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improvement. [[?]] manifests a laudable determination to hold the scales of justice even. In cases of assault and battery committed upon Freedmen by white men, he refuses to receive as a sufficient answer to the allegation the statement that the negro was "saucy or impudent." Some of the justices of the Peace are still too ready to bind over for trial on trivial evidence, and I see not how this is to be prevented fully except by giving to the negro the ballot.
Now of the criminal prosecutions for the murder of freedmen have yet been reached. I have been attending court a portion of each day, but it is now certain that none of these cases will be reached before the holiday adjournment, Judge Frazier assures me that he will take the cases up in the order upon which they are placed on the docket. I think it will be the policy of the counsel on the other side simply to delay trial and in that way to defeat justice.
Should the cases to which I refer be deferred beyond the period of the present session of the Criminal Court, I shall urge the propriety of the arrest and confinement of the guilty parties by military authority