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"It is true, a white man by the name of Cunningham, was found guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses, constructive larceny, and sentenced to be whipped, and the sentence of the court was carried out on yesterday. But, as I stated to you in my communication of the 8th, it was the first instance in this county since before the Rebellion, and the only one, with a single exception, that has occurred in very many years. I think it was done in this case to avoid the appearance of discrimination; but I had doubts at the time, and still have, whether this man would have been so sentenced, if he had not been a friendless stranger."

But I think there is abundant grounds for the indignant feeling entertained by the freed people, in the fact that if no discrimination was made in the mode of punishment, there was in the punishment itself. Wood and Jenkins, freedmen, were whipped on the 21st, as I reported in my letter of that date, and very severely as I am informed by one of them, his flesh having been laid open in many places. But the white man whipped on yesterday was touched so lightly as scarcely to mark the skin for the moment- a whipping that would not have brought tears from the eyes of an infant. I regard this whipping as a sham and mockery.

When I objected to this mode of punishment, in my letters to you of the 8th, 10th, and 21st, it was in the hope that the Assistant Commissioner would suspend the operation of the statute, as Gen. Terry did the vagrant act, by general order; or that the Governor would be induced to do the like by proclamation. And I am still anxious that it should be done, not only because I think bodily injury an improper punishment, but to allay the ill feeling now existing among the freedmen in this county.  But if this sort of interference is not deemed proper, I would respectfully recommend that the next Legislature be petitioned to repeal so much of the statutes as pertain to whipping as a punishment for petit larceny. 

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