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now it will be different, we may make cotton but instead of buying negroes, it will be to improve our Homes, our roads, our travel, our implements of husbandry, our Machinery, our stock, raise more grain, more meat, more Hogs, Horses & Cattle, manufacture more, and buy less.
Individually I am bettered looking to the future. I was born in the south raised in the south, all that I had was in the south, but I feel very confident that it is much to my advantage. I had good negroes, but they made me nothing. I made the money that bought them, I am certain they never cleared expenses after I owned them, and I have thought that it improbable for any man to make anything out of them unless he was barbarous by the time I paid all board, cloths, medical & incidental bills, or mine, I had to call upon some other portion of my capital to pay expenses, of all this labor can and soon I am money free from, If now I hire a negro to do me a days work, he does it. If I give him 1.00 and the days work pays me or worth that much or more I loose nothing. This year I will save several hundred Dollars in family expenses alone.
The Freedmen in this community are in The main doing well, farmers are getting along remarkably well, far better than they expected, and no idle ones in this community, some few are not more than making a bare living, there are still however some croaking still crying woolf. Woolf saying this is the last year  

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-04-11 08:55:51 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-04-11 20:34:38 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-04-12 08:28:31 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-04-12 10:22:37