New Representations of a ‘Misrepresented Bureau’

Reflections on Recent Scholarship on the Freedmen's Bureau

Bibliographic Data

ID16769282
AuthorsRobert L Harrison (0000-0002-8348-3874, corresponding author), Robert Harrison (0000-0002-9759-3126)
Year2007
Volume8
Issue2
Pages205-229
Publication date2007-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Nineteenth Century History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-4658 • E-ISSN: 1743-7903
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14664650701387946
OpenAlexW2155592809
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited82

It is hard to deny the central importance of the Freedmen's Bureau to the politics of Reconstruction. Since the 1970s, however, there has been a huge upsurge of interest in the Freedmen's Bureau. This article offers some reflections on the state of the scholarship today, and suggests that what the ‘New Freedmen's Bureau Historiography’ has taught us is that, within the parameters set by the unforgiving dynamics of Reconstruction, Bureau agents, most of them at least, struggled to negotiate the terms of freedom for African Americans. By probing the variations, the tensions, the contradictions in the agency's history, ‘New Freedmen's Bureau Historiography’ has left us with a more complete and detailed picture of the practical workings of Reconstruction on the troubled ground of the postbellum South

Agency (philosophy · Historiography · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Computer Science · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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