Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Freedmen's Bureau===
{{Main|Freedmen's Bureau}}
[[File:Freedmen richmond sewing women.jpg|thumb|Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.]]
On March 3, 1865, the [[Freedmen's Bureau Bill]] became law, sponsored by the Republicans to aid freedmen and White refugees. A federal bureau was created to provide food, clothing, fuel, and advice on negotiating labor contracts. It attempted to oversee new relations between freedmen and their former masters in a free labor market. The act, without deference to a person's color, authorized the bureau to lease confiscated land for a period of three years and to sell it in portions of up to {{convert|40|acres|0|abbr=on}} per buyer. The bureau was to expire one year after the termination of the war. Lincoln was assassinated before he could appoint a commissioner of the bureau.<ref>{{Cite web |title=U.S. Senate: Freedmen's Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866 |url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=www.senate.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Freedmen's Bureau: New Beginnings for Recently Freed African Americans |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/freedmens-bureau-new-beginnings-recently-freed |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref>

With the help of the bureau, the recently freed slaves began voting, forming political parties, and assuming the control of labor in many areas. The bureau helped to start a change of power in the South that drew national attention from the Republicans in the North to the Democrats in the South. This is especially evident in the [[1868 United States presidential election|election]] between Grant and Seymour (Johnson did not get the Democratic nomination), where almost 700,000 Black voters voted and swayed the election 300,000 votes in Grant's favor.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Even with the benefits that it gave to the freedmen, the Freedmen's Bureau was unable to operate effectively in certain areas. Terrorizing freedmen for trying to vote, hold a political office, or own land, the Ku Klux Klan was the nemesis of the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mikkelson |first=Barbara |date=May 27, 2011 |title='Black Tax' Credit |url=https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-tax-credit/ |work=[[Snopes]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Freedmen's Bureau |encyclopedia=[[Tennessee Encyclopedia]] |url=http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=517 |access-date=April 29, 2010 |last=Zebley |first=Kathleen |date=October 8, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Belz |first=Herman |title=Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780823217694 |series=North's Civil War |volume=2 |location=New York |pages=138, 141, 145}}</ref>