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Although as “good natured as the day is long” and not easily “aggravated into
imposing” on the white locals, Culver had every reason to worry. A devout
Congregationalist, he entered Bureau service to help the less fortunate. Refus-
ing white amenities, he put himself in danger (both for the white and freed
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communities) by oft en traveling unprotected in his subdistrict. He even had to
get his point across through the barrel of his gun on more than one occasion.
His zeal and incorruptibility were intolerable to many whites in the area. As he
returned from a trip, for instance, a white man stopped him on the road leading
into Cotton Gin. Th
e man, not recognizing the SAC, inquired if Culver was
another sent to replace “that damned Culver.” While at a July 4th celebration in
Corsicana, which was in an adjacent county, one white referenced him a
“damned Yankee Bureau man” in a speech. Th
is only encouraged the rest of the
crowd to join in on the verbal attacks. Th
ey further showed their “resiliency” in
late 1867 when Culver, trying to enforce a local ordinance, was gunned downed
and killed in the streets of town. Whites in other counties would use Culver’s
death for eff ect. Wanting to scare the agent in their area, whites in Dallas “pub-
licly threatened” William H. Horton with “a fate similar to Capt. Culver.” Th
is
was one of several death threats against Horton while in Dallas.
Th
e constant strain could be just as debilitating as physical violence. Th
e case
of Albert H. Latimer and his successor, Charles F. Rand, is revealing. An oppo-
nent of secession, state comptroller in Andrew Jackson Hamilton’s administra-
tion in late 1865, a Unionist delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866,
and later a prominent Republican politician and judge in Edmund Jackson
Davis’s gubernatorial administration, Latimer’s loyalty was unchallenged. He
came highly recommended, having been “tried and found pure.” He received an
appointment to his home county of Red River. It bordered the Indian Territory
(Oklahoma) and was notoriously lawless. “Th
e rowdy class . . . ride rough shod
over [everybody],” observed one inspector about the area, and “are all enemies
to reconstruction and everything tending to law and order.” Latimer was her-
alded as the right man at the right place. Th
e workload and county’s conditions,
however, soon weighed on the sixty- year- old. He constantly pleaded for troops
and sent only one monthly report to superiors during his service as Bureau
agent. Wanting to know what Latimer was doing (or not doing), offi
cials ordered
an inspector to Red River County. What William H. Sinclair found shocked
him. “My God,” he cried out, “how your heart would bleed for the union men of
this county.” It was simply “pandemonium.” “I thought the war was over,” Sin-
clair thought, “but since I’ve been here I fi nd I was dreaming. It isn’t.” Th
e calm,
collected Sinclair, who prided himself on his accurate reporting, worried how
he would be perceived by this account. “I have written so earnestly,” he admit-
ted, “that you will think me wild.” When he visited Latimer, Sinclair noticed
“the times and the condition of aff airs here are killing him.” He “looks ten years
older than when I saw him a year ago.” Latimer feared for his life and wished to
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Violence, Frustration, Yellow Fever
be relieved. Concerned about the Union cause in the county, Sinclair recom-
mended superiors replace the aged agent with a “young man with blood in his
eyes,” one “who is up to the times” and with “backbone.” Th
at man was Charles
F. Rand. Sinclair believed him indispensable.
A native New Yorker and VRC offi
cer, Rand took great pride in his reputa-
tion and work. Whether assigned to Matagorda, Marshall, Wharton, or Gilmer
(his previous posts), Rand was fair and prudent, which won him respect from
fellow agents, superiors, the emancipated, and even some whites. Possessing
“backbone,” he oft en performed his duties without the aid of soldiers and,
according to one, was not “a man inclined to be scar[ed]. . . .” Rand’s ability and
courage were greatly tested when superiors reassigned him to Clarksville, Red
River County, in late 1867. In the fi rst couple of months there, he busied himself
with contract disputes.
Th
e county’s conditions tested Rand’s eff ectiveness. He faced “the most bit-
ter, prejudicial, vindictive, malicious and unreliable” whites in Texas. He hoped
to calm the situation by prohibiting fi rearms within the city’s limits, an order
that one local tough, John Henderson, brazenly disregarded. When Rand con-
fronted Henderson in the courthouse, Henderson refused to relinquish his gun.
