Viewing page 141 of 229

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Huntsville, Ala. Nov 25/65

Brev. Maj Genl Swayne -
Chaplain T. M. Goodfellow has requested that I shall give my views of the necessity or policy of retaining the Bureau for Freedmen, and of its operations in this valley. 

The institution of this Court or something like it arises from the necessity of the case. A life time of rule on our part over a race, marked by color, that race held as slaves to our will, renders the white race of the South, in the mass, incompetent, suddenly to acknowledge the rights of the person of the former slave. We must have time to accustom our minds to the change, and to transfer the rights from the master to the individual person of color. All these things will come right after a while. There cannot be found a people more jealous of rights, or more ready to resent wrongs than the Southern people. Heretofore the wrongs done by a third party to a negro, was a wrong done to the owner or master, and the negro was merged in the master, the black man in the white man, and the controversy was really between two, although a third person was involved. The white man, recognized as master, felt a pride in the very dependence

Transcription Notes:
ed