On September 20, Colonel Samuel Thomas, assistant com-
missioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, proposed to Governor
Sharkey to transfer to the civil authorities the right to try
all cases in which the rights of freedmen were involved, upon
condition that the judicial officers and magistrates of the pro-
visional government would take for their mode of procedure
the laws then in force, except in so far as they made a dis-
tinction on account of color, and allow negroes the same
rights and privileges as were accorded to white men before
the courts. This meant that they were to have the rights
of bringing suit and of giving testimony. ¹ Governor Sharkey
informed Colonel Thomas that in his opinion the negro could
already sue and be sued in any court of the state as a result
of the action of the convention in abolishing slavery, one
incident to their right of person and property guaranteed by
the Constitution of the United States being their competency
to testify before any court of justice. ²

On September 25, Governor Sharkey issued a proclama-
tion reciting Colonel Thomas's proposition, and expressed a
belief that the abolition of slavery carried with it the aboli-
tion of all laws which constituted a part of the system and
established principles of slavery, a fact which entitled the
negro to sue and be sued, and to testify in the courts. In
order, therefore, to secure to the people of the state the right
of trial before their own officers and under their own laws,
rather than by military tribunals and by military law, he
ordered that in all civil and criminal trials in which the
rights of freedmen were involved, either for injuries done
their person or property, or in matters of contract, their tes-
timony should be received, subject to the rules of evidence
as regarded competency and credibility in the case of white
witnesses. He announced his acceptance of Colonel Thomas's
proposition, and requested that no freedman's court should
thereafter be organized, and that those already in existence
be closed, and instructed to transfer the cases pending before
them to the civil authorities. ³

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