?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
CHEATED AND EXPLOITED (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION--RECONSTRUCTION.) Manuscript document, being an agreement between 23 freed men and women and G. W. Foster, the owner of The Foster Safe Retreat Plantation in Lauderdale County, Alabama, essentially bonding themselves to him, signed by all with an "X" next to their names. Bi-folium leaf, folded to form four pages, written on two sides and docketed on a third; creases where folded; a few small stains; 50, 10 and 5 cent revenue stamps, with 1868 written over them in ink. Lauderdale, County, 1868
An exceptionally explicit contract in which this plantation owner hires on his ex-slaves, but obliges them to rent their quarters and buy their food from him: "Whereas the undersigned freedmen and freedwomen laborers on the plantation known as the G. W. Foster Safe Retreat Plantation in said county rented for the current year by Andrew J. Foster, current year (1868) are unable to furnish our own supplies, provisions and supply ourselves and our families while working and gathering the crop on said place during the current year, and whereas the said Andrew J. Foster has agreed and obligated himself to furnish us with reasonable and necessary supplies bona fide for the purpose of enabling us to make and gather the crop which we could not do without such advancements." Tens of thousands of slaves suddenly found themselves liberated, but certainly not free. In many cases, ex-slaves such as these had no recourse for basic survival than to return to their old quarters, as renters and share-croppers, obliged to pay for their food by ceding their share of the crop. One of the many monstrous injustices of Reconstruction.
