"
No sooner was the work thus started, and the general
system and local organization in some measure begun, than
two grave difficulties appeared which changed largely the
theory and outcome of Bureau work. First, there were the
abandoned lands of the South. It had long been the more or
less definitely expressed theory of the North that all the chief
problems of Emancipation might be settled by establishing
the slaves on the forfeited lands of their masters,--a sort of
poetic justice, said some. But this poetry done into solemn
prose meant either wholesale confiscation of private property
in the South, or vast appropriations. Now Congress had not
appropriated a cent, and no sooner did the proclamations of
general amnesty appear than the eight hundred thousand acres
of abandoned lands in the hands of the Freedmen's Bureau
melted quickly away. The second difficulty lay in perfecting
the local organization of the Bureau throughout the wide field
of work. Making a new machine and sending out officials of
duly ascertained fitness for a great work of social reform is no
child's task; but this task was even harder, for a new central
organization had to be fitted on a heterogeneous and confused
but already existing system of relief and control of ex-slaves;
and the agents available for this work must be sought for in
an army still busy with war operations,--men in the very
nature of the case ill fitted for delicate social work,--or
among the questionable camp followers of an invading host.
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