The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
LATTER-DAY SLAVE SMUGGLERS
Notable Slave-ships that Plied between the African Coast and the United States just before the Civil War — When the Wanderer Carried the Flag of the New York Yacht Club to the Congo — Troubles of a Smuggler as described in his Letter-book — A Movement for Legally Reopening the Slave-trade — Dream of a Slave Empire.
The most remarkable evidence regarding the smuggling of slaves into the United States in the decade before the civil war is found in a series of letters copied from the letter-book of Charles A. L. Lamar, a citizen of Savannah and a member of a family of high social position. These letters were rescued from a paper mill by an unnamed writer and printed in the North American Review for November, 1886.
The first letter referring to the slave-trade was dated on October 31, 1857, and was written to Lamar's father. It says:
“You need give yourself no uneasiness about the Africans and the Slave-trade. I was astonished at some of the remarks in your letter; they show that you have been imbued with something more than the ‘panic' by your associations North and with Mrs, , For example, you say 'An expedition to the moon would have been equally sensible, and no more contrary to the laws of Providence. May God forgive you for all your attempts to violate His will and His laws.' Following out the same train of thought, where would it land the whole Southern community?
"You need not reproach yourself for not interposing with a stronger power than argument and persuasion to prevent the expedition. There was nothing you or the Government could have done to prevent it. Let all the sin be on me. [am willing to assume it all."
A letter of an earlier date (July 27, 1857) tells something more about this expedition, and also gives a very good insight into the way President Buchanan's administration got on with the slave smugglers. The letter was written to Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury. It says:
"I am loath to trouble you again, but your damned sap-head of a collector refuses to do anything. . . . He detained my vessel eight days after she was ready for sea, and after she had applied for her clearance papers. Mr. Boston said she was not 'seized.' but merely 'detained' He said the department would respond to any demand I might make for damages, ete. The District Attorney and all the lawyers to whom he applied for advice told him that there was nothing to cause suspicion to attach to the vessel."
A bill for damages follows: "Eight days' detention at $150 per day, $1,200; wharfage, etc., $120; total, $1,320." It is not unlikely that the bill was paid. Then comes this frank statement:
"I did not, in my other communication, disclaim any intention of embarking in the Slave-trade, nor did I say anything to warrant you in supposing I was not engaged in it. I simply declared that there was nothing on board except what was on the manifest, and that I insist there was nothing suspicious on it. I will now say, as the vessel is 1,000 miles from here, that she was as unfit for a voyage to import negroes as any vessel in port. . . . What she may hereafter do is another matter. . . . John Boston had her detained because he says he knew she would be engaged in the trade, and had heard that from men who confessed that they were eavesdroppers, who hung around my windows to listen to all conversations that took place. . . . Tam coming on to bore you in person unless you will yield to my short epistles.”
That to an officer who had sworn he would execute the laws!
We find in a letter of November 7th, of the same year, to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, that the venture went awry. The letter reads:
"I am truly glad to find that Grant [the slave captain] is at least honest. He has acted badly and sacrificed our interest most shamefully. His clearance papers would have taken him anywhere he wanted to go, unmolested. . . . He knew the vessel was fitted for nothing else but the trade, and ought to have known we would want to send her back. . . . Why did he not go to the Coast? He knew before he undertook the command that there were armed vessels on the Coast, and a number of them. He ought to have known that he was running no risk — that the captain and crew are always discharged. The captain of the Albert Devereux was here the other day. The British cruisers even let him take his gold. If Grant had been equal to the emergency we would all have been easy in money matters."
A letter of December 23, 1857, to Theodore Johnson, of New Orleans, says: "In reference to Grant, discharge him, pay him nothing, and hope with me that he will speedily land in hell."
Much talk of Lamar's financial straits follows, and then we learn the name of the vessel. "Something ought to be done at once with the Rawlins," he says.
