Report on the Condition of the South Part 12

There have come under my notice, officially, twelve cases in which I am morally certain (the trials have not been had yet) that negroes were killed by whites. In a majority of cases the provocation consisted in the negroes trying to come to town, or to return to the plantation after having been sent away. These cases are in part as follows:

Wilson H. Gordon, convicted by military commission of having shot and drowned a negro, May 14, 1865.

Samuel Smiley, charged with having shot one negro and wounded another, acquitted on proof of an alibi. It is certain, however, that one negro was shot and another wounded, as stated. Trial occurred in June.

Three negroes were killed in the southern part of Dallas county; it is supposed by the Vaughn family. I tried twice to arrest them, but they escaped into the woods.

Mr. Alexander, Perry county, shot a negro for being around his quarters at a late hour. He went into his house with a gun and claimed to have shot the negro accidentally. The fact is, the negro is dead.

Mr. Dermott, Perry county, started with a negro to Selma, having a rope around the negro's neck. He was seen dragging him in that way, but returned home before he could have reached Selma. He did not report at Selma, and the negro has never since been heard of. The neighbors declare their belief that the negro was killed by him. This was about the 10th of July.

Mr. Higginbotham, and Threadgill, charged with killing a negro in Wilc.o.x county, whose body was found in the woods, came to my notice the first week of August.

A negro was killed on Mr. Brown's place, about nine miles from Selma, on the 20th of August. Nothing further is known of it. Mr. Brown himself reported.

A negro was killed in the calaboose of the city of Selma, by being beaten with a heavy club; also, by being tied up by the thumbs, clear of the floor, for three hours, and by further gross abuse, lasting more than a week, until he died.

I can further state, that within the limits of my official observation crime is rampant; that life is insecure as well as property; that the country is filled with desperadoes and banditti who rob and plunder on every side, and that the county is emphatically in a condition of anarchy.

The cases of crime above enumerated, I am convinced, are but a small part of those that have actually been perpetrated.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J.P. HOUSTON, _Major 5th Minnesota, and Provost Marshal U.S. forces at Selma, Alabama_.

Major General CARL SCHURZ.

No. 22.

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU,

_Mobile, September_ 9, 1865.

Sir: In compliance with your request I have the honor to report the state of affairs as connected with the freedmen in this city and the counties of Was.h.i.+ngton, Monroe, Clark, Choctaw and Baldwin.

The civil authorities in this city have accepted General Swayne's order No. 7, (herewith enclosed,) but the spirit of the order is not complied with, and complaints of injustice and criminal partiality in the mayor's court have been frequently made at this office, and particularly when Mr.

Morton presides there is no justice rendered to the freedmen. Little or no business is done before other magistrates, as the colored people are aware, from experience, that their oath is a mere farce and their testimony against a white man has no weight; consequently all complaints of the colored people come before this bureau.

I have by special order of General Swayne designated one of the justices of the peace, Mr. T. Starr, who adjudicates cases of debt, and in matters where both parties are of color he has so far given satisfaction, but the prejudice so universal against colored people here is already beginning to affect his decisions.

The civil police department of this city is decidedly hostile to color, and the daily acts of persecution in this city are manifest in the number of arrests and false imprisonment made where no shadow of criminality exists, while gangs of idle rebel soldiers and other dissolute rowdies insult, rob, and a.s.sault the helpless freedmen with impunity.

All hopes of equity and justice through the civil organization of this city is barred; prejudice and a vindictive hatred to color is universal here; it increases intensely, and the only capacity in which the negro will be tolerated is that of slave.

The fever of excitement, distrust, and animosity, is kept alive by incendiary and lying reports in the papers, and false representations of rebel detectives. The alarm is constantly abroad that the negroes are going to rise; this is utterly without foundation. The freedmen will not rise, though docile and submissive to every abuse that is heaped upon them in this city. If they are ragged and dirty, they are spurned as outcasts; if genteel and respectable, they are insulted as presumptive; if intelligent, they are incendiary; and their humble wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d is construed as a designing plot to rise against the citizens who oppress them.

It is evident that General Swayne's good intentions are nugatory from the want of faith on the part of those to whom he intrusted his order.

These men have been recipients of office for years. Old a.s.sociations, customs and prejudices, the pressure of public opinion, and the undying hostility to federal innovation, all conspire gainst impartiality to color. Such is the state of affairs in this city.

