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but little disposition on the part of many of the former slave holders to pay the freedmen any thing like the amt they would have hired for while slavery existed.

I had a case before me during the past month in which a woman claimed wages for her son a small boy who had been hired by his master in January 1865 for one year the master to receive for the boys services the sum of ten bushels of corn. After the surrender of Richmond the boys mother allowed her son to remain with the parties who had hired him from his former owner, and at the end of the year she claimed for her son the proportion of corn due for his services from the tenth of April 1865. This the parties who had received his services refused to give, and the boys mother came to me. I told her she was entitled to the amt of corn due for the balance of the year dating from the 10th of April, and told her to tell the parties her son had served that they must pay her the corn or its equivalent in money. This they refused to do and I summoned them before me and they came and being unable to show any reason why they should not pay the boy as much for his services as they agreed to pay his master I ordered them to pay the boys mother, which they did. Now here was an old woman of over fifty and a man of thirty who had rode 

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-27 14:37:31 filled in the two missing words ---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-28 12:15:12