of color or political opinions. General Sickles thought the same to be true for most parts of South Carolina. General Howard, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, drew from the reports of his subordinates a similar conclusion as to the whole region covered by their operations.[1] On the other hand, General Sheridan found a good deal still to be desired in Louisiana and Texas, and Sickles admitted that certain specified counties of South Carolina failed to afford a safe habitation for the freedmen. The latter officer's explanation of the existing disorder embodied a truth that was applicable very generally through the South. He declared that the outrages in the localities referred to were not peculiar to that time.
Personal encounters, assaults and difficulties between citizens, often resulting in serious wounds and death, have for years occurred without serious notice or action of the civil
authorities; . . . where it has hitherto seemed officious to arrest and punish citizens for assault upon each other, they can hardly be expected to yield with any grace to arrests for
assaults and outrages upon negroes.[2]
The general here touched upon a potent source of evil to the South in the days of reconstruction. Northern opinion tended to judge the rebel states by social standards that never had been fairly applicable to them. A laxity in the administration of criminal justice that had always prevailed
