Links in the Chain of Violence—the Maltreatment of Women, and the Murder of Whites and Blacks.
By W. B. STICKNEY
To the Editor of The N. Y. Tribune. SIR: As the late indiscriminate murder of Union men in New Orleans has convinced the Northern public that a malignant spirit still exists in “Rebellion,” and demonstrated that the brutal outrages occasionally reported as having been committed at different points in the South, have not been exaggerated cases of Rebel atrocity and barbarity, the following hitherto unpublished and unnoticed accounts of acts of violence coming within the notice of the writer, while on duty as an officer in the Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana, will serve as another link in the chain of evidence, proving that the spirit of Rebellion still prevails, and that the policy of President Johnson, in pardoning the leading Rebels and restoring them to office, has only made them more violent in their dealings with Union men, and rendered the lives of the freedmen still more insecure. Emile Bertrand, a teacher employed by the Freedmen’s Bureau, was taken by the chivalry in the parish of Point Coupee, where he was teaching, and severely cowhided and his life threatened if he continued to teach a nigger school. This occurred in January last. Lieut. P. F. Burnham, formerly of the 8th Vermont Volunteers, having been mustered out of service, proceeded to Monroe, La., in February last, for the purpose of opening a school. He called a meeting of the colored population. This was set upon by ruffians armed with pistols and knives, and several of the negroes were murdered, and the Lieutenant barely escaped with his life, having received a cut with a knife, five inches in length, across the small of his back. In August, 1865, Corp. J. M. Wallace, of the 47th Ind. Vet. Vols., while on duty with the Freedmen’s Bureau at Shreveport, La., was kidnapped and brutally murdered, and in the same parish, during the same month, the Provost Marshal of Freedmen reported “that five freedmen had been killed, and that there were sixty well authenticated cases of assault upon the persons of the freedmen—that bodies of the freedmen were found hanging upon the trees, and floating in Red river.” In January last, Charles Colton, formerly a Lieutenant of the 8th Vermont, reported “that while traveling in Alabama on business, and in citizen’s dress, Dr.—informed him ‘that he had lately rid himself of several of the negroes upon his plantation.’ Said the Doctor, ‘It is an easy matter. They go to the village, but do not return, and nobody knows anything about them; one of my neighbors disposed of four of his in this way.’” Capt. Marshall Twitchell of Townshend, Vt., who was agent of the Bureau in Claiborne parish, La., reported the maltreatment of two ladies who were sent to his parish to teach, and said “that the parties who had engaged to board them refused, because they had been threatened that if they did so, their house would be burned down, and that it was not safe for him to ride over the whole of his parish, and that he could not protect the teachers.” Lieut. Chas. N. Rockefeller, 48th U. S. C. I., A. A. Q. M., of the Bureau at Shreveport, La., reported “that it became necessary to station a guard at the residence of the teachers to prevent their being brutally treated.” An attempt was made in March last to lynch Gen. Sypher, formerly Colonel of the 20th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (colored). Having left the service, he, in company with Gen. Fuller, another ex-United States Army officer, leased plantations upon Bayou Boeuf, and Gen. Sypher hired some laborers at Plaquemine, La., and was expected to land several miles below the village from an evening boat, and take the laborers to his plantation. A mob gathered to lynch him upon the landing of the steamer, but as business in New Orleans prevented his arrival, he escaped. Gen. Sypher informed me that he and Gen. Fuller considered it necessary to arm the hands upon his place for their personal protection. Other Northern men adopt the same rule. Col. Frisbie hired the men of his regiment before the order was issued prohibiting the black soldiers from purchasing their arms from the Government, and as his laborers have the Enfield rifles which they bore in the army, he keeps up a guard upon his plantation, and drills his men regularly. In Louisiana the freedmen are now left entirely to the mercy of their old masters. The Freedmen’s Bureau is powerless. What can an officer do toward enforcing order in a parish fifty miles long, and from five to twenty wide, without a single soldier to assist him, and with the positive assurance from headquarters that he cannot have any military force? Capt. H. E. Pease, agent at Monroe, La., reported “that a planter told him to go to hell with his orders.” The captain went to New Orleans for a military force, but could not obtain even a corporal’s guard. I repeat, the Freedmen’s Bureau, as at present conducted, is powerless, and the freedmen are defenseless, and Union men at the mercy of traitors. Said the editor of The New Orleans Tribune, the organ of the blacks in Louisiana, himself a colored man, “The Government protects us, and how? President Johnson appoints Provisional Governors, and allows them and their successors to organize a militia in the South. This militia search the dwellings of the black man, and rob him of his arms. The Constitution guarantees to all citizens the right to the use of arms, but the black man cannot exercise this right.” This is the protection which President Johnson gives us, “such as vultures give to lambs, covering and devouring them.” Again, the white soldier, upon103being mustered out, is allowed to purchase the arms he has borne in the service; but the President issued an order which deprives the black man of this privilege. Facts like the above have a language which is too plain to be misunderstood. Comment is unnecessary. Late Lieut. U. S. A., of the Freedmen’s Bureau of La. Leyden, Mass., Aug. 7, 1866.