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Crawford, Russell County, Alabama
January 4th 1866.

General.
I have the honor to call to your special attention the enclosed communication from Lieut Smith, from which you will perceive that he has undertaken to construe the Statute law of Alabama and instruct me accordingly. Since I have been acting as the Agent of the Freedman Bureau, I have addressed myself to the task with an honest purpose of reconciling, in my double capacity, as well as possible, the new and experimental status of the negro, with whatever may be conflicting and unjust in the law of the State; I say unjust because time and opportunity has not yet transpired in which Legislation has altered and amended the provisions of our Statute law which are necessarily in conflict with his new condition. Upon the subject of apprenticeship, however, I have been acting not only under the Statute law of the State but also under the order of Genl Howard Chief of Bureau. About the time that I commenced the system of apprenticing the children of Freedmen likely to suffer or become chargeable upon the