will have, an element of danger and revolution, of
dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know. It was
some inkling of this paradox, even in the unquiet days of the Bureau,
that allayed an opposition to human training, which still to-day lies
smouldering, but not flaming. Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton were
founded in these days, and nearly $6,000,000 was expended in five
years for educational work, $750,000 of which came from the freedmen
themselves.

Such contributions, together with the buying of land and various other
enterprises, showed that the ex-slave was handling some free capital
already. The chief initial source of this was labor in the army, and his
pay and bounty as a soldier. Payments to Negro soldiers were at first
complicated by the ignorance of the recipients, and the fact that the
quotas of colored regiments from Northern states were largely filled by
recruits from the South, unknown to their fellow soldiers. Consequently,
payments were accompanied by such frauds that Congress, by joint
resolution in 1867, put the whole matter in the hands of the Freedmen's
Bureau. In two years $6,000,000 was thus distributed to 5000 claimants,
and in the end the sum exceeded $8,000,000. Even in this system, fraud
was frequent; but still the work put needed capital in the hands of
practical paupers, and some, at least, was well spent.

The most perplexing and least successful part of the Bureau's work lay
in the exercise of its judicial functions. In a distracted land where
slavery had hardly fallen, to keep the strong from wanton abuse of the
weak, and the weak from gloating insolently over the half-shorn strength
of the strong, was a thankless, hopeless task. The former masters of
the land were peremptorily ordered about, seized and imprisoned, and
punished over and again, with scant courtesy from army officers. The
former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry
and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centres simply for
punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely
institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks. Almost every law
and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the legislatures to
reduce the Negroes to serfdom,--to make them the slaves of the state,
if not of individual owners; while the Bureau officials too often were
found striving to put the "bottom rail on top," and give the freedmen
a power and independe