Hampton had only too much foundation: "There MAY be," he said, "an honest man
connected with the Bureau." John Minor Botts, a Virginian who had remained
loyal to the Union, asserted that many of the agents were good men who did
good work but that trouble resulted from the ignorance and fanaticism of
others. The minority members of the Ku Klux Committee condemned the agents as
being "generally of a class of fanatics without character or responsibility."

The chief activities of the Bureau included the following five branches:
relief work for both races; the regulation of Negro labor; the administration
of justice in cases concerning Negroes; the management of abandoned and
confiscated property; and the support of schools for the Negroes.

The relief work which was carried on for more than four years consisted of
caring for sick Negroes who were within reach of the hospitals, furnishing
food and sometimes clothing and shelter to destitute blacks and whites, and
transporting refugees of both races back to their homes. Nearly a hundred
hospitals and clinics were established, and half a million patients were
treated. This work was greatly needed, especially for the old and the infirm,
and it was well done. The transportation of refugees did not reach large
proportions, and after 1866 it was entangled in politics. But the issue of
supplies in huge quantities brought much needed relief though at the same time
a certain amount of demoralization. The Bureau claimed little credit, and is
usually given none, for keeping alive during the fall and winter of 1865-1866
thousands of destitute whites. Yet more than a third of the food issued was to
whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous Confederate soldiers
on the way home after the surrender were fed by the Bureau, and in the
destitute white districts a great deal of suffering was relieved and prevented
by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling for the most part in regions where
labor was in demand, needed relief for a shorter time, but they were attracted
in numbers to the towns by free food, and it was difficult to get them back to