821

SLAVE HIRE LAWSUIT

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SLAVE HIRE LAWSUIT
<b>821. SLAVE HIRE LAWSUIT </b>An interesting copy legal document, 12pp. legal folio, Travis County, TX, Apr. 27, 1868, in which C.R. Johns, owner of the slave "<i>Nancy</i>", hired her out to a Mr. Mosely and Mr. Goodrich for the first two years of the Civil War, yet failed to receive payment. Johns explains that he is filing suit at this late date because Feb. 26, 1863, the Texas Legislature passed an act suspending the trying of all civil cases until one year after the close of the War. Likely due to the large amount of men going into service, including many of the propertied classes such as plantation owners, the impressments of large number of slaves into Confederate service, and the added economic disruptions including the freeing of slaves, led to an increasing legal morass as the War progressed. It is not unlikely that such contracts as the one entered into here were involuntarily broken to due to the circumstances of the War. Nonetheless, the postwar local court of Travis County held that the plaintiff Johns' contracted should have been enforced, and that the rent of the slave now to be paid. Upon losing the case in lower court, the defendants appealed, and the case was presented to the Supreme Court. Fully intact, and bearing the original pink ribbon with which it was bound. In very clean, near fine condition.<b> $75-100</b>