The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight Over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction by William A Blair published by University of North Carolina Press (2021)
One frustrating thing in researching the Reconstruction Era is the question of the trustworthiness of accounts and statistics about human rights abuses. Reports in newspapers can sound authoritative, but they often lack even the basic indicia of reliability of a named reporter quoting named sources. A newspaper article may say conclusively that a killing took place and that a particular person is suspected of having carried it out, but the unnamed writer does not give a clue as to where he got his information from. Not so with reports from the Freedmen’s Bureau. These were filed by agents of the Bureau whose names appear on the reports. They often say what the source of the information was, and offer an assessment of reliability.
The author, William Blair, uses as his starting point in his examination of the Freedmen’s Bureau documentation of human rights abuses a compilation of instances of anti-Black terrorism entitled “Records Relating to Murders and Outrages.” This Record would be used by Radical Republicans to expose the lie promulgated by the Andrew Johnson Administration that white former Confederates could be entrusted with the futures of the disenfranchised former slaves living in the South. According to Blair:
In an effort to produce unmistakable evidence, officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau stationed in Southern communities after the Civil War documented racial violence to show that former rebels persecuted freedpeople and white Republicans through terrorism. Without the knowledge of President Andrew Johnson, they began to collect the data and eventually leaked it to Radicals in the Senate. Their efforts contradicted Johnson’s policies and supported passage of legislation for military rule of the South. [pp. 2-3]
Of course, the Record was a cooperative effort of Bureau staff and the Black people who risked their lives to provide testimony. As Blair notes, “White supremacists resented the Freedmen’s Bureau in their communities and used all forms of intimidation, including murder, to prevent African Americans from testifying about the injustice they faced.” [p. 3] As one Bureau report noted “The offices of the bureau were thronged day after day from dawn till dark by the victims of these wrongs, many of them having travelled on foot several days to find a friend who would defend and protect them.” [p. 36] Some of the “outrages” recorded in the reports were inflicted on African Americans who had given testimony of earlier “outrages” to the Bureau.
Blair gives some practical examples of how the Freedmen’s Bureau reports were used. One was of the disbandment of white militias in some southern states. In the first months after the Civil War ended, President Johnson allowed all-white electorates in the former Confederate states to elect all-white governments. The new legislatures, dominated by former Confederates, immediately passed Black Codes designed to keep African Americans in a state as close to slavery as possible. The states also created all-white militias to physically control the Black population. These militia companies were filled with ex-Confederates and many of them refused to even carry the United States flag! The militias conducted house searches of Black homes and confiscated the weapons owned by Blacks, while insisting on their own right to “keep and bear arms.” The records of the Bureau provided the evidence for ending these state-sanctioned armed bands.
In the early 20th Century the Freedmen’s Bureau reports were often ignored or dismissed by white historians of the Dunning School, who saw their mission as shoring up the white supremacist Redemption of the South. Blair writes:
In general, they depicted Radical Reconstruction as a mistake, especially the institution of Black suffrage. Most of the volumes [written by the Dunning School historians] took the inferiority of African Americans for granted, judging them as ill-prepared to handle such a responsibility. They also tended to present a moderate portrayal of white treatment of freedpeople. John W. Burgess, one of the central figures in this school of thought and an influential colleague of Dunning, flat-out described talk of outrages as the “most extravagant tales.” [p. 136]
Black historians, like W.E.B. DuBois, championed the use of the Freedmen’s Bureau records, but until the 1960s their call fell on deaf white ears.
As someone who has produced raw data for human rights reports, I found this book a fascinating look at some of the earliest such reporting by a United States government agency. Unfortunately, at only 138 pages of text, many of which set the historical context of the reporting, I found that the treatment of the processes of testimony collection as well as the selection process for what got in the reports was less thoroughly developed than I would have liked. Also, since the reports were challenged by former Confederates and their Democratic Party allies in the North, a greater examination of their accuracy through corroboration of their findings would have been welcome.
Those unfamiliar with the Freedmen’s Bureau records will find this book a useful introduction to their uses in uncovering “murders and outrages.”
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