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The Revered - and Forgotten - Protectors of Rights of Newly-Freed Black Plantation Workers.

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:150.00 USD Estimated At:300.00 - 400.00 USD
The Revered - and Forgotten - Protectors of Rights of Newly-Freed Black Plantation Workers.
Printed Circular No. 4, Headquarters, Beaufort, N.C., Apr. 1, 1864, issued by Brig. Gen. and Military Gov. R(ufus) Saxton. The personal copy of his aide-de-camp Capt. E.W. Hooper, signed at bottom by Hooper, with "Official" in his hand. 5 x 7 1/2. "Every person employing laborers in cultivating the soil this year upon any plantation within Dept. of the South...is hereby ordered to present himself to the Gen. Supt. of the Div. in which such plantation lies...and make a distinct statement of the agreement... existing between himself...and the laborers...Each Gen. Supt. is here ordered, as soon as practicable after receiving each statement, to visit personally the plantation...to call together all the laborers, and read and carefully explain to them the statement of their employer. When he thinks they all fully understand the agreement, he shall ask if any one of them objects...If the employer shall refuse to amend it, the Gen. Supt. shall warn the laborer to leave his employer...Any employer...failing to appear ...will be liable to arrest...The burden of proof...will be upon the employers to show that they have faithfully carried out their agreements...." Apparently trimmed at top where removed from old letterbook, but believed with no loss of text; old soft vertical fold, light waterstains and edge tears at bottom, else about very good. The work of Saxton and Hooper in protecting former slaves figured conspicuously in the freedmen's movement. First sent to South Carolina in 1862 with a group of teachers from the New England Freedmen's Aid Society, Hooper played a significant role in aiding blacks' transition to freedom, notwithstanding his 1863 testimony leading to formation of the Freedmen's Bureau: "I came to this department without any knowledge of the negro character, prepared to meet a race of savages...quite ready to tear me limb to limb unless I could succeed in making myself agreeable to them. I have since found them...almost too gentle in many cases to stand up for their own rights." Postwar, Hooper became Military Gov. of the South Carolina Sea Islands, and Treasurer of Harvard for over twenty years. It was at the old plantation site which included Camps Saxton and Shaw, that the first Federally-authorized black unit to fight for the Union, the 1st S.C. Volunteers, was encamped. On Jan. 1, 1863, Gen. Saxton assembled a large group for one of the earliest readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. An annual reenactment of the reading is held at the Camp Saxton site to this day. A seminal document in protecting black labor rights in America.