Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

Before June, 1865, rations were issued by the army officers. From June, 1865, to September, 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau issued 2,522,907 rations to refugees (whites) and 1,128,740 to freedmen. The following table shows the number of people fed each month in Alabama by the Freedmen’s Bureau before October, 1866:—

White						Black
Months	Men	Women	Boys	Girls	Total	Men	Women	Boys	Girls	Total
1865.
Nov.	72	483	821	875	2,521	327	656	346	615	1,944
Dec.	271	909	1,059	1,090	3,329	464	860	345	574	2,243
1866.
Jan.	349	2,377	1,735	2,764	7,225	538	1,053	742	1,002	3,335
Feb.	1,285	3,641	3,806	5,039	13,771	894	1,455	880	1,095	4,324
March	1,181	4,971	5,796	6,758	18,616	995	2,007	1,389	1,662	6,053
April	1,038	4,340	4,844	6,642	16,864	1,176	2,331	1,904	2,771	8,182
May	1,743	5,821	6,939	9,064	23,567	1,479	3,433	2,898	3,576	14,526
June	1,912	5,661	6,932	8,092	22,577	1,654	3,170	2,846	3,151	10,821
July	1,585	5,036	7,108	8,076	21,805	1,294	2,472	2,379	2,648	8,793
Aug.	1,376	4,528	5,932	6,836	18,672	1,178	2,025	2,112	2,247	7,562
Sept.	1,368	4,454	5,547	6,543	17,912	1,242	2,225	1,939	2,126	7,532
Totals	12,180	42,201	50,429	61,779	166,589	11,241	21,687	17,780	21,407	72,115

Men, 23,421; women, 63,888; children, 151,295; aggregate, 238,704; rations issued, 3,789,788; value, $643,590.18.

During the month of September, 1865, 45,771 rations were issued to 1971 refugees, and 36,295 rations to 3537 freedmen; in October, 1865, 2875 refugees and 2151 freedmen drew 153,812 rations. From September 1, 1866 to September 1, 1867, 214,305 rations were issued to refugees and 274,329 to freedmen. From September 1, 1867, to September 1, 1868, refugees drew only 886 rations, and freedmen 86,021. Fewer and fewer whites and more and more freedmen were fed by the Bureau.[1192]

In 1865 and 1866, the crops were poor, and in 1866 there were at least 10,000 destitute whites and 5000 destitute blacks in the state. The Bureau asked for 450,000 rations per month, but did not receive them. The agents were now (1866) beginning to use the issue of rations to control the negroes, and to organize them into political clubs or “Loyal Leagues.” During this time (1866-1867), however, the state gave much assistance, and coöperated with the Freedmen’s Bureau. Some of the agents of the Bureau sold the supplies that should have gone to the starving.[1193]

The Bureau furnished transportation to 217 refugees and to 521 freedmen who wished to return to their homes, and to a number of northern school teachers. These transactions were not attended by abuses.[1194]

Demoralization caused by the Freedmen’s Bureau

After the Federal occupation, when the negroes had congregated in the towns, the higher and more responsible officers of the army used their influence to make the blacks go home and work. If left to these officers, the labor question would have been somewhat satisfactorily settled; they would have forced the negroes to work for some one, and to keep away from the towns. But the subordinate officers, especially the officers of the negro regiments, encouraged the freedmen to collect in the towns. Few supplies were issued to them by the army, and there was every prospect that in a few weeks the negroes would be forced by hunger to go back to work. The establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, however, changed conditions. It assumed control of the negroes in all relations, and upset all that had been done toward settling the question by gathering many of the freedmen into great camps or colonies near the towns. One large colony was established in north Alabama, and many temporary ones throughout the state,[1195] into which thousands who set out to test their new-found freedom were gathered. On one plantation, in Montgomery County, in July, 1865, 4000 negroes were placed. There was another large colony near Mobile.[1196] A year later the Montgomery colony had 200 invalids. Perhaps more misery was caused by the Bureau in this way than was relieved by it. The want and sickness arising from the crowded conditions in the towns was only in slight degree relieved by the food distributed, and the hospitals opened. There were 40,000 old and infirm negroes in the state, and thousands died of disease. Not one-tenth did the Bureau reach. The helpless old negroes were supported by their former masters, who now in poverty should have been relieved of their care. Those who were fed were the able-bodied who could come to town and stay around the office. The colonies in the negro districts became hospitals, orphan asylums, and temporary stopping places for the negroes; and the issue of rations was longest and surest at these places.[1197] Several hundred white refugees also remained worthless hangers-on of the Bureau.

The regular issue of rations to the negroes broke up the labor system that had been partially established and prevented a settlement of the labor problem. The government would now support them, the blacks thought, and they would not have to work. Around the towns conditions became very bad. Want and disease were fast thinning their numbers. They refused to make contracts, though the highest wages were offered by those planters and farmers who could afford to hire them, and the agents encouraged them in their idleness by telling them not to work, as it was the duty of their former masters to support them, and that wages were due them, at least since January 1, 1863.[1198] They told them, also, to come to the towns and live until the matter was settled.[1199] Domestic animals near the negro camps were nearly all stolen by the blacks who were able but unwilling to work. These marauders were frequently shot at or were thrashed, which gave rise to the stories of outrage common at that time.

Doctor Nott of Mobile wrote that in or near Mobile no labor could be hired; that it was impossible to get a cook or a washerwoman, while hundreds were dying in idleness from disease and starvation, deceived by the false hopes aroused, and false promises of support by the government, made by wicked and designing men who wished to create prejudice against the whites, and to prevent the negroes from working by telling them that to go back to work was to go back to slavery. The negro women were told that women should not work, and they announced that they never intended to go to the field or do other work again, but “live like white ladies.”[1200] Wherever it was active the Bureau demoralized labor by arousing false hopes and by unnecessary intermeddling. It has been claimed for the Bureau that it was a vast labor clearing-house, and that a part of its work was the establishment of a system of free labor.[1201] In other states such may have been the case; in Alabama it certainly was not. The labor system partially established all over the Black Belt in 1865 was deranged wherever the Bureau had influence. The system proposed by the Bureau was simply that of old slave wages paid for work done under a written contract. The excessive wages and the interference of the agents in the making of contracts made it impossible for the system to work, and Swayne acquiesced in the nullification of the Bureau rules by black and white, saying that natural forces would bring about a proper state of affairs. Wherever the Bureau had the least influence, there industry was least demoralized. So far from acting as a labor agency, its influence was distinctly in the opposite direction wherever it undertook to regulate labor. The free labor system, such as it was, was already in existence when the Bureau reached the Black Belt, and, in spite of that institution, worked itself out.[1202]