"A Most Singular and Interesting Attempt": The Freedmen's Bureau at Marshall, Texas

Abstract

"A Most Singular and Interesting Attempt":The Freedmen's Bureau at Marshall, Texas Christopher Bean (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The "Little Virginia Courthouse" in Marshall, 1852–1889, the first of Harrison County's brick courthouses. It was the courthouse in Marshall when the Freedmen's Bureau operated there. Courtesy the Harrison County Historical Museum. [End Page 464] On March 3, 1865, Congress created, according to historian W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the most "singular and interesting of theattempts made by a great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social condition." This organization, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which resided under the auspices of the War Department and was responsible for the freedmen's transition from servitude to citizen during Reconstruction, faced a daunting task the likes of which had never been tried before and one that most white southerners vowed to make impossible. According to historian Eric Foner, white southerners "resented the Bureau as a symbol of Confederate defeat and a barrier to the authority reminiscent of slavery that planters hoped to impose upon the freedmen." Most white southerners harbored deep animosity toward the victorious Union army, white Unionists, and black freedmen and were willing to employ intimidation and even murder as a means of maintaining the established racial order. Under these circumstances, the Freedmen's Bureau became a focal point of opposition to Reconstruction.1 All former Confederate states, and some southern states that did not secede, resisted Union efforts at reconstruction. Texas, however, stood out for the level of lawlessness and violence. Texans, especially those in the northeastern part of the state, remained virtually untouched by the war as compared to their [End Page 465] Confederate brethren in the east and remained belligerently opposed to Union control in ways reminiscent of the recently ended conflagration. Few who did not personally experience it could comprehend the state of affairs in northeastern Texas. One assistant inspector general of the bureau toured the region and discovered "a fearful state of things." "The campaign of an army through the eastern part of the State, such as was made by General Sherman, in South Carolina," concluded Bvt. Brig. Gen. William E. Strong, "would improve the temper and generosity of the people."2 "[H]ell has transferred its capital from pandemonium to Jefferson," remarked one correspondent on the area, "and the devil is holding high carnival in Gilmer, Tyler, Canton, Quitman, Boston, [and] Marshall.3 Marshall, which had a population estimated at two thousand in 1860, was a key entry point into northeastern Texas from Shreveport on the Red River in Louisiana. The town served as the seat of government for Harrison County, the center of slaveholding and cotton production in that part of the state. Whereas blacks represented approximately 30 percent of the population of Texas as a whole, they accounted for nearly 60 percent of the people in Harrison County. Indeed, the county had a slave population nearly comparable to Delta counties in Mississippi, Black Belt counties in Alabama, and coastal counties in South Carolina.4 Harrison County, because of its strategic location, was one of the first places in Texas to receive Union occupation forces (Federal troops arrived in Marshall on June 17, 1865, two days before the occupation of Galveston). And the county, because of the size of its black population, became one of the first Freedmen's Bureau subdistricts created in the state. Thus Harrison County provides an excellent setting for a study in microcosm of bureau activities in northeastern Texas.5 No subdistrict in Texas or across the South exactly matched any other, of course, and no claim is made here that Harrison [End Page 466] County was typical in any way. Nevertheless, it is a good place to seek answers to important questions concerning the bureau's role in Reconstruction. What difficulties did bureau officials face in dealing with local whites? What degree of commitment existed on the part of Union military headquarters concerning the duties of bureau agents in the Marshall subdistrict? Did the military and bureau agents cooperate effectively to provide protection for the freedmen and whites loyal to the Union...