On March 3, 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created in the war department under the direction of General Howard.(1) Although the bill was twice vetoed by the president, it was eventually over ruled my majority vote and passed as a law by Congress. It was soon to be called the Freedmen’s Bureau. The main purpose of the Bureau was to help establish schools, aid the poor, and settle conflicts between whites and blacks (2). W.E.B. Du Bois had written, “The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South” (3). Although the Bureau did not establish the schools itself, it helped coordinate and finance the activities that went to black education and helped provide the schools with teachers from the north. Education eventually became the main objective of the Freedman’s Bureau. At the end of the Bureaus time, General Howard’s wish was to transfer the education system to a permanent government division.(4) Although The Freedmen’s Bureau expired in 1870 when the bill to extend the program was vetoed by the president, the educational work of the Bureau lasted until 1872. (5)
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