Be it our function to teach them the duty and necessity of Equal Rights.

Where such a spirit prevails, the freedmen fare badly.

The hatred toward the negro as a freeman is intense among the low and brutal, who are the vast majority.

Murders, shootings, whippings, robbing, and brutal treatment of every kind are daily inflicted upon them, and I am sorry to say in most cases they can get no redress.

They don’t know where to complain or how to seek justice, after they have been abused and cheated.

The habitual deference toward the white man makes them fearful of his anger and revenge.

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…

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.

If legal chicanery can avail, those rights will be but nominal, and they will remain, as they have ever been, isolated and apart,--free in name, but slaves in fact.

Such is the unimaginable atrocity which, according to friendly authority, prevails in Georgia.

Alas that such scenes should disgrace our country and age!

Alas that there should be hesitation in applying the necessary remedy!

From Georgia pass to Alabama, only to find the same evil spirit and the same succession of enormities, intensified, if possible.

But I have yet to see the first signs of repentance on the part of those who have received clemency from the Chief Magistrate of the Government.

The existing feeling is, that no man who did not support the Confederacy is worthy of trust; and all offices are given to those who did their best to break up the country.

President Johnson will find in the end that he has been too liberal in the exercise of clemency.

And unless he changes his course, or is checked by Congress, the most corrupt men in the South will again get into power, and sway the destinies of this section of the country.

The planters hate the negro, and the latter class distrust the former; and while this state of things continues, there cannot be harmonious action in developing the resources of the country.

Besides, a good many men are unwilling yet to believe that the ‘peculiar institution’ of the South has been actually abolished, and still have the lingering hope that Slavery, though not in name, will yet in some form practically exist.

I hope there will be strength and moral courage enough in that body to keep the ship of state right.

The Government, in taking the responsibility of freeing this people, tacitly engaged to protect them in their freedom.

The various departments of Government have solemnly declared the black man entitled to equal rights before the law with the white man.