als and
many of the lower ones toward the white people. They assumed that the
whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment to the blacks in the
matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in Louisiana declared
that the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau were
removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported
that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special
privileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for his
lawlessness and made of the Negroes a pampered class. General Tillson
in Georgia predicted the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his
hate, cruelty, and malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some
of the meanest, unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists
in Kentucky that curse the soil of the country... a more select number
of vindictive, pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than
a majority of the Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to
lecture the whites about their sins in regard to slavery and to point
out to them how far in their general ignorance and backwardness they
fell short of enlightened people.

The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and
oppressive manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people,
without regard to justice." For this reason they were suspended for a
time in Louisiana and Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton,
and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highest
character were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous
complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or
otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the
civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not
conducive to a return to normal conditions.

The inferior agents, not sufficiently under the control of their
superiors, were responsible for a great deal of this bad feeling. Many
of them held radical opinions as to the relations of the races, and
inculcated these views in their courts, in the schools, and in the new
Negro churches. Some were charged with even causing strikes and other
difficulties in order to be bought off by the whites. The tendency of
their work was to create in the Negroes a pervasive distrust of the
whites.

The prevalent delusion in regard to an impending division of the
lands among the blacks had its origin in the operation of the war-time