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they would not be disturbed, these places shall always be yours. Just as they are comfortably settled an order comes for them to pull up and settle on other lands, for this property has been restored by the "Traitor Johnson" to the original owners. So long as these poor Freedmen are compelled to move from place to place, and not permitted to have homes, so long I ask can it be expected they can all get along without some help from abroad.

The duties of my profession calls me among them, and I know more of their condition, & sufferings than any other man here. During the severe weather of last winter, both my wife and self devoted nearly our whole time among these people supplying them with clothing, provisions, & fuel, and had it not been for us many of these people would have perished with hunger & cold. We had some clothing sent to us from the north. We distributed that, then gave of our own until at one time my whole family hardly had a change of clothing. There is not a physician at the north who has had the amt of practice I have had for these last two years, and today I am as poor as a "church mouse". I own a little building lot in Hampton with a little hut on it in which I stay. I did intend to put me up a comfortable little house this summer past, but what little means I had I felt it my duty to use for 

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-11-17 14:56:30