Viewing page 196 of 263

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

been confusing with many of them,) at a late hour in the evening he came to my room, and after some enquiries about his land, he persisted in describing all the questions pertaining to reconstruction. -State rights, and our Bureau in particular. The probing questions, and calling for opinions and answers.
After an hour's talk I doubt if he was much wiser except upon the general points that I thought he might understand as were first as last. Whether wiser or not he changed his course + asserted to our plans and pledged me the aid of his influence + that of the leading men in the adjoining Counties.
 Farmville is the Commercial Center of about thirty Counties. It has about twenty tobacco factories all standing still for the want of the raw material.  Peace come too late to put in Tobacco crops this year, and therefore several thousand negros been no work in that time. The same is essentially true about Lynchburg where the old father, and executor of Lynch law, ruled supreme for more than a [[strikethrough]] [[century]] [[/strikethrough]] Generation. Now the same spirit lives, and but for uncle Sam's bayonets. Old lynch would be as free of [[?]] as ever. A much worse state of things, [[?]] in practice at and about Lynchburg than Petersburg Genl. Gregg have checked or modified some of the abuses, but some of the worst were still in [[?]]. I give you an example. Showing at once the spirit of the Planters, and their influence with the Military