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Office Assistant Commissioner, State of Alabama,}
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.}
Montgomery, Ala., Jany 27th 1866.

Major General O.O. Howard
Commissioner &c
Washington D.C.

General
Mr. J. A. Strothers, of Bolivar County Mississippi makes a strenuous application for transportation from Alabama to Mississippi for certain negroes brought to this State during the war.
I have declined on the simple ground that Government does not pay out money on sentimental or commercial considerations but only to relieve suffering which arises from lack of employment or helplessness, neither of which is shown to exist here.
Mr. Strother in reply states that he has just come from Washington, That his is one of a class of cases understood by the Government, and that it has been intimated that to relieve his country from becoming a wilderness the levees would be rebuilt and transportation furnished to laborers when applied for. 
I have consented to refer this statement to you

Transcription Notes:
Looks like Strothers at beginning of letter, then Strother further down?