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while in other cases, I have been unable to effect a compromise.  In the latter case of course there is no remedy left, but the Civil Courts.

There are in this county some 14,000 Freedmen, and to represent there were filed in this office last year 836. contracts, of course a large number of these Freedmen engaged themselves merely under verbal contracts, or made engagements of which this Bureau had no cognizance.  In the settlement of these verbal or unrecognized contracts, this Bureau is now called upon to adjudicate, and it will be my endeavor this year (1867) to avoid a repitition of this state of, things. That in the event of injustice or unfairness in the final settlement, there may be found in this office a written contract between the parties, serving as a protection and guarantee to all interested. 

In the framing of the contracts for the year just past, the interest or caprice of the planter was in most cases suffered to pas unquestioned, save this Bureau saw that the Freedmen assented to the terms dictated therein, and the result is, that in the main