John Hagan (slave trader)

Last updated

John Hagan (d. June 8, 1856) was a well-known [1] [2] American interstate slave trader who operated slave jails in both Charleston and New Orleans, as well as maintaining strong business and personal ties to the Richmond slave markets. [3] [4] He partnered with his brothers Hugh Hagan and Alexander Hagan, as well as with his maternal uncles, Hugh McDonald and Alexander McDonald. [4]

Contents

According to historian Walter Johnson, "John Hagan's yearly routine began in Charleston with slave buying during June and July; he continued in Virginia and then was back in Charleston in September, still buying, before traveling to New Orleans in October." [1] Hagan was both a shipper and consignee (intended recipient) of enslaved people who were on the Creole in 1841. [5] Before he died in 1856 he worked assiduously to manumit a young enslaved woman from Virginia named Lucy Ann Cheatam, and her two children, Frederika Bremer "Dolly" Cheatam and William Lowndes Cheatam. [4] He also provided bequests of cash and real estate for her in two versions of his will. [4] Per historian Alexandra J. Finley, these children, and two others who died young, were almost certainly Hagan's biological offspring. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slavery in the colonial history of the United States</span> Slavery in colonies that became the United States

Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery as it existed in the European colonies which eventually became part of the United States. Slavery developed due to a combination of factors, primarily the labour demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies, which had resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were victims of enslavement by European colonizers during the era.

<i>Creole</i> mutiny Slave revolt on board the ship named Creole

The Creole mutiny, sometimes called the Creole case, was a slave revolt aboard the American slave ship Creole in November 1841, when the brig was seized by the 128 slaves who were aboard the ship when it reached Nassau in the British colony of the Bahamas where slavery was abolished. The brig was transporting enslaved people as part of the coastwise slave trade in the American South. It has been described as the "most successful slave revolt in US history". Two died in the revolt, an enslaved person and a member of the crew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave trade in the United States</span>

The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the mercantile trade of enslaved people within the United States. It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves from Africa was prohibited by federal law. Historians estimate that upwards of one million slaves were forcibly relocated from the Upper South, places like Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, to the territories and then-new states of the Deep South, especially Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. F. Hatcher</span> American slave trader (c. 1814–1869)

Charles F. Hatcher, typically advertising as C. F. Hatcher, was an 19th-century American slaver dealing out of Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana. He also worked as a trader of financial instruments, specie, and stocks, and as a land agent, with a special interest in selling Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas real estate to speculators and settlers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of slavery in Louisiana</span> Regional history of slavery in the USA

Following Robert Cavelier de La Salle establishing the French claim to the territory and the introduction of the name Louisiana, the first settlements in the southernmost portion of Louisiana were developed at present-day Biloxi (1699), Mobile (1702), Natchitoches (1714), and New Orleans (1718). Slavery was then established by European colonists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of the slave trade in the United States</span>

This is a bibliography of works regarding the internal or domestic slave trade in the United States (1775–1865, with a measurable increase in activity after 1808, following the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadrack F. Slatter</span> American slave trader and capitalist (1798–1861)

Shadrack Fluellen Slatter, usually listed as S. F. Slatter in advertisements and often called Col. Slatter in later life, was a 19th-century American slave trader and capitalist. In the 1830s and 1840s he was part of the coastwise slave trade in partnership with his older brother Hope H. Slatter, who bought slaves in Baltimore for S. F. Slatter to sell at New Orleans. It was typical for interstate traders like the Slatters to have a buying location in the Upper South and a selling location in the Lower South. After quitting the retail slave trade, he was a real estate developer and landlord in New Orleans. In the late 1850s he was heavily involved in promoting and funding the freelance invasion of Nicaragua by William Walker. Fort Slatter in Nicaragua was named in Slatter's honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard M. Campbell and Walter L. Campbell</span> American slave traders

Bernard Moore Campbell and Walter L. Campbell operated an extensive slave-trading business in the antebellum U.S. South. B. M. Campbell, in company with Austin Woolfolk, Joseph S. Donovan, and Hope H. Slatter, has been described as one of the "tycoons of the slave trade" in the Upper South, "responsible for the forced departures of approximately 9000 captives from Baltimore to New Orleans." Bernard and Walter were brothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave markets and slave jails in the United States</span>

Slave markets and slave jails in the United States were places used for the slave trade in the United States from the founding in 1776 until the total abolition of slavery in 1865. Slave pens, also known as slave jails, were used to temporarily hold enslaved people until they were sold, or to hold fugitive slaves, and sometimes even to "board" slaves while traveling. Slave markets were any place where sellers and buyers gathered to make deals. Some of these buildings had dedicated slave jails, others were negro marts to showcase the slaves offered for sale, and still others were general auction or market houses where a wide variety of business was conducted, of which "negro trading" was just one part.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theophilus Freeman</span> 19th-century American slave trader

Theophilus Freeman was a 19th-century American slave trader of Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi. He was known in his own time as wealthy and problematic. Freeman's business practices were described in two antebellum American slave narratives—that of John Brown and that of Solomon Northup—and he appears as a character in both filmed dramatizations of Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas McCargo</span> American slave trader (c. 1790–aft. 1854)

