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State of Lousiana
Executive Department
New Orleans Decr 18th 1865

Brevet Major General A. Baird
Assistant Commissioner of Bureau of
Refugees Freedmen and Abandoned Lands &c

Sir

I am in receipt of your communication of this date in relation to the acts adopted by the legislature regulating labor &c. In reply I would state that I had already determined in my own mind that the action of the legislature was not only impracticable but unnecessary.

I consider the existing laws as sufficient in defining the rights and status of the Freedmen and in conjunction with the just and liberal rules and regulations you have recently promulgated, I cannot recognize the expediency of further legislation in the matter. I shall therefore withhold my signature in the case of

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