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Office Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, } 
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, }
Montgomery Ala., Sept. 9th 1865.

Sir
Your attention is respectfully called to the fact that throughout the Country, civil justice at the South is extensively pronounced a failure, especially so far as negroes are concerned. With the same feeling the course of the Assistant Commissioner for this State in delegating to the civil courts the judicial authority vested in him, is regarded as more than questionable.

This class of assertions can be best met by facts, and to this end you are requested to send at once to this Office a report mentioning all cases which have come to your knowledge within your jurisdiction in which which white men have been bound over, fined, indicted or convicted, for outrages committed upon negroes, and the number of negroes similarly dealt with, and to send such report hereafter monthly. The general result shown by these reports will be made public.

That such outrages are of lamentably frequent occurrence is apparent from reports rendered by United States Officers and by the better class of citizens, from letters to the Press, by travelers in this State, and from the incontestible evidence of negroes who present themselves at the Military Agencies

Transcription Notes:
removed Archives stamp (not part of original document) [[stamp]]: The National Archives of the United States