f terror prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro
found scant justice in the local courts against the white man. He could
look for protection only to the military forces of the United States still
garrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to the Freedmen's
Bureau."[98] This Freedmen's Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If it
had been presented to-day instead of fifty years ago, it would have been
regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than the state insurance of
England and Germany. A half century ago, however, and in a country which
gave the _laisser faire_ economics their extremest trial, the Freedmen's
Bureau struck the whole nation as unthinkable, save as a very temporary
expedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of distress following war.
Yet the proposals of the Bureau were both simple and sensible:

1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen.

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend.

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.

4. To establish schools.

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor relief
stations, etc.

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom
with less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extending
over a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to be
enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen who
attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither
object nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposed
the Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want the
Negro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the many
mistakes of the new Bureau.

The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen's
Bureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but finding
this not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking on
an enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the already
staggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolition
of slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done by
the North without time and money, they determined to put the
responsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous
experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to an
astonishing degree. It made the immediate reestablishment of