local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we
know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause
of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question
ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer.
No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than
this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth,--What
shall be done with Negroes? Peremptory military commands
this way and that, could not answer the query; the Emancipation
Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the
difficulties; and the War Amendments made the Negro problems
of to-day.

It is the aim of this essay to study the period of history
from 1861 to 1872 so far as it relates to the American Negro.
In effect, this tale of the dawn of Freedom is an account of
that government of men called the Freedmen's Bureau,--one
of the most singular and interesting of the attempts made by a
great nation to grapple with vast problems of race and social
condition.

The war has naught to do with slaves, cried Congress, the
President, and the Nation; and yet no sooner had the armies,
East and West, penetrated Virginia and Tennessee than fugitive
slaves appeared within their lines. They came at night, when
the flickering camp-fires shone like vast unsteady stars along
the black horizon: old men and thin, with gray and tufted
hair; women with frightened eyes, dragging whimpering hungry
children; men and girls, stalwart and gaunt,--a horde of
starving vagabonds, homeless, helpless, and pitiable, in their
dark distress. Two methods of treating these newcomers seemed