The same writer, in another letter, shows how Rebels were honored in the Convention.
“‘I’ll be d—d, if I vote for any man who did not go with the State,’ said one of the delegates, while the canvass for officers was going on; in accordance with which spirit the secretary is a gentleman who was a colonel in the Rebel army, and the doorkeeper a gentleman who lost an arm in the service.”
Where such a spirit prevails, the freedmen fare badly. In Georgia they are treated cruelly. A traveller writes:—
“The hatred toward the negro as a freeman is intense among the low and brutal, who are the vast majority. Murders, shootings, whippings, robbing, and brutal treatment of every kind are daily inflicted upon them, and I am sorry to say in most cases they can get no redress. They don’t know where to complain or how to seek justice, after they have been abused and cheated. The habitual deference toward the white man makes them fearful of his anger and revenge.”
An official of the Government, after traversing Mississippi and Alabama, writes from Georgia in a very recent letter:—
“Every day the press of the South testifies to the outrages that are being perpetrated upon unoffending colored people by the State militia. These outrages are particularly flagrant in the States of Alabama and Mississippi, and are of such a character as to demand most imperatively the interposition of the National Executive. These men are rapidly inaugurating a condition of things, a feeling among the freedmen, that will, if not checked, ultimate in insurrection. The freedmen are peaceable and inoffensive; yet, if the whites continue to make it all their lives are worth to go through the country, as free people have a right to do, they will goad them to that point at which submission and patience cease to be a virtue.
…
“I call your attention to this matter, after reading and hearing from the most authentic sources, officers and others, for weeks, of the continuance of the militia robbing the colored people of their property,—arms,—shooting them in the public highways, if they refuse to halt, when so commanded, and lodging them in jail, if found from home without passes, and ask, as a matter of simple justice to an unoffending and downtrodden people, that you use your influence to induce the President to issue an order or proclamation forbidding such wicked and unlawful proceedings, and, if he deem it prudent, forbidding the organization of State militia. The only military force NEEDED in the South is more regular and volunteer troops to keep in proper subjection those lately in rebellion, and to teach them to treat the freed people in a manner becoming a civilized community.”
Another witness, himself a Georgian, with ample opportunities of information, testifies:—
“I have personal and friendly relations with many leading men of this section: I had before the war. I have met many of them in New York and in Washington within the past few months, and have, as a citizen of the South, had frequent conversations with them upon our future, and the means that should be employed to begin it auspiciously. These interviews have been free and open in interchange of opinion, and I must believe that I had laid before me the intentions of those who must and will again assume the leadership here. If they are not so honored, their opinions will show how they would lead, had they the power.