A letter dated three days later invites L. Viana, of 158 Pearl Street, New York, to join in the slave-smuggling business, and then we learn that "Captain William Ross Postell . . . a Gent, reliable in every way, and a thorough sailor and navigator," was secured to take command of the E. A. Rawlins. An era of prosperity came to the smugglers, it seems, for the letters show that, in addition to the Rawlins, the Richard Cobden and the notorious yacht Wanderer were put into the trade. Lamar even contemplated buying a steamer. Here is what he wrote about the steamer on May 24, 1858, to "Thomas Barrett, Esq. . Augusta," italics as in the original:
I have in contemplation, if I can raise the necessary amount of money, the fitting out of an expedition to go to the coast of Africa for a cargo of African apprentices to be bound for the term of their natural lives, and would like your co-operation. No subscription will be received for a less amount than $5,000, The amount to be raised is $300,000. I will take $20,000 of the stock and go myself. I propose to purchase the "Vigo," an iron screw steamer of 1,750 tons, now in Liverpool for sale at £30,000 cash. She cost £75,000. G. B. Lamar can give you a description of her . . . . She is as good as new, save her boilers, and they can be used for several months. If I can buy her I will put six Paixhan guns on deck and man her with as good men as can be found in the South. The fighting men will all be stockholders and gentlemen some of whom are known to you, if not personally, by reputation. My estimate runs thus:
| Steamer $150,000; repairs, guns, small arms,coal; etc; $50,000 | $200,000 |
| Supplies, $25,000; money for purchase of cargo, $75,000 | 100,000 |
| $300,000 |
In an estimate of the steamer's profits sent to William Roundtree, of Nashville, Tenn., Lamar placed the cost at $300,000, and the income — "1,200 negroes at $650, $780,000, which leaves net profit and steamer on hand, $480,000."
In some way this scheme fell down; probably he could not raise the capital. But it is worth telling, as showing the drift of affairs in our slave territory at that time.
As to his proposal to introduce Africans as apprentices for life, to evade the letter of the law, he said in a letter to Secretary Cobb, in 1858: "I would land the cargo on the levee in New Orleans and test the legality of the matter in the courts of the United States." And because Cobb refused to sanction such a plan, Lamar asked sternly in another letter, "Has Northern public opinion, then, acquired the force of law?"
The yacht Wanderer, of which Lamar makes mention, was without doubt the most notable slave-smuggler known to the trade, and her story is therefore well worth giving here.
According to the records of the New York Yacht Club, the Wanderer was built by James G. Baylis, at Port Jefferson, L. I., for Mr. J. D. Johnson, a wealthy member of the club. She was launched in June, 1857. Her dimensions were: Length over all, 104 feet; keel, 95; beam, 26.5; depth of hold, 10.5; draught, 10.5. Her mainmast was 84 feet long and its topmast 35. The main boom was 65 feet long, and its gaff and the main gaff 35. The bowsprit was 23 feet outboard.
Captain Thomas Hawkins superintended her while on the blocks, and "to hear him tell it." said one of his friends to me, "you'd think she could fly instead of sailing." He added: "She was, however, a very fast schooner." A beautiful painting of the Wanderer hangs in the Yacht Club's reception room at this writing (1900).
Mr. Johnson sold the schooner to Captain W. C. Corrie, who was elected a member of the New York Yacht Club on May 29, 1858, and he sailed for the South with her at once. Under the rules of the club Corrie was captain of the yacht. Her sailing master was a brother of the late Admiral Semmes, of the Confederate navy. Captain Corrie took her to Charleston, and there cleared out for Trinidad, as if on a pleasure voyage, although, as a matter of fact, she had a slaver outfit in her hold. Captain Egbert Farnham, a man of an adventurous career — he had been a famous overland rider in his time, and, it is said, one of Walker's Nicaragua filibusters — went along as supercargo.
From Trinidad the Wanderer went to St. Helena, and thence to the Congo River. She was still flying the American flag and that of the New York Yacht Club, of course, and when the British war-ship Medusa was found cruising for slavers on the Congo coast, Captain Corrie ran alongside and remained with her several days (according to the newspapers), during which he entertained the British officers with the best he had, and was in turn entertained in royal fashion on the war-ship. Places of interest ashore were visited in company. There was a race with a British yacht off the coast, in which, of course, the Wanderer won handsomely.
Farnham told the reporters, after his return, that on one occasion, after the wine had mellowed the British officers sufficiently, they were invited to inspect the Wanderer to see whether she was not a slaver, whereat the whole party laughed joyously. The idea that such a magnificent floating palace as the Wanderer was to be used as a slaver did seem extremely ridiculous to them. Then the British sailed away and the Wanderer slipped away up the Congo to the barracoons.
