Born near Cologne, Germany, in 1829, Carl Schurz emigrated to Wisconsin in 1852, where he began a career as a lawyer and politician. He rose rapidly in the Republican Party, eventually supporting Abraham Lincoln’s Presidential bid in 1860. He was rewarded by being named minister to Spain, a position he left to fight in the Civil War. Lincoln made him a general, and Schurz repaid him by assisting him in his re-election campaign of 1864. After the war, President Andrew Johnson recognized Schurz’s political contributions as a moderate Republican, naming him a Special Commissioner to oversee conditions in the Gulf states. Schurz filed the following report in this capacity.

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While the Southern people are always ready to expatiate upon the shortcomings of the Freedmen’s Bureau, they are not so ready to recognize the services it has rendered. I feel warranted in saying that not one-half of the labor that has been done in the South this year or will be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The confusion and disorder of the transition period would have been infinitely greater had not an agency interfered which possessed the confidence of the emancipated slaves; which could disabuse them of any extravagant notions and expectations and be trusted; which could administer to them good advice and be voluntarily obeyed.  

No other agency, except one placed there by the national government, could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so necessary to prevent the southern society from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its different elements.  

That the success achieved by the Freedmen’s Bureau is as yet very incomplete cannot be disputed. A more perfect organization and a more carefully selected personnel may be desirable; but it is doubtful whether a more suitable machinery can be devised to secure to free labor in the South that protection against disturbing influences which the nature of the situation still imperatively demands.

Source: Senate Ex. Doc., no. 2, 39 Cong., 1 Sess, 40. (Document 4.9.13)