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4
[[stamp]] THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES [[/stamp]]

estate, the law which forbade negroes to have arms, the law which gave the master the right to whip his slave, the law which disallowed his testimony against a white man, and the code of false "honor" which required a blow, a shot or a stab to avenge insult especially when offered by a negro, were still practically unrepealed. Complaints came to me daily of negroes robbed of guns, pistols and ammunition, of houses broken into and searched at midnight, of negroes tied hand and foot and brutally whipped, of negroes shot at, and driven from their old homes by threats and violence, in a word all those manifold wrongs which once were necessarily incidents to a state of slavery, but which become outrages in a state of freedom. I do not charge these things upon the generous, cultivated and high minded portion of the citizens of Georgia. But these are in a minority.
There is a tendency, as if it were by a tacit understanding among all classes, to exaggerate the negroe's faults, to picture him as idle, lazy, filthy, shiftless, an universal liar, [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] a perpetual thief, and in matrimonial matters a devoted follower of Brigham Young.
Everybody except a few of the most intelligent believed or pretended to believe that there was great danger of a negro insurrection. Whether conscience made cowards of them or they wished a pretext for arming themselves and disarming the blacks, or wishes to excite our suspicions against them as a bad race, or some smart negroes practiced upon their credulity, I know not;