Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 18

2. Paul Skeels Pierce, The Freedmen’s Bureau: A Chapter in the History of Reconstruction, The State University of Iowa Studies in Sociology Economics Politics and History, vol. 3, no. 1 (Iowa City, IO: By the University, 1904). (200 p.)

Monograph as described by the title. The author thanks several Mississippians in his preface, including General Stephen D. Lee, Professor F. L. Riley, Professor J. G. Deupree, and Professor R. M. Leavel. He also thanks Professor W. A. Dunning of Columbia University for having read the manuscript and offering comments and criticisms. Mr. Stone has marked long sections of the monograph and wrote the following comment in pencil on the back cover. “Gives not the faintest idea of the thousands of trifling incidents which were magnified by Bureau agts. into causes of irritation & friction disastrous in their consequences to the harmonious relations absolutely essential to the welfare of the negro. These things alone created a responsibility for trouble sufficient to condemn the institution, viewed in the longer view of a comparison of the good it accomplished with the evil it wrought.”