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Girard Russell County March 11, 1867

Genl Swayne Commendant, Montgomery Ala
Dear Sir, 
In behalf of a colored girl about fourteen years having no relatives near to assist her I write this letter. She was arrested, convicted and sent to the chain gang for five months, by a single Justice of The Peace in Beat No 2. without counsel, without a jury, and no evidence reduced to writing, on the examination, and no one to represent her at the trial, and no papers upon which her case can be taken up for supervision. She is reported to have been charged with stealing clothes, not (according to all the reports) worth five dollars and the prosecutor has refused, and still refuses, to deliver to her, her own wearing apparel, as she lived with him at the time she was sent to the chain gang. She is now without clothing enough to change, apart from the very cold weathers. I have known this girl from her childhood. I raised her like one of my children, and I can bring testimony of gentlemen of the highest respectability as to her honesty up to the time she left me about a year ago. I cannot entertain the belief that this girl has been justly dealt with and with none to aid or counsel her in her poverty, in her destitution, humanity must be invoked. If she be guilty of the charge, (which she most solemnly denies) she has atoned sufficiently to the law, having been on the chain gang one month

Transcription Notes:
I'm not sure how to add the stamp part in.