The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands: Securing Freedom During and After the Civil War

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) was established to aid runaway slaves who flocked to Union army camps during the Civil War. Postwar, Bureau duties vastly expanded to include responsibility for military and civil order. Diane M. Boucher provides an overview of Bureau officials’ efforts to provide education, health care, housing assistance, and employment arrangements to former slaves as a temporary means to self-sufficiency and independence. She also examines how Bureau documents can provide invaluable genealogical information. Boucher is a lecturer in History at the United States Coast Guard Academy. She has presented papers at conferences and workshops about transatlantic slavery, Africans in the Americas, and African American life during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights eras.