" These were the saddest sights of that woful day; and
no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the
present-past; but, hating, they went to their long home, and,
hating, their children's children live today.
Here, then, was the field of work for the Freedmen's
Bureau; and since, with some hesitation, it was continued by
the act of 1868 until 1869, let us look upon four years of its
work as a whole. There were, in 1868, nine hundred Bureau
officials scattered from Washington to Texas, ruling, directly
and indirectly, many millions of men. The deeds of these
rulers fall mainly under seven heads: the relief of physical
suffering, the overseeing of the beginnings of free labor, the
buying and selling of land, the establishment of schools,
the paying of bounties, the administration of justice, and the
financiering of all these activities.
Up to June, 1869, over half a million patients had been
treated by Bureau physicians and surgeons, and sixty hospi-
tals and asylums had been in operation. In fifty months twenty-
one million free rations were distributed at a cost of over four
million dollars.
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