FREEDMEN'S LETTERS.

Received.

Total number received since August, 1864 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 811

Average per month, 135; total for year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,620

Sent.

Total number sent during the year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,825

Distributed.

Total number distributed during the year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660

Written for freedmen at office.

Total number written during the year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Oaths of allegiance.

Total number administered during the year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,228

GENERAL ASSISTANCE TO FREEDMEN--HELP FROM THE AUTHORITIES.

We have given up children out of slavery to their parents; we have secured payment of wages of servants in the city and elsewhere; we have secured pay of hands on steam-ships and boats; we have delivered persecuted people out of the jails; we have sent the sick to hospitals; we have redressed grievances of every description; we have given protection to many who at one time could not get it in the courts because it was claimed they were slaves, and in the great variety of duties which we have been called upon to exercise toward this oppressed population of about 90,000 souls I have the satisfaction of saying that I have been sustained in every work by the major-general commanding and not crippled in my efforts by any of the authorities, including the governor of the State, who has done valuable service in shaping the conduct of the courts in regard to these people, and the commander of the Defenses of New Orleans, who has rendered telling assistance whenever I have asked it of him.

RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING PASSES.

I recommend that the regulations of the military service in the department be so modified in the pass system as to enable colored citizens to be subject only to the same restrictions as other people, excepting in cases of small-pox, which disease is now, and has been for some time, very prevalent among the colored people on the plantations and elsewhere in the department. In the treatment of the movements of freedmen from plantations infected with the disease I urge the wisest possible restriction, as the disease is spreading to a most alarming extent. In all other respects I hope a more liberal treatment will be extended regarding this matter. I beg leave to say, in conclusion, that free labor and the system adopted at the commencement of the year were both new to this section. The first was the thing of all others which the planters most disliked and were most unwilling to adopt. The second was put in operation where the like was never before attempted, and where all the deep-rooted prejudices of the land owners were opposed to it. With the exception of the friends of the Government