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To His Excellency, Robert M. Patton,
Governor of the State of Alabama

Your petitioner, Daniel Wadsworth, of the County of Autauga and State of Alabama, would respectfully represent unto your Excellency that he was on yesterday arrested by order of the Freedmens Bureau for Alabama and is now held in their custody under a charge of assault & Battery upon a Freedman who was in the employment of your petitioner.
Your petitioner avers that he did commit an assault and battery on said Freedman using at the time a small knife but that he did it in self defense, and under reasonable apprehension of great bodily harm and that his life was endangered, and that he carried said assault and battery no further than the rules and principles of self defense required, and that said Freedman was not seriously injured in his person or property. 
Your petitioner further avers that