The owners of the Wanderer, besides Corrie, were Charles A. L. Lamar, of Savannah; N.C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans; Captain A.C. McGhee, of Columbus, Ga.; Richard Dickerson, of Richmond, Va., and Benjamin Davis, of Charleston, S.C. Captain McGhee, in an interview with a correspondent of the New York Sun, printed four or five years ago, said that the cargo purchased consisted chiefly of young negroes from thirteen to eighteen years of age, and that seven hundred and fifty were taken on board.
That she got clear of the slave-coast with a full load is beyond doubt. The exact date of her arrival on the Georgia coast is not known, but it was not far from December 2, 1858. The first mention of the matter in print is found in the Savannah Republican of December 11th of that year, wherein it is asserted that her cargo was landed "in the neighborhood of St. Andrews Sound, near Brunswick." and that "part of her cargo was subsequently sent up Saltilla River on board a steamer."
The Savannah Republican said a few days later that it had heard "that the slaves were landed on Jekyl Island, for which privilege, it is said, the negro traders paid $15,000, and that a steamboat from this city went down and brought one hundred and fifty of them past Savannah and up the river to a plantation from whence they were scattered over the country."
Captain McGhee tells how this was done:
"The most difficult part of the voyage was to get into port. The only way to enter the mouth of the Savannah River was under the black muzzles of the guns of the fort, and it would have been madness to attempt to enter with that contraband cargo in open daylight. Instead Captain Semmes crept into the mouth of the Great Ogeechee by night and ascended the river to the big swamp, and there lay concealed while he communicated with Lamar in Savannah.
"Lamar thereupon announced that he was going to give a grand ball in honor of the officers and garrison of the fort, and insisted that the soldiers, as well as their superiors, should partake of the good cheer. When the gayety was at its height the Wanderer stole into the river and passed the guns of the fort unchallenged in the darkness and made her way to Lamar's plantations, some distance up the river. The human cargo was soon disembarked and placed under the charge of the old rice-field negroes, who were nearly as savage as the new importations."
According, however, to a letter written by Lamar to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, on December 18th, the smugglers were in trouble enough in spite of successful tricks, for United States District Attorney Ganahl had moved in the matter at once, and Lamar wrote:
Nor were his troubles solely with the Government officials. Ina letter to Theodore Johnson, of New Orleans, he says that some of the planters with whom the negroes were left for safe keeping were proving recreant to the trust. He says:
I am astonished at what Governor Phiniz has written me. . . . . The idea of a man’s taking negroes to keep at fifty cents a head per day, and then refusing to give them up when demanded, simply because the law does not recognize them as property, is worse than stealing.
A letter from Lamar to "C. C. Cook, Esq., Blakely, Georgia,” is of interest here, though I am not able to say definitely that it refers to the Wanderer, for Lamar had two other slavers afloat. The italics are in the original:
Meantime arrests had been made. Captain Corrie was taken in custody on January 22, 1859. The date of Lamar’s arrest is not recorded, as far as I can learn. From a letter addressed to "Captain N. D. Brown," who was apparently one of the men under arrest, it appears that while in trouble himself, Lamar still stood by some of his crew, for he says:
The distribution of the negroes was accomplished in the meantime. Captain Frazier, of the river-steamer Augusta, testified that he carried one hundred and seventy-two of the negroes from Jekyl Island to a plantation lying two miles below Augusta. It is likely that the ball mentioned by Captain McGhee was given when this cargo was taken up the river past Savannah to Augusta.
Meantime the news had created a deal of excitement in every part of the country. Congress took up the matter. On motion of Senator Henry Wilson the Senate called on President Buchanan for all the facts that the Government had. The document containing the President's reply is a leaflet. He said: "I concur with the Attorney-General [J. S. Black] in the opinion that it would be incompatible with the public interest at this time to communicate the correspondence with the officers of the Government at Savannah, or the instructions which they have received." He added a promise to "make every practicable effort" to discover "all the guilty parties and to bring them to justice."
As usual, the smugglers escaped, and the Wanderer was condemned. She was sold at auction, and was bid in by her former owners at a fourth of her value as a merchant schooner.
Captain McGhee, already quoted in telling of the final results of the voyage, said that the "slaves that had been purchased for a few beads and bandanna handkerchiefs were sold in the market for from $600 to $700 apiece. The owners of the vessel paid Captain Semmes $3,500 for his services and cleared upward of $10,000 apiece on the venture for themselves.
