Viewing page 216 of 274

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

9

for themselves and left me largely in debt, hence they are dissatisfied. I can prove by the Gentleman from whom I rented the place that he went out with the Freedmen and did all he could to encourage and induce them to work, and after several days gave it up as a fruitless effort. it is customary for hands to hoe cotton over three and four times during the working season, these hands barely hoed their crop over twice, and from the beginning to the end worked slowly and indifferently. I paid three thousand dollars rent for the plantation. I furnished corn [[strikethrough]] for the [[/strikethrough]] and forage for the stock, and fed the laborers, during the year, besides giving them two suits of clothes and one pair of shoes, and what did I get for it all, not enough to pay the rent. I lost heavily by their failure to cultivate the crop,