Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Too Great a Burden to Bear
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Ada
STATE:
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NATIONALITY:
https://www.ecok.edu/1516 * https://www.ecok.edu/article/east-central-university-hires-new-faculty-members
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
University of North Texas, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, educator, and writer. University of North Texas, Denton, former teaching assistant and instructor; East Central University, Ada, OK, assistant professor of history and Native American studies.
WRITINGS
Contributor to The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory, edited by Bradley R. Clampitt, University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Contributor to professional journals.
SIDELIGHTS
Christopher B. Bean is a history professor and a contributor to history journals. He is also a contributor to The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory, edited by Bradley R. Clampitt, in which he writes about how various Native American nations address issues differently with the federal government during Reconstruction. In his first book, Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas, Bean provides insight into the Freedman’s Bureau with a specific focus on its agents in Texas.
The Freedmen’s Bureau was created in 1865 by the U.S. Congress as a bureau to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South following the Civil War. Around four million slaves were freed because of the war, which left much of the South’s economy and many of its communities in ruins. The bureau was designed to offer food, housing, and medical aid to people, as well as legal assistance if needed. Another goal was to resettle former slaves on Confederate lands that had been confiscated or abandoned during the course of the war. The bureau had lasted only seven years when it was disbanded by Congress, largely under pressure from white southerners. Even when it was in operation, the bureau was hampered from achieving its goals due a shortage of funds, agents, and cohesive guidelines. “In its brief seven-year existence, the Freedmen’s Bureau became the epicenter of the debate about Reconstruction,” Bean writes in the introduction to Too Great a Burden to Bear.
The book largely revolves around historiographical debates in relation to the bureau’s character and its sub-assistant commissioners (SACs), who had the most interactions with the people the bureau was trying to help. Bean takes the approach of focusing on the SACs on a personal level in order to reveal what kind of men the bureau officials felt were qualified to oversee African Americans’ transition to freedom. Bean writes in his introduction that in most historians’ look at the SACs, their “individual experiences” have been the primary focus. Bean writes about their individual experiences but goes further to examine their personal qualities and lives, from their socioeconomic and marital status to their ages, military experiences, and occupations. “A close examination reveals the typical SAC in Texas … was a well-intentioned, honest man toward the freepeople,” Bean writes in Too Great a Burden to Bear, adding: “Although influenced by contemporary attitudes toward labor, dependency, and gender, for his time he engaged in work seen as quite philanthropic.” Bean also points out that the SACs “achieved more than many thought possible” despite the bureau’s many failures.
Bean begins with a chapter that provides a demographic look at the agents. Drawing from employment applications, Bean discusses why the men joined the bureau, with reasons ranging from the opportunity to make money and reconstruct the former Confederate states to ideas of patriotism. Bean notes that SACs were chosen on the basis of the belief in their ability to deal effectively with the challenges of emancipation. In the following chapters, Bean discusses the SACs various activities with a focus on four assistant commissioners administrations. For example, he discusses the tenure of J.B. Kiddoo, who served at the height of the bureau’s growth in terms of agents and various services.
“This organizational framework allows readers to fully grasp the immensity of subassistant commissioners’ duties for implementing the Reconstruction project,” wrote Civil War Monitor website contributor Hilary Green, who went on to note: “Texas serves as a great barometer for understanding Freedmen’s Bureau’s non-educational operations, and the massive white resistance against the entire Reconstruction project.” An Internet Bookwatch contributor called Too Great a Burden to Bear a “nuanced, complex, heavily researched, and utterly invaluable addition to American … and Texas history collections.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Bean, Christopher B., Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas, Fordham University Press (New York, NY), 2016.
PERIODICALS
Internet Bookwatch, August, 2016, review of Too Great a Burden to Bear.
Journal of Southern History, November, 2016, David P. Hopkins, review of The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory, p. 943; August, 2017, Matthew Moten, review of Too Great a Burden to Bear, p. 706.
Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, fall, 2017, Evan C. Rothera, review of Too Great a Burden to Bear, p. 816.
ONLINE
Civil War Monitor, https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/ (January 4, 2017), Hilary Green, review of Too Great a Burden to Bear.
East Central University Website, https://www.ecok.edu/ (January 11, 2017), brief faculty profile.
Dr. Christopher B. Bean, assistant professor of history, completed his doctorate this spring at the University of North Texas. He was a teaching assistant and an instructor at UNT where he also received his bachelor's and master's degrees.
He has written articles for several history journals and presented papers at history conferences.
