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[[top margin] No. 10. [/top margin]]

OFFICE OF ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER,
BUREAU OF REGUGEES, FREEDMEN AND ABANDONED LANDS,
Montgomery, Ala., August 30, 1865.

GENERAL ORDER,}
No. 12.}

I. All contracts with freedmen, for labor, for the period of one month, and over, must be reduced to writing, approved by an agent of this Bureau, and one copy deposited with him. In proper cases he shall require security.
II. For plantation labor:
1. Such contracts will be made with heads of families. They will embrace the labor of all the members of the family, able to work.
2. The employer will stipulate to provide good and sufficient food, quarters and medical attendance for the entire family, and such further compensation as may be agreed on. 
3. Such contracts will be a lien upon the crop, of which not more than one-half will be removed until full payment is made, and the contract released by an agent of this Bureau, or a Justice of the Peace, in case it is impracticable to procure the services of such agent.
III. The usual remedies for violation of contracts, to the employer, of forfeiture of wages due, and to the freedmen, of damages secured by lien, or personal security, are deemed to be sufficient and all that is practicable. 
IV. But as many persons have not yet learned the binding force of a contract, and that freedom does not mean living without labor, it is further ordered, that where any employer, under this order, shall make oath before a Justice of Peace, acting as an agent of this Bureau, and having local jurisdiction, that one of his employees have been absent from labor without good cause for a longer period than one day, or for an aggregate of time greater than three days in one month, the Justice shall proceed against such a person as a vagrant. 
V. Freedmen committed as vagrants may be set to work on roads, or at other labor, by the County or municipal authorities, which provide their support, or they may be turned over to an agent of this Bureau for confinement at hard labor. 
VI. No contract will be approved which does not expire on or before the first day of January, 1867. 
WAGER SWAYNE,
Brig. Gen. and Ass't Commissioner.
OFFICIAL:

Ass't Adj't Gen.