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S & E. 116.

Bureau Refugees Freedmen and A.L.
Office Asst. Supt. Sub-Dist No. 10. 7th Dist Dept Potomac
Consisting of Augusta and Highland Counties
Staunton Augusta Co. Va Oct 31st 1866

Captain R. S. Lacey
Superintendent 7th Dist Va.
Lynchburg Va

Captain:
I have the honor to submit the following report of "Bureau Affairs" in this Sub-Dist for the Month ending October 31st 1866.

The freedmen are very quiet seeming to feel that it is the better for them to submit to small inconveniences in order to live peaceably with their white employers - The number of idlers is largely on the increase the working season being nearly at an end; the majority of those who worked by the day must now be unemployed or work for their board during the coming winter - Many families throughout the Counties are now working on the same basis as before their freedom; this will if continued soon bring a large class of them completely dependent upon the will of the whites.

This state of affairs is attributable in some degree to the manner in which Slaves were treated here - it seems never to have been the practice to exact the hard labor from them in this portion of the State exacted through most of the South the consequence is that as a class their labor is not as valuable

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