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in making these divisions - not only are efforts being made to deprive the laborer of what he is justly entitled, but means are employed by which to initiate and provoke them to some act upon which the charge could be based that the contract had been violated, so that the employer could claim damages, or a forfeiture of the laborers interest in the crop. - In one case which has been reported to me, the employer, although he had two barns unoccupied, positively refused to let his freedmen use either of them for preparing their share of the tobacco for market - and this too, in the face of the fact that these men had not only worked faithfully, but had succeeded in making for him as good, if not better crops than he ever had before - they providing for themselves and families the whole time.

I introduce this as a simple illustration of the kind of spirit which actuate a class of whites in this district - And yet none are louder in their professions of kindly feeling toward the race, and none more ready to denounce bitterly every man who is found guilty of imposing upon the freedmen - none who refrain more studiously from giving expression to any sentiment which would indicate any disposition to take advantage of the colored man - But I am convinced from the little meannesses which have been practiced upon those within my own personal knowledge, that if the protection of the Bureau was withdrawn from the freedmen, they would soon be reduced to

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