Men who find that the Government, while they have been fighting to overthrow it, has used their property, complain bitterly of the injustice with which they are treated; and through the very importunity of their complaints, they are not unlikely to carry some of their claims.
Reid highlights the grievances of individuals whose property was used by the government during the war, reflecting the tensions of the Reconstruction era.
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They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out.
With her, then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship, and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause.
In November nothing could exceed the hatred which seemed everywhere felt to the freedmen.
I would rather give up my crop to the negroes than the lives of my wife and children.