Viewing page 202 of 223

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

few needy ones from the Company rations; and anticipating that he would receive frequent applications, he had sent in a requisition for 2500 rations; but did not know whether he would get them.

Lt. Richards had not received any of the Bureau orders, and was still charging a fee for approving Contracts. He had received no orders as to turning over the money, and did not know who was to receive it.

I will here say, that as there had been no Agent of the Bureau at Marion Court House, and the officer who had commanded at Sumterville having been ordered to another district, I found it would be impossible for me to get any figures that would show how many persons there were in the districts who would suffer unless Government aid was furnished. Owing to the size of the districts, also, — Marion being some seventy miles long by between thirty and forty miles wide, and Sumter covering an even larger area of country, — I saw at once that it was a work requiring the labor of weeks to make anything like a correct report of destitute, as called for in the letter of instructions. There are no towns in the districts, except the ones named, no railroads connecting the different parts of the districts, and the plantation houses are widely scattered.