The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their superiors,
were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many of them held
radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and inculcated these views
in their courts, in the schools, and in the new Negro churches. Some were
charged with even causing strikes and other difficulties in order to be bought
off by the whites. The tendency of their work was to create in the Negroes a
pervasive distrust of the whites.

The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the lands among
the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time confiscation laws,
in some of the Bureau legislation, and in General Sherman's Sea Island order,
but it was further fostered by the agents until most blacks firmly believed
that each head of a family was to get "40 acres and a mule." This belief
seriously interfered with industry and resulted also in widespread swindling
by rascals who for years made a practice of selling fraudulent deeds to land
with red, white, and blue sticks to mark off the bounds of a chosen spot on
the former master's plantation. The assistant commissioners labored hard to
disabuse the minds of the Negroes, but their efforts were often neutralized by
the unscrupulous attitude of the agents.

As the contest over reconstruction developed in Washington, the officials of
the Bureau soon recognized the political possibilities of their institution.
After midyear of 1866, the Bureau became a political machine for the purpose
of organizing the blacks into the Union League, where the rank and file were
taught that reenslavement would follow Democratic victories. Nearly all of the
Bureau agents aided in the administration of the reconstruction acts in 1867
and in the organization of the new state and local governments and became
officials under the new regime. They were the chief agents in capturing the
solid Negro vote for the Republican party.