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0876

Office S.A. Comr.
B.R. F. and A. L      
SHERMAN, TEXAS, October 31st, 1866.

Bvt. Col. H.A. Ellis
A.A General, 
Galveston, Texas:

Sir:——I have made a tour over the country, visiting the plantations. I find but 
few cotton farms; wheat and corn are the staple products of this section.
The citizens, generally, are pleasant enough when I meet with them. All are 
anxious for me to stir the nigger out with a "sharp stick," and make him work, for he will not do anything - so they say. I tell them I find more trouble in collecting the money for what he has already done, than in getting him to work. I am urging the policy of prompt payment, as an experiment, to see if it will not remedy the great evil complained of. Many of these freedmen remained with their former masters, under assurance that they should have a fair share of the crops, and be rationed and treated kindly; but as soon as the crops could be taken care of without their assistance - after having been worked and whipped in a manner unprecedented, kept on half rations - were driven off under some false accusation, with hardly enough filthy rags to cover their nakedness. I am doing what I can to right these wrongs, and requiring a settlement for work done during the Fall of 1865.

A freedman named Dan. Wheat was murdered on the 21st inst., near his own home, at Farmington, Grayson county. Four men rode up to his house after night, called said Wheat out, arrested him for some pretended offence, and took him off a couple hundred yards and shot him down. The guilty parties are not known.

Very respectfully
sgd. A. Evans
Capt. 116th U.S.C.T.
S.A. Comr.

A true Copy
Wm H. Sinclair
S.A. Comr.