Instead of granting newly freed African Americans their own plots of land, the Freedmen’s Bureau instructed them to enter into written labor contracts with planters—often their former owners. This contract between Kentucky employer Abraham Bledsoe and his former slave Henry Bledsoe sets conditions to be met by both parties and includes penalties for failure to comply.
Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, National Archives and Records Administration
Labor contract between Abraham Bledsoe and Henry Bledsoe (freedman), commencing January 19, 1866 (Maysville, Kentucky)
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
Instead of granting newly freed African Americans their own plots of land, the Freedmen’s Bureau instructed them to enter into written labor contracts with planters—often their former owners. This contract between Kentucky employer Abraham Bledsoe and his former slave Henry Bledsoe sets conditions to be met by both parties and includes penalties for failure to comply.
Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, National Archives and Records Administration
