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according to their contracts filed in my office, offering the negroes some trifling sum and telling him if he does not take that he may bring suit and then he would not pay him any thing. You ask me if there is a disposition amongst the planters to settle fairly with the freedmen, for the present year, I answer emphatically, no there is not! In the division of the crop the freedmen are put off with the last pickings of the cotton which is of inferior quality and if he is not willing to take what is offered him, he is told to sue for his rights and he will see what he will get."

Mr. J. J. Holloway Supt &c for Fayette County upon this subject states: "In my opinion there must be further legislation, with express enactment for the benefit of the freed people.  I look upon the Civil Laws as they stand at present to be wholly inadequate to the exigencies  of the case.  There has been as yet but few settlements for the present year, some of which were attended with difficulty and I fear that the freed people will in a great many cases be defrauded of a portion of their just dues, or many employers will take advantage of their