John Hagan (slave trader)

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John Hagan (died 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] John Hagan was also a cotton factor, meaning he ran a cotton brokerage and de facto private bank and business office for cotton plantation owners. [5]

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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. [6] 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]

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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. ↑ Killick, John R. (1977). "The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown and Sons in the Deep South, 1820–1860" . The Journal of Southern History. 43 (2): 169–194. doi:10.2307/2207344. ISSN   0022-4642.
  6. ↑ 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.


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