color-line,--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in
Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase
of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who
marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points,
of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as
we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the
conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced
itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had
Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly
guised, sprang from the earth,--What shall be done with Negroes?
Peremptory military commands this way and that, could not answer the
query; the Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and
intensify the difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro
problems of to-day.

It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history from 1861 to
1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro. In effect, this tale
of the dawn of Freedom is an account of that government of men called
the Freedmen's Bureau,--one of the most singular and interesting of the
attempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race
and social condition.

The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the President,
and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies, East and West,
penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive slaves appeared within
their lines. They came at night, when the flickering camp-fires shone
like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon: old men and thin,
with gray and tufted hair; women with frightened eyes, dragging
whimpering hungry children; men and girls, stalwart and gaunt,--a horde
of starving vagabonds, homeless, helpless, and pitiable, in their dark
distress. Two methods of treating these newcomers seemed equally
logical to opposite sorts of minds. Ben Butler, in Virginia, quickly
declared slave property contraband of war, and put the fugitives to
work; while Fremont, in Missouri, declared the slaves free under
martial law. Butler's action was approved, but Fremont's was hastily
countermanded, and his successor, Halleck, saw things differently.
"Hereafter," he commanded, "no slaves should be allowed to come into
your lines at all; if any come without your knowledge, when owners call
for them deliver them." Such a policy was difficult to enforce; some
o