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114 Industry of their fallen States, & to a gentleman who held one of the highest offices in the late Confederate Government. begin lined out portion I did not find it necessary to use all the introductions I was supplied with; & I take this opportunity for expressing the grateful sense I retain of the hospitality & kindness with which I was received by all those to whom I delivered letters, & for the trouble they imposed on themselves to procure for me the means of end lined out portion I had therefore sufficient means for obtaining the information I required.

  But the question is, what did one see & hear? & what were

the conclusions to which one was brought by personal observation? The fact that first forces itself on the eye in the towns, & often in the rural districts you pass through, is that there are multitudes of negroes, loafing about, doing nothing. You see them at every station. When you ? to make inquiries as to what they are doing, & how they subsist, & generally as to the state of the country; you are told that they are to be found in shoals in every town where there is a Freedman's Bureau. They expect something from the Bureau; &, like so many coloured Micawbers, are drawn to the towns in the hope that something or other will turn up. So in the towns; but that in the country districts, where there is no power to restrain the idle & ill-disposed, things are in an actively bad condition -- that this class has taken to stealing, & has not left on many properties a sweet potatoe, or head of maize, or the pig that wd have fed upon them -- that they have made a