Enacted by U.S. Congress, approved March 3, 1865 Reprinted on Freedmen's Bureau Online (Web site)

A government agency assists the recently freed African Americans

"The Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel … for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen.…"

The end of the Civil War (1861–65) brought sudden freedom—and a new kind of hardship—to four million African Americans in the South. The war had ended slavery, but most African Americans faced the overwhelming prospect of starting over without money, the ability to read, or their own plot of farmland. Their former masters had no reason to give them shelter or food, unless they continued to work their old slave jobs. Thousands of African Americans fled the plantations (large estates on which basic crops like cotton, rice, and...