Partly printed document completed in manuscript. Person County, North Carolina, 3 May 1863. 1 page, 4to. Completed and signed by Clerk George Laws. Extensive docketing to verso.

A wartime capias warrant commanding the sherrif of Person County to "take the body of Benjamin Johnston (free negro)" and hold him and stand trial on the fourth monday in August. He was being asked "to answer to a bill of indictment found against him for trading with slaves." The docketing to the verso, dated 6 June 1863, records that Johnston was "not to be found in the city."

We do not any written evidence of Johnston's whereabouts, but given that the writ was issued after the Emancipation Proclamation, it is not a stretch of the imagination that Johnston fled the authorities to safer havens, perhaps making his way to a Union encampment.

An unusual legal document concerning a free Black man during the midst of war.