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War Department
Washington City,
Nov 11th 1865

It having been officially reported to this Department that a large number of animals marked as the property of the United States, are, by exchange, abandonment, or otherwise, in possession of citizens of Alabama, and employed in raising necessary food it is:-
Ordered:-that the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands for that State, be charged with the control of such cases, and will take up such property only when the United States has an equitable title, and the animals are not indispensably employed in agricultural pursuits.
Animals which have been seized as above, and the proceeds of the sale of such as have been sold, will also be transferred under the above order.
Edwin M Stanton
Secretary of War