“Every day the press of the South testifies to the outrages that are being perpetrated upon unoffending colored people by the State militia. These outrages are particularly flagrant in the States of Alabama and Mississippi, and are of such a character as to demand most imperatively the interposition of the National Executive. These men are rapidly inaugurating a condition of things, a feeling among the freedmen, that will, if not checked, ultimate in insurrection. The freedmen are peaceable and inoffensive; yet, if the whites continue to make it all their lives are worth to go through the country, as free people have a right to do, they will goad them to that point at which submission and patience cease to be a virtue. … “I call your attention to this matter, after reading and hearing from the most authentic sources, officers and others, for weeks, of the continuance of the militia robbing the colored people of their property,--arms,--shooting them in the public highways, if they refuse to halt, when so commanded, and lodging them in jail, if found from home without _passes_, and ask, as a matter of simple justice to an unoffending and downtrodden people, that you use your influence to induce the President to issue an order or proclamation forbidding such wicked and unlawful proceedings, and, if he deem it prudent, forbidding the organization of State militia. _The only military force_ NEEDED _in the South is more regular and volunteer troops to keep in proper subjection those lately in rebellion, and to teach them to treat the freed people in a manner becoming a civilized community_.” Another witness, himself a Georgian, with ample opportunities of information, testifies:-- “I have personal and friendly relations with many leading men of this section: I had before the war. I have met many of them in New York and in Washington within the past few months, and have, as a citizen of the South, had frequent conversations with them upon our future, and the means that should be employed to begin it auspiciously. These interviews have been free and open in interchange of opinion, and I must believe that I had laid before me the intentions of those who must and will again assume the leadership here. If they are not so honored, their opinions will show how they _would_ lead, had they the power.