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with several of the officers of the law, they may be shamed into some pretence of justice. It is possible that the commonwealths attorney will prepare and the grand jury will find bills of indictment, corresponding with the crime, and that the parties who have been caught by the soldiers, and forced into the hands of the Magistrates, will actually be tried by a Jury. I do not suppose however, that a Jury of Accomac County confederated in feeling, if not co-conspirators in crime, with the prisoners will give a verdict allowing their punishment- in this connection Mr. Lilliston, the presiding Justice before alluded to, stated in the presence of three witnesses, that he did notthink  any Jury would convict a white man, on negro testimony. I must add however that the defence in these cases to be well organized. The commonwealth's attorney suggested in Court at the time when the two men above alluded to were heard by the Justice, that if the negroes chose they might get money compensation and let the case drop: this looks like an attempt to compromise the felony- Also a freedmen named Peter White: one of those who applied for the warrant was afterwards according to his own statement, shot at and wounded by several white men lying in ambush for him; this was on the 4th inst and if the man is to be believed was an attempt to get rid of his testimony by the summary process of killing him. This matter is still under investigation, and being so far, only given on the authority of the colored many himself, is an exception to my general statement. "That the facts of this Report are wholly from white sources". The general condition of the

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-03-05 14:15:06 Confirmed with Accomac census data that it is Mr. Lilliston, not Silliston