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K67

Nashville Tennessee
Dec 22nd 1865

Majr. Gen. O. O. Howard Comr &c.

[[stamp]] The National Archives of the United States [[/stamp]]

It affords me pleasure to inform you that I have been successful, beyond my most sanguine expectations, in engaging labor for all my Plantations in Arkansas and Tennessee. I have already engaged about 400 Freedmen, and have full confidence in making a success of the years work.
I have given, in all cases, the Freedmen a part of the crop of cotton, and I allow him land for the cultivation of vegetables & corn for his own use nothing charged therefore. I could have engaged 1000 laborers if I had needed that number. My Brother who adopted my plan of work, succeeded in engaging labor for three places he is working). I have just one large Plantation, under white laborers from the North, upon precisely the same terms I engaged Freedmen. I feel anxious to try the system of white laborers in making cotton & therefore I engaged labor of that character for our Plantation. Knowing the talents