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as many have become obsolete in point of fact; probably in part from their severity and in part from faultiness in the machinery. Of this you are the best judge. I hope your legislature will take the lead on the subject of suits and testimony in the courts.

I notice that the President instantly advocates to the necessity of the protection of life and property of the freedmen by the civil courts. Nearly all the provisional Governors advocate opening the courts to the Freedmen without reserve, and nearly every Southern lawyer that I have conversed with agrees in this opinion. There is an opposition amongst the people based on the peculiar prejudice of caste, but it will not bear the light of reason or experience.

Greater perversion of justice must arise from the suppression of the testimony of at least a third of your population, than can possibly arise from its incompetence and frequent falsity under its admission. There are other topics upon which there is a variety of opinions. These I will not even touch upon, but simply remark that as yours is now a free State, the more far-seeing the work of adjusting the state law, the better. If you hamper yourselves on account of temporary and transitory ills, with