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10 / REPORTS OF ASSISTANT COMMISSIONERS

bined to drive this family from the State. They attacked the house three times, abused the women and children, destroyed all their clothing, bedding, and furniture to the value of five hundred dollars, ($500,) and finally drove them from their homes. The names of the perpetrators, so far as known, are Allen Arnold, John Arnold, Franklin Yowell, Woodford Fry, L. Snow and Robert Edwards; all live in Walton, Kentucky. An attempt was made to bring these parties to justice, but it failed, as colored testimony could not be received. This same man Finney has a daughter held as a slave by Mr. Widen Sheet, of Boone county, whom he values at one thousand dollars ($1,000.) Sixteen armed men resisted Mr. Finney and an expressman when they went for the girl, and beat them cruelly with clubs and stones."

"An old colored man, named Baxter, was shot and killed by James Roberts, for refusing to let Roberts in his house. The civil authorities will neither arrest nor punish said Roberts, as there is no testimony except of colored persons."(Reported by Thomas Rice, Richmond, Kentucky.)

"Lindsley Taylor, of Richmond, stabbed a negro on the 30th of January, for no cause save that the negro did not wish said Lindsley to search his house. The civil authorities tried Taylor and acquitted him." (Reported by Thomas Rice, superintendent.)

L. L. Pinkerton, superintendent of Fayette county, at Lexington, reports that, "in his and the opinion of all whom he has consulted, the freedmen cannot receive their just rights without a considerable millitary force."

C.P. Oyler Covington, writes: "The civil officers, after the late action of the Kentucky legislature in regard to the Freedmen's Bureau, refused to co-operate with me, and manifest a disposition to drive the bureau out of the State. It will be impossible to secure to freedmen their just rights without the aid of a military force. Colored people are driven from their homes and their houses burned."

Willian Goodloe writes: "The counties of Boyle, Lincoln, and Mercer are infested with guerilla bands. Outrages are mostly committed upon colored persons. The evidence of colored persons is not taken in court. I am powerless to accomplish anything without soldiers."

"Peter Branford, a returned colored soldier, in Mercer county, was shot by James Poore, a white man, without cause or provocation."

Judge Samuel A. Spencer, of Green county, writes: "A great many colored men are beaten, their lives threatend, and they refused the privelege of returning home because they have been in the army. I cannot accept the agency on account of the action of the Kentucky legislature."

E. P. Ashcraft, of Meade county, writes: "Richard, William, Jesse, and John Shacklett and Martin Taylor, returned rebel soldiers, have on different occasions attacked negroes with fire-arms, and say they inted no d-d niggers shall live on this side the Ohio." "The civil authorities are powerless."

R. W. Thing, of Warren county, writes: "An old negro was killed by gunshot while attempting to run from a white boy eighteen years of age, to escape a whipping."

"A freedman was attacked in his cabin and shot. He and his wife ran to the woods, with bullets flying thick and fast around them from five or six revolvers, the woman escaping with her life by tearing off her chemise while running, thereby presenting a darker-colored mark."

"A woman was stabbed by a white woman in the neck, the knife penetrating the windpipe, for giving water to a Union soldier in a tumbler."

"A woman and her son were horribly cut and mangled with the lash and then hung by the neck until so nearly dead that water had to be thrown in their faces to revive them to make them acknowledge that they had set a house on fire."

"A woman received a severe cut in the head from a club in the hands of a man, who drove her from her home because her husband had joined the army."