This collection consists of an order issued by Colonel Orlando Brown, superintendent of the 8th District of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau), on September 14, 1865, written from Christiansburg, Virginia. Special Order No. 12 requested the assistant superintendent of the bureau to report on the condition of freedmen in their districts in terms of whether they were willing to work for or rent land from the people who formerly enslaved them, how they were working, and how they were treated by the people who formerly enslaved them. It also inquired why they may refuse to work.

Content Warning: This collection contains outdated language and racist stereotypes.