t throw out in bold relief, as one of the great landmarks of
political and social progress, the organization and administration of
the Freedmen's Bureau."

On May 12, 1865, Howard was appointed; and he assumed the duties of his
office promptly on the 15th, and began examining the field of work. A
curious mess he looked upon: little despotisms, communistic
experiments, slavery, peonage, business speculations, organized
charity, unorganized almsgiving,--all reeling on under the guise of
helping the freedmen, and all enshrined in the smoke and blood of the
war and the cursing and silence of angry men. On May 19 the new
government--for a government it really was--issued its constitution;
commissioners were to be appointed in each of the seceded states, who
were to take charge of "all subjects relating to refugees and
freedmen," and all relief and rations were to be given by their consent
alone. The Bureau invited continued cooperation with benevolent
societies, and declared: "It will be the object of all commissioners to
introduce practicable systems of compensated labor," and to establish
schools. Forthwith nine assistant commissioners were appointed. They
were to hasten to their fields of work; seek gradually to close relief
establishments, and make the destitute self-supporting; act as courts
of law where there were no courts, or where Negroes were not recognized
in them as free; establish the institution of marriage among ex-slaves,
and keep records; see that freedmen were free to choose their
employers, and help in making fair contracts for them; and finally, the
circular said: "Simple good faith, for which we hope on all hands for
those concerned in the passing away of slavery, will especially relieve
the assistant commissioners in the discharge of their duties toward the
freedmen, as well as promote the general welfare."

No sooner was the work thus started, and the general system and local
organization in some measure begun, than two grave difficulties
appeared which changed largely the theory and outcome of Bureau work.
First, there were the abandoned lands of the South. It had long been
the more or less definitely expressed theory of the North that all the
chief problems of Emancipation might be settled by establishing the
slaves on the forfeited lands of their masters,--a sort of poetic
justice, said some. But this poetry done into solemn prose meant
either wholesale confiscation of private property in th