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La Grange, Ga, Sept. 3d ,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, & bring these midnight assassins to punishment. There can be no doubt of the existence of such an organization, & the fact that the newspapers, & public generally are silent in reference to the atrocities. committed, induces men to believe that too many of the people slily wink at these proceedings. I have been told (by freedmen & also by a "white union man) that six or seven negroes have been murdered there, within the last two weeks. Is there any remedy for this? How may these assassins be arrested in their bloody carear? To day I witnessed a mournful spectacle. It was that of a man, his wife & two daughters & two grand children, six in all, fleeing for their lives, from the pursuit of those 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 answere, left. The night before, they had visited a neighboring farm, & cruelly murdered, without provocation, a poor black woman. This with the circumstance of their visiting & calling for the man last night, alarmed and