American Civil War Reconstruction Era

Freedmen's Bureau Policy Reversal

• Freedmen's Bureau agents held meetings with freedmen across the South, informing them that the promise of land reform would not be honored
• Instead, freedmen were advised to return to work for their former enslavers as wage laborers, sparking widespread shock and disappointment
• Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner General Oliver O. Howard personally delivered the news to the Black population on Edisto Island
• The freedmen on Edisto Island responded angrily to the policy reversal, citing broken promises of homesteads and the impossibility of forgiving their former enslavers
• One freedman recounted the brutal treatment he suffered at the hands of his former enslaver, who had given him 39 lashes and flogged his mother and sister, highlighting the difficulty of forgiveness and the apparent lack of remorse from the enslaver

A quiz on the Reconstruction Era after the American Civil War, focusing on the Freedmen's Bureau and land reform for freed slaves. Learn about the policy reversals and their impact on the South.