ORGANIZATION AND EXPANSION 53 
forces with him before the act of incorporation 
was passed. Sperry’s experience as paymaster to 
Negro troops made him a valuable man and he 
now became a soliciting agent for the Freedmen’s 
Savings Bank.® 
BEGINNING OF EXPANSION 
Although there was nothing in the charter that 
would authorize the establishment of branch 
banks or headquarters outside the District of 
Columbia, Alvord’s original plan had contem- 
plated extension by branches into all Negro dis- 
tricts. The incorporators who were directing the 
policy of the bank, perhaps through ignorance, 
paid no attention to the will of Congress as ex- 
pressed in the debates over the act of incorpora- 
tion and in the amendments, but proceeded to 
expand the system.’ 
Organization and expansion proceeded rapidly. 
The New York headquarters office was estab- 
lished on April 4, 1865. On May 16 the New 
York branch bank received the first deposits, 
and on June 8 its deposits amounted to $700.00. 
On June 3 Butler’s military savings bank at Nor- 
folk, Virginia, was absorbed with its unclaimed 
deposits of soldiers amounting to $7,956.38. The 
military savings bank established by General 
Saxton at Beaufort, South Carolina, became a 
branch of the Freedmen’s Bank on December 14, 
. | 8 Douglas Report, pp. 30, 66; Bruce Report, p. 246. 
"The Comptroller of the Currency in a report dated February 21, 
1873, takes the position that under the charter there was no authority 
for the branches.—Sen. Misc. Doc. No. 88, 43 Cong., 2 Sess. 
8 Booklet, Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 1872, containing the first report 
to the trustees.