On the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good-will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land.
Du Bois critiques the Freedmen's Bureau for failing to foster goodwill and self-reliance among freedmen.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.