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for his food & clothes, & 35$, for the year.  Lynch asked him what he had been doing; told him he had been making the fire; & on that he struck him.  I have sent this Boy, with his Father, to [[strikethrough]] Chief [[/strikethrough]] Presiding Justice Burnard, with the request to have Lynch bound over to keep the peace.  I feel almost confident that in neither of these cases will anything be done.

This will give a fair idea of the general condition of affairs.  I have shown in my other, concurrent report, that when cases against colored persons came up before the higher Courts, they meet with full & impartial justice; but I have also shown what difficulties each in the way of complaints of colored persons against Whites ever reaching so far:  I have never known of any succeeding in doing so.  But if they did, I feel persuaded that even then; we will say where an outrage has been committed against a Freedman; should it be ever made to appear that he had been at all, so termed, "insolent", there could hardly be a Jury found that would give judgment in his favor.

That there will be a great deal of suffering among a large class of colored people, this Winter, there can be no question.  There are quite a number of women with no husbands, who on account of their having several children, too small to be of use, can obtain no permanent homes; & many other of both sexes, too old to work.  A portion of these naturally fall as a burden on some of their relations, whose scanty earnings were barly, or hardly sufficient to keep them all from starving during the summer.  Truly, the prospect before such is very deplorable.  In this connection I respectfully beg to call attention to a paper herewith submitted, marked A., handed in by the Freedwoman "Gillie Arrington" herself,   

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-03-03 14:05:09