American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission

The American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission was charged by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton in March 1863 with investigating the status of the slaves and former slaves who were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Stanton appointed Samuel Gridley Howe, James McKaye, and Robert Dale Owen as commissioners, all three of whom served from the creation of the committee in 1863 through to their submission of its final report in May 1864. These committees traveled south and interviewed former slaves and Union field commanders to get a better grasp of what the situation in the South was. The Commission helped with the transition of African Americans from a life of slavery to a free life. The Commission used Federal money to establish schools and churches in the South in an attempt to employ and educate former slaves. The Commission's mission was successful, and the bill's life was extended in Congress in January 1866.

The Union Army stole from African American Virginia "contrabands". The following documents the looting: "In connection with the probabilities of our obtaining the above number of colored troops, it is the duty of the Commission to report the fact that, in too many cases, not injustice only but robbery and other crimes have been committed against fugitives on first entering our lines. As an example: the Assistant Superintendent at Suffolk, Virginia, informed the Commission that instances had come to his knowledge of pickets who sometimes kept refugees until their masters came for them, and sometimes sent them back, pocketing the reward; the examples, however, of this offence were not numerous. He stated further, that, “in hundreds of cases,” the refugees had been robbed by the pickets, chiefly of money, but occasionally of other articles. Valuable horses, too, and other property, were taken from them by the Quartermaster, without remuneration to the refugee who brought them in."