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory
David P. Hopkins
82.4 (Nov. 2016): p943+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory. Edited by Bradley R. Clampitt. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Pp. [viii], 192. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-0-8032-7727-4.)
Today, historians continue to seek meaning in the Civil War. What did the war mean for the North and the South? How would the nation move forward? Why did Reconstruction fail? But these questions are usually posed in the context of the Union or Confederate war, North or South, and black or white. Bradley R. Clampitt's edited collection of essays, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory, offers a perspective on the war beyond these constraints. Clampitt views the war from Indian Territory in an attempt to bring some balance to the larger story both geographically and thematically. The well-researched essays collected in this work cover a lot of ground with regard to the war as it was experienced by a number of Native American groups, including the military importance of the region, the civilian experience, slavery, public commemoration, and Reconstruction. For people in Indian Territory, the Civil War was not a single defining event. For Native Americans, deciding who to support in that war was one of many different choices that they would be forced to make during the years 1861-1877. While there has been a surge of recent scholarship on both the Civil War in the West and the war's impact on Native Americans, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory is an excellent sampling of this research collected into a single volume.
In one of the book's stronger chapters, Clarissa Confer details the Native American civilian experience during the war. Confer focuses on Indian Territory as a border region in which Native Americans received the brunt of the violence, sometimes from guerrilla fighters who expanded their reach beyond Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. Confer argues that the war was very disruptive and "brought immense suffering to Indian Territory" (p. 58). Clothing and food could become scarce, and one might become displaced because of the war or neighbors settling old scores. As a result, loyalty was key to wartime survival. The conflict displaced a number of Native Americans in the territory, leading to decreased agricultural production, theft, and illness throughout the region. Confer's essay sheds some light on the importance of home for so many inhabitants of the region who could not leave.
Other chapters in the volume paint the conflict as one of a number of different layers to an already complicated situation in Indian Territory. The war was not a defining event; rather, it was one in a line of disruptive events for Native peoples. For the Five Nations who had been forced to relocate to Indian Territory under President Andrew Jackson, the years leading up to 1861 proved to be very difficult. During this period Native Americans reconstituted themselves after Jackson's removal policies. While not a "golden age" for Native peoples, argues Brad Agnew, the two decades leading up to the war can be characterized as years that saw Native Americans rebuilding their lives (p. 65). This period saw slavery introduced to the region, which furthered the antagonism between groups the author calls "mixed-bloods" and "full-bloods" in the territory (p. 65). Despite these developments, neither slavery nor states' rights motivated the people of Indian Territory because, by this point, most were convinced that no matter what happened, the federal government would not honor any agreements with Native peoples. Building on Agnew's piece, Linda W. Reese argues that there were two civil wars fought in Indian Territory--one between Native Americans and white Americans, and another that involved Native Americans and freedpeople. Reconstruction, combined with this added dynamic, further complicated some already difficult questions surrounding the nature of citizenship for both Native Americans and freedpeople. As a result, notes Christopher B. Bean, different nations took different approaches with the federal government during Reconstruction, just as the federal government used Reconstruction to reshape its relationships with Native Americans.
Overall, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory is successful in its self-proclaimed goal of broadening the war and bringing balance both topically and geographically. The essays contained in this volume offer an excellent introduction to the intricate nature of the war and Reconstruction and how they affected Native peoples across the territory. It would be an excellent addition to any graduate book list or undergraduate Civil War course.
DAVID P. HOPKINS
Midland College
Hopkins, David P.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hopkins, David P. "The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 4, 2016, p. 943+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A470867698/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ad135363. Accessed 9 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470867698
Too Great a Burden to Bear
(Aug. 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Too Great a Burden to Bear
Christopher B. Bean
Fordham University Press
2546 Belmont Avenue, University Box L, Bronx, NY 10458-5172
9780823271764 $40.00 pbk
9780823268757 $140.00 hc www.fordhampress.com
Established in 1865, and lasting for seven years (technically--draconian budget cuts reduced its impact as the years went on), the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands popularly known as the "Freedmen's Bureau"--was an agency created especially to help former African-American slaves adapt to life during and after the Reconstruction. Tragically, political opposition, violence from the Ku Klux Klan, insufficient funds and more severely undermined the bureau's work. Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas examines the character, qualifications, ideals and principles of those agency members who worked in Texas. Of particular interest is how these men championed the former slaves' right to an education and their right of mobility. Extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index round out this nuanced, complex, heavily researched, and utterly invaluable addition to American History and Texas History collections. Highly recommended.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Too Great a Burden to Bear." Internet Bookwatch, Aug. 2016. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A462046475/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0e8543d4. Accessed 9 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462046475
BEAN: Too Great a Burden to Bear (2016)
POSTED 1/4/2017 REVIEWED BY Hilary Green
Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas by Christopher B. Bean. Fordham University Press, 2016. Paper, ISBN: 978-0823271764. $40.00.
