Sale 2471 - Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 29, 2018

RECONSTRUCTION LOTS 333 - 341 333 c   (RECONSTRUCTION.) Share- cropping agreement between a Mississippi plantation and 15 freedmen. Partly Printed Document Signed, 19 3 / 4 x 7 3 / 4 inches on 2 sheets of conjoined paper with docketing on verso; folds, minor foxing. Jefferson County, MS, 25 May 1865 [500/750] An agreement between L.F. Wood of the Mount Hope Plantation and “the freedmen of Mount Hope Plantation,” signed by Wood, two witnesses, and the freedmen by mark (with names and ages listed). Just weeks after the close of the war, these freed slaves agree to work on their old plantation for 10 hours per day, 5 days per week for the remainder of the year. Their former master agrees to “furnish the said freedmen with food & clothes to the extent of my means, also to allow said freedmen the use of teams & plantation utensils to cultivate their respective crops.” Each freedman is also given 1 to 3 acres to cultivate on their own account. The relatively humane terms of this agreement did not arise organically—they were enforced by Union troops. The docketing on verso is signed by the county’s lieutenant and subcommander of freedmen, who certified to “the within contract being in conformity to Gen. Order No. 34.” Tax was paid through 23 August on 11 remaining freedmen, the other four presumably dispersing by that point.