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Richmond June 20th 1865
His Excellency J.H Piesport[[?]] Governor of Virginia fin[[?]]

The anomalous condition of the colored population in our midst coincident with the terrorization of our lamentable civil war. Calls for the exercise of the highest faculties of the human mind as well as the noblest qualities of our nation[[?]] to perfect some plan to present the book of freedom extended to this lowly race by our Government from becoming a calamity to them and ruinous to the while inhabitants of the Southern states. Doubtless[[?]] many of the wisest, most sagacious V comprehensive minds of our whole country are at this time exhausting their resources of thought to devise the best plan for the intellectual and moral culture[[?]] of this large and helpless class of beings and placing them under such tutelage of guidance and privileges of freemen. Whilst this effort to promote the good of these informants[[?]] engages all the sympathies and hopes of this ... he feels his entire incompetency[[?]] to add a single thought not common is all reflecting minds on their momentous subject. Doubtless some plan, having the sanction of diverse favor, will be matured to compass[[?]] the benign and vital objects in contemplation. There is however one subject deeply affecting the comfort indeed jeopardizing the very existence of this dependent class as well as the welfare of the