Viewing page 271 of 346

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

(5)

disallowed the $25.00 charged at the end of the account, as Brandon declared he had never received it. By the contract Brandon & wife were to have two suits of clothes each free, but these had been charged & were of course, disallowed. Whole account allowed $102.22 Brandon credited by year's work, $144.00 & wife, $70.00 making $214.00 less $102.22 acct, leaves $111.78 still due. I showed the statement to Mrs Mitchell & she was indignant, declaring she never would pay it. I told her she had better compromise the matter without a trial - there there were many unpleasant things connected with the matter which I did not care to investigate: that she had better pay the Freedman & save further trouble. Mrs Mitchell fiercely declared she would not - saying with emphasis that "it would be a bad precedent"

At this stage of affairs Mrs Mitchell became somewhat excited & commenced abusing me shamefully accusing me of wanting to be bribed & at almost the same breath said she had no doubt I intended to divide the money with the nigger. Then came a tirade of abuse against the Bureau Agents in general. That Lt. Morton had run off with the poor Freedmen's cotton & who knew but Capt. Randall would be sloping off some day with the Freedmen's cotton. Up here cotton stealing! Pretty business! That I was the Sub-Sub-Sub of some great abolition nigger worshipper &c &c &C I told Mrs Mitchell that I came very reluctantly to her house as a matter of business; that she could heap whatever indignity she pleased upon me. I should take no personal offence Mrs Mitchell proposed to bring evidence to prove her account. I asked her not to do so, for I had come there to compromise the matter, not to hear evidence when I tried the case it would be in my office at Sterling & both parties would be duly heard & their evidence considered.

Transcription Notes:
2.9.2023 - Transcribed per guidelines (spelling transcribed as is) and marking for review