rched
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 deeper 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 slaves? Peremptory military
commands, this way and that, could not answer the query; the
Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the
difficulties; and so at last there arose in the South a government of
men called the Freedmen's Bureau, which lasted, legally, from 1865 to
1872, but in a sense from 1861 to 1876, and which sought to settle the
Negro problems in the United States of America.

It is the aim of this essay to study the Freedmen's Bureau,--the
occasion of its rise, the character of its work, and its final success
and failure,--not only as a part of American history, but above all as
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.

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 of the blue hosts 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. Said some, "We have nothing to do with slaves."
"Hereafter," commanded Halleck, "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." But others said, "We take grain and fowl;
why not slaves?" Whereupon Fremont, as early as August, 1861, declared
the slaves of Missouri rebels free. Such radical action was quickly
countermanded, but at the same time the opposite policy could not be
enforced; some of the black refugees declared themselves freemen, others
showed their masters had deserted them, and still others were captured
with forts and plantations. Evidently