Report on the Condition of the South

by Carl Schurz

By order of Colonel Samuel Thomas, assistant commissioner Freedmen's
Bureau for State of Mississippi.

STUART ELDRIDGE, Lieutenant, Acting Assistant Adjutant General.

I have written to Governor Sharkey, and explained to him how this order can be put in force in this State, and will do all I can to secure its success, and to aid the civil authorities to discharge their duties. I presume the legislature of this State, which is to meet in October, will take up this matter immediately, and arrange some plan by which the State authorities can take complete charge of freedmen affairs, and relieve the officers of this bureau. There is a jealousy of United States officers existing among the State officials that makes it disagreeable to perform any duty which is liable to conflict with their authority.

When General Howard's Circular No. 5 was issued, I thought it was the intention that military courts should be established for the purpose of taking the administration of justice among the freedmen out of the hands of their old masters, and placing it under the control of their friends for a short time—until the citizens of the south were reconciled to the change, and until their feeling of hatred for their former slaves had abated; that a complete restoration of rights, privileges, and property was to come after a period of probation, in which they should give some evidence of their changed feelings. I have thought much on this subject, have watched the development of feeling among the southern people, and am satisfied that the time for such a restoration has not yet arrived.

The order of General Swayne and the proclamation of General Parsons are unexceptionable in form. If justice to the freedmen can be secured by the means indicated in these documents, and if the process be not too expensive, and if ruinous delays be not allowed, then, it may be, all this movement will be good. But it seems to me that so delicate a matter cannot be smoothly managed in the present temper of Mississippi.

I am aware that it is the policy of the government; that we must trust these people some time; that the establishment of the Freedman's Bureau is (as soon as martial law is withdrawn) a violation of the spirit both of the State and federal constitutions; that the officers of the bureau have no interest in common with the white citizens of the State, and that the bureau is an immense expense to the general government, which should be abolished as soon as compatible with the public interest.

Yet, I feel that we are in honor bound to secure to the helpless people we have liberated a "republican form of government," and that we betray our trust when we hand these freed people over to their old masters to be persecuted and forced to live and work according to their peculiar southern ideas. It seems to me that we are forgetting the helpless and poor in our desire to assist our subjugated enemies, and that we are more desirous of showing ourselves to be a great and magnanimous nation than of protecting the people who have assisted us by arms, and who turned the scale of battle in our favor. We certainly commit a wrong, if, while restoring these communities to all their former privileges as States, we sacrifice one jot or tittle of the rights and liberties of the freedmen.

The mayor of this city has had complete charge of all municipal affairs since the issue of General Slocum's Order 10, (quoted in the order I have before given.) He has been compelled to admit negro testimony by the provisions of that order. In cases that come before him, when it is necessary to admit it he goes through the form of receiving it, but I have yet to hear of one instance where such evidence affected his decision. The testimony of one white man outweighs (practically) that of any dozen freedmen.

The admission of negro testimony will never secure the freedmen justice before the courts of this State as long as that testimony is considered valueless by the judges and juries who hear it. It is of no consequence what the law may be if the majority be not inclined to have it executed. A negro might bring a suit before a magistrate and have colored witnesses examined in his behalf, according to provisions of general orders and United States law, and yet the prejudices of the community render it impossible for him to procure justice. The judge would claim the right to decide whether the testimony was credible, and among the neighbors that would surround him, in many places, he would be bold, indeed, if he believed the sworn evidence of a negro when confronted by the simple assertion or opposed even to the interest of a white man. I recently heard a circle of Mississippians conversing on this subject. Their conclusion was, that they would make no objection to the admission of negro testimony, because "no southern man would believe a nigger if he had the dammed impudence to testify contrary to the statement of a white man." I verily believe that in many places a colored man would refuse, from fear of death, to make a complaint against a white man before a State tribunal if there were no efficient military protection at hand.

Wherever I go—the street, the shop, the house, the hotel, or the steamboat—I hear the people talk in such a way as to indicate that they are yet unable to conceive of the negro as possessing any rights at all. Men who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors will cheat a negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take the property away from a negro they do not consider robbery. The people boast that when they get freedmen affairs in their own hands, to use their own classic expression, "the niggers will catch hell."