Claiborne A. Freeman asks that "the pretended contract for the sale of" a slave named John be declared "void & recinded." He asserts that "he was the owner of a likely negro man aged about seventeen years worth at least nine hundred dollars," whom he had hired out "for the present year." Freeman further recounts that on 8 May 1851 "he came to the town of Fayetteville & indulged in the use of spirituous liquors untill he became completely overcome with liquor." He confesses that he "was so drunk he was not senseble of any thing he done" and that "he was wholly incapable of attending to any kind of business." The petitioner charges that the defendants took advantage of his "excessive intoxication" by inducing him to trade his slave John for a 60-year-old female slave named Hannah, "worth about $100 at present." Freeman also avows that "neither the body or the signature" of the purported bill of sale "is in his hand write." Citing that "he was so drunk he did not know what he was doing," the petitioner argues "gross fraud and immorality on the part of said Moores & Thomson." Freeman therefore prays that the bill of sale be set aside and that "your complt may have his negro boy John delivered to him."
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Repository: Lincoln County Courthouse, Fayetteville, Tennessee
