until labour had been disorganized for several years. The administration of justice by the bureau agents amounted simply to a ceaseless persecution of the whites who had dealings with the blacks, and bloody conflicts sometimes resulted. The law creating the bureau provided for the division of the confiscated property among the negroes, and though carried out only in parts of South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, it caused the negroes to believe that they were to be cared for at the expense of their former masters. This belief made them subject to swindling schemes perpetrated by certain bureau agents and others who promised to secure lands for them. When negro suffrage was imposed by Congress upon the Southern States, the bureau aided the Union League (q.v.) in organizing the blacks into a political party opposed to the whites. A large majority of the bureau officials secured office through their control of the blacks. The failure of the bureau system and its discontinuance in the midst of reconstruction without harm to the blacks, and the intense hostility of the Southern whites to the institution caused by the irritating conduct of bureau officials, are indications that the institution was not well conceived nor wisely administered. See P. S. Pierce, _The Freedmen's Bureau_ (Iowa City, 1904); _Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction_ (Washington, 1866); W. L. Fleming (ed.), _Documents relating to Reconstruction_ (Cleveland, O., 1906); W. L. Fleming, _Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_ (New York, 1905); and James W. Garner, _Reconstruction in Mississippi_ (New York, 1901). (W. L. F.)