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5

through causes perhaps in part the fault of the freed people, but more directly traceable to causes human means could not control, the cotton crop failed. The planter lost his money and the freed people their time in the common nurture.
 
Mutual disappointments and criminations followed and I believe that nothing will produce so good an effect and tend so much to quiet and dispel the discord that has grown up and so often terminates in crime as a good cotton crops. Nothing that I know of will tend so much to produce a good state of feeling.

It is only surprising that in the face of so many disappointments and failures the freed people have done so well for it certainly must be, or rather must have been, discouraging to them to have seen the fruits of their first efforts as free men disappear in a day as has heretofore been the case. 

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-24 15:07:12