Old St. Louis Hotel and Slave Market in New Orleans

On the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets in 1838, the St. Louis hotel opened. It was also called the City Exchange Hotel. Two years later it burned down but was quickly rebuilt. The main entrance to the hotel led into the exchange, a beautiful domed rotunda where every afternoon between noon and 3 p.m. the auctions were held. In this elegant hotel, the center of Creole society before the Civil War, was located perhaps the most infamous of the slave auction blocks. There was more than one.

Auction Block: Saint Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

In 1842, George Buckingham reported walking through the rotunda. The auctioneers, he said, were "endeavouring to drown every voice but his own. ... One was selling pictures and dwelling on their merits; another was disposing of some slaves. These consisted of an unhappy family who were all exposed to the hammer at the same time. Their good qualities were enumerated in English and in French, and their persons were carefully examined by intending purchasers, among whom they were ultimately disposed of, chiefly to Creole buyers; the husband at 750 dollars, the wife at 550, and the children at 220 each."

Slaves were sold on this spot at the old St. Louis hotel, which had also served as the state Capitol and the site of Carnival balls. The hotel was on St. Louis between Chartres and Royal streets. Damaged in a 1915 storm, it was demolished two years later.

Indeed, in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe imagined a New Orleans hotel rotunda as the place where Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves from the St. Clare plantation were sold.

In the antebellum years, Creole gentlemen drank in the hotel's bar and attended with their wives and daughters fabulous balls and concerts. One of the most spectacular events held in the hotel was in honor of the visiting Henry Clay. During the winter of 1842-43, the great statesman paid an official visit to New Orleans, and a dinner and ball was held. Six hundred people sat down to dinner at $100 dollars each. While they dined, they were entertained by the French Opera orchestra.

Rotunda, Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana

During Reconstruction, the hotel was used for a few years by the state Legislature. Then the hotel was renovated and given a new name: the Royal Hotel, but it soon became neglected and very run-down because visitors preferred the St. Charles Hotel. Writer John Galsworthy paid a visit to New Orleans in 1912. He and his friends were taken into the old hotel on a tour to view the rotunda and the slave auction block. Their guide was an old woman who reminisced: "Yes, suh. Here they all came -- 'twas the finest hotel -- before the war-time; old Southern families -- buyin' an' sellin' their property."

In 1915, the old closed-up building was a veritable haven for rats and a bubonic plague scare made way for the demolition of the hotel. In its place stands the Omni Royal Orleans hotel.

The luxurious Omni Royal Orleans hotel at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres streets stands on a site once home to a hotel rotunda that was the site of the city's most infamous slave-auction block.

The Constitution of the United States included a provision that abolished the international slave trade after 1808. This boosted domestic slave trafficking. Since there was a large demand for slaves in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia for the cultivation of sugar and cotton, slave traders went throughout the upper South to purchase slaves to be sold at auction in the lower South. Slaves from Virginia were especially desired for their training and intelligence and brought the highest prices.

Slaves in the upper South feared being sold into the lower South because of the harsh conditions and the hot climate. But hundreds of thousands of African Americans were forced to migrate South, tearing apart families. New Orleans became the center of the slave trade, especially after 1840, and the slave auction was one of the most cruel and inhumane practices of slavery.

Slave-trading firms kept "slave pens," where they held the people waiting to be sold or auctioned off. The rooms usually held fifty to 100 slaves, crowded together in unspeakable conditions before they were taken to one of the markets: the St. Louis Hotel, the St. Charles Hotel or the exchange on Esplanade Avenue.

Old St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans

Frederika Bremer, a Danish writer who visited one of the slave markets in the 1850s, described the black men and women, "silent and serious" standing against the walls. "I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places," wrote Bremer, "excepting the whole thing." (source: Best of New Orleans)

St. Augustine, Florida Slave Market

St. Augustine Record, on 2 December 2001, "St. Augustine once a hub of slave trade," by Margo Pope: ST. AUGUSTINE -- Four and a half centuries ago, St. Augustine was the hub of the slave trade in Spanish colonial Florida, a distinction that continued through the early 1800s. The slave trade was part of the city's economy from its founding in 1565, when Spanish explorer and founder Pedro Menendez de Aviles included black slaves among the New World's first Spanish settlers.

In fact, said St. Augustine historian Susan Parker, the Spanish Crown was one of the largest slaveholders, putting slaves to work on the city's defenses.

And, though many of the records from that period are lost, documents from the Catholic Church reveal slavery's deep roots in North Florida's history. In 1606, one year before the founding of Jamestown, Va., the first documented slave birth was recorded in St. Augustine. Agustin was baptized in the Catholic faith. He was the son of Agustin and Francisca, both listed as slaves in church baptismal records.

Church documents from what is called the First Spanish Period, 1565 to 1763, were taken from St. Augustine to Cuba in 1763 when the British occupied Florida. Some records were lost. But St. Augustine's main church, now called the Cathedral Basilica, has records dating to 1594.

Parker said church documents show how the royal government worked through slave owners to record slaves' marriages and births. "The Church is so prominent in this role," Parker said.

Parker said there are misconceptions regarding what early slavery was like in St. Augustine. Many people today have an image of slavery from movies about the pre-Civil War American plantations, she said. Though a plantation society did exist around St. Augustine in the 18th century, the first slaves, primarily from Africa, worked in Spanish households in town.

"In a lot of the homes, they did the hard tasks," Parker said."You would have a female domestic slave, a male slave for hard work but you wouldn't have slave quarters [as on plantations]."

And not all remained slaves. Fort Mose became the first town for free blacks in Spanish Florida, in 1738. Mose was then the northern defense outpost for St. Augustine. Those slaves who converted to Catholicism and worked at the fort were given their freedom.

Under British rule

From 1763 to 1783, when the British ruled Florida, more of a plantation society-style developed in St. Augustine. Historian Daniel Schafer said St. Augustine maintained its dominant position in the slave trade under British rule, but it did so with more of an economic and less of a domestic slant. Schafer is a professor of history at the University of North Florida and has studied the roots of slavery in Florida from its African origins.

In the 20-year occupation of St. Augustine by the British, slave ships regularly arrived, either after stopping in the American colonies or coming directly in from Africa.

As the British settled in East Florida, agricultural plantations were built apart from the center of town. British residents coming to Florida from the Carolinas and Georgia brought slaves with them to work in the fields. Florida's British Gov. James Grant had African slaves, but Lt. Gov. John Moultrie, Schafer said, had third-, fourth- and fifth-generation slaves born in America.

Principal slave suppliers to east Florida were South Carolinian Henry Laurens, who provided mostly African-born slaves, as well as John Graham of Savannah, Ga., and Richard Oswald of Scotland. Oswald, said Schafer, had a slave "factory" on Bance Island in what is now part of Sierra Leone, Africa. Oswald brought hundreds of slaves for his plantation near St. Augustine, as well as to sell to others.

Ships coming into the Port of St. Augustine would carