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yourself willing to rectify and redress all our wrongs and grievances, so far as in your power, to which, in the present new order and relation of things we are daily and hourly exposed, if we would but inform  you what those wrongs & outrages were, and who inflicted them, - whether done by the former owners of the land through envy, or under the clandestine and more pernicious covert of pretended official authority!

We the Colored People of Edisto, are, and have been the principal practical, if not theoretical agriculturists of the afore-named islands, ever since they have fallen into the hands of the Union Forces, at which time we were, of necessity, turned out upon our own resources, having no houses, homes, nor a single spot of land we could claim as own. - being of times subject to most inconvenient - and  

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inconvenient and disadvantageous removal upon the rapid restoration of the property of the islands to [[strikethrough]] th [[/strikethrough]] its rightful or rather former owners.  But blessed with the boon of freedom, we spied through the telescope of faith the dawning of a brighter and better day! (Unto that day we and our children live in the liveliest hopes of one day sooner or later aspiring!

Pinched with hunger, and of times starvation, we have worked, labored and tugged early and late, both night and day, to obtain and honest, comfortable and respectable livelihood for ourselves and beloved families.

Nothing sweetened our toil when our brow was beaded with briny sweat, - when our backs groaned beneath the burdens and heat of the day. - when our loins ached and our legs failed almost to