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Government would see that these promises were kept. I have been met by expressions of doubt and fear. They say that, if their old masters are to be left to secure to them their rights & privileges guaranteed by the proclamation of freedom, they will receive nothing but oppression and ill-treatment, which will make their condition now worse than it was in the days of slavery.

Your late visit to the South has given you an opportunity to see and feel the difficulties under which a Commissioner of the Bureau labors, charged by the whites with inciting insurrection & inflating the hopes of the negroes, and by the blacks with failing to secure them their rights.

I have forwarded to your office many cases of reported refusals to give Freedmen a fair trial by Mayors & other magistrates. You are aware that the state authorities take charge of all criminal cases and try them before the civil tribunals, yet Negroes are murdered and their murderers swagger about the country perfectly secure