Thomas McCargo, also styled Thos. M'Cargo, was a 19th-century American slave trader who worked in Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana. He is best remembered today for being one of the slave traders aboard the Creole, which was a coastwise slave ship that was commandeered by the enslaved men aboard and sailed to freedom in the British Caribbean. The takeover of the Creole is considered the most successful slave revolt in antebellum American history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Kendig</span> American slave trader (~1813–1872)

Bernard Kendig was an American slave trader, primarily operating in New Orleans. He sold enslaved people at comparatively low prices, and dealt primarily in and around Louisiana, rather than importing large numbers of enslaved people from the border states or Chesapeake region. Kendig was sued a number of times under Louisiana's redhibition (warranty) laws and accused of having willfully misrepresented the health or character of slaves he sold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan M. Wilson</span> American slave trader (~1796–1871?)

Jonathan Means Wilson, usually advertising as J. M. Wilson, was a 19th-century slave trader of the United States who trafficked people from the Upper South to the Lower South as part of the interstate slave trade. Originally a trading agent and associate to Baltimore traders, he later operated a slave depot in New Orleans. At the time of the 1860 U.S. census of New Orleans, Wilson had the second-highest net worth of the 34 residents who listed their occupation as "slave trader".

Catharine was an enslaved woman of Tennessee in the United States who may have been associated with slave trader and Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest. Her life is poorly documented, and she could be a propagandistic fiction. She is known primarily from one unsigned anti-Forrest newspaper article that appeared in the wake of the Battle of Fort Pillow, but there are two, possibly three, other sources that may at least confirm her existence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elihu Creswell</span> American slave trader (~1811–1851)

Elihu Creswell was an "extensive negro trader" of antebellum Louisiana, United States. Raised in an elite family in the South Carolina Upcountry, Creswell eventually moved to New Orleans, where he specialized in "acclimated" slaves, meaning people who had spent most of their lives enslaved in the Mississippi River basin so they were more likely to have acquired immunity to the region's endemic contagious diseases. This gave him a market niche distinct from many of his competitors, who typically imported slaves from Chesapeake region of the Upper South, or from border states as far as west as Missouri. Unique among slave traders, Creswell's will provided for the manumission of his slaves and moreover provided for their transportation to "the free United States of America." His mother, the other major beneficiary of his will, contested this provision. The legal documentation of the case and the "succession of Elihu Creswell" is a valuable primary source on the slave trade in New Orleans and the history of slavery in Louisiana. A judge ultimately rejected Sarah Hunter Creswell's petition and in 1853 when the steamer Cherokee departed New Orleans, among the passengers aboard were 51 free people of color bound for New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. M. Rutherford</span> American slave trader (c. 1810–aft. 1866)

Calvin Morgan Rutherford, generally known as C. M. Rutherford, was a 19th-century American interstate slave trader. Rutherford had a wide geographic reach, trading nationwide from the Old Dominion of Virginia to as far west as Texas. Rutherford had ties to former Franklin & Armfield associates, worked in Kentucky for several years, advertised to markets throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, and was a major figure in the New Orleans slave trade for at least 20 years. Rutherford also invested his money in steamboats and hotels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John M. Gilchrist</span> American slave trader (fl. 1830–1860)

John M. Gilchrist was an 19th-century slave trader of Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Gilchrist seems to have been engaged in interstate trading to some extent, primarily to Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. Gilchrist was also seemingly bolder than many slave traders in openly advertising individual children for sale, separate from their families of origin, potentially setting himself up for abolitionist opprobrium. Gilchrist's trading was a primary trigger for the 1849 Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion. There is little record of Gilchrist's life outside of his work as a trader.

John T. Hatcher was a 19th-century American slave trader. He was the younger brother of slave trader C. F. Hatcher; they worked together in Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana. Two days before Christmas 1858, he whipped an enslaved woman to death and fled New Orleans to avoid the consequences.

References

  1. 1 2 Johnson, Walter (2009) [1999]. Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 47–49, 61. doi:10.4159/9780674039155. ISBN   9780674039155. LCCN   99-046696. OCLC   923120203.
  2. Bancroft, Frederic (2023) [1931, 1996]. Slave Trading in the Old South (Original publisher: J. H. Fürst Co., Baltimore). Southern Classics Series. Introduction by Michael Tadman (Reprint ed.). Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. p. 314. ISBN   978-1-64336-427-8. LCCN   95020493. OCLC   1153619151.
  3. Schermerhorn, Calvin (2015). The business of slavery and the rise of American capitalism, 1815-1860. New Haven: Yale university press. p. 148. ISBN   978-0-300-19200-1.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Finley, Alexandra J. (2020). "Chapter Four: Housekeeper". An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America's Domestic Slave Trade. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 96–103. ISBN   9781469655123. JSTOR   10.5149/9781469655130_finley.
  5. Kerr-Ritchie, Jeffrey R. (2019). "4. "Engaged in the Business Ever Since She Was Constructed"". Rebellious Passage: The Creole Revolt and America's Coastal Slave Trade. Cambridge University Press. pp. 77–98. doi:10.1017/9781108616324.005. ISBN   978-1-108-61632-4. S2CID   241442157.