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Office Sub-Ass't. Com'r.
BRF&AL
Houston, Texas, Nov. 22d 66
Bvt. Lt. Col. H.A. Ellis
AAAG
Colonel
Your telegram is just received. I have stopped no cotton coming forward from points where there are agents of this Bureau. As I have stated before there are more than a thousand negroes here with complaints that they are driven from the plantations on which they worked all year without receiving any money. The produce which they raised has to pass through here, I am unable to know on which particular lot of cotton these freedmen have any claim as they do not know the marks nor the Commission Merchant with whom it is stored, unless the Planters are compelled to procure a permit here to ship their produce the negroes will not be paid. The freedmen have not the money to travel from