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| The Freedmen's Bureau: Success or Failure? |
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Author: John Soos, Sudbrook Middle Magnet, Baltimore County Public Schools
Grade Level: Middle/High
Duration: 2-3 Periods |
Overview:
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Many young students intuit that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not in fact transform African-American slaves into citizens with the same rights as whites. Less clear, however, is the historical process that ended the institution of slavery after the Civil War. This lesson uses the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau, a government advocacy group set up during Reconstruction, to teach students the complexity of social progress during those pivotal years. By analyzing historical documents, students will discover that in the areas of education, reuniting family members, and the courts, the Bureau did much to protect the new rights of former slaves. However, in the face of President Johnson's pardoning of Southern landowners and Congress' failure to adequately fund the Bureau, little could be done to ensure African-Americans' economic independence. Most former slaves thus had little choice but to become tenants, working for wages on white-owned farms. So although African-Americans now enjoyed freedom of movement and legal marriages, their lack of property ownership ensured continued white supremacy, especially in the South.
The ambiguous victories of the Freedmen's Bureau teach us that "freedom" is always a qualified term. By studying the primary sources, students can determine for themselves which version of freedom prevailed in different circumstances.
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