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for the planters and I have known many instances, where they thought the crop was spoiled or lost, try to trump up some charge against their laborers to drive them from the place. I have also known the same thing to occur when they thought their crop made and safe. 

There is a Statute Law in South Carolina which provides that Colored people shall be allowed to sue and be sued. My observation has convinced me that the said law is in operation except in the latter case. I have not yet known of a colored person having having sued a white man and gotten his case; while it is only necessary for a white man to make a complaint against a colored person for a sure conviction to follow. It is said of South Carolina that she has done all that could be asked of her, abolishing slavery by her own act, allowing equal rights before the law, without regard to caste or color, compels evidence of colored people to be taken in courts to. After a colored person has been put upon the stand, the District Attorney and the Judge are sure to impress upon the Jury that the evidence just taken is Nigger and they must not believe it before white evidence. 

A general practice prevails of hiring the free people and then paying them in due bills, and then make no effort to pay them until compelled by an Officer of the Bureau to do so. No effort is made by the white planter to keep his 

Transcription Notes:
"able" at top was put with "unprofit-" at bottom of previous page.