t was the French paper La Temps which said, "There cannot be real emancipation for men who do no possess at least a small portion of soil."28 When the bill was introduced in Congress it was resoundingly defeated by a majority of Republicans. Stevens was alone in underezding the tremendous institutional changes that would have to take place to guarantee the emancipation of a people. If the former slave did not have his own land he would be turned into a serf inhis own nation a stranger to the freedoms guaranteed to him and a slave all but in name. The other alternative the leaders of Reconstruction had was expanding the Freedmen's Bureau from a temporary to a permanent institution that educated all former slaves and ensured that former slaves had a viable economic base that did not exploit them. Instead, the Freedmen's Bureau lasted merely five years, and only five million dollars were appropriated to it. Its mission to educate and protect the Freedmen was meet in only a small way in this short amount of time and when the Freedmen's Bureau shutdown it left the education of former slaves to local governments which allocated limited if any funds.29 Although proposed by a few Republicans the Freedmen's Bureau also refused to set a minimum wage in the South to ensure that former slaves received a fair wage from their former slave masters. Instead, the Freedmen's Bureau was instrumental in spearheading the formation of sharecropping by encouraging both former slaves and plantation owners to enter into sharecropping agreements.30 By the time the Bureau ceased operations in 1870, the sharecropping system was the dominant arrangement in the South. This arrangement continued the poverty and oppression of Blacks in the South. As one Southerngovernor said about sharecropping, "The Negro skins the land and the landlord skins the Negro."31 The Freedmen's Bureau missed a great opportunity; had its mission been broadened, its funding increased,...
