During 1863 and 1864, several influences were urging the establishment of a
national bureau or department to take charge of matters relating to the
African race. Some wished to establish on the borders of the South a paid
labor system, which might later be extended over the entire region, to get
more slaves out of the Confederacy into this free labor territory, and to
prevent immigration of Negroes into the North, which, after the Emancipation
Proclamation, was apprehensive of this danger. Others wished to relieve the
army and the treasury officials of the burden of caring for the blacks and to
protect the latter from the "northern harpies and bloodhounds" who had
fastened upon them the lessee system.

The discussion lasted for two years. The Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, after
a survey of the field in 1863, recommended a consolidation of all efforts
under an organization which should perpetuate the best features of the old
system. But there was much opposition to this plan in Congress. The Negroes
would be exploited, objected some; the scheme gave too much power to the
proposed organization, said others; another objection was urged against the
employment of a horde of incompetent and unscrupulous officeholders, for "the
men who go down there and become your overseers and Negro drivers will be your
broken-down politicians and your dilapidated preachers, that description of
men who are too lazy to work and just a little too honest to steal."

As the war drew to a close, the advocates of a policy of consolidation in
Negro affairs prevailed, and on March 3, 1865, an act was approved creating in
the War Department a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. This
Bureau was to continue for one year after the close of the war, and it was to
control all matters relating to freedmen and refugees, that is, Unionists who
had been driven out of the South. Food, shelter, and clothing were to be given
to the needy, and abandoned or confiscated property was to be used for or
leased to freedmen. At the head of the Bureau was to be a commissioner with an