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Office Asst. Supt. B.R. F & A. L.
County of Albemarle, Virginia
Charlottesville, August 31st, 1866.

Bvt. Lieut. Col. James A. Bates
Act. Asst. Adjt. Genl., 
Head Quarters Asst. Comr., 
Richmond, Va.

Colonel:
I have the honor, in compliance with Circular, No. 6, Head Quarters, Asst. Com., Va., to submit the following report upon the condition of Bureau affairs and state of feeling existing between citizens and freedmen in this county.

During the month nothing has occurred to mar the peaceful relations existing between the classes, except the infliction of stripes as a legal punishment for petit larceny. Many of the more intelligent of the freedmen, who appreciate in some degree the blessings of liberty, have manifested intense feeling on this subject. They regard the punishment as a degradation, it having been the usual mode of inflicting pain for corrective purposes during their slavery; and it too keenly reminds them of the chatel condition from which they have been so recently disenthralled.

The feeling of opposition to this kind of punishment, was at first chiefly confined to those who have some proper idea of the great change in their political condition, but it is now spreading among the more ignorant with great rapidity. They entertain the belief, and nothing has occurred to my knowledge that should change it, that the punishment is revived for them, and that it will not be inflicted on white persons for like offenses.