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Registrar's Office in Bankruptcy
Athens, Alabama, August 3d 1867 

D. H. BINGHAM
REGISTER.

Maj Genl O. O. Howard
Commissioner of Freedman's Bureau-

Sir,

When I left Washington in April last, you asked me to write you posting you as to the condition of things in regard to freedmen's affairs in this section of Ala. Until now nothing has transpired worthy of your official interference - and hence I have not troubled you. The time has now arrived, when the crop is laid by and the work of the freedmen not being absolutely necessary, their working on shares are being turned off, under some trifling pretext, with a view to force them to sell their interest in the crop for a trifling consideration and depend upon hiring the same or other labour hereafter to gather it by the day or month. This I understand is being done very generally and I have to day been applied to, by the freedmen who have been thus treated, both of whom, I have advised to go back and stay till the crop has matured gathered and divided - and not to suffer themselves to be forced into a market to sell their share of the crop- The crop on the ground this year is the best that has

Transcription Notes:
One word to be deciphered (it was Market)