Bricks Without Straw: A Novel

by Albion Winegar Tourgée

"I ain't afeard o' yer dogs," said Nimbus, as he went down the hall, and, mounting his mule, rode away.

With every step his wrath increased. It was well for Potestatem Desmit that he was not present to feel the anger of the black giant whom he had enraged. Once or twice he turned back, gesticulating fiercely and trembling with rage. Then he seemed to think better of it, and, turning his mule into the town a mile off his road, he lodged a complaint against his old master, with the officer of the "Bureau," and then rode quietly home, satisfied to "let de law take its course," as he said. He was glad that there was a law for him—a law that put him on the level with his old master—and meditated gratefully, as he rode home, on what the nation had wrought in his behalf since the time when "Marse Desmit" had sent him along that very road with an order to "Marse Ware" to give him "twenty lashes well laid on." The silly fellow thought that thenceforth he was going to have a "white man's chance in life." He did not know that in our free American Government, while the Federal power can lawfully and properly ordain and establish the theoretical rights of its citizens, it has no legal power to support and maintain those rights against the encroachment of any of the States, since in those matters the State is sovereign, and the part is greater than the whole.

CHAPTER XIV.

BORN OF THE STORM.

Perhaps there was never any more galling and hated badge of defeat imposed upon a conquered people than the "Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands," a branch of the Federal executive power which grew out of the necessities of the struggle to put down rebellion, and to which, little by little, came to be referred very many of those matters which could by no means be neglected, but which did not properly fall within the purview of any other branch of military administration. It is known, in these latter days, simply as the Freedmen's Bureau, and thought to have been a terrible engine of oppression and terror and infamy, because of the denunciations which the former slave-owners heaped upon it, and the usually accepted idea that the mismanaged and malodorous Freedmen's Savings Bank was, somehow or other, an outgrowth and exponent of this institution. The poor thing is dead now, and, like dead humanity, the good it did has been interred with its bones. It has been buried, with curses deep and bitter for its funeral obsequies. Its officers have been loaded with infamy. Even its wonderful results have been hidden from the sight of man, and its history blackened with shame and hate. It is one of the curious indices of public feeling that the North listened, at first, with good-natured indifference to the virulent diatribes of the recently conquered people in regard to this institution; after a time wonder succeeded to indifference; until finally, while it was still an active branch of the public service, wondering credulity succeeded, and its name became synonymous with disgrace; so that now there is hardly a corner of the land in which a man can be found brave enough to confess that he wore the uniform and performed the duties of an agent of the "Freedmen's Bureau." The thorough subserviency of Northern sentiment to the domination of that masterly will which characterized "the South" of the old regime was never better illustrated. "Curse me this people!" said the Southern Balak—of the Abolitionist first, of the Bureau-Officer next, and then of the Carpet-Bagger. The Northern Balaam hemmed and paltered, and then—cursed the children of his loins!

Of the freedmen, our recent allies in war, the grateful and devoted friends, of the nation which had opened for them the gateway of the future, not one of the whole four millions had a word to utter in reproach of this branch of the service, in which they were particularly interested. Strangely enough, too, none of those Union men of the South, who had been refugees during the war or friends of that Union after its close, joined in the complaints and denunciations which were visited on this institution and its agents. Neither did the teachers of colored schools, nor the officers and agents of those charitable and missionary associations of the North, whose especial work and purpose was the elevation and enlightenment of the colored man, see fit to unite in that torrent of detraction which swept over the country in regard to the "Bureau" and its agents. But then, it may be that none of these classes were able to judge truly and impartially of its character and works! They may have been prepossessed in its favor to an extent which prevented a fair and honest determination in regard to it.

Certain it is that those who stood upon the other side—those who instituted and carried on rebellion, or the greater part of them, and every one of those who opposed reconstruction, who fought to the last moment the enfranchisement of the black; every one who denied the right of the nation to emancipate the slave; every one who clamored for the payment of the State debts contracted during the war; all of those who proposed and imposed the famous "black codes,"—every one of these classes and every man of each class avowed himself unable to find words to express the infamy, corruption, and oppression which characterized the administration of that climacteric outrage upon a brave, generous, overwhelmed but unconquered —forgiving but not to be forgiven, people.

They felt themselves to have been in all things utterly innocent and guileless. The luck of war had been terribly against them, they considered, but the right remained with them. They were virtuous. Their opponents had not only been the aggressors at the outset, but had shown themselves little better than savages by the manner in which they had conducted the war; and, to crown the infamy of their character, had imposed upon "the South" at its close that most nefarious of all detestable forms of oppressive degradation, "the Bureau." Their orators grew magniloquent over its tyrannical oppression; the Southern press overflowed with that marvellous exuberance of diatribe of which they are the acknowledged masters—to all of which the complaisant North gave a ready and subservient concurrence, until the very name reeked in the public mind with infamous associations and degrading ideas.

A few men tried to stem the torrent. Some who had been in its service even dared to insist that they had not thereby rendered themselves infamous and unworthy. The nation listened for a time with kindly pity to their indignant protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers in the silence of calm but considerate disbelief. They were quietly allowed to sink into the charitable grave of unquestioning oblivion. It was not any personal attaint which befouled their names and blasted their public prospects, but simply the fact that they had obeyed the nation's behest and done a work assigned to them by the country's rulers. Thus it came to pass that in one third of the country it was an ineffaceable brand of shame to have been at any time an agent or officer of this Bureau, and throughout the rest of the country it was accounted a fair ground for suspicion. In it all, the conquering element was simply the obedient indicator which recorded and proclaimed the sentiment and wish of the conquered. The words of the enemy were always regarded as being stamped with the mint-mark of truth and verity, while the declarations of our allies accounted so apparently false and spurious as to be unworthy of consideration, even when attested by svvorn witnesses and written in blood upon a page of history tear blotted and stained with savage deeds. All this was perfectly natural, however, and arose, almost unavoidably, from the circumstances under which the institution was created and the duties which it was called upon to discharge. It may not be amiss to consider again the circumstances under which it came to exist.

This is how this institution had its origin: As the war to put down rebellion progressed and our armies advanced farther and farther into the heart of the Confederacy, the most devoted and malignant adherents of the Confederate cause abandoned their homes and all that they could not easily take with them, and fled within the Confederate lines. Those white people who were adverse to the Confederate cause, or at least lukewarm in its support, spurred by the rigors of conscription and the dangers of proscription and imprisonment, took their lives in their hands, left their homes, and fled by every available road to the shelter of the Federal forces. Those who had no homes—the slaves—either deserted by their owners or fancying they saw in that direction a glimmer of possible freedom, swarmed in flank and rear of every blue-clad column which invaded the Confederacy, by thousands and tens of thousands. They fled as the Israelites did from the bondage of Egypt, with that sort of instinctive terror which has in all ages led individuals, peoples, and races to flee from the scene of oppression. The whites who came to us were called "refugees," and the blacks at first "contrabands," and after January 1, 1863, "freedmen." Of course they had to be taken care of. The "refugee" brought nothing with him; the freedrnan had nothing to bring. The abandoned lands of the Confederates were, in many cases, susceptible of being used to employ and supply these needy classes who came to us for aid and sustenance. It was to do this that the Freedmen's Bureau was created.