consider it safe for the government to base expectations upon it, which
the manner in which it manifests itself does not justify.

The reorganization of civil government is relieving the military, to a
great extent, of its police duties and judicial functions; but at the time
I left the south it was still very far from showing a satisfactory
efficiency in the maintenance of order and security.--In many districts
robbing and plundering was going on with perfect impunity; the roads were
infested by bands of highwaymen; numerous assaults occurred, and several
stage lines were considered unsafe. The statements of Major General Woods,
Brigadier General Kilby Smith and Colonel Gilchrist, (accompanying
documents Nos. 11, 9 and 18,) give a terrible picture of the state of
things in the localities they refer to. It is stated that civil officers
are either unwilling or unable to enforce the laws; that one man does not
dare to testify against another for fear of being murdered, and that the
better elements of society are kept down by lawless characters under a
system of terrorism. From my own observation I know that these things are
not confined to the districts mentioned in the documents above referred
to. Both the governors of Alabama and Mississippi complained of it in
official proclamations. Cotton, horse and cattle stealing was going on in
all the States I visited on an extensive scale. Such a state of
demoralization would call for extraordinary measures in any country, and
it is difficult to conceive how, in the face of the inefficiency of the
civil authorities, the removal of the troops can be thought of.

In speaking above of the improbability of an insurrectionary movement on a
large scale, I did not mean to say that I considered resistance in detail
to the execution of the laws of Congress and the measures of the
government impossible. Of all subjects connected with the negro question I
shall speak in another part of this report. But there is another matter