Lamar's letters do not quite agree with this so far as he was concerned personally. "I have been badly swindled." he says, "by getting into the hands of rascals and vagabonds. I am out of pocket on the Wanderer — had to assume all the responsibility, pay all the money, and do all the work."
It is fair to presume that he actually got back more dollars than he put in, but considered that he had lost his time — had been inadequately paid for it.
On July 21, 1859, Lamar wrote to his friend "Trowbridge, at New Orleans, saying, "The Wanderer is going to China, and may return with coolies. They are worth from $340 to $350 each in Cuba, and cost but $12 and their passage." It is likely she did not go on this voyage. McGhee said, at any rate, that "In the spring of 1859 the Wanderer again sailed for the west coast of Africa, and again Captain Semmes found King Dahominey ready to trade on the most liberal terms. On the second occasion he had to go further up the river to secure the cargo, but he succeeded in delivering six hundred captives at the mouth of the river. They were more intelligent than the first cargo, lighter in color, and better in many respects than those captured nearer the coast. A number of them died during the voyage, and the Wanderer was put to her best speed on several occasions to get away from undesirable acquaintances, but she was never overhauled, and she arrived off the Georgia coast in December. She was caught in a violent gale, and in attempting to enter Jekyl Creek, between Jekyl and Cumberland Islands, she ran aground one stormy night, and a number of the captives escaped from the hold and jumped into the sea and were drowned. . . . The negroes were sent to New Orleans and sold, except a few that were scattered about among the Georgia planters. "The profits were quite as large as from the first expedition, and but for the breaking out of the war and the blockading of the port at Savannah, the Wanderer might have made another voyage in 1860. As it was, she was hemmed up in the river by the blockade and finally sold to the Confederate Government."
Lamar wrote a letter regarding this second voyage that is interesting as showing the kind of a heart he had. He said:
Imagine the scene portrayed by this letter. There on the banks of Jekyl Island lay the negroes, dying because of the torments they had endured, while Lamar and the captain stood by quarrelling over the blood money.
In the record of the meetings of the New York Yacht Club for 1859 (a thin little 12mo manuscript volume) can be found, under the date of February 3, a preamble and resolutions expelling Corrie from the club and erasing the name of the Wanderer from the club’s squadron list. The club did this not only because Corrie had violated the law, "but more especially from his being engaged in a traffic repugnant to humanity and to the moral sense of the members of this association.”
There were many slavers living in New York then, but they were not considered fit for membership in the New York Yacht Club.
According to Lamar’s letter-book, the Wanderer was stolen out of Savannah, after the second voyage to Africa, by a Captain D. 8. Martin. "He has undoubtedly gone to the coast of Africa for a cargo of negroes,"" says Lamar; "and if he is as smart there as he has been here, he will get one."
The Wanderer was eventually captured by the Federal forces, and was, for a time, used as revenue cutter at Pensacola. Then she was sold at auction and was put into the cocoanut trade by a firm dealing with the islands on the north coast of Honduras, and there she remained until driven ashore on Cape Henry, where her bones found a last resting-place. Lamar was killed in battle during the civil war.
One might tell in considerable detail, too, the story of the slaver Clotilde, a schooner of three hundred and twenty-seven tons built by Captain Timothy Meagher on the Mobile River late in the fall of 1858. Timothy bought one hundred and seventy-five prime slaves in Africa, and landed them without the loss of one (a most humane voyage) near Mobile City. But it did not pay. The negroes cost too much ($8,640 gold, besides ninety cases of rum and eight cases of cloths), and only twenty-five could be sold, because of the discovery of the importation and the rush of officials for prize money. The Captain sunk in all nearly $100,000.
As to the extent of the smuggling Stephen A. Douglas said in public that he believed 15,000 slaves were smuggled into the United States in 1859. A correspondent wrote to the Tribune in 1860 that "twelve vessels will discharge their living freight upon our shores within ninety days from the Ist of June last." Douglas's position on the slaver question cost him dearly — he failed of election as President because of it.
In spite of a pretence of prosecuting the slavers detected in their work, the Government in those days practically aided them by failing to prosecute them to conviction for the crime committed. Out of sixty persons arrested as slavers, "who have been bailed from the first day of May, 1852, to the first day of May, 1862," says a report made by Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith, the following disposition had been made: Eight cases were still pending; nine had been tried and acquitted by the jury; no bill had been found in two cases; in one case "Defendant could not be found, but the bond was not forfeited"; in another, "Defendant surrendered his bail, but afterward escaped." In all other instances the case was dismissed or a nolle was entered.
