egular pay. The Secretary of War could issue rations,
clothing, and fuel to the destitute, and all abandoned property was
placed in the hands of the Bureau for eventual lease and sale to
ex-slaves in forty-acre parcels.

Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of
the emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation. It was a tremendous
undertaking. Here, at a stroke of the pen, was erected a government
of millions of men,--and not ordinary men, either, but black men
emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old;
and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time
of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken, embittered population
of their former masters. Any man might well have hesitated to assume
charge of such a work, with vast responsibilities, indefinite powers,
and limited resources. Probably no one but a soldier would have answered
such a call promptly; and indeed no one but a soldier could be called,
for Congress had appropriated no money for salaries and expenses.

Less than a month after the weary emancipator passed to his rest,
his successor assigned Major General Oliver O. Howard to duty
as commissioner of the new Bureau. He was a Maine man, then only
thirty-five years of age. He had marched with Sherman to the sea, had
fought well at Gettysburg, and had but a year before been assigned to
the command of the Department of Tennessee. An honest and sincere
men, with rather too much faith in human nature, little aptitude
for systematic business and intricate detail, he was nevertheless
conservative, hard-working, and, above all, acquainted at first-hand
with much of the work before him. And of that work it has been truly
said, "No approximately correct history of civilization can ever be
written which does not throw out in bold relief, as one of the great
landmarks of political and social progress, the organization and
administration of the Freedmen's Bureau."

On May 12, 1865, Howard was appointed, and he assumed the duties of his
office promptly on the 15th, and began examining the field of work. A
curious mess he looked upon: little despotisms, communistic experiments,
slavery, peonage, business speculations, organized charity, unorganized
almsgiving,--all reeling on under the guise of helping the freedman, and
all enshrined in the smoke and blood of war and the cursing and silence
of angry men. On May 19 the new government--for a government