Viewing page 231 of 258

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

provision to be made by the Government about Christmas for them, & she may have wanted to be settled among her old friends. This woman was in such pitiable plight that I let her go into one of my cabins. Besides these eight negroes for whom I am under no obligation to work, I have now on my lot several of my own besides two white Tenants. I am not able to bear this burden I cannot do it, and a humane Government ought not to place its subjects in any such dilemma. I know the Government can't do everything at once but it is time that the Government was coming to some conclusion upon a matter so important as [[strikethrough]] as to have [[?]] If [[/strikethrough]] the problem presented in this letter to your consideration. That is to say, what can be done. What is best to be done for negro women & children who have no husbands & fathers, as is the care of themselves in this country & I forgot to state is the care of the two women & their children already brought to your notice.

I suggest this that an order be published requiring all such people to bind themselves & their children under our System of Apprenticeship for which I refer you to the Code. This will be no other impingement of their rights than will be necessary and much as our Code provided for free Whites long before abolition was dreamed of