The Black Codes were never implemented. Radical Republicans in the Congress, with the early support of President Lincoln, objected strongly to the intent to impose new restrictions on the movement and rights of freedmen. The federal government established the Freedmen's Bureau as an agency to help educate and assist the former slaves, in the U.S. War Department. It attempted to help the freedmen negotiate contracts and other relations in the new free labor market. Most officials in the Freedmen's Bureau were former Union Army officers from the North. Many settled permanently in the state, with some becoming political leaders in the Republican Party and in business (they were scornfully known as "carpetbaggers" by white Democrats in the South). The Black Codes outraged northern opinion, as they represented an attempt to reassert conditions of slavery and white supremacy. They were not fully implemented in any state. White Mississippians and other Southerners were committed to restoring white supremacy and circumscribing the legal, civil, political, and social rights of the freedmen.