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Office U.S. Direct Tax Commission
Beaufort S.C. Oct 22d 1869

Hon. E. R. Hoar, Attorney General
Washington D.C.

[[stamp]] THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES [[/stamp]]

Dear Sir,
In a conversation the last summer with Senator Pomeroy upon the subject matter of this communication he advised me to write to you, as he thought it was in your power to remedy the evil for which I had suggested some congressional action.

Under the act in relation to the collection of direct taxes in insurrectionary districts approved June 7th 1862 some 80,000 acres of land were sold for taxes in the Parish of St Helena, S.C., and the larger part of it was struck off to the United States, and under instructions from President Lincoln Sep. 16th 1863 was divided up and resold in small parcels, mostly to the Freedmen in lots of ten or twenty acres to each head of a family. About two thousand families have in that was acquired homesteads. The former proprietors who participated in the rebellion are many of them now commencing suits to recover this property. White persons who have capital and resources can of course defend themselves through their attorneys. But what are these poor colored people to do? They cannot afford to employ a lawyer and hear the costs of a suit. They are