Viewing page 121 of 275

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

by paying a fine of "One Cent", besides the cost of prosecution ($20.00).- In the new Code of Laws for this State, an Act concerning Vagrants, and Vagrancy Sect. II, Page 11 is by the white people locked upon, as something which will give them ample power over the Freedmen, and one of the men, who had been found guilty of maltreating one of his Freedmen, prosecuted the sister & brother of his victim for leaving his service without just cause.- Whether it be or be not considered a just cause for a Freedmen or Woman to leave an Employer for whipping either their father, mother, husband, wife, brother or sister I do not know.- In this case it did not come to a trial; the brother and sister spoken of; where released from jail on paying costs of Court, and returning to their Employer to work.-
Hon. H. Thornton, the Judge of Probate Court is a man of strict integrity, and his action in this matter is never questioned and he will dispense justice regardless of opinion.
I have before me a news-paper, containing a statement made by Governor Patton to General Steadman where the former gives us a reason, why the Bureau should be removed, that in Districts where no Bureau Officer was stationed no trouble was experienced on account of Freedmen. I do not doubt that the Governor knows, that there is a very good reason for his assertion. Without Bureau Officers the white people will have it all their own way, as in good old Slave times. The Governor might just as well have said: if there never had been a Freedman's Bureau or U.S. Soldiers in this State, the Proclamation of freeing the Negroes would have never