During and after the U.S. Civil War, many Republicans envisioned a program of Reconstruction that would refashion the postwar South in the image of the free labour North. Central to their ability to do so was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Christopher B. Bean, currently Associate Professor of History and Native American Studies at East Central University, provides a detailed overview of the Bureau’s Texas activities, with particular attention to subassistant commissioners, “the men in direct contact with Southern civilians” (p. 2). The typical Texas subassistant commissioner “was a well-intentioned, honest man toward the freedpeople. Although influenced by contemporary attitudes toward labour, dependency, and gender, for his time he engaged in work seen as quite philanthropic” (p. 3). This judicious study explores both the shortcomings and successes of the Bureau and its agents and provides in-depth, insightful analysis of how policy unfolded on the ground in Texas. Who were the Bureau agents? The vast majority were white and two-thirds of them were born north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Furthermore, many southern-born agents came from states like Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia with large unionist populations. Military officers played an important role in the life of the Bureau and, as might be expected, the Bureau usually distrusted the planter class and shied away from employing planters as civilian agents. In sum, the Bureau “hesitated to employ men from the former Confederacy and desired men with Northern roots” (p. 10). When discussing why men joined the Bureau, the author makes an important point: different occupations would have been safer and financially more remunerative. He contends that men joined the Bureau for reasons beyond the desire for employment. Some emphasized the opportunities the Bureau provided to help the freedpeople. Others wanted to promote Radical Republican ideology. Some served from patriotism, where others desired revenge against the rebels. In other words, many motivations drove men to join the Bureau, not just a pressing need for employment. Gregory lasted less than a year. In March 1866, Commissioner Oliver Otis Howard reassigned Gregory to Washington because many Texans disapproved of his zeal in favour of the freedpeople. Howard replaced Gregory with J. B. Kiddoo. Proble-matically, white Texans saw Gregory’s removal as a victory. Thus, they were encouraged to greater resistance. Agents faced intransigent local and state officials emboldened by Andrew Johnson’s lenient policies, to say nothing of an unpleasantly contentious populace. In the face of continued white resistance, Bureau agents often called on soldiers. In addition, agents could place offenders on trial in Bureau courts. Bureau men usually “cast a skeptical eye toward claims by employers against their hands” and “suspicion sometimes guided their policy toward whites” (p. 72). Furthermore, during the Kiddoo era, agents attempted to modify what they saw as problematic behaviour by the freedpeople and “constantly battled behavior contrary to Victorian societal norms” (p. 92). In particular, agents instituted regulations about marriage and divorce. However, although they played a heavy-handed role in attempting to modify elements of the freedpeople’s behaviour, Bean contends that agents should not be held responsible for the development of sharecropping because they lacked uniformity about whether wage labour or sharecropping was better for the freedpeople. In late 1866, General Charles Griffin, commander of the District of Texas, relieved Kiddoo of his position and succeeded him as Assistant Commissioner. Although the Bureau reached its apex, in terms of agents employed, under Griffin, the new Assistant Commissioner began to transfer responsibilities to the civil authorities. He hoped that newly-enfranchised African Americans would create a “new order” in Texas, one based on the …