Viewing page 111 of 339

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

3
people in the Mississippi Valley has been a failure or not.
Col. Eaton has never been placed in arrest, neither have charges and specifications ever been regularly preferred against him. The substance of the following accusations which I write down as charges, has been made verbally by various parties at different times, or has been found in letters written and circulated throughout the country. There are certain people whose names are well known to you, whom I am well satisfied are bitter personal enemies of Col. Eaton, from what cause I am not advised. These parties have taken every opportunity to injure him and have used the utmost vigor and most untiring industry in attempting to prove to the world that his management of the freed people has been a failure.
I was prepared at one time to believe that their had been cause for complaint, and that Col. Eaton had made very many unfortunate mistakes; that the freedmen had been sadly neglected and cruelly treated; that they had been swindled and oppressed and that Col. Eaton and his subordinate officers had filled their pockets from their hard earning, and that the very worst systems of fraud and corruption had been introduced and allowed and that not only the freedmen but the Government had been defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars which had passed directly or indirectly to the credit of Col. Eaton. I commenced my inspection of his Dep't expecting to find