In one of Lamar's letters was a reference to what he calls his missionary work, and that is a subject needing further notice. An examination of newspapers and periodicals shows that many slave-owners had a strong desire for the expansion of the slave territory. Filibustering expeditions like that of Walker to Nicaragua grew out of it. Pollard in his "Black Diamonds" speaks of Walker as one of a number of men who looked over the whole territory bordering on the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico as a vast field for slave-holders to acquire in order that they might make of it a slave empire that should supply the world with cotton, coffee, sugar, and other staples, all to be produced by slave labor for the benefit of the dominant race. Pollard called the dream magnificent.
Then there was the plan for buying Cuba which Buchanan aided, as already mentioned. Spain could have had $100,000,000 for the island then.
In addition to these evidences of restlessness were the efforts made to reopen the slave-trade between Africa and the United States.
In De Bow's for November, 1858, is the following:
"It cannot be denied that the Southern States — more especially those in which are grown the great staples of cotton, sugar, and rice — demand a greater number of negro laborers than can now possibly be acquired by natural increase or from those home sources which have hitherto yielded but a sparse supply.”
The price of slaves was increasing rapidly, the writer continues. Quotations from reports of auction sales showed that "the price has already reached that point which is beyond the means of small planters.” Able men sold as high as 31,835 cash. The lowest price for an adult at a sale quoted was “Olivia, $1,140." There was, of course, but one remedy — the reopening of the African slave-trade.
This is a fair sample of many similar appeals in periodicals. Pamphlets were printed and circulated. One of them made a most potent appeal to all the merchants and manufacturers having trade with slaveowners. The character of the appeal appears from its title, "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits.” It may be found in the libraries.
Meantime conventions were called wherein orators could proclaim views which were, of course, printed afterward in the newspapers. It was "a campaign of education.”
For instance, there was the convention of May 10, 1858, held at Montgomery, Ala. Spratt, of South Carolina, from the committee on the slave-trade, introduced the following resolutions (quoted in Du Bois):
Resolved, That slavery is right, and that, being right, there can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation.
Resolved, That it is expedient and proper that the foreign slave-trade should be reopened, and that this convention will lend its influence to any legitimate measure to that end.”
When some of the more conservative men present mildly objected, Yancey declared that “if it is right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa, and carry them there?"
His question was, of course, unanswerable. Le might also have said that if it was right to own negroes it was right to buy them wherever they were on sale and take them to any place where they were needed. Although he did not know it, he was clearing the much-befogged road leading to the point of view from which might be seen the real evil principle at the bottom of slavery.
At Vicksburg, in 1859, a convention of commercial men resolved by a vote of forty to nineteen that "all laws, State or Federal, prohibiting the African slavetrade onght to be repealed;" also that "the convention raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the best sermons in favor of reopening the African Slavetrade!"
The reopening of the trade was also advocated on the floor of Congress. Omitting many quotations that might be made from the words of slave-holding Congressmen it will be sufficient to note what two who were representative of their class said. Alexander Stephens, in his farewell address to his constituents, according to reputable reports, used these words: "Slave-States cannot be made without Africans. . . . [My object is] to bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of African slaves from abroad you may not expect or look for many more slave-States."
Jefferson Davis, while opposing an immediate reopening of the trade, denied "any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinfulness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi, not of the African, dictates my conclusion." He thought to open the trade immediately would flood Mississippi with negroes by bringing in more than could be profitably and safely handled, but "this conclusion, in relation to Mississippi, is based upon my view of her present condition, not upon any general theory. It is not supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any future acquisitions to be made south of the Rio Grande."
But the rising tide of the power of those who believed in human slavery had reached its highest level. While slave-holders were holding conventions in which to advocate the reopening of the slave-trade, the abolitionists were in a thousand ways proclaiming the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A few were even proclaiming the strange doctrine that the superior race, instead of having, by virtue of its superiority, the right to oppress the weak, was, by the example and command of Almighty God, bound to uplift and carry the burden of the weak. <A river of Jordan running bankful of blood lay before us, and we were about to bathe in it and be healed.