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their contract, a provision containing there in

In addition to this force I was compelled to hire a number of other hands, and gathered from my cotton field (four hundred acres) 155 bales, my corn, for want of ability to save it, I was forced to sell, as it stood in the field, to the Qr Mastr of Gen. Custar's Division then stationed at Hampstead.

As the final statement I paid the negroes for the months of July & August, five dollars per month for men & less for women and children, coin, I selected those amts, for the reason that during those months very little was required to be done, the crops being "laid by", and not in condition to be gathered; As this settlement I refused to pay five hands (if I remember correctly) anything, for the reasons of their having flagrantly broken their contract, I was actuated on this not by the amt. of money, but because of the principle involved, and its effect upon future contracts.

Walter L. Mann