violence, were frequent enough in South Carolina and Georgia to call forth
from General Saxton a circular threatening planters who persisted in this
practice with loss of their property, and from Major General Steedman,
commander of the department of Georgia, an order bearing upon the same
subject. At Atlanta, Georgia, I had an opportunity to examine some cases
of the nature above described myself. While I was there, 9th and 10th of
August, several negroes came into town with bullet and buckshot wounds in
their bodies. From their statements, which, however, were only
corroborating information previously received, it appeared that the
reckless and restless characters of that region had combined to keep the
negroes where they belonged. Several freedmen were shot in the attempt to
escape, others succeeded in eluding the vigilance of their persecutors;
large numbers, terrified by what they saw and heard, quietly remained
under the restraint imposed upon them, waiting for better opportunities.
The commander of the sub-district and post informed me that bands of
guerillas were prowling about within a few miles of the city, making it
dangerous for soldiers and freedmen to show themselves outside of the
immediate reach of the garrison, and that but a few days previous to my
arrival a small squad of men he had sent out to serve an order upon a
planter, concerning the treatment of freedmen, had been driven back by an
armed band of over twenty men, headed by an individual in the uniform of a
rebel officer.

As our troops in Georgia were at that time mostly concentrated at a number
of central points, and not scattered over the State in small detachments,
but little information was obtained of what was going on in the interior
of the country. A similar system was followed in Alabama, but enough has
become known to indicate the condition of things in localities not
immediately under the eye of the military. In that State the efforts made
to hold the negro in a state of subjection appear to have been of a