The Freedmen's Bureau in Mississippi

As the America Civil War progressed into its later stages, the Union army began occupying more and more Confederate territory which required the creation of an organization to manage all the issues in occupied land was necessary. This resulted in the creation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, more commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, in 1863 which sought to aid the refugees, abandoned lands and property, and newly freed slaves in the newly occupied territory. However, as the Civil War ended, the mission of the Bureau was expanded to not only manage former Confederate lands, but to provide aid and resources to freed slaves in order to help them move on from the plantation-based slave society and to integrate with society and the economy as free citizens. What this project aims to do is track all of the aid given to freed people in a smaller sample area (the State of Mississippi in this project) to determine what kinds of aid the Freedmen’s Bureau was giving to freed people, and whether or not the Bureau was able to achieve its goal of helping freed slaves adjust and succeed in a society in which they were free citizens.