Bureau
courts tended to become centres simply for punishing whites,
while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institu-
tions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks. Almost every law
and method ingenuity could devise was employed by the
legislatures to reduce the Negroes to serfdom,--to make them
the slaves of the State, if not of individual owners; while the
Bureau officials too often were found striving to put the
"bottom rail on top," and gave the freedmen a power and
independence which they could not yet use. It is all well
enough for us of another generation to wax wise with advice
to those who bore the burden in the heat of the day. It is full
easy now to see that the man who lost home, fortune, and
family at a stroke, and saw his land ruled by "mules and
niggers," was really benefited by the passing of slavery. It is
not difficult now to say to the young freedman, cheated and
cuffed about who has seen his father's head beaten to a jelly
and his own mother namelessly assaulted, that the meek shall
inherit the earth. Above all, nothing is more convenient than
to heap on the Freedmen's Bureau all the evils of that evil
day, and damn it utterly for every mistake and blunder that
was made.
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