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[345] promised to cooperate with our Bureau officers and earnestly push the educational work. So there was hope ahead for Tennessee.

General Sidney Burbank had relieved General Davis about the middle of February in Kentucky. This State was slow to modify objectionable laws in spite of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and the clear-cut Civil-Rights-Law, which necessitated the eventual repeal of every cruel and unjust measure. The State Court of Appeals had in fact retarded progress by giving a decision against the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act, that is, within the State jurisdiction.

Kentucky in its criminal calendar for the year had kept abreast of Tennessee. The record for the year was: Murders, 20; shootings, 18; rape, 11; other maltreatments, 270. Total outrages of whites perpetrated upon the freedmen, 319 recorded cases.

But a little light dawned upon the State. United States Judges Swayne and Ballard had heard cases in the District Court in Kentucky, and strongly sustained the Civil-Rights-Law. This was auspicious for the negroes. The testimony, however, that came to me from Kentucky, to my surprise and comfort, showed that the schools had more than held their own, and had done so in spite of the contentions and hatreds due to the State's action in all things that affected the courts or politics. Yet I found that a large number of white citizens had manifested a bitter opposition to education of all colored children, and their opposition had tended to dishearten freedmen and thwart the efforts of our workers. Threats had been made in neighborhoods, and oft repeated to destroy the school buildings.

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