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January 17th  6

General,
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your telegram of yesterday in answer to my own if the 13th inst.

At careful reading of par. 3. of Circular 5. from this office will I think show that the rights of all the freed people are sufficiently guarded.  The only persons who can by a compulsory process be hired out are those who in the eye of the law are vagrants and even they cannot be thus hired out unless good wages are paid, and in a previous portion of same Circular par 2. I have stated what are good wages.

Either this must be done or these persons must be left in idleness by the Bureau, live by stealing or practicing some other vice - suffer or starve - or be turned over to the tender mercies of the Civil authorities to be dealt with according to the vagrant law of this State, which gives a white man not less than two or more than four years imprisonment for this offence.  Can you wonder that the delegates to the Freedmens Convention recently in Session in this City, when the question was placed before them fairly, fully