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[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