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U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum

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U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum
Phone:
+1 256-883-3737

Hours:
SundayClosed
MondayClosed
TuesdayClosed
Wednesday10am - 4pm
Thursday10am - 4pm
Friday10am - 4pm
Saturday10am - 4pm


The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of the United States Department of War to direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which established the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865, was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. The Freedmen's Bureau was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. The Bureau was made a part of the United States Department of War, as it was the only agency with an existing organization that could be assigned to the South. Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau started operations in 1865. Throughout the first year, its representatives learned that these tasks would be very difficult, as Southern legislatures passed laws for Black Codes that restricted movement, conditions of labor, and other civil rights of African Americans, nearly duplicating conditions of slavery. The Freedmen's Bureau controlled a limited amount of arable land.The Bureau's powers were expanded to help African Americans find family members from whom they had become separated during the war. It arranged to teach them to read and write, considered critical by the freedmen themselves as well as the government. Bureau agents also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both local and national courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues. The Bureau encouraged former major planters to rebuild their plantations and urged freed blacks to return to work for them, kept an eye on contracts between the newly free laborers and planters, and pushed whites and blacks to work together in a free labor market as employers and employees rather than as masters and slaves.In 1866, Congress renewed the charter for the Bureau. President Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who had succeeded to the office following Lincoln's assassination, vetoed the bill because he believed that it encroached on states' rights, relied inappropriately on the military in peacetime, and would prevent freed slaves from becoming independent by offering too much assistance. By 1869, the Bureau had lost most of its funding and as a result been forced to cut much of its staff. By 1870 the Bureau had been weakened further due to the rise of Ku Klux Klan violence across the South, whose members attacked both blacks and sympathetic white Republicans, including teachers.In 1872, Congress abruptly abandoned the program, refusing to approve renewal authorizing legislation. It did not inform Howard, who had been transferred to Arizona by President Ulysses S. Grant to settle hostilities between the Apache and settlers. Grant's Secretary of War William W. Belknap was hostile to Howard's leadership and authority at the Bureau. Belknap aroused controversy among Republicans by his reassignment of Howard.
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