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for I have heard Maj Gen Steedman and Brig Gen Fullarton say that they believed it best for the freed people to leave their former owners and find new homes.  This becomes an important point in this case, and I desire to bring it prominently to the attention of the court.  It is important for it had a direct tendency to make the negroes insubordinate to their former masters while they remained with them.  They were poor, ignorant creatures who had never done much thinking and they really were like children in their simplicity and they became fully impressed with the idea that if they were to obey any body as servants, it would never do for them to obey their former owners.  Whether this was right or wrong has nothing to do with the merits of this case, but the fact existed and that fact is all important.  The effort of Dr Holt to be relieved of these negroes was based then upon two principal grounds, first his lack of provisions to support them, second upon the fact that he could not control them if they remained.  His effort was repeated often and continued from May till autumn, it was made to the officers of the Freedman's Bureau at Salisbury, but without avail; he was told that the government would require him to keep and feed them, old and young, until January 1866 when he could do as he pleased about making contracts with them.  And in the language of Mr Haughton, one of the witnesses, "it was the full understanding that this was all that would be required of him."  He failed in his efforts to get relieved from them, perhaps owing to the fact of his having so many, while others, with smaller numbers and more manageable, did get relieved of theirs, - as sworn to by the witness William. E. Rowe. There the negroes were