Bleak Prognosis: "A Freedman's Bureau Agent Predicts a Grim Future for the Freed Slaves"

Tensions were heightened across the country -north and south- during the era of Reconstruction. Despite the success of emancipation, the successful integration of African Americans into society and politics was by no means certain. To this end, Freedman's Bureau agent John W. De-Forest expressed his particular concerns over the future of freed slaves in his article, published in Harper's, Atlantic Monthly and Putnam's Magazine in 1868 and 1869. One striking feature of this article is the racial prejudice exhibited by an educated individual who was sympathetic to the African American cause and purportedly politically active in securing a successful future for freed peoples. The tone of this “enlightened” individual is decidedly bleak, and the failure of white promoters of black participation to maintain constructive sentiment  may be, at least in part, to blame for the failure of Reconstruction.

The first concern that De-Forest expresses is one of racial amalgamation. He cites a perceived decline in the interracial commingling of blacks and whites since the abolition of slavery: “It is true that there are few marriages, and a few cases of illegal cohabitation, between Negro men and the lowest class of white women... [And m]iscegenation between white men and Negresses diminished under the new order of things.”¹ As a part of this concern, the agent offers a personal anecdote about how he discouraged a black man from marrying a white woman when he was asked for advice on the matter. First the agent commented on how the woman “must be a disreputable creature, who would make a wretched helpmeet,” but his reason for discouraging the union was that the black man would meet harsh persecution for entering into an interracial relationship.² Although he informed the man that it would be legal for him to enter into such a union, and that military and civil authorities would be obliged to protect that union, the agent nevertheless discouraged the man from acting upon his supposed right to interracial marriage. It seems to me that the agent presents a perceived problem and then cites himself, and perhaps other Freedman's Bureau agents, as one source of this problem.

The agent goes on to express his perception that black women are abandoning their roles as workers and are transitioning to the standards of white womanhood: “the girls were learning... to demand nice dresses and furniture... to be fine ladies.”³ Thus, he contends that the struggling black man will find no helpful partner in marriage to a black woman, nor would he be able to support such an extravagant wife. These generalizations made by De-Forest seem overreaching at best. More likely they are largely false and the product of his disheartened and prejudiced imagination.

De-Forest's final assessment and prescription are the most disparaging of all. He sums up the impending struggle of freed slaves by remarking that their attempts to become actors in white civilization will result in their diminished productivity as they continue to endure assaults on their humanity. The agent seems to be promoting a remorseless prediction, displaying his cynical outlook concerning the capacity of either race to reach any mutually beneficial arrangement. Inquiring, “What judgment shall we pass upon abrupt emancipation, considered merely with reference to the Negro?” De-Forest declares, “It was a mighty experiment, fraught with as much menace as hope. To the white race alone it was a certain and precious boon.”⁴ With such a contemptuous assessment from an agent of the Freedman's Bureau, it is almost no wonder that it would take almost a century to achieve any meaningful progress toward racial equality in the United States.

1John W. De-Forest, “A Freedman's Bureau Agent Predicts a Grim Future for the Freed Slaves, 1868-1869,” Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. Michael Perman (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991), 475.

2Ibid, 476.

3Ibid.

4Ibid, 477.