05/13/2026
Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) on March 3, 1865. Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard served as the only Commissioner of the Bureau. Part of the War Department, the Bureau managed all matters relating to refugees, freedmen, and lands abandoned or seized by Federal authorities during the Civil War. Providing relief and assistance to freedmen, the Bureau issued rations and clothing, operated hospitals and refugee camps, and supervised labor contracts
“Congress designed the bureau to be temporary, authorizing it to serve until a year after the war ended. The establishing legislation also contained a clause that allowed the commissioner, “under the direction of the president,” to distribute up to 40 acres of confiscated land to each freedman. The clause built upon the previously mentioned Confiscation Acts that the military had used to create government farms throughout the South, and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, which allowed freedmen to receive up to 40 acres of land along a stretch of territory from , to Charleston, South Carolina. Over 40,000 freedmen claimed 400,000 acres of such land by June 1865."
In the fall of 1867, a group of blacks in Gainesville organized a board of trustees to open a school for Freedmen.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105), also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. The Bureau was responsible for the supervision and management of all matters relating to the refugees and fre...
