Other Publications by Jim Jordan

Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar and the Movement to Reopen the African Slave Trade

"On the evening of November 28, 1858, a luxury yacht -more battered than elegant- anchored off the coast of Georgia. After a six-week cruise, the ship's crew and passengers were anxious to walk on land again. The next morning they did, on a Jekyll Island beach, to the amazement of several onlookers. The passengers, about four-hundred nine Africans, made up perhaps the largest documented illegal importation of slaves into The Untied States since the international slave trade was prohibited by an act of Congress effective January 1, 1808. The ship was the Wanderer; Charles Lamar, a well-known member of Savannah society, masterminded the expedition. He became even more renowned, in Savannah and beyond, after the crime. The sheer audacity of the act, Lamar's outrageous behavior after the landing- including the theft of human evidence, challenging a trial witness to a dual, and freeing a defendant from jail for a party- and the resulting trials made headlines throughout the country."

This article is published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly (Fall 2009), which is available at many university libraries and the University of Georgia Galileo system.


Copyright © 2007 Jim Jordan.