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Office of the Probate Court
Selma, Nov 8th 1867.

Major-
I am not disposed without just cause to complain, but when I am convinced that these are great wrongs and oppression committed and done by persons in office. I feel that it would be permitting inhumanity and wrong against the helpless Freedmen to maintain silence.

I therefore beg leave to state that in parts of this County, particularly by the lower or western portion where assauls of the most brutal kind are committed on Freedmen, no adequate redress is afforded by officers even when complaints are made. The emergence is that in many cases, particularly from the western and lower portion of this County the parties agrieved bear the wrong- others more determined to vindicate the law, seek redress by traveling twenty to thirty miles to this place to file these complaints when if Justice was done and the law properly administrated  the same redress could be had within a few miles of their homes, with little expense of cost and comparatively no loss of time. The wrong