Whether agents originated or simply winked at the red, white and blue stick enterprise, I am unable to say. Into a neighborhood would come strangers from the North, seeking private interviews with negroes possessing a little cash or having access to somebody else's cash; to these would be shown, with pledges of secrecy, packages of red, white and blue sticks, four to each package. "Get up before light on such a date, plant a stick at the four corners of any piece of land not over a mile square, and the land is yours. Be wary, or the rebels will get ahead of you." Packages were five dollars each. One gentleman found a set for which he had lent part of the purchase money planted on his land. If a negro had not the whole sum, the seller would "trust" him for the balance till he "should come into possession of the land." Generals Fullerton and Steedman advised discontinuance of the Bureau in Virginia; and some similar recommendation must have accompanied the report for Florida and the Carolinas which contained such revelations as this about the Trent River Settlement, where 4,000 blacks lived in "deplorable condition" under the superintendency of Rev. Mr. Fitz, formerly U. S. A. Chaplain. "Four intelligent Northern ladies," teaching school in the Settlement, witnessed the harsh treatment of negroes by Mr. Fitz, such as suspension by the thumbs for hours; imprisonment of children for playing on the Sabbath; making negroes pay for huts; taxing them; turning them out on the streets. Interesting statements were given in regard to the "planting officials" who impressed negroes to work lands under such overseers as few Southern masters (outside of "Uncle Tom's Cabin") would have permitted to drive negroes they owned, the officials reaping profits. The Bureau had ways of making whites know their place. One could gather a book of stories like this, told me recently by an aged lady, whose name I can give to any one entitled to ask: "Captain B., of the Freedmen's Bureau, was a very hard man. He took up farms around and put negroes on them. We had a large place; he held that over a year and everything was destroyed. Saturdays, Captain B. would send many negroes out there--and it was pandemonium! My husband was in prison. My father was eighty; he would not complain, but I would. We went to the Bureau repeatedly about the outrages. Captain B. was obsequious, offered father wine; but he did not stop the outrages. Once he asked: 'Have you not had any remuneration for your place?' 'No,' I said, 'and we are not asking it. We only beg you to make the negroes you send out there behave decently.' He said he would do anything for us, but did nothing; at last, I went direct to General Stoneman, and he helped us."