With the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction underway, Christopher B. Bean’s Too Great a Burden to Bear is a timely reassessment of one of the most misunderstood agencies at the center of the debate over the meaning of the Civil War. Acknowledging a rich literature defined by W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Cimbala, LaWanda and John Cox, Barry Crouch, and others, Bean’s well-researched discussion centers on the subassistant commissioners (SACs) who had daily interactions with white and black civilians. The author reveals the subassistant commissioners’ motivations, the obstacles before them, and their firm commitment to facilitating newly freed black Texans’ transition from slavery to citizenship. Moving beyond outright dismissal, Bean argues: “The country asked them to do the unprecedented, and, despite falling short of some expectations (including some of their own), they archived more than many thought possible (3).”
Bean begins with a detailed demographic understanding of the agents, including their socioeconomic backgrounds, race, education, previous military service, motivations for becoming agents, and average tenure in the agency. He deftly uses employment applications to demonstrate that agents joined the bureau for a variety of reasons: wages, patriotism, and the opportunity of reconstructing the former Confederate states. The agency chose individuals who were most likely to handle the post-emancipation challenges of “wiping away the last vestiges of slavery and secession (29).” Bean frames subsequent chapters around the SACs’ activities under the four specific assistant commissioners administrations. J. B. Kiddoo receives an extended discussion. His tenure marked the apex of the organization’s expansion of agents and services. This organizational framework allows readers to fully grasp the immensity of subassistant commissioners’ duties for implementing the Reconstruction project.
From the beginning, inefficiency within the bureaucratic infrastructure, a lack of manpower, a lack of clearly defined responsibilities, and a hostile white community posed significant obstacles for the temporary agency designed to facilitate emancipated African Americans’ transition to citizenship and free labor. Throughout, Bean argues against prevailing misconceptions of the Freedmen’s Bureau. For instance, he insists that SACs’ encouragement, as well as enforcement of labor contracts, did not equate with the “return of slavery in another form (41).” Rather, SACs were honest men who strove to secure the interests of white employers and black workers. Fulfillment of white and black Texans’ expectations (or the lack thereof) simultaneously produced disappointment, vehemence, and satisfaction. Yet, SACs still meted out color-blind justice whether in dealing with labor concerns, protecting black Texans’ rights, or overseeing the expansion of a biracial electorate following the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Moreover, Bean reveals the effects of internal bureaucratic problems and a hostile environment on operations. Agents simply did not last long on account of stress, mistrust of leadership, and violence directed toward them. Interestingly, the SACs’ shared experience encouraged a camaraderie that transcended all issues and even intensified their commitment to the entire Reconstruction project.
Following Kiddoo’s administration, operations waned. On December 31, 1868, General Orders No. 40 ushered in both the official end of non-educational freedmen’s affairs, as well as the intensification of white Texans’ rhetorical and real violence. Joseph J. Reynolds, the last assistant commissioner, strove to end bureau operations with dignity. Much of the agency’s final policies and activities focused on another transition for black Texans: a life without the Freedmen’s Bureau. Even as educational operations continued under a fifth assistant commissioner, the bureau's demise reflected national attitudes that the agency's work was complete. White and black Texans had to learn to live together without further federal assistance.
In his conclusion, Bean connects Reconstruction-era efforts with more modern military occupations. This comparison demonstrates how the temporary postbellum agency eventually helped to change some white Texans’ attitudes. By protecting black Texans’ rights, the Freedmen’s Bureau served to define their postwar inclusion into the body politic and citizenship. Ultimately, the failed promises of the Freedmen’s Bureau (inherent to its foundation) “were incapable of being fulfilled. That any were ever promised…is the real tragedy of Reconstruction (181).”
Scholars, graduate students, and general readers alike will appreciate Bean’s nuanced reassessment of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Readers might quibble whether Texas is representative of the federal agency’s operations elsewhere, or question his occasionally oversimplified presentation of white Texans’ opposition toward the agency. Nevertheless, Bean’s inclusion of detailed tables, biographies of key personnel, and appendices is convincing. Texas serves as a great barometer for understanding Freedmen’s Bureau’s non-educational operations, and the massive white resistance against the entire Reconstruction project—making citizens of newly emancipated African Americans.
Hilary Green is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama and the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (2016).
Quotes from: pgs. 2