CLERK’S SALE BROADSIDE ANNOUNCING THE COURT-ORDERED SALE OF ENSLAVED PERSONS, SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE, 1855

Clerk's Sale. Letterpress broadside on paper. [Memphis, Tennessee]: Memphis Appeal Job Rooms, 1855. Period ink inscription dated "March 10th, 1855". Dated for sale Monday, April 2, 1855. Visible ## x ## in., matted and framed to ## x ## in. 

This sobering broadside announces a “Clerk’s Sale” conducted pursuant to a decree of the County Court of Shelby County, ordering the public auction of enslaved individuals to satisfy outstanding debts of the estate of W. B. Alexander, deceased. Issued by Clerk John P. Trezevant, the broadside forcefully illustrates the routine employment of judicial authority to liquidate human property within antebellum probate and debt-collection proceedings.

The sale, scheduled to take place at the courthouse door in Raleigh, Tennessee, specifies the offering of Beck, an enslaved woman, together with her child Emily, dispassionately recording their identities only insofar as they functioned as assets of the estate.

Printed by the Memphis Appeal Job Rooms, the broadside demonstrates the internal Southern slave economy. Tennessee, a border state with deep commercial ties to the Mississippi River trade, frequently saw such court-mandated sales, particularly involving the forced separation of families under the guise of probate necessity.

Ephemeral by nature, broadsides of this type were intended for temporary public display and were rarely preserved.

VERY RARE, POSSIBLY UNIQUE. We traced no copies that have ever sold at auction. OCLC lists 0 copies. 

[Broadsides, Ephemera, Printing, Posters, Handbills, Documents, Newspapers] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation]

.