Rand then ordered the sheriff , who the agent was talking with at the time, to
arrest the man. Henderson immediately lunged at Rand with a club. Th
e Bureau
man, with the use of only one arm from an injury in the war, defl ected the blow,
only then to stare down the barrel of a revolver. Defying “invalid status,” Rand
quickly dived into an empty room, while Henderson fl ed. Adding insult to
injury, superiors reprimanded Rand that “agents . . . are not the proper author-
ity to issue” a ban on fi rearms. It would “place the law abiding citizens who
would obey the order at the mercy of the outlaws who would not.” Th
us, they
countermanded the order. Already frustrated aft er his request for a leave of
absence due to ill health was declined, Rand thought their treatment disrespect-
ful, further frustrating him.
Rand’s troubles were far from over, however. Th
roughout the summer of
1868, desperadoes routinely entered Clarksville. Th
ey threatened Unionists
(white and black), even fi ring into Rand’s room in hopes of killing him. Rand
did not take these off enses lying down. He invoked General U. S. Grant’s state-
ment during the Overland Campaign during the war and promised to “fi ght it
out on that line.” Th
at fi ght came immediate, because Ben Griffi
th, a notorious
former Confederate cavalryman and the agency’s scourge in Clarksville, arrived
in the city. Having recently escaped from federal offi
cials, Griffi
th returned
with hopes of exacting revenge. Aft er bragging to a crowd of local whites about
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th, while leaving the town, robbed a freedman. Th
e victim,
luckily escaping death, returned to town and reported the incident to Rand.
Rand quickly gathered a posse and found the desperado a mile outside of town.
When the agent yelled halt, Griffi
th tried to escape. He did not get far, before the
posse riddled the outlaw with bullets. Th
e outlaw’s death only worsened the
situation for Rand, however, as white locals focused their anger against him. For
protection, he slept in a diff erent place each night. Th
e intrepid agent was at a
loss what to do. To stay in town, he noted, with no troops for sixty miles “and
[Confederate] sympathizers all around, is to say the least very unpleasant.” “I
am worn out . . . by constant anxiety both day and night,” Rand confi ded. Mili-
tary offi
cials sent troops to Clarksville, and under cover of night sneaked Rand
out of the “blood- thirsty hole.” Th
e military sent a detachment to replace the
departed Bureau agent.
Helpless at times, agents were rarely passive observers. Th
ey oft en made
“practical and judicious suggestions” to make the “Bureau more effi
cient.” In
1867 headquarters, realizing their ignorance about conditions in the interior,
inserted a question on the pre- printed report forms each agent completed and
sent in monthly (“Make such practical and judicious suggestions as will, in your
opinion, render the operations of the Bureau more effi
cient, etc., etc.”). Many
seized upon the opportunity to make suggestions. Th
ey suggested appointing
more clerks, reducing subdistricts to no more than one county, assigning a
detachment of cavalry to every agent, or providing mounts for infantry. When-
ever possible, military offi
cials sent cavalry, but they never provided horses for
infantry.
Th
eir personalities or particular problems infl uenced suggestions. Th
ey
included calls to increase their authority, to increase inspection tours, and to
limit their focus to only labor or education. For some perspective, two examples
will suffi
ce. Patrick F. Duggan relished this opportunity. Besides suggesting a
clerk be appointed to each subdistrict, he thought headquarters should “pay a
little more attention” to “the communications I send him in regard to forage for
my horse.” Since his appointment “there has been a constant drain on my purse
to pay expenses caused by the performance of my duties which would otherwise
have been neglected.” If the forage situation would not or could not be remedied,
Duggan suggested immediate pay upon assuming the position and “thereby save
[him] from being under pecuniary obligations to a class of people that look upon
him as an instrument of oppression.” Although critical of the chain- of- command
system regarding the use of troops, Anthony M. Bryant thought the Bureau ran
rather smoothly and needed little improvement. “I have no suggestions to make
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Violence, Frustration, Yellow Fever
as enunciated,” he wrote, the “wise policy adopted by the department if carried
out will secure the Freed people in all their rights.” Such suggestions to improve
the eff ectiveness in protecting the emancipated continued to the agency’s end.
Of all the problems, the labor system topped their list. Even with Griffi
n’s
policy changes earlier in the year, some diffi
culties remained. Griffi
n’s new
order was to change the labor regulations set down by his predecessor and bring
back some kind of “natural and nominal conditions of capital and of free labor”
in Texas. Agents were to allow “all labor . . . to off er itself in the market upon the
best terms it can obtain.” Contracts could not exceed one year. Local offi
cials,
such as justices of the peace or county clerks, and SACs had the authority to
approve labor contracts. Despite this delegation, Griffi
n reminded civil offi
cials
that agents still retained the authority to abrogate any contract they deemed
“manifestly unjust.”
