the Negro for food and shelter. Negroes, he said, were afraid of contracts
and, besides, contracts led to litigation.

In order to safeguard the civil rights of the Negroes, the Bureau was given
authority to establish courts of its own and to supervise the action of state
courts in cases to which freedmen were parties. The majority of the assistant
commissioners made no attempt to let the state courts handle Negro cases but
were accustomed to bring all such cases before the Bureau or the provost
courts of the army. In Alabama, quite early, and later in North Carolina,
Mississippi, and Georgia, the wiser assistant commissioners arranged for the
state courts to handle freedmen's cases with the understanding that
discriminating laws were to be suspended. General Swayne in so doing declared
that he was "unwilling to establish throughout Alabama courts conducted by
persons foreign to her citizenship and strangers to her laws." The Bureau
courts were informal affairs, consisting usually of one or two administrative
officers. There were no jury, no appeal beyond the assistant commissioner, no
rules of procedure, and no accepted body of law. In state courts accepted by
the Bureau, the proceedings in Negro cases were conducted in the same manner
as for the whites.

The educational work of the Bureau was at first confined to cooperation with
such Northern religious and benevolent societies as were organizing schools
and churches for the Negroes. After the first year, the Bureau extended
financial aid and undertook a system of supervision over Negro schools. The
teachers employed were Northern whites and Negroes in about equal numbers.
Confiscated Confederate property was devoted to Negro education, and in
several states the assistant commissioners collected fees and percentages of
the Negroes' wages for the benefit of the schools. In addition the Bureau
expended about six million dollars.