O.O. Howard on Griffin in the Bureaui

 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OLIVER OTIS HOWARD VOL. TWO  (NY 1908)

p. 342 By army and Bureau changes General Charles Griffin came to be, the first of this year, district commander and assistant commissioner in Texas, with headquarters at Galveston . He did good work while he lived . I wrote of him: “ His thorough knowledge of the people , eminent patriotism , sympathy with the freedmen , and the remarkable energy and promptness which marked his administration endeared him to the laboring classes and commanded universal respect . ” He fell a victim to the epidemic of yellow fever that prevailed during the autumn of that year , dying at [343] Galveston , September 15 , 1867 . General J. J. Reynolds , a respected instructor of mine at West Point , replaced him for the remainder of the year . Before Griffin came , Texas had been but partially occupied . The troops had been mostly located near the southern coast . The agents of the Bureau could do little or nothing away from the garrisons . In remoter parts , robberies , murders , and other outrageous crimes were matters of daily occurrence . Griffin at once distributed the troops and by May, 1867 , had occupied 57 subdistricts, and sent out 38 army officers and 31 civilians as his representatives ; all were so stationed and so supported as pretty thoroughly to cover the State . He made these assistants his school inspectors , each of his own subdistrict . Schools were started . Every school was visited monthly . Land was obtained by donations ; on lots so obtained and held , usually by col ored trustees , Griffin permitted or caused school build ings to be erected and school furniture to be supplied . Through our Northern benevolent societies and through the freedmen's own support, the Texas schools were multiplied . Griffin, shortly before his last illness, wrote : “If the associations which have done so much for freedmen will send me 100 good teachers I will furnish them schoolhouses and aid besides to carry on 200 primary schools. ”He thus hoped to reach 40,000 children by day schools and 50,000 adults by night schools . Planters were now favoring schools and applying to Griffin for teachers . Of course there were drawbacks . In parts, as I intimated, where desperadoes had the mastery, public opinion was intensely hos tile to any project for the improvement of negroes . The poverty of the white people of Texas was never so great as elsewhere in the South, and they had suf [344] -ficient pride to take care of their own poor . This of itself was a great boon to the assistant commissioner.