This text is part of:
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
[425] hostile forces arrayed against the Bureau to be somehow rid of me. It seemed at one time that there was no indignity of language too harsh or contemptible for my foes to use. My friends and supporters were, however, equally pronounced and ardent in my defense, and with their confidence and aid in Congress and out, I carried through the Freedmen's Bureau to the natural consummation of its larger purposes in 1869. About that time I met with troublesome assaults upon my reputation for integrity from two new sources. One came, as we have before seen, through the imposing upon me of the payment of the back pay and bounties and prize money of all unpaid colored soldiers and sailors, and especially the being obliged by law to pay these claimants in currency and not in checks or drafts. This work raised up against all honest payers and payees a wicked host, whose sole aim was greed. They had accomplished much when they could in any way corrupt a paymaster, stain the reputation of a disbursing officer, or circumvent an assistant commissioner. This trouble I fought to a successful issue by facing every official accusation and demanding official investigation and trial. Other difficulties arose from a second source quite outside of Government operations. Being engaged in a struggle for what I have called the manhood of the black man in labor, justice, suffrage, and the schools, I naturally carried the same efforts with me into the church, with which I was connected. One day, during the fall of 1865, two college classmates met me and asked me if I would not join a little Congregational Church, just then forming in Washington. “We have thirteen members,” they said, “and you will make fourteen. When slavery was here people several ”
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.