Fair and Last Warning! All Persons are Henceforth Notified to Desist from Hunting, Foraging Their Stock, Stealing or Otherwise Trespassing on the Lands Belonging to the Estate of A.M. Lewis... [caption title and beginning of text]

Sumter County, AL: March 15, 1868. Broadside, 11.25 x 8.5 inches. Old folds and creases, a few tiny losses along folds. Expertly repaired along fold lines on verso. Good plus condition. The only known copy of a broadside from Reconstruction-era Alabama in which a landowner named A.M. Lewis threatens poachers, foragers, and thieves from trespassing on his lands "lying in the counties of Marengo, Sumter, and Choctaw." Additionally, Lewis provides a stern warning: "All those who disregard this emphatic warning are informed that they will be most promptly arraigned before the CIVIL, MILITARY, and Powder and Lead Courts," i.e., the latter meaning Lewis's own vigilante justice. Lewis clearly prefers the latter, continuing: "to the last of which [Powder and Lead Courts], by the force of circumstances, the laziness of the negro, the great scarcity of meat and the workings of felonious Radicalism, I am more religiously inclined."

The most interesting aspect of the broadside lies in this latter language, which is clearly informed by post-Civil War and Reconstructionist activities in Alabama. Lewis's language speaks to the controversies which rose after the Civil War regarding the impact of northern agitators and the perceived insouciance of freed slaves on the scarcity of food and resources in the former Confederacy. Lewis is clearly angry at the state of his life and property in 1868. The work is signed in type by Lewis and his executor, L.J. McCormick. The pair give a final warning near the bottom of the broadside reading: "For his greater safety here and better government hereafter, the thief must go back to God, from whom he will receive more justice and less mercy than is agreeable to robbers." In other words, God will give trespassers more mercy than will Lewis.

The broadside was first sold in 1965 by the renowned rare book firm, Edward Eberstadt & Sons. They proposed that it may have been printed in Demopolis. It then sold through the William Reese Company a quarter century ago; they referred to it as "A quite clearly Reconstruction broadside." The broadside is not listed in Hummel or Ellison, and we could locate no copies in OCLC.

Eberstadt 168:5 (this copy). William Reese Company 198:4 (this copy).