Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/348

314 made to hold the negro in a state of subjection appear to have been of a particularly atrocious nature. Rumors to that effect which reached me at Montgomery induced me to make inquiries at the post hospital. The records of that institution showed a number of rather startling cases which had occurred immediately after the close of the war, and some of a more recent date; all of which proved that negroes leaving the plantations and found on the roads, were exposed to the savagest treatment. A statement signed by the provost marshal at Selma, Alabama, Major J. P. Houston, says: There have come to 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. The cases above enumerated, I am convinced, are but a small part of those that have actually been perpetrated.

In a report to General Swayne, assistant-commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama, communicated to me by the general, Captain Poillon, agent of the bureau at Mobile, says of the condition of things in the southwestern part of the State, July 29th: There are regular patrols posted on the rivers, who board some of the boats; after the boats leave they hang, shoot or drown the victims they may find on them, and all those found on the roads or coming down the rivers are almost invariably murdered. . . . The bewildered and terrified freedmen know not what to do—to leave is death; to remain is to suffer the increased burden imposed upon them by the cruel taskmaster, whose only interest is their labor, wrung from them by every device an inhuman ingenuity can devise; hence the lash and murder are resorted to to intimidate those