Griffi
n further mandated a delegation to the civil courts. Th
is included all
freedpeople’s cases except those “arising from contracts for labor,” something
he “thought . . . the Bureau . . . [should] control.” Agents were to continue to act
as adjunct county judges. In the end, Griffi
n wanted justice based more on law,
rather than agents’ personal opinions, and reduce “collision[s] with the civil
authorities and contempt . . . upon the National Government . . . [for] the want
of tact and judgment on [agent’s] part . . . with their own peculiar judgment and
experience without any uniform guiding principles.” He understood the limita-
tions on the military to provide protection and justice for fi eld agents. Labor
contracts notwithstanding, Griffi
n wanted subordinates to act as observers to
civil proceedings. If an agent believed civil authorities rendered biased justice,
he could overrule the decision or refer it to superiors for review. Th
e agency’s
role was diminishing. Each day, agents intervened less and less to resolve
disputes.
Problems that plagued labor policies under Kiddoo remained under Griffi
n’s
plan. Phineas Stevens relayed that planters in Hallettsville refused to work
another year with freedpeople because of their ineffi
ciency and irresponsible
ways. Copies of contracts were not made and fi led as required, and some agents
unnecessarily seized cotton, even without a complaint by a freedperson. Wil-
liam Garretson reported the emancipated in his district disrupted the labor
situation by organizing a paramilitary unit. Th
is worried whites in his district.
“I advised [the hands] to attend to the requirements of their contracts,” he
wrote, “and that if any military demonstrations were necessary, they would be
made by the U.S. authorities and that they should not be led away from their
duties by any foolish representations. . . .” Byron Porter witnessed “knavery and
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corruption” toward freedpeople. “It is not an uncommon thing for merchants to
give planters a large percent on all the trade they send them,” he admitted. “Th
is
percent ranges from 10 to 25 and of course a corresponding increase of price is
put on the goods. Some planters get the things for their hands themselves and
then charge them 25 to 100 percent more than the merchants charged them
saying all the time that they are chargin
g just the store prices. Th
e negro feels
that he is cheated in some manner but can not tell how. He knows that he made
a good crop sold it at a fair price [and] has not been extravagant, but come out
in debt. ”
At the same time he delegated to local authorities, Griffi
n further centralized
a part of the labor process. To reduce the “knavery and corruption” described
by Porter, the AC proposed a way to ensure freedpeople’s wages. Griffi
n blamed
his predecessors for the problems going back to 1865. Under his tenure, hands
would be dealt with fairly. Th
is would happen through a two- part plan. First
and foremost, the issuance of General Orders No. 11. In it, the “accounts against
freemen will not be allowed to constitute a lien upon” their portion of the crop
(this, however, did not apply if the hand agreed in the contract to a lien on his
share and a Bureau agent approved it). Th
is, Griffi
n hoped, would remedy plant-
ers charging workers for everything, leaving them in debt by year’s end. Agents
were also to “urge . . . the freedmen” to settle all their debts upon the sale of their
crop. Second, Griffi
n proposed a single merchant house, A. Ruttkey & Co., to
handle all the crops for the freedpeople in Texas. He wanted subordinates “for
the pecuniary security of the Freedmen[,] to recommend in all cases that they
consign their crops.” Th
e house would set a minimum and fair price. Th
e assis-
tant commissioner wanted to force all other merchants into fair practice toward
the freedmen or risk going out of business.
Some believed General Orders No. 11, the no- lien policy, necessary. “Many
accounts of last year are brought in by the planters themselves & squaring up
their accounts & balancing their books occupies a good deal of my time,”
reported Charles E. Culver. “I am alone called upon to [go] over to plantations
to see the cotton and corn is equally divided.” Culver also noted the uncertainty
whether an attachment constituted a lien. As a result, civil authorities could
evade Griffi
n’s order. Some observed “much discontent concerning Genl. Order
No. 11 & as I rigidly enforce it, I am not much esteemed.” Others described
confusion for all, including the agents. Superiors received “numerous applica-
tions” from subordinates for clarifi cation. Planters and merchants now refused