“A Superintendent of the Bureau reports the poor creatures coming in with cruel grievances that are unredressed by these magistrates. General Chetlain tells us, that, while he was in command, for two months, of the Jackson district, containing nine counties, there was an average of one black man killed every day, and that, in moving out forty miles on an expedition, he found seven negroes wantonly butchered; and Colonel Thomas, Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau for this State, tells us that there is now a daily average of two or three black men killed in Mississippi: the sable patriots in blue, as they return, are the objects of especial spite.” There is another authority of peculiar value. It is a letter dated at Webb’s Ranch, Issaquena County, Mississippi, November 13, 1865. “I regret to state, that, under the civil power, now deemed by all the inhabitants of Mississippi (since the order of President Johnson revoking General Slocum’s decree in relation to the State militia) to be paramount, the condition of the freedmen in many portions of the country has become deplorable and painful in the extreme. _I must give it as my deliberate opinion, that the freedmen are to-day, in the vicinity of where I am now writing, worse off in most respects than when they were held as slaves._ If matters are permitted to continue as they now seem likely to be, it needs no prophet to predict a rising on the part of the colored population, and a terrible scene of bloodshed and desolation; nor can one blame the negroes, if this proves to be the result. _I have heard, since my arrival here, of numberless atrocities that have been perpetrated against the freedmen._ It is sufficient to state that the old overseers are in power again. The agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau are almost powerless. Just as soon as the United States troops are withdrawn, it will be unsafe for the agents of the Bureau to remain. The object of the Southerners appears to be to make good their often repeated assertions, to the effect that the negroes would die, if they were freed. To make it so, they seem determined to goad them to desperation, in order to have an excuse to turn upon and annihilate them. There are, within a few miles of where I sit writing, several Northern men, who have settled here, designing to work plantations. _They all assure me that they do not consider themselves safe in the country_; and two of them, ex-colonels in the United States army, are afraid to leave their places without an armed escort. Other Northern lessees do not dare remain on their places.” These are grave words, opening in fearful vista the tragical condition of the freedmen, and the perils of Northern settlers.