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71 i j Chapter 3 Crop Liens, Freedmen, and Planters in the summer of 1863, as general grant’s troops occupied Natchez and Northern traders of all stripes began to swarm the district, a human movement of a different sort was under way that would soon transform the local marketplace like no other force. Some twenty miles to the east of Natchez in Adams County lay the cotton plantation of William and Jonathan Rucker, the 975-acre Rucker home place. Part of an expansive planter family that held hundreds of slaves on plantations in Adams, Chickasaw, Pontotoc, and Yazoo Counties of Mississippi, the Ruckers had at least ninety-four enslaved blacks on Rucker plantation ranging from three to eighty-six years old. Among them were brothers George, James, and Nathaniel Wright. Once word was out that Natchez was securely in Union hands, slaves from the surrounding countryside began making their way there, as the local planters’ tenuous hold on their slaves broke down. That August the three Wright brothers left with three other Rucker field hands for Natchez and joined the Fifty-Eighth Colored Infantry of the occupying Union army. But conditions at Camp McPherson in Natchez were horrific, as disease raged among the recruits, and over 30 percent died, while many more deserted, including the Rucker field hands and two of the Wright brothers. The twenty-four-year-old Nathaniel Wright alone remained. He spent his first two years and eight months as a free man serving as a private in the Union army. His brothers, James and George, might have spent the next eighteen months in “contraband” camps around the area, avoiding rebel guerrillas, but they returned to the Union army in June 1865 and were officially discharged with Nathan in May 1866. Thus embarked the Wright family into a brave new world of freedom that certainly must have seemed full of promise, only to find that the reality was far less than anticipated.1 72  Crop Liens, Freedmen, and Planters While it is unclear what the three brothers did the next few years, by the early 1870s George and Nathaniel were both married and raising their families back on Rucker plantation, working for their former owners as sharecroppers. The census lists their worth at 500 and 1,500 in personal property, respectively, probably mostly livestock and a wagon or two. Starting in 1873 both began a business relationship with Natchez merchant George T. Payne, giving him a lien on their yearly cotton crop in return for supplies to make a crop and support their families for the year. On April 11 that spring, Nathaniel “received from G. T. Payne of the City of Natchez in money and for the purchase of supplies, farming utensils, working stock and other things necessary for the cultivation of a plantation ” and a 75 credit line for the year 1873, both secured by “the crop of cotton to be raised by me during the present year, and also, the following property to wit; one Black mule, [and] one milk cow.” Wright also agreed to pay a 2.5 percent commission upon any advances in addition to 10 percent interest on the total of goods already marked up as much as 50 percent , while agreeing to “ship G. T. Payne all cotton” produced for handling and sale. Nathaniel’s brother George agreed to the same terms with Payne & Co., except he borrowed 150 to make his crop and survive for the year. Thus began a cycle of yearly debt for both men as they depended on Payne for their advances and supplies, paying over 12 percent interest on top of a heavy markup for the privilege, and remitting a good deal more for Payne to handle and ship their cotton. Both Wright brothers apparently were productive farmers and good for their accounts, because they never recorded an amount owed from one year to the next; both used Payne’s mercantile firm for several years, borrowing amounts ranging from 50 to 200 per year, before apparently moving on to a competitor for their supplies . Meanwhile, plantation supply merchant J. W. Roos bought Rucker plantation from Peter Rucker in 1887 for 4,276 and began renting land to the croppers like the Wrights. In 1902, almost forty years after he set out upon his new life as a free man, Nathaniel Wright was still on the same plantation where he had been enslaved, renting land from merchant J. W. Roos and plowing cotton...

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