The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans
216 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:01 Apr 1999
ISBN:9780292712195
Drawing on a wealth of previously unused documentation in the National Archives, this book offers new insights into the workings of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the difficulties faced by Texas Bureau officials, who served in a remote and somewhat isolated area with little support from headquarters.
The] episodes in Texas Reconstruction history that Mr. Crouch relates, perhaps do more than broad generalizations to explain why the Freedmen's Bureau failed, and how we lost the peace after the Civil War.
Crouch skillfully presents the Freedmen's Bureau as one of the most unique, misunderstood, and maligned ad hoc reform agencies ever devised by a democratic government in the name of social and political freedom and equality.
. . . breaks new ground in Reconstruction history. [Crouch's] study is among the first on the bureau in Texas and the first to focus on the subdistrict agent, the subassistant commissioner.
Barry A. Crouch was Professor of History at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. He was the co-author of Cullen Montgomery Baker, Reconstruction Desperado (1997).
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1. The Freedmen's Bureau in Texas: A Historiographical Appraisal
- 2. The Texas Assistant Commissioners: Labor, Justice, Education, and Violence under the Bureau
- 3. The Texas Bureau in Microcosm: The Thirtieth Subdistrict During Reconstruction
- 4. To Die in Boston (Texas, That Is)
- 5. Reconstructing Brazos County: Race Relations and the Freedmen's Bureau, 1865-1868
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Essay on Sources
- Index
