General Ulysses S. Grant commanded all Union armies at the end of the Civil War. In November of 1865, President Andrew Johnson sent Grant on a tour throughout the South to observe conditions. In December, Grant sent his report to Johnson. A military man with few clear political sentiments, Grant steered toward a moderate-conservative position on the reconstruction of the South. In general, he told Johnson what he wanted to hear – that white southerners were accepting defeat and emancipation gracefully. This notion, while not generally true, buttressed Johnson’s policy of quick reconciliation with the former Confederates, and undermined the Radicals’ calls for continued intervention – militarily and otherwise – into southern affairs. As far as the freedpeople went, Grant believed white southerners were their best and natural “friends,” on whom they should first rely. He thus reflected a paternalism he shared with southern conservatives and some northern moderates alike.

In some of the States its [i.e., the Freedmen’s Bureau’s] affairs have not been conducted with good judgment or economy, and that the belief, widely spread among the freedmen of the Southern States, that the lands of their former owners will, at least in part, be divided among them, has come from the agents of this bureau. This belief is seriously interfering with the willingness of the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year. In some form the Freedmen’s Bureau is an absolute necessity until civil law is established and enforced, securing to the freedmen their rights and full protection. . . .

Many, perhaps a majority, of the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau advise the freedmen that by their own industry they must expect to live. To this end they endeavor to secure employment for them, and to see that both contracting parties comply with their engagements. In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman’s mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman has the right to live without care or provision for the future.  

The effect of the belief in division of lands is idleness and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities. In such cases I think it will be found that vice and disease will tend to the extermination, or great reduction of the colored race.  

It cannot be expected that the opinions held by men at the South for years can be changed in a day; and therefore the freedmen require for a few years not only laws to protect them, but the fostering care of those who will give them good counsel, and in whom they can rely.

Source: Senate Ex. Doc. No. 2, 30 Cong., 1 Sess., 117. (Document 4.9.11)