Act to Establish Freedmen's Bureau (page 1)

This is a copy of the act of Congress establishing the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which was ratified on March 3, 1865. The second page of this document describes a provision for the Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner to dedicate abandoned or otherwise confiscated tracts of land in “insurrectionary States” to be parceled out to freedmen in quantities up to forty acres. Such parceling of land never materialized, however.