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Office Sub-Assistant Commissioner,
BUREAU OF R., F. AND A.L.,
Marshall, Texas, October 31, 1867

To
Lieut J.P. Richardson
A.A.A. Gen'l,
Bureau of R., F. and A.L., 
Galveston, Texas:

Sir:

In compliance with Circular Letter, dated Headquarters, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, State of Texas, Galveston, December 31, 1866, I have the honor to submit the following Report for the month ending October 31st, 1867:

During the past month I encountered much trouble in the discharge of my duty, from a lawless class, who have been emboldened by the failure of our troops to capture the notorious desperado Cullen Baker, and who now openly and violently refuse to acknowledge the authority of this office.

I sent a man to Rusk County, to arrest a desperate character of the name of Gay, who is charged with shooting the eye out of a freeman.  He succeeded in making the capture and when he had brought him in the vicinity

Transcription Notes:
Cullen Baker: Somewhat later, the Union Army and the Freedmen's Bureau came to the area, and Baker focused his attention upon harassing and killing employees of the bureau and their clients. In December 1867 Baker also wrought havoc upon Howell Smith's family because of their alleged "unorthodox" relations with the black laborers they employed. He was wounded, but the local citizenry and the army failed to capture him. Baker returned to the Reconstruction scene again in mid-1868 as the leader of various outcasts and killers. He and his group are credited with murdering two Freedmen's Bureau agents, one in Texas and another in Arkansas, and numerous black men and women, all the time eluding the army.