Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 80

Price Realized: $ 3,840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
INFAMOUS BLACK CODES (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION--RECONSTRUCTION.) Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session of the Mississippi Legislature; Held in the City of Jackson, October, November and December, 1865. 8vo, 509 pages (complete) includes the Index but lacking the title-page. [Jackson: J.J. Shannon, State Printers, 1866]

Additional Details

rare copy of mississippi's "black codes." The Black Codes were laws put in place in the Southern States immediately following the Civil War, effectively limiting the basic human rights and civil liberties of the newly freed slaves. Even as they were negotiating to re-enter the Union, these ex-slave states' "Black Codes" allowed planters to draw up complex tenant farming contracts that placed their ex-slaves in a state of virtual slavery, in most cases charging them for food and lodging. Even though the States were forced to rescind these laws, their effect was devastating to an enormous population, most of whom were illiterate and of course ignorant of the subtleties of the laws. Mississippi's Black Codes were some of the harshest. See W.E.B. Du Bois, "Black Reconstruction," (New York, 1935) pp. 171-175. oclc locates only seven copies.