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their colored laborers, who make the crops on land heavily encumbered. When debtors failed to get the court stopped at Eutaw by a false telegram [[strikethrough]] from Gen [[/strikethrough]] purporting to be from Gen Swain they burned up the Court House [[strikethrough]] but [[/strikethrough]] with the records of eighteen hundred suits. With men in such desperate circumstances nothing can be done without force, and I have accordingly made a requisition on you for a small number of soldiers to protect the person of your Agent there in the discharge of his official duty. This Agent Mr Yordy is an extremely prudent man & well known at Eutaw; & the efforts made to drive him away are not personal, but hostility to his office as protector of the colored laborers; who last year were plundered wholesale. Indeed the Sheriff gave as a reason for resigning, that he [[strikethrough]] [[?]] if he [[/strikethrough]] would not attach white mens cotton at the suit of "niggers", & by such a trick the right of laborers to attach for their wages was rendered unavailing.

But as disturbances are liable to break out at any time in other parts of the district [[strikethrough]] they [[/strikethrough]] the soldiers might be stationed here subject to orders in the discretion however of the commander of the department