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260 were left unprovided for. A custom had grown up to have the force of the law, that every former slave-holder might have the children of his former slaves apprenticed to him until they were twenty one. Cases were known of attempts to seize young men but two or three years under age and hold them under such a system, and loud complaints were made by parents who were well to do of younger children taken from them as the result of judicial process of which they had never before received any intimation. An amendment to the law was speedily procured requiring that the parents in all cases should be summoned - but this did not reach the corrupt exercise of a discretionary power. A parallel to this was found in the system of "chain-gangs"; a savage mode of punishment adopted in the several Counties in lieu of sending their convicts to the jail or to the penitentiary, and in the Cities as a means of working out the fines imposed for misdemeanors. This was among those measures authorised by law without distinction but confined in practice to the punishment of freedmen. In March the Military Reconstruction Bill was passed, and the Assistant Commissioner remaining in command, authority was found to remedy the two last evils by an Order which was speedily applied. "I. Complaints of hardship in the needless apprenticing of minors particularly in pursuance of the preference given to the "former owner" in the law have been almost incessant. It is enjoined upon Probate Judges, upon application, to revise the action taken in such cases and as a rule to revoke indentures made within the past two years of minors who were capable of self support. II. The attention of the Magistrate is called to the repeal of the last Legislature of the "Vagrant law" approved December 15th 1865 and published with the Code. Attempts which are still made to put it into execution will hereafter be the subject of Military cognizance. 261 III. The use of "chain gangs" as a mode of legal punishment being found to involve serious abuses, will henceforth discontinued except in connection with the Penitentiary." this was however but one feature of what followed from the passage of the Reconstruction Bills. A general amendment in the treatment of the freedmen signalized the fact, and has been steadily progressing. The sense of the coming power brought immediate respect. A new and summary process menacing those ruffians who eluded or defied the civil law, brought a degree of order which has been a sensible relief. In the administration of the law, the passage of the bill has vindicated those who have insisted upon justice, and has brought a new responsibility to bear on those who have been pondering to the animosities of race. The freedmen themselves promptly took new heart at the improvement in their prospects. Laboring with as much industry as ever, they seem to study with ore zeal, to have new confidence in trying to improve. Already they have been admitted to the jury box, and some of them employed in the lower branches of the public service, so that they have little need to fear injustice in the future. And the Convention which is soon to meet, will hardly fail to properly enlarge their scope of opportunity or to provide their children with facilities of education such as are required by their new capacities and powers. With these and with such fair rewards of industry as average years afford, it is not difficult to see how they may before many years present, if not as large, as bright an illustration of the worth of freedom as the world has known, and at the same time of the Providence by which it has been wrought. I have the honor to be, General Very Respectfully Your Obedient Servant Bvt. Major Genl. U.S. Army Assistant Commissioner
