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[[stamp]] THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES [[/stamp]]
Augusta Ga. Jan. 10, 1866
General,
In compliance with your request that I should communicate to you in writing my views of the disposition and transfer of the people of North Eastern Georgia towards the Freedmen, I have the honor to make the following 
Report.
I must premise that I held the office of A.S.A. Commissioner of the Bureau for but three or four weeks and my previous residence in the Sub District of Athens continued only about a month Consequently I do not feel competent to speak with that confidence which years of experience and observation might justify. However I saw and conversed with many persons of all classes, and made constant and patient inquiry into the whole matter of the relations of the whites to the blacks in that Section.
The preparation of the white people for the new state of things seems to me to have been most unfortunate. Slavery had fastened the idea firmly in their mind that the true and normal condition of the negro is that of servitude. They believe that the design of the Creator is thwarted by giving him liberty. They have no faith in him as a freeman, not a particle. I found hardly an exception to this rule, and do not suppose there are a dozen in the fifteen counties I had the honor to command. The best portion of