Freedmen's Bureau Essay

In the previous year, Congress had passed a bill known as the New Freedmen’s Bureau. This bill assisted the integration of former slaves into freedmen society in the southern states for one year. The Bureau was directed under the War Department and provided many services such as: food, medical aid, and schools. In 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill was renewed by Congress, but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. He believed: “...the bill before me contains provisions which in my opinion are not warranted by the Constitution, and are not well suited to accomplish the end in view”. 1 One of the key reasons why Johnson vetoed the bill was due to his opposition of the federal government securing the rights of blacks. Johnson felt that it should

In the early spring of 1866, President Johnson vetoed yet another bill involving the rights of former slaves. On March 27, Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The act was to establish: “That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power...are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States....”2 It was a direct response to southern legislation’s enacting Black Codes. In all of the former Confederate states, the state legislation limited the rights and freedom of former slaves. Some of the limitations included in the Black Codes were: voting, serving on juries, marriage, and occupation. President Johnson vetoed the act of similar reasons to his veto of the Freedman’s Bureau; interfering with state rights. Again, Congress overrode

“The Civil Rights Bill is a law. The House following the example of the Senate, passed the bill at three o’clock by the large vote of one hundred and twenty-two to forty-one noes.” 3 With the passing of The Civil Rights Act of 1866, many white southern men went to resist the rights of the former slaves. One of the ways southerns resisted the act was through an organization known today as The Ku Klux Klan. This group was formed by six former Confederate soldiers in Pulaski, Tennessee. When it was first established, it was not intended to inflict any violent attacks; it was just a social club for the ex-Confederate soldiers. In 1866, there were outbreaks of violence throughout the south between whites and blacks. In Memphis, a disagreement between former black and white soldiers turned into a deadly riot with the assistants of white policemen. This riot left at least forty people dead, seventy people wounded and burned down many buildings. In July, there was a violent outbreak in the city of New Orleans at a black suffrage convention. This assault left an estimated thirty-seven people dead, including three white allies. With the attacks and aggression between blacks and whites in south, by 1868 ‘The