Yet a U.S.Commissioner, without any warrant or even pretended jurisdiction, will stop any vagrant negro, drive him through the streets in person, and say that he does it as a U.S.
officer! Of course we simply look on and have had no controversy with them, unless driven to it by direct efforts on their part to interfere with our necessary regulations.
"The simple fact is that a few men of property who are avowed Secessionists control the town and make its public sentiment.

By this means they practically control these officers also.

Many of the negroes employed at the salt-works, and under hire in other capacities in the vicinity, are the slaves of rebels who are either in the rebel army or fled with it from the valley.

The great problem upon which the Secessionists remaining here are exercising their ingenuity is to find the means of using the U.S.Commissioner and Marshal to secure to them the services of these persons without cost or legitimate contract of hiring, for the present profit of these gentlemen here, and the future advantage of their compatriots across the lines.
"Colonel Smith and Mr.Slack say that they made the statement at the express request of Major Darr of the Commanding General's staff.

A simple inquiry by the Major would have saved me the necessity of writing this long letter." It is due to General Rosecrans to say that although he had been anything but an anti-slavery man before the war, he made no pressure upon me to violate my own sense of right in these or similar cases, and they ended with my reports of the facts and of my reasons for the course I pursued.