OFFICE ACTING ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER BUREAU FREEDMEN, &c., FOR SOUTHERN
DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI,
Natchez, Miss., September 25, 1865.
General: In obedience to your request, I have the honor to submit the following as the result of my observations during the past year among freedmen:
The opinion and feeling among the negroes throughout this district, comprising the counties of Claiborne, Copiah, Lawrence, Covington, Jones, Wayne, Jefferson, Franklin, Pike, Marion, Perry, Greene, Adams, Wilkinson, Amite, Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson, and Concordia and Teusas parishes, Louisiana, are almost unanimous on one point, viz: they will remain this year on their old places for a support, and such remuneration as the crop raised can give them, but next year they will leave and make other arrangements. They say that they have tried their old masters, know what they require, and how they will be treated, and that, as they are now free, they will try some other place and some other way of working. They take this view not because they are tired of work, or because they want to be idle, but because they are free, and want to find out in what their freedom consists.
To contend with the results of this opinion will be the great work flung upon the hands of some one next year. And not only will they have to see that the laborers are properly settled, but they must provide for the crippled, the helpless and the children. The planters cannot be made to support those who are too feeble to give any return, and who only remain because they are too old or too young to get away. What, then, is to become of them?
As to those who can labor, there will be no difficulty—the demand for laborers will far exceed the supply. The great trouble will be to keep the negro in the State, and to provide assistance for those who are unable to take care of themselves. Another want to be provided for is that of education. If we are to have good, industrious, and law-abiding people, we must provide some means for their education. It is intended to place a teacher in every town in which schools can be established and protected. From conversations with intelligent citizens, whom I feel assured, represent the feelings of a large class of people, I think that for some time the equality of negroes and whites before the law, as regards testimony, will be merely an equality in name.
Citizens say that their legislature may, and probably will, make laws receiving the testimony of negroes in all cases, as a means of inducing the government to re-admit them to a full exercise of their State jurisdiction and representation, but that no southern jury can ever be found that, when it comes to a case where twenty negroes testify one way, and two white men testify the other, will not decide in favor of the white, and virtually throw out the negro testimony. Of course this matter of testimony will settle itself with time, and a negro's word obtain the same credit from his individual character as among whites, for the whites, having cases that they are dependent upon negro testimony for, will in the course of time be brought by their own interests to take and demand the full benefit of the law; but for some time, although legally admitted, it will in fact be excluded.
The report of Captain Warren Peck, a copy of which I have the honor to enclose, gives a very fair view of what the result would be, were the officers of this bureau removed.
When I took charge here I found a perfect state of terror among whites and blacks; but now that officers are thickly distributed over the district, complaints are few, and the laborers are well, and, so far as possible, comfortably fixed for this year. Out of a negro population of over 75,000, only 649 receive rations from the government as destitutes.
I feel no hesitation in saying that it is imperatively necessary to give the system of free labor a fair trial, and to secure to the freedmen all the benefits contemplated by the emancipation proclamation; that officers or agents should be retained whose duty it is to look after the interests of this large class of people, and see that they are gradually accustomed to manage their own business and protect their own interests.