White southerners, many former confederate soldiers, engaged in violence against freed black Americans.Henry Adams, an ex-slave, claimed that over 2,000 black people were murdered in 1865 in Texas. The sudden and dramatic dislocation of a former slave-owning society was a clear factor for the violence. employee of federal government agency, the Freemen's Bureau, believed that white southerners opposed any change in social arrangements that existed in the slavery period, when black slaves showed defence to what white people believed were their social superiors. an example of this is when one North Carolina white landowner told a northern army officer that a black soldier in the northern army had said good morning to him, claiming that black people should never address white people unless spoken to first.