p. 163 | Tennessee

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 23, 1866

Tennessee.

THE WICKED GO UNPUNISHED.

It is a very difficult thing for a freedman to get justice in the courts. Almost every day some poor fellow makes his way to Nashville, wounded and distressed. His employer or some other villain, in a moment of excitement, has fired on him with the intention of killing him. The truth is, there is a class in the South who would rather shoot at a negro than at a fox or a squirrel. They think it sport. They have no regard for his life or limbs. Half a dozen freedmen have been shot dead or dangerously wounded in this county within a few months past, and yet no man has been punished, and I doubt whether any one of the cold-blooded murderers of freedmen I see on the streets every day, will ever be punished. They never will be if Andrew Johnson's policy is indorsed by the northern people.

Your readers will remember that a most bloody massacre occurred some months since in Memphis. Many of the most foul murders that have been perpetrated in any country were committed in that city; and the murderers are well known, yet no one has been indicted by the grand jury, and no one of them has been arrested. The civil authorities will not punish them, and the military are restrained by that man at Washington, who rose to power when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He has refused to authorize the military authorities to bring the Memphis murderers to justice.

Now these are sad facts, and they portend evil. The faces of Union men in Tennessee are becoming troubled and anxious, and they have but one hope. If the northern people at the coming elections speak with a voice of thunder in condemnation of Johnson's policy, then all will be well; and that is their hope.

I can not think that the great struggle through which we have passed, at the expense of so much blood and treasure, is to end in nothing substantial and valuable; and it does not seem to me possible that President Johnson can be permitted by the Almighty to blast the hopes of the most gallant nation under the sun.

I will add a news item, that Major-General Fisk has been dismissed the service. He is one of the noblest of men, but could not indorse Johnson. His removal is a heavy stroke on the freedmen, and all loyal men here feel indignant.—Religious Telescope.