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9.

stealing a mule and endeavoring to effect discontent among the Freedmen. I arrested the accused and turned the case over to the civil authorities. No other testimony could be produced, than that of negroes, and such was the outcry against this planter, upon his attempting to arraign before a Court of Justice, a white man, though of a doubtful character, and convict him of crime by negro testimony, that, rather than expose himself to this odium of the people he withdrew the case, and would have permitted the man to go free without trial, had I not summoned him before me and taken the testimony, which however, being insufficient to convict him, he was released; his arms, a revolver being first confiscated.

If a crime be committed by a negro, he is pursued and prosecuted with all the rigor of the offended law. If on the other hand, the negro be the complainant, it is with much indifference that the case is adjudicated, and injustice is often winked at. And in correcting this abuse and in teaching the negro his true position, and giving him a wholesome understanding of his rights and privileges and of the power of offended law, has the Freedmen's Bureau done much good.

The Freedmen's Bureau is a great Court of Chancery for this people, in which the barbarisms of the slave code are set aside, and the spirit of the law of a free people administered. But for this power the Freedmen would have suffered much injustice. Remove it before all the rights of Freedmen are securely guaranteed to this