A new essay in Civitas, highlighted by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy, draws on recently digitized Freedmen's Bureau archives to examine religious practice in federal schools after the Civil War. The records show that Bureau-run schools in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Maryland incorporated Bible reading, prayer, and hymn singing into daily routines. One Alabama school held a daily "divine service" that included the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer.
The essay argues these practices were not incidental. Bureau officials viewed religious instruction as a way to supply the "moral and religious wants" of recently freed people, and teachers were sometimes asked to report conversions. General O.O. Howard, the Bureau's commissioner, was told that teachers explained "the lessons of morals and christianity" from the Bible.
The significance, the author argues, is for originalist debates about the Establishment Clause. Because the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, the federal government's own conduct that year—including funding and managing schools with devotional exercises—may inform how the clause was originally understood. The essay is described as a preview of a forthcoming symposium article, and the author encourages further archival research.