Race Relations in Georgia, ca. 1871

From Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States. Georgia, vol. I., and South Carolina, vol. II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872. 833, 1430.

1) Statement of C. W. Howard [a Georgia editor]

The negroes show their inherent vices, . . . indolence, theft, and sensuality. Before the war closed, when it was thought that the negroes would be emancipated, all of us apprehended a repetition of the scenes of San Domingo; but nothing of the kind has occurred. The negroes have been quiet and orderly, under very strong temptations to be otherwise; temptations not originating with themselves, but with a class of very bad men who came among them, and who endeavored to foster ill blood between the races for their own aggrandizement. But those men had little brains and less principle, and the negroes soon saw through them. If they had been like members of the internationale, or of the commune,--earnest fanatics--I think they would have done much harm; but I think their power is very much at an end, and the result has been very different from what we feared. The negroes have been orderly and quiet, for the main part, to a wonderful degree. On the other hand, the conduct of the whites has been very different from what experience and analogy might have induced us to expect. Those people suddenly having been liberated, given the power to vote, to sit upon juries, and to hold office, it was very natural to suppose that the whites, as a mass, would have a feeling of the strongest animosity toward them. But it has not been so; and, as a general rule (of course there are exceptional cases) the two races, in their intercourse with each other, have acted in a manner which no former experience would have led us to anticipate. I think that the negroes generally are going to their old masters, and their old masters are treating them with kindness and even-handed justice. . . .

2) Statement of Alexander P. Wylie [a newspaper writer from South Carolina who claims he was a Unionist before and during the war. He describes a group of blacks organizing themselves after they had had a violent clash with the Ku Klux Klan]

2)[The negroes] came on down to Chester, warning the negroes to come; that the fight was to commence; sending runners to various quarters. On Monday morning I went up; it was the first I heard of it. They were then encamped in the borders of the town, within the corporation, a few hundred yards from the court-house, picketing the roads, preventing people from going in and out in that direction.
Question. How many were there at the time?
Answer. Something like a hundred, I think.
Question. Fully armed?
Answer. All armed with muskets.
Question. Proceed.
Answer. It created great excitement. . . .There is a negro company there at Chester Village of about one hundred, commandeered by a mulatto, John Lee. . . . There were negro women there, I know two; one of them has been treated most kindly throughout her life by an old aunt of mine; she raised the cry, "Now is the time to burn," and a night or two after that the fire was set. She cried out, "Now is the time to burn." A number did that. I recollect one girl there who had been treated just as a white girl--a bright mulatto, and still living with her old owner to this day. No person suspected such a feeling in her. And she said that she would delight in . . . to be in hell, to have a churn-paddle, and churn the whites to all eternity.