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Office Sub Com Freedmen
Brookhaven Miss. Oct 29th 1865.

Major,

Agreeable to your directions I have the honor herewith to transmit a report of my operations, and as far as I am able, to do so, give you general information in regards to the disposition and condition of the planters and Freedmen living in the Sub Dist of Brookhaven Miss. consisting of four counties, viz:  Lawrence, Pike, Marion and Covington.

This Sub District is altogether a pine woods country.  The land is poor, and the inhabitence not very rich.  Those that were most wealthy before the war depended more upon raising negroes, than they did upon the product of the soil, and the result of the war has been to leave them in rather bad circumstances.

This year the planters raised no cotton and the severe drought nearly ruined their crop of corn, and they are really in no condition or circumstance to give the Freedmen much encouragement by way of compensation for his labor.  And I am inclined to believe that in many instances they work according to their pay.

The usual complaint of the planter is that the negro will not work without he is forced.  That many of them are floating about the country living with the poor classes of white people, stealing and pilfering everything that they can get their hands upon.  To my certain knowledge their