mn it utterly for every mistake and blunder that was made.

All this is easy, but it is neither sensible nor just. Someone had
blundered, but that was long before Oliver Howard was born; there was
criminal aggression and heedless neglect, but without some system of
control there would have been far more than there was. Had that
control been from within, the Negro would have been re-enslaved, to all
intents and purposes. Coming as the control did from without, perfect
men and methods would have bettered all things; and even with imperfect
agents and questionable methods, the work accomplished was not
undeserving of commendation.

Such was the dawn of Freedom; such was the work of the
Freedmen's Bureau, which, summed up in brief, may be epitomized thus:
for some fifteen million dollars, beside the sums spent before 1865,
and the dole of benevolent societies, this Bureau set going a system of
free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietorship, secured
the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law, and founded the
free common school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to begin
the establishment of good-will between ex-masters and freedmen, to
guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged
self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied
promises to furnish the freedmen with land. Its successes were the
result of hard work, supplemented by the aid of philanthropists and the
eager striving of black men. Its failures were the result of bad local
agents, the inherent difficulties of the work, and national neglect.

Such an institution, from its wide powers, great responsibilities,
large control of moneys, and generally conspicuous position, was
naturally open to repeated and bitter attack. It sustained a searching
Congressional investigation at the instance of Fernando Wood in 1870.
Its archives and few remaining functions were with blunt discourtesy
transferred from Howard's control, in his absence, to the supervision
of Secretary of War Belknap in 1872, on the Secretary's recommendation.
Finally, in consequence of grave intimations of wrong-doing made by the
Secretary and his subordinates, General Howard was court-martialed in
1874. In both of these trials the Commissioner of the Freedmen's
Bureau was officially exonerated from any wilful misdoing, and his work
commended. Nevertheless, many unpleasant things were brought to
light,--the methods of