[1772] Montgomery Advertiser, July 24, 1867; Ala. Test., pp. 236, 246.
[1774] For specimen letters written to their homes, see the various reports of the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Church, and the reports of other aid societies.
[1775] The best-known instances of the killing of such negroes were in Tuscaloosa and Chambers counties. The Ku Klux Report gives only about half a dozen cases of outrages on teachers. See Ala. Test., pp. 52, 54, 67, 71, 140, 252, 755, 1047, 1140, 1853. Cloud in his report made no mention of violence to teachers, nor did the governor. Lakin said a great deal about it, but gave no instances that were not of the well-known few. There was much less violence than is generally supposed, even in the South.
[1776] Ala. Test., p. 252.
[1777] See Ala. Test., pp. 236, 1889; Somers, “Southern States,” p. 169; Report of the Joint Committee on Outrages, 1868. In Crenshaw, Butler, and Chambers counties some schools existed for a year or more until teachers of bad character were elected. Then the neighborhood roughs burned the school buildings. Neither Cloud nor any other official reported cases of such burnings. The legislative committee could discover but two, and in both instances the women teachers were of bad character. In the records can be found only seventeen reports of burnings, and several of these were evidently reports of the same instance; few were specific. Lakin, who spent several years in travelling over north Alabama, and who was much addicted to fabrication and exaggeration, made a vague report of “the ruins of a dozen” schoolhouses. (Ala. Test., pp. 140, 141.) There may have been more than half a dozen burnings in north Alabama, but there is no evidence that such was the case. The majority of the reports originated outside the state through pure malice. The houses burned were principally in the white counties and were, as Lakin reports, slight affairs costing from $25 to $75. It was so evident that some of the fires were caused by the carelessness of travellers and hunters who camped in them at night, that the legislature passed a law forbidding that practice. See Acts of Ala., p. 187. About as many schoolhouses for whites were destroyed as for blacks. Some were fired by negroes for revenge, others were burned by accident.
[1778] Weekly Mail, Aug. 18, 1869.
[1779] Demopolis New Era, April 1, 1868.
[1780] Hodgson’s Report, Nov. 11, 1871.
[1781] Hodgson’s Report, Nov. 15, 1871.