The following educational document corresponds with Unit Six: Pursuing Citizenship: Justice & Equality in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.

Context
The inability of federal authorities to impose control over local officials or to stem abuses against freedpeople, mentioned in Document 3, continued into 1866 and 1867, and even growing more acute under the lenient approach pursued by President Andrew Johnson. In the city of Wilmington, home to a large population of former slaves, a deep antagonism developed between Freedmen's Bureau officials and the local mayor, who was reported to recruit men to the local police force on the basis of their former service in the Confederate military. As the following documents make clear, this force became widely detested in Wilmington's black community for their frequent outrages against freedmen and women of all ages. The first of these is from testimony by Bureau agent W. H. H. Beadle before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction; the second is from a field report filed by another agent relative to the same matter.

Harassment of Freedpeople in the Vicinity of Wilmington

[Testimony April 4, 1866]

Question. How do the secessionists receive President Johnson's liberal policy of treatment?
Answer. With rejoicing. Everything favorable from the President is published with capital headings. They receive it with great satisfaction... The laws of the State retain whipping, cropping, branding, and letting or binding to service as punishments for crime.

My assistant heard men say in the street that they would soon get rid of the d--n niggers when the Freedman's Bureau was withdrawn. I believe he used the terms, "would soon kill off the niggers."

Question. Have you had any knowledge of such whipping cases?

Answer. Yes, sir I interfered and stopped the whipping of some freedmen by the sheriff of New Hanover county.

Question. Was the whipping order by the justices of the peace?

Answer. By what is called the county court, the court of pleas and quarter sessions, which consists of the Justices in the county sitting together quarterly, with exciting member.

Question. Has that been a frequent occurrence?

Answer. No, sir; it only occurred once after I went there. I saw it going on, stopped it, requested the court to suspend the lash, and forwarded a report, with a request that such punishment be forbidden. It was referred to the general commanding the department of North Carolina, but no action had been taken when I left . . .

[Respondent asserts under questioning the possibility that, if federal troops are withdrawn, black people "will be ultimately exterminated by bad treatment, the hard mode of life they will be reduced to and consequent disease."]

Question. Will not the perpetual oppression [by] the white race produce something more terrible than gradual dwindling away of black race?

Answer. There is great danger of that now, at times. When the freedmen were publicly whipped the others were very much excited. Freedmen of intelligence and some means of life came to me weeping at the degradation they were subject to. They begged that I should protect their race. They said that at a word from them the colored people would have rescued the prisoner, but they prevented such attempts. I advised quiet, and they said they would keep so if their rights were protected, or if there was reasonable hope they would be. They had no sympathy with crime, but abhorred the brutalizing method of punishment. This law applies to whites and blacks alike; but the practice would be that ninety-nine blacks would be punished in this way to one white man. Such degrading punishments always fall upon the unfortunate and poor race. The whipping, heretofore left by law to masters, and done on the plantations, will now be done at the public whipping-post, if allowed.

Question Have the blacks arms?

Answer. Yes, sir; to some extent. They try to prevent it, (the whites do,) but cannot. Some of the local police have been guilty of great abuses by pretending to have authority to disarm the colored people. They go in squads and search houses and seize arms. These raids are made often by young men who have no particular interest in hired and trusty labor, some of them being members of the police and others not. The tour of pretended duty is often turned into a spree. Houses of colored men have been broken open, beds torn apart and thrown about the floor, and even trunks opened and money taken.