The Freedmen and the Bureau

The Dispatch suggests that black citizens be weaned off the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau. Some white Richmonders believe the Bureau is making "negroes" too reliant on government and handouts leaving them lazy and dependent.

The Freedmen and the Bureau. The New York Times, in speaking of the sufferings of the South and the best means of relieving them, makes some practical suggestions touching the bad effects the operations of the Freedmen's Bureau have had upon the negro. That paper admits that negroes have been deluded, by the guardianship of the Bureau and the political powers conferred upon them, to believe "that they may for all time rely "upon the Government, instead of trusting to themselves." It insists that if help is given them this year it must be administered "as an auxiliary in disciplining "the freedmen to the steady, faithful "labor which is with them the sole alternative of pauperism." That they have neither done as much nor as well as when in a state of slavery, the Times frankly ad-mits-a very creditable admission for a Republican, but one the truth of which no man can deny-and it says to them: "The "country, we doubt not, will cheerfully, "and with needful liberality, provide for "their present imminent necessities, but "it is not inclined to maintain them in "laziness or to encourage expectations "which point to shiftlessness and beggary."

“The Freedmen and the Bureau,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/761.