Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau with an act on March 3, 1865, expecting the Bureau’s work to be complete within a year. In 1866, realizing the Bureau would require more time, Congress passed a bill extending its term and increasing its powers. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, but both the House and Senate overrode his veto on July 16, 1866.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
H.R. 613, An Act to continue . . . and to amend “An act to establish a Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees,” June 11, 1866
The Freedmen's Bureau
In 1865 Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, to address the needs of displaced and formerly enslaved persons. The bureau administered humanitarian, economic, and legal services; supervised labor contracts; and redistributed abandoned lands. Congress re-chartered the Freedmen’s Bureau over President Andrew Johnson’s veto in 1866, but terminated its activities in 1872. African Americans elected to the House who had worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau included John Mercer Langston, Jeremiah Haralson, Josiah Walls, and Robert C. De Large.
The greatest success of the Freedmen’s Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among the Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South.
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Freedmen’s Bureau, 1901
Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau with an act on March 3, 1865, expecting the Bureau’s work to be complete within a year. In 1866, realizing the Bureau would require more time, Congress passed a bill extending its term and increasing its powers. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, but both the House and Senate overrode his veto on July 16, 1866.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
