Too Great a Burden to Bear : The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas / Christopher B. Bean.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bean, Christopher B., Author.

Series:

Reconstructing America (Series)

Reconstructing America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands--Officials and employees--Biography.

United States.

United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands--History.

African Americans--Texas--History--19th century.

African Americans.

Freed persons--Texas--History.

Freed persons.

Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--Texas.

Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877).

Texas--Race relations--History--19th century.

Texas.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In its brief seven-year existence, the Freedmen’s Bureau became the epicenter of the debate about Reconstruction. Historians have only recently begun to focus on the Bureau’s personnel in Texas, the individual agents termed the “hearts of Reconstruction.” Specifically addressing the historiographical debates concerning the character of the Bureau and its sub-assistant commissioners (SACs), Too Great a Burden to Bear sheds new light on the work and reputation of these agents.Focusing on the agents on a personal level, author Christopher B. Bean reveals the type of man Bureau officials believed qualified to oversee the Freedpeople’s transition to freedom. This work shows that each agent, moved by his sense of fairness and ideas of citizenship, gender, and labor, represented the agency’s policy in his subdistrict. These men further ensured the former slaves’ right to an education and right of mobility, something they never had while in bondage.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. “A Stranger Amongst Strangers”

2. “The Post of Greatest Peril”

3. Conservative Phoenix

4. Bureau Expansion, Bureau Courts, and the Black Code

5. The Bureau’s Highwater Mark

6. “They must vote with the party that shed their blood . . . in giving them liberty”

7. Violence, Frustration, and Yellow Fever

8. General Orders No. 40 and the Freedmen’s Bureau’s End

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

9780823271771

0823271773

9780823268788

0823268780

9780823268771

0823268772

OCLC:

938856414