ave until
freed the by war, but I never received such treatment during all my
life as a slave. I waited on officers in the Confederate army from
1862 until the surrender. The last six months I was with Lt. Col.
Jones, Second Georgia Reserves, at Andersonville. I never received
a blow or a harsh word from one of them. I have traveled a great
deal before and since the war. I know that the colored people are
more brutally treated now than they were in slavery times. A great
many more are beaten, wounded and killed now than then. I know a
great many cases where they have been beaten to death with clubs,
killed with knives and dirks, shot and hung. We have no protection
at all from the laws of Georgia. We had rather die than go back
into slavery, but we are worse treated than we ever were before. We
cannot protect ourselves; we want the Government to protect us. A
great many freedmen have told me that we should be obliged to rise
and take arms and protect ourselves, but I have always told them
this would not do; that the whole South would then come against us
and kill us off, as the Indians have been killed off. I have always
told them the best way was for us to apply to the Government for
protection, and let them protect us."

ANDERSONVILLE, GA., _February 10, 1869_.

WHY I WAS KU KLUXED.

Mr. B. B. Dikes, referred to in the foregoing statement of Floyd
Snelson, is not the only claimant who has endeavored to secure
possession of the grounds in and around the stockades at _Andersonville,
Georgia_. I should have said that he has entered a suit in the U. S.
Court for the possession of these lands, but in the absence of the
military he judged the ejectment of the freedmen, and getting possession
in the manner I have described, as more sure and speedy than the "law's
delay."

A Mr. Crawford claims that the land which lies within and around the
south stockade, in which are the hospital sheds, where so many of our
soldiers died, where even now the bare ground upon which they lay shows
the indenture made by the bodies of our suffering dying soldiers,
belongs to certain heirs, and he, too, has been endeavoring to get
possession of these grounds. My pastoral visitations led me to the
cabins in and around the stockades, that have been built upon the land
now claimed by Mr. Crawford. As was most natural, they poured into my