The President of the United States, through the War Department and through the Commissioner, was authorized to extend military jurisdiction and protection over all employees, agents and officers of the Bureau; and the Secretary of War was authorized to issue such provisions, clothing, fuel and other supplies, including medical stores, and to afford such aid, as he might deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute refugees and freedmen, their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he might direct.

The President was also authorized to reserve from sale or settlement under the Homestead and Pre-emption Laws, public lands in Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas, not to exceed three millions of acres of good land in all, for the use of the freedmen, at a certain rental to be named in such manner as the Commissioner should be regulation prescribe; or the Commissioner could purchase or rent such tracts of land in the several districts as might be necessary to provide for the indigent refugees and freedmen depending upon the Government for support.
It was further provided that wherever in consequence of any State or local law any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, such as the right to enforce contracts, to sue, to give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold or convey real and personal property, were refused or denied to freedmen on account of race or color or any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, or whenever they were subjected to punishment for crime different from that provided for white persons, it was made the duty of the President, through the Commissioner, to extend military jurisdiction and protection over all cases affecting persons against whom such unjust discriminations were made.

It was made the duty of the officers and agents of the Bureau to take jurisdiction of and to hear and determine all cases, in which by local law discrimination was made against the freedmen.

This was to be done under such rules and regulations as the President, through the Commissioner, might prescribe.

But the jurisdiction was to cease "whenever the discrimination on account of which it is conferred shall cease," and was in no event to be exercised in any State "in which the ordinary course of judicial proceeding has not been interrupted by the Rebellion, nor in those States after they shall have been fully restored to their constitutional relations to the United States, and when the courts of the State and of the United States, within their limits, are not disturbed or stopped in the peaceable course of justice." In the time of peace, these provisions seemed extraordinary, but the condition of affairs, in the judgment of leading Republican statesmen, justified their enactment.