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himself without a home, & with diminished chances of getting out, as planters, generally, will have made some arrangement for the year by them. With a few exceptions, composed of that class, who, as you remarked in your address in Milledgeville, are not worthy to be called a part of the people of the State, I think the planters, generally, would be willing to make fair & generous contracts with the majority of the negroes if they could: but failing, they are making their arrangements for smaller crops. From present indications, as to the calculations for the next year's crop, I do not think that more than half the ablebodied field hands can find employment. This is my observation. My experience is, that in endeavoring to make contracts for two or three field hands- (I never owned more than four or five working hands; & they the descendants of a patrimonial bequest of my father nearly fifty years ago,) I find the greatest difficulty to consist in disagreements between husbands & wives. Of the only three men I know, in whom I could repose confidence as faithful working hands, each of their wives are clamorous for them to get them houses of their own, to him to themselves; while neither of them have any means of support, but by their daily labour. The men are disposed to coerce their wives; but all good citizens desire or ought to desire to live a quiet & peaceable life: I rather than have continual, or even occasional quarreling & fighting- blasphemy & obscenity about me, which I have no power to suppress, except by the slow process of the law, I would prefer to dispense with any help at all, & do any work with my own hands, even at the age of three score years. Many of the men are disposed to treat their wives with cruelty; & some of the women