Viewing page 17 of 271

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

9
not my fault" Neither was it the fault of the Freedmen, and to stop such a course, I respectfully ask permission at the out-set, to make an example of a few plantations of this kind. 
The Code of Alabama, Section 2043. binds the Master to provide his slave "with a sufficiency of healthy food.' I submit if we can ask an employer to treat a freeman with less consideration. 

Revenue
At present no hard no source of revenues whatever. Should the adjudication of suits to which the Negro is a party, be committed to the agents of Bureau, a fund could be created from fines &c. If it be thought best to put such cases in the hands of civil courts, when they must ultimately go then it seems no more than right that we should look to some other source for necessary experience. 
I beg leave therefore to ask for authority to charge the ten cents per hundred words for each contract recorded in this Office to pay for registration and similar expences. 

The Coming Year
Many citizens have asked me if I thought they could rely upon the labor of free negroes for the cultivation of their Plantations another year. They doubt our success in controling Negroes.