Viewing page 10 of 45

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

6

upon the colored people of that City by the Mayor. On my arrival here I called the attention of the Governor to the fact and afterward addressed to him a formal communication enclosing a copy of instructions to the Chief of Police. Before action had ben taken on this I assumed jurisdiction under Circular 5 throughout the State. In hopes the Mayor would not accept, and determined he should not do so, simply as concurring in a general movement. I at once sent a courier to Mobile to hand him a copy of the order and ask his decision. His declination was telegraphed me, as expected. I at once telegraphed him that further exercise of jurisdiction of the order of the President, and again addressed the Governor, exhibiting to him the condition of the City and the career of the Mayor as shown by such records of his court as I had been able to procure, and his published decision that negroes had no rights in civil courts. I respectfully presented to him the alternation of committing a city already in a State of quasé riot to the divided rule of hostile jurisdictions or uniting both in an honest and influential man. That afternoon I went to Mobile with his Adjutant General who bore commissions as Mayor for act of in persons in case one would not accept. He prevailed upon the first one to do so, Mr John Forsyth, formerly Minister to Mexico, an Ex-Mayor of the City, and I am assured more beloved by the colored people of people of Mobile, than any man in the City. With the commission, he accepted an agency under my order and I am satisfied is discharging it in kindness and good faith. 

Meanwhile the Judges and magistrates



7

throughout the State were asking the Governor whether they should accept under my order, and on my return he prepared and submitted to me the kind and manly letter which I enclose to you herewith. Assuming that this will give the order full force, I desire from a sense of responsibility or a measure which had time allowed I should have first submitted to yourself to give you my review of it.

1-  I found on my arrival here but your feeble agencies for a negro population of 450.000, and the U.S. Troops so concentrated that immediate extension of the field could not be made. 

2-  The Governor was honestly endeavoring to carry out the views of the President, selecting his appointees with much care, only fearful that decided action on his part might be so used in a political canvas as to return to the Convention bad men, who would cast the constitution in an impracticable mould.
 
3- Hence it appeared to me that I could not establish military tribunals on a sufficient scale and of fit character to do the business. 

4- If I did, they would unite public sentiment against the change of law on which they were based, and their verdicts would be misrepresented and every where trumpeted as outrageous. 

5- On the other hand, if it succeeded I should have the use of the vast judicial machinery which the Governor was rapidly restoring, with power of removal whenever it was found not to work well. Its action could not be impugned by the people, being their own.

6- The colored people must at some period be left to the civil courts, and it is better they come in to them under the auspices of this Bureau than after they have come to be re-