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they say they do not. And this is one reason why they almost universally refuse to make contracts for another year. In fact, one negro, near this place, said a few days ago that the colored people had positive orders from "the Yankees" as he expressed it, not to make contracts until Christmas. It is this that the poor creatures desire themselves. My great fear is that they will refuse to contract until too late to make a cotton crop - a crop which our government now needs above all others for the sake of the gold it would bring us from Europe.

Another reason why the colored people in South-western Georgia will not contract is that most of them, having exhausted the soil in Middle Georgia, were sent off to cultivate more fertile land in another part of the state. These all expect to flock back to the old hedge-fields of their former homes. The result will be an excess of the colored people in Middle Georgia, attended with pauperism and crime, and an abandonment of your most productive lands to weeds and bushes. This is likely to become a question of serious movement, and I beg leave to respectfully call your attention to it. This I am the more emboldened to do, because I see, in the course you pursue, an honest effort to do the best you can for all [?] of our population: and I believe you will receive, kindly, any suggestion made by a planter of experience one who knows the character of the colored people, and who is acquainted with their wants, and the agricultural wants of the country.

But I am going off into generalities, when my only object was to seek your counsel