James E. Slater seeks a reduction in the support payments he is making to his estranged wife as their divorce case moves through the chancery court. He avers that he is unable to pay the $166 per month for many reasons: first, the slaves Bedna and his wife Sallie, "working by day" in Montgomery, ran away when they learned that the sheriff had seized their children, thus depriving Slater of their hiring wages; second, when Bedna later returned, he "was immediately taken down with Typhoid fever and will be unfit for active labor for probably some months to come;" third, the only slave not seized by the sheriff is a seventeen-year-old girl [Sarah] who serves as a nurse to his five-year-old daughter Kate; and lastly, the extraordinarily high cost of travel and the problems caused by the war forced him to abandon his mercantile business and accept a position in Mobile at a modest salary. He asks that his payments be reduced to $75 per month.
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Repository: University of South Alabama Archives, Mobile, Alabama
