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0890
Washington April 30 1867
General A O Howard
At this tax sales at Fernandina Florida by the United States Direct-Tax commissioners a quantity of land was bid in by the Commissioners for the United States. Under the advice of General Saxton so as more fully to divest the former owner of all title in the land, and secure to the Freedmen, who had congregated in Fernandina in large numbers for protecting homes thereon.
By the advice or encouragement of the Commissioners who sold the land, and also by the advice and encouragement of the agents of the Freedmans Bureau, the colored people in large numbers have gone on, and now occupy the land. All their hard earnings since the emancipation have been devoted to making improvements on the land. Induced by the Government and its agents to think they were securing some interest in the land, and the right to homes they have put on a great many thousand dollars worth of improvements, -built for themselves houses and many very good and comfortable ones, -labored industruously almost