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white men have lost their whole season's labor by this most iniquitious legislation——
The operation of the vagrant law will depense much on the justice of the local tribunals - It will most likely be abuses to the oppression of the Freedmen for whom it was evidently intended—
The Apprentice Law seems designed, to judge by its operations to enable, the old slave owners to hold on to the children of their former slaves until they become twenty one years of age. Reports are made of children taken unwillingly to courts and bound although they had relatives able and willing to support them. Under former orders these children were returned to their relatives———
All these things are done in accordance with civil law——To enforce payment to a Freedman, according to the terms of the contract, his first dues, conflict with the civil law— To rescue a Freedman's crop seized by the Sheriff to pay another's debts conflicts with the civil law— To ask a liberty a man confined for being poor & black beside - conflicts with the civil law— To restore children to their blood relative from whom they have been kidnapped also conflicts with the civil law— ye tall these things are ordered to be done by former instructions while subsequent orders announce the civil law paramount—