Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Volume 50 (Summer 1994), p. 158
"A Dear Little Job":
Second Lieutenant Hiram F. Willis,
Freedmen's Bureau Agent in Southwestern Arkansas,
1866-1868
BY WILLIAM L. RICHTER*
"I TELL YOU I WON'T PAY FOR IT and it will be a dear little job for you to undertake to make me!"
The speaker was Washington Miller, a Sevier County, Arkansas, farmer who owed a teenaged African-American three dollars a month for a year's labor around his house. The girl's father, Billy Piggees, had already tried to collect the amount, but Miller had maintained that the girl was worthless and he would not pay a cent for her meager effort. Piggees had come into Paraclifta in southwestern Arkansas in January 1867 to report the incident to the local Superintendent of Freedmen, Second Lieutenant Hiram F. Willis. It was to Willis that Miller was complaining.
Willis patiently listened to both sides of the account. Contrary to federal law, there was no written labor contract between the girl and Miller. But after auditing the case as if there were a legal document (after all the war had been over for less than two years and irregularities like this were common in the confusion that followed), and deducting legitimate expenses, Willis figured that Miller owed the teen twenty-four dollars. Miller said he had no ready cash, so Willis agreed to give him a week to raise the sum. Privately Miller bragged he would never pay. When Willis finally sent a soldier out with a note demanding immediate payment, Miller told the soldier he would come into Willis's Paraclifta office to settle.
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* The author received his Ph. D. from Louisiana State University in 1970,
and published The Army in Texas During Reconstruction, 1865-1870 (Texas
A & M University Press) in 1987. He currently operates a farrier service
in Tucson, Arizona.
