No. 21 Office Provost Marshal
Post of Selma, Alabama, August 22, 1865.
I have the honor to report the following facts in regard to the treatment of colored persons by whites within the limits of my observation:
There have come under my notice, officially, twelve cases in which I am morally certain (the trials have not been had yet) that negroes were killed by whites. In a majority of cases the provocation consisted in the negroes trying to come to town, or to return to the plantation after having been sent away. These cases are in part as follows:
Wilson H. Gordon, convicted by military commission of having shot and drowned a negro, May 14, 1865.
Samuel Smiley, charged with having shot one negro and wounded another, acquitted on proof of an alibi. It is certain, however, that one negro was shot and another wounded, as stated. Trial occurred in June.
Three negroes were killed in the southern part of Dallas county; it is supposed by the Vaughn family. I tried twice to arrest them, but they escaped into the woods.
Mr. Alexander, Perry county, shot a negro for being around his quarters at a late hour. He went into his house with a gun and claimed to have shot the negro accidentally. The fact is, the negro is dead.
Mr. Dermott, Perry county, started with a negro to Selma, having a rope around the negro’s neck. He was seen dragging him in that way, but returned home before he could have reached Selma. He did not report at Selma, and the negro has never since been heard of. The neighbors declare their belief that the negro was killed by him. This was about the 10th of July.
Mr. Higginbotham, and Threadgill, charged with killing a negro in Wilcox county, whose body was found in the woods, came to my notice the first week of August.
A negro was killed on Mr. Brown’s place, about nine miles from Selma, on the 20th of August. Nothing further is known of it. Mr. Brown himself reported.
A negro was killed in the calaboose of the city of Selma, by being beaten with a heavy club; also, by being tied up by the thumbs, clear of the floor, for three hours, and by further gross abuse, lasting more than a week, until he died.
I can further state, that within the limits of my official observation crime is rampant; that life is insecure as well as property; that the country is filled with desperadoes and banditti who rob and plunder on every side, and that the county is emphatically in a condition of anarchy.
The cases of crime above enumerated, I am convinced, are but a small part of those that have actually been perpetrated.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J.P. HOUSTON, Major 5th Minnesota, and Provost Marshal U.S. forces at Selma, Alabama.
Major General CARL SCHURZ.