on October 12, 2018
George Boutwell, the Massachusetts Radical, had read a set of reckless allegations the Freedmen's Bureau sub-commissioner J. H. Matthews had made in Mississippi and summoned the young Iowan to Washington D.C., where Matthews cunningly told Boutwell just what Boutwell wanted to hear during a long interview printed in the Congressional Globe. Very much of what Matthews testified to is false. I am horror stricken to see this in Robert B. Mitchell's article: "Capt. J.H. Matthews, assigned to the Freedmen’s Bureau, told lawmakers that vigilantes in Amite and Pike counties whipped and murdered former slaves. In a report to his superiors in the bureau, Matthews told of one ex-slave being hanged and skinned. Outrages occurred elsewhere." According to Matthews, one of my cousins, John H. McGehee, had murdered a slave and skinned him, but John H. McGehee had nothing to do with either killing or cutting up a body. In 1865, Matthews as a Captain in the 66th Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry Matthews had led a raid on another, more distant cousin of mine, a raid in which one of his men for no reason fired on my cousin as he approached his home, and killed him. This was murder under cover of USCI authority. Matthews later led a similar raid on the house of John H. McGehee, but a former slave warned McGehee and he fled, escaping middle-of-the-night capture (and I think death) at Matthews's hands. What Matthews says about the behavior of whites in Amite County in 1865 is not all totally false, but the worst accusations are. Does any Civil War webzine want a carefully documented 10 page or so article laying out the truth of these lamentably persistent lies? The paper is a telling piece about how a Freedmen's Bureau sub-commissioner could stir up post-war hatred while getting away with horrific acts of his own.
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