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Complaints continue to be daily made by the freedmen of their inability to collect the wages due them for last year's work, and although the people are poor in consequence of the small crops raised last year, yet I cannot but think, from all I see and hear, that the failure to pay results as much from the disposition not to pay as from the poverty of the debtors. I am strengthened in this conclusion by the acts of the people, & by the testimony adduced in examining these cases,  but more particularly by the almost universal aversion and refusal of the civil officers to institute proceedings, or prosecute them in their several stages after instituted, in cases where freedmen are the plaintiffs and whites the defendents.

There is a strong determination on the part of the whites to prevent the freedmen, by bribery and threats from voting at the coming election. At the last court, where there was public speaking for them, the speaker, a white citizen, was insulted, pushed from the platform & pistols drawn upon him. A very serious disturbance was at the one time threatened, but good counsels prevailed. 

I have the honor to be, General, 

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-03-24 20:56:50