The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990 Page: 306
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
came focused on his own simple survival. These latter two points were
to figure strongly in Brown's career as bureau representative at Paris.5
Brown's tenure was much affected by events that had occurred prior
to his arrival in northeastern Texas. Set up in the fall of 1867, the Paris
office of the Freedmen's Bureau was established relatively late in the
Reconstruction process. The first agencies in Texas had been created
two years earlier, as the Texas bureau sought to extend the influence of
emancipation to the former slaves into this last of the Confederate
States to surrender to Yankee domination.6 The most recent of several
postwar army commanders in Texas, Bvt. Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin,
however, represented an innovative force in Texas Reconstruction. Ar-
riving in the state shortly before Brown himself, the new commandant
immediately had set to work to spread the bureau's influence through-
out the state.'
Griffin's first act as assistant commissioner was to issue Circular Orders
No. 3, on February 1, 1867. In it he declared the army commander of
each military post, in addition to his other duties, to be the subassistant
commissioner for his command area, unless another officer or civilian
had been detailed by specific order to the bureau job. This action
nearly doubled the number of agents in Texas overnight. But it was still
not enough to cover a state the size of Texas. On April i, the general
established forty-nine subdistricts covering the entire state, each with a
definite boundary of authority. Although prior assistant commissioners
had used civilian agents, for the first time Griffin used exclusively men
who would become prominent later in the councils of the Republican
party to fill out the ranks of his subassistant commissioners. The gen-
5Study of the conduct of individual Texas agents has hardly been begun. For an example of
an agent (F. W Reinhart) acting contrary to his charge for personal interest (he allegedly per-
mitted a woman whose granddaughter he courted to string up fieldhands by their thumbs), see
Frances Jane Leathers, Through the Years; A Historscal Sketch of Leon County and the Town of Oak-
wood (Oakwood, Tex.: n.p., 1946), 53. Thumb-tying seemed to be a ritual in east central Texas
after the war and cost several agents (but not Reinhart) their jobs. See, for example, W. B.
Anderson to AAAG, May 30o, 1866, LR, AC, T, Champ Carter, Jr., to AAAG, June 6, 1866,
ibid ; Bvt. Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard to 2 Lt. Robert McClermont, Aug. 14, 1866, ibid.; McCler-
mont to Bvt. Maj Gen J. B. Kiddoo, Aug. 30, 1866, ibid. See also, AAAG to Carter, June 7,
1866, Endorsements Sent (ES), AC, T.
6The policies of Texas assistant commissioners are described in Sinclair, "The Freedmen's
Bureau in Texas. The Assistant Commissioners and the Negro."
7On Griffin's tenure in particular, and the army's role in general, see William L. Richter, "Ty-
rant and Reformer: General Griffin Reconstructs Texas, 1865-66," Prologue, X (Winter, 1978),
225-242; and William L. Richter, The Army mn Texas during Reconstruction, I865-1870 (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 79-115. Harrison County had received the first
appointment of an agent in the state, Special Orders No. 1, Oct. 6, 1865, Texas Freedmen's
Bureau (TFB), BRFAL, RG 105 (NA). The agents in the field when Griffin took command are
in "Rosters of Officers and Civilians on Duty ...," Dec. 1, 1866, Jan i, 1867, MS. vol. 9, AC, T,
BRFAL, RG 105 (NA).306
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990, periodical, 1990; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101213/m1/362/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.