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Office Supt B.R.F and A.L.
District of Mobile
Mobile Ala, Oct 31st 1866

Maj General Wager Swayne
Asst Com. B.R.F. + A.L.
Montgomery, Ala.

General:
I have the honor to submit as far as I am enabled to do so by the data in my possession, the report called for from this office by C in No. 2 Hd Qrs Sub-District of Ala., dated Montgomery Ala. Oct 10th 1866.
My duties as Supt. at this office commenced October 16th 1866.  From the outset, being entirely unacquainted with the kind and nature of the duties I was expected to perfORm, I found myself embarrassed and unable to arrive at any clear conclusion of those duties from the great confusion and uncompleteness in which I found the records of the office.  No regular files of orders or letters pertaining to the business of the Bureau had been kept;  there were no books, records, reports or memoranda arranged in any systematic or intellegible shape to guide me in learning the past history of the office, and the papers that were left by my predicessors were so mixed and confusted, without the pretence of arrangement or classification, as to make any examination of them a work of more time and labor than I have been able to give to them.  Indeed it has, thus far, been quite as much as I could accomplish, with such meager sources of information as I have had at hand , to acquire such
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