A freedman or freedwoman is a person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their owners), emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self-purchase.

Oct 28, 2021 · The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105), also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865.

When the Five Tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands in the 1830s–40s, people enslaved by the tribes also made the long journey to Indian Territory. By 1861, eight to ten thousand Black people were enslaved throughout Indian Territory.

The Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal provides unprecedented opportunities for family historians and genealogists to search for their ancestors and for scholars to research a variety of topics related to slavery and Reconstruction in the Freedmen’s Bureau records.

Jun 1, 2010 · The Freedmen’s Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of former Black slaves and poor whites in the...

freedman, former slave set free. In ancient Athens, former slaves bore no stigma, and some rose to positions of political or economic power. During the later Hellenistic period, however, some Greek communities passed laws providing separate regulations and restrictions for former slaves.

Freedmen’s Bureau, (1865–72), during the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War, popular name for the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, established by Congress to provide practical aid to 4,000,000 newly freed African Americans in their transition from slavery to freedom.

On January 5, 1866, Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull introduced a bill to extend the provisions of the Freedmen’s Bureau Act by removing an expiration date and encompassing freedmen and refugees everywhere in the United States—not just in the ex-Confederate states.

With over 3.5 million searchable records, the Freedmen’s Bureau collection can provide details of your African American ancestors’ lives before 1870—giving you a more complete picture of your past. What is the Freedmen's Bureau? See the first time your ancestors' names appeared in records after Emancipation.

The Freedmen and Southern Society Project was established in 1976 to capture the essence of that revolution in the words of its participants: liberated slaves and defeated slaveholders, soldiers and civilians, common folk and the elite, Northerners and Southerners.