| Summary: | These are items related to the Lauderdale County Freedmen's Bureau. According to Florence historian Lee Freeman, "The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) was created by the War Dept. in 1865, established to help transition the nation from war to peacetime and deliver services to refugees and to the newly freed slaves. It operated from 1865-1868 but was reauthorized briefly in 1872.
The Bureau’s agents delivered medical care, rations, transportation, etc. to destitute people and refugees and its activities among freed slaves included drawing up and enforcing labor contracts, registering people and supervising work details; legalizing slave marriages; processing Civil War military claims; establishing schools; conducting trials for complaints, outrages and murders; managing, leasing and selling abandoned Confederate land; and in general presiding over Reconstruction policy."
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