Letters of Rev. John W. Alvord

[letterhead] HEAD QUARTERS, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands STATE OF LOUISIANA New Orleans, 1865.

[in pen] Vicksburg Nov 15.

My Dears

You see I keep writing—digging away at work, trying to get along rapidly, & yet moving slowly after all. Mr Hewitt does not come down yet from Memphis—I shall wait for him until 5^oC today & then drop below as far as Natches, waiting for him there. Of course, as you saw from my last Mr. Warren —Savage, & Ray are with me. It has been raining, & is now very muddy—The first mud seen since starting —The coast of the Atlantic being only sand, except the river bottoms quite back in the Alleghanies, & of course dry.

I came back here from Jackson—The General going on by rail to Memphis—Addressed a Reg.^t of Col.^d soldiers before starting on my bank project very enthusiastically received—& have had a great meeting of Col.^d people here—All are very anxious for a Bank. The cotton crop is good & the negroes who have been cultivating it largely are now receiving their money for the crops. These lands being taken from them by the recent order of the President they will have