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8

Collateral Interests.

It would take volumes to fully explain, criticize and venture suggestions upon the present and future condition and advancement of the Freedmen of this country, and I can give but few words. The citizens of this County accept the new condition of affairs with a spirit worthy a generous and brave people, yet there are those who are disaffected, who while they acknowledge the diction and the rule of that arbiter of great national rights, the Sword, do not cease to think and often act, as dreamers of "treason, stratagem and spoils." As a unit the people desire to expel from their midst the Freedmen's Bureau, denouncing it as being during the war, a disturbing element and in peace an intolerable, obstrusive, arbiter; as sowing the teeth of the dragon, that shall spring up armed men all over the land, rather than the seeds of harmony and peace, and provoking every day increased bitterness and strife between the two people, the negroes and their former masters.

Gov. Wm L. Sharkey's proclamation favoring the right of Freedmen to testify, is seized upon with avidity by the citizens as a lever with which to remove the Freedmen's Bureau; yet the instance of J. B. Freeman, candidate for State Legislature in Hinds County, who supported this act of polity of the Govenor, being defeated by about 1000 majority is a very true exponent of the sentiment of the people of the State in their judgement of this proclamation.

A citizen of this County entered complaint in this office against a roving character, for