FREEDMEN'S BUREAU (officially the BUREAU OF FREED MEN, REFUGEES AND ABANDONED LANDS), a bureau created in the United States war department by an act of Congress (March 3, 1865), to last one year, but continued until 1872 by later acts. Its establishment was due partly to the fear entertained by the North that the Southerners if left to deal with the blacks would attempt to re-establish some form of slavery, partly to the necessity for extending relief to needy negroes and whites in the lately conquered South, and partly to the need of creating some commission or bureau to take charge of lands confiscated in the South. At the head of the bureau was a commissioner, General 0. 0. Howard, and under him in each Southern state was an assistant commissioner with a corps of local superintendents, agents and inspectors. The officials had the broadest possible authority in all matters that concerned the blacks. The work of the bureau may be classified as follows: (I) distributing rations and medical supplies among the blacks; (2) establishing schools for them and aiding benevolent societies to establish schools and churches; (3) regulating labour and contracts; (4) taking charge of confiscated lands; and (5) administering justice in cases in which blacks were concerned. For several years the ex-slaves were under the almost absolute control of the bureau. Whether this control had a good or bad effect is still disputed. Much neces sary relief work was done, but demoralization was also caused by it. In educating the blacks the bureau made some progress, but the instruction imparted by the missionary teachers resulted in giving the ex-slaves notions of liberty and racial equality that led to much trouble, finally resulting in the hostility of the whites to negro education. When negro suffrage was imposed by Congress upon the Southern States, the bureau aided the Union League (q.v.) in organizing the blacks into a political party opposed to the whites. A large majority of the bureau officials secured office through their control of the blacks. The failure of the bureau system, its discontinuance, in the midst of reconstruction, without harm to the blacks, and the intense hostility of the Southern whites to the institution, caused by the irritating conduct of bureau officials, are indications that the institution was not well conceived nor wisely administered.