The intense dislike which the Southern whites manifested for the Freedmen's
Bureau was due in general to their resentment of outside control of domestic
affairs and in particular to unavoidable difficulties inherent in the
situation. Among the concrete causes of Southern hostility was the attitude of
some of the higher officials and many of the lower ones toward the white
people. They assumed that the whites were unwilling to accord fair treatment
to the blacks in the matter of wages, schools, and justice. An official in
Louisiana declared that the whites would exterminate the Negroes if the Bureau
were removed. A few months later General Fullerton in the same State reported
that trouble was caused by those agents who noisily demanded special
privileges for the Negro but who objected to any penalties for his lawlessness
and made of the Negroes a pampered class. General Tillson in Georgia predicted
the extinction of the "old time Southerner with his hate, cruelty, and
malice." General Fisk declared that "there are some of the meanest,
unsubjugated and unreconstructed rascally revolutionists in Kentucky that
curse the soil of the country . . . a more select number of vindictive,
pro-slavery, rebellious legislators cannot be found than a majority of the
Kentucky legislature." There was a disposition to lecture the whites about
their sins in regard to slavery and to point out to them how far in their
general ignorance and backwardness they fell short of enlightened people.

The Bureau courts were frequently conducted in an "illegal and oppressive
manner," with "decided partiality for the colored people, without regard to
justice." For this reason they were suspended for a time in Louisiana and
Georgia by General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then sent
before military courts. Men of the highest character were dragged before the
Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed,
and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau
courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial
matters was not conducive to a return to normal conditions.