t the Bureau should have a brief existence, but the
institution and its wards became such important factors in politics that
on July 16, 1866, after a struggle with the President, Congress passed
an act over his veto amplifying the powers of the Bureau and extending
it for two years longer. This continuation of the Bureau was due to many
things: to a belief that former slaveholders were not to be trusted in
dealing with the Negroes; to the baneful effect of the "Black Laws"
upon Northern public opinion; to the struggle between the President
and Congress over reconstruction; and to the foresight of radical
politicians who saw in the institution an instrument for the political
instruction of the blacks in the proper doctrines.

The new law was supplementary to the Act of 1865, but its additional
provisions merely endorsed what the Bureau was already doing. It
authorized the issue of medical supplies, confirmed certain sales of
land to Negroes, and provided that the promises which Sherman made in
1865 to the Sea Island Negroes should be carried out as far as possible
and that no lands occupied by blacks should be restored to the owners
until the crops of 1866 were gathered; it directed the Bureau to
cooperate with private charitable and benevolent associations, and
it authorized the use or sale for school purposes of all confiscated
property; and finally it ordered that the civil equality of the Negro be
upheld by the Bureau and its courts when state courts refused to accept
the principle. By later laws the existence of the Bureau was extended to
January 1, 1869, in the unreconstructed States, but its educational and
financial activities were continued until June 20, 1872.

The chief objections to the Bureau from the conservative Northern
point of view were summed up in the President's veto messages. The laws
creating it were based, he asserted, on the theory that a state of war
still existed; there was too great a concentration of power in the hands
of a few individuals who could not be held responsible; with such a
large number of agents ignorant of the country and often working for
their own advantage injustice would inevitably result; in spite of
the fact that the Negro everywhere had a status in court, arbitrary
tribunals were established, without jury, without regular procedure
or rules of evidence, and without appeal; the provisions in regard to
abandoned lands amounted to confiscation without a hearing; the Negro,