In the counties of this district above named there is no right of the negro which the white man respects; all is anarchy and confusion; a reign of terror exists, and the life of the freedmen is at the mercy of any villain whose hatred or caprice incites to murder. Organized patrols with negro hounds keep guard over the thoroughfares, bands of lawless robbers traverse the country, and the unfortunate who attempts escape, or he who returns for his wife or child, is waylaid or pursued with hounds, and shot or hung. Laborers on the plantations are forced to remain and toil without hope of remuneration. Others have made the crop and are now driven off to reach Mobile or starve; scarcely any of them have rags enough to cover them. Many who still labor are denied any meat, and whenever they are treated with humanity it is an isolated exception. Ragged, maimed, and diseased, these miserable outcasts seek their only refuge, the Freedmen's Bureau, and their simple tale of suffering and woe calls loudly on the mighty arm of our government for the protection promised them.

These people are industrious. They do not refuse to work; on the contrary, they labor for the smallest pittance and plainest food, and are too often driven off deprived of the small compensation they labored for.

The report of rations issued to dest.i.tute citizens on August 1, 1865, was 3,570 persons. Owing to the numerous impostures by those who had means of support, I erased the names of a large number and the list now stands 1,742 persons who are recipients of government alms. Of this number, 95 per cent. are rebels who have partic.i.p.ated in some manner in this rebellion. Number of rations issued to dest.i.tute colored people is simply six (6).

The report of the freedmen's colony of this district to this date is (12) twelve men, (71) seventy-one women, and (88) eighty-eight children, and sick in hospital (105) one hundred and five; total (276) two hundred and seventy-six. Of this number many have been driven off of plantations as helpless, while many of their grown children are forcibly retained to hard labor for their masters.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W.A. POILLON, _Captain, a.s.sistant Superintendent freedmen, refugees, abandoned lands, &c._

General CARL SCHURZ.

Freedmen's Bureau, _July_ 29, 1865.

Sir: I have the honor to report some testimony I have received of the murders and barbarities committed on the freedmen in Clark, Choctaw, Was.h.i.+ngton and Marengo counties, also the Alabama and Bigbee rivers.

About the last of April, two freedmen were hung in Clark county.

On the night of the eleventh of May, a freedman named Alfred was taken from his bed by his master and others and was hung, and his body still hangs to the limb.

About the middle of June, two colored soldiers (at a house in Was.h.i.+ngton county) showed their papers and were permitted to remain all night. In the morning the planter called them out and shot one dead, wounded the other, and then with the a.s.sistance of his brother (and their negro dogs) they pursued the one who had escaped. He ran about three miles and found a refuge in a white man's house, who informed the pursuers that he had pa.s.sed. The soldier was finally got across the river, but has not been heard of since.

At Bladen Springs, (or rather, six miles from there,) a freedman was chained to a pine tree and _burned to death_.

About two weeks after, and fifteen miles from Bladen, another freedman was burned to death.

In the latter part of May, fifteen miles south of Bladen, a freedman was shot _outside_ of the planter's premises and the body dragged into the stable, to make it appear he had shot him in the act of stealing.

About the first of June, six miles west of Bladen, a freedman was hung.

His body is still hanging.

About the last of May, three freedmen were coming down the Bigbee river in a skiff, when two of them were shot; the other escaped to the other sh.o.r.e.

At Magnolia Bluff (Bigbee river) a freedman (named George) was ordered out of his cabin to be whipped; he started to run, when the men (three of them) set their dogs (five of them) on him, and one of the men rode up to George and struck him to the earth with a loaded whip. Two of them dragged him back by the heels, while the dogs were lacerating his face and body.

They then placed a stick across his neck, and while one stood on it the others beat him until life was nearly extinct.

About the first of May, near ---- landing, in Choctaw county, a freedman was hung; and about the same time, near the same neighborhood, a planter shot a freedman, (who was talking to one of his servants,) and dragged his body into his garden to conceal it.

A preacher (near Bladen Springs) states in the _pulpit_ that the roads in Choctaw county stunk with the dead bodies of servants that had fled from their masters.

The people about Bladen _declare_ that _no negro_ shall live in the county unless he remains with his _master_ and is as obedient as heretofore.

In Clark county, about the first of June, a freedman was shot through the heart; his body lies unburied.