The act establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau began life in March of 1864, as a bill in Congress to establish a Bureau of Freedmen in the War Department. Debate in Congress swirled for a year, with a plan for a permanent Bureau scuttled as too radical. Finally, in March of 1865, Congress passed the following act, establishing a temporary agency with a general mandate to aid the freedpeople.

An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees.

Be it enacted . . . That there is hereby established in the War Department, to continue during the present war of rebellion, and for one year thereafter, a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which shall be committed, as hereinafter provided, the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states. . . .

The Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct.

The commissioner, under the direction of the President, shall have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land, and the person to whom it was so assigned shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three years. . . . At the end of said term, or at any time during said term, the occupants of any parcels so assigned may purchase the land and receive such title thereto as the United States can convey, upon paying therefor the value of the land, as ascertained and fixed for the purpose of determining the annual rent aforesaid.

APPROVED, March 3, 1865.

Source: U.S., Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, vol. 13 (Boston, 1866),  507-9.

Document 4.9.3: Excerpts from The First Freedman’s Bureau Act, 1865.