[Freedmen's Bureau]: Townsend, E.D.:

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GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 91….ORDER ORGANIZING BUREAU OF REFUGEES, FREEDMEN, AND ABANDONED LANDS [caption title]. The War Department's General Orders transmitting the Act which established the Freedmen's Bureau, and announcing the selection of General O.O. Howard as its Commissioner. While the act providing for the creation of the Bureau was passed on March 3, these orders from May 12 provide for physical premises and staff, and thus mark the actual beginning of operations. Signed in type by E.D. Townsend as Assistant Adjutant General.The establishing act forwarded herein charges the bureau with the management of all "abandoned" Confederate lands and empowers Commissioner Howard with "the authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary States as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise; and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land." Unfortunately for the intended beneficiaries of this provision, President Johnson's blanket pardons meant that most of the abandoned or confiscated lands were soon returned to their original owners, and the freedmen and refugees who were granted lands were frequently ousted by government evictions, violent local resistance, or both.A scarce and important document, marking the official beginnings of the Freedmen's Bureau. An

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