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La Grange, Ga. Sept 3rd 1866.

General. 

Although I am aware that this place is not within your department, yet I have concluded to write to you, believing that you have influence that may be exerted for the security of the freedmen in this section as well as your own. There is in an adjoining County, Heard, an organization of white men who, blacking their faces, and riding at night, go to the houses of freedmen, and calling them to their doors shoot them down in cold blood.

Neither the Bureau nor the civil authorities seem to make an effort to ferret out and bring these mid-night assassins to punishment. There can be no doubt of the existence of such an organization, and the fact that the newspapers, and public generally are silent in reference to the attrocities committed, induces men to believe that many of the people slyly wink at these proceedings. I have been told (by freedmen and also by a white union man) that six or seven negroes have been murdered there within the last ten weeks. 

Is there any remedy for this? How may these assassins be arrested in their bloody career? To day I witnessed a mournful spectacle. It was that of a man, his wife, her two daughters and two grandchildren, six in all, fleeing for their lives, from the pursuit of these murderous wretches. Last night they were visited, as they supposed, by the Black Cavalry, for so the assassins are called. They called at the house where the black people were staying, called the man, (Jerry by name) but receiving no answer left & the night before they 

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