Bitter Freedom is an evaluation of the pivotal role of the Freedmens Bureau during Reconstruction in war-torn South Carolina as written by a young bureau agent eager to do his part in rebuilding a divided nation. In early 1866 Major William Stone of the 19th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers, having survived four major Civil War battles and three combat wounds, arrived in South Carolina to serve in the newly formed Freedmens Bureau. Spanning nearly three years of this service, his recently discovered first-person narrative chronicles his insightful observations on the postwar South and...