patrols with negro hounds keep guard over the thoroughfares, bands of lawless robbers traverse the country, and the unfortunate who attempts escape, or he who returns for his wife or child, is waylaid or pursued with hounds, and shot or hung. Laborers on the plantations are forced to remain and toil without hope of remuneration. Others have made the crop and are now driven off to reach Mobile or starve; scarcely any of them have rags enough to cover them. Many who still labor are denied any meat, and whenever they are treated with humanity it is an isolated exception. Ragged, maimed, and diseased, these miserable outcasts seek their only refuge, the Freedmen's Bureau, and their simple tale of suffering and woe calls loudly on the mighty arm of our government for the protection promised them.
These people are industrious. They do not refuse to work; on the contrary, they labor for the smallest pittance and plainest food, and are too often driven off deprived of the small compensation they labored for.
The report of rations issued to destitute citizens on August 1, 1865, was 3,570 persons. Owing to the numerous impostures by those who had means of support, I erased the names of a large number and the list now stands 1,742 persons who are recipients of government alms. Of this number, 95 per cent. are rebels who have participated in some manner in this rebellion. Number of rations issued to destitute colored people is simply six (6).
The report of the freedmen's colony of this district to this date is (12) twelve men, (71) seventy-one women, and (88) eighty-eight children, and sick in hospital (105) one hundred and five; total (276) two hundred and seventy-six. Of this number many have been driven off of plantations as helpless, while many of their grown children are forcibly retained to hard labor for their masters.
- I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Captain, Assistant Superintendent freedmen, refugees, abandoned lands, &c..
Major General Carl Schurz.
Sir: I have the honor to report some testimony I have received of the murders and barbarities committed on the freedmen in Clark, Choctaw, Washington and Marengo counties, also the Alabama and Bigbee rivers.
About the last of April, two freedmen were hung in Clark county.
On the night of the eleventh of May, a freedman named Alfred was taken from his bed by his master and others and was hung, and his body still hangs to the limb.
About the middle of June, two colored soldiers (at a house in Washington county) showed their papers and were permitted to remain all night. In the morning the planter called them out and shot one dead, wounded the other, and then with the assistance of his brother (and their negro dogs) they pursued the one who had escaped. He ran about three miles and found a refuge in a white man's house, who informed the pursuers that he had passed. The soldier was finally got across the river, but has not been heard of since.
At Bladen Springs, (or rather, six miles from there,) a freedman was chained to a pine tree and burned to death.
About two weeks after, and fifteen miles from Bladen, another freedman was burned to death.
In the latter part of May, fifteen miles south of Bladen, a freedman was shot outside of the planter's premises and the body dragged into the stable, to make it appear he had shot him in the act of stealing.
About the first of June, six miles west of Bladen, a freedman was hung. His body is still hanging.
About the last of May, three freedmen were coming down the Bigbee river in a skiff, when two of them were shot; the other escaped to the other shore.
At Magnolia Bluff (Bigbee river) a freedman (named George) was ordered out of his cabin to be whipped; he started to run, when the men (three of them) set their dogs (five of them) on him, and one of the men rode up to George and struck him to the earth with a loaded whip. Two of them dragged him back by the heels, while the dogs were lacerating his face and body. They then placed a stick across his neck, and while one stood on it the others beat him until life was nearly extinct.
About the first of May, near ——— landing, in Choctaw county, a freedman was hung; and about the same time, near the same neighborhood, a planter shot a freedman, (who was talking to one of his servants,) and dragged his body into his garden to conceal it.
A preacher (near Bladen Springs) states in the pulpit that the roads in Choctaw county stunk with the dead bodies of servants that had fled from their masters.
The people about Bladen declare that no negro shall live in the county unless he remains with his master and is as obedient as heretofore.
In Clark county, about the first of June, a freedman was shot through the heart; his body lies unburied.
