The assistant commissioners were, as a rule, general officers of the army,
though a few were colonels and chaplains.* Nearly half of them had during the
war been associated with the various attempts to handle the Negro problem, and
it was these men who shaped the organization of the Bureau. While few of them
were immediately acceptable to the Southern whites, only ten of them proved
seriously objectionable on account of personality, character, or politics.
Among the most able should be mentioned Generals Schofield, Swayne, Fullerton,
Steedman, and Fessenden, and Colonel John Eaton. The President had little or
no control over the appointment or discipline of the officials and agents of
the Bureau, except possibly by calling some of the higher army officers back
to military service.

* They numbered eleven at first and fourteen after July 1866, and were changed
so often that fifty, in all, served in this rank before January 1, 1869, when
the Bureau was practically discontinued.


As a result of General Grant's severe criticism of the arrangement which
removed the Bureau from control by the military establishment, the military
commander was in a few instances also appointed assistant commissioner. Each
assistant commissioner was aided by a headquarters staff and had under his
jurisdiction in each state various district, county, and local agents, with a
special corps of school officials, who were usually teachers and missionaries
belonging to religious and charitable societies. The local agents were
recruited from the members of the Veteran Reserve Corps, the subordinate
officers and non-commissioned officers of the army, mustered-out soldiers,
officers of Negro troops, preachers, teachers, and Northern civilians who had
come South. As a class these agents were not competent persons to guide the
blacks in the ways of liberty or to arbitrate differences between the races.
There were many exceptions, but the Southern view as expressed by General Wade