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Hdqrs. Asst. Comr.
Bureau Refugees, Freedmen & A. L.
Charleston S.C. Oct. 23d 1865.

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

Mr. Wm. C. Prescott

Dear Sir:

Owing to a break-down in our steamer we were obliged to return to this place and I hasten to write the promised letter.

I have looked forward with much interest and anxiety to the coming legislation in the several Southern States. Believing that many matters of great importance would be thus attended to, I have limited myself and my agencies to as little law making as possible. Now that the negroes are free, great perplexity and future complication will be avoided by using the statutes which have been carefully made for free whites, avoiding as far as is possible distinctive class legislation. This rule will be likely to find but little opposition on the subjects of marriage, indenture, vagrancy, contracts and perhaps some others. These laws will doubtless need revising in order to meet new circumstances and under them operative,    

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