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Table of Contents:
Chapter
47
: freedmen's aid societies and an act of congress creating a Bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands
Chapter
55
:
first
appropriation by congress for the bureau; the reconstruction Act,
March
2
,
1867
; increase of educational work
Chapter
60
: opposition to Bureau and reconstruction work became personal; the
Congregational Church of
Washington
Chapter
62
: life in
Washington, D. C.
,
1866
to
1874
; assigned to duty in regular army as commander,
Department of the Columbia
Chapter
63
: in the
Northwest
, among the
Indians
; trip to
Alaska
; life in
Portland, Ore.
;
1874
to
1881
Chapter
64
: superintendent of the
United States military Academy
; commanding
Department of the Platte
,
Omaha, Neb.
Chapter
68
:
French
army maneuvers,
1884
; promotion to
Major General
,
United States army
,
San Francisco
1886
-
88
[360] or during the recess of Congress that the acting assistant adjutant general of the Bureau should do the work. The second and last paragraph directed me to discontinue the Bureau altogether on January 1, 1869, except the educational department and payment of bounties and other dues to colored soldiers and sailors or their heirs. These two latter divisions were to go on until otherwise ordered by Act of Congress. Very naturally this bill was vetoed by the President, but was speedily passed by both the Senate and the House over his veto, and so became a law. To close out my general work, and to aid schools and pay the bounties, I was equipped with just the right kind of an organization, and also relieved of much of the previous responsibility and consequent anxiety. The necessary orders and instructions were issued very soon after the publication of the Act of Congress which, in fact, was to effect the substantial close of the Freedmen's Bureau. Officers, agents, and clerks were notified that their services would be no longer required after December 31, 1868. The freedmen were generally carefully apprised of the situation, and shown that they must now look to the civil magistrates more directly than heretofore for protection of their rights and redress of their wrongs, and that supplies of food and clothing for the destitute, medicines and care for the sick, the transportation of laborers to new homes, and all aid and oversight of contracts must very soon cease to come to them from the general Government. Disbursing officers were directed promptly to settle outstanding obligations, and to sell the public property no longer needed. “Abandoned lands and lots,” now few in number, must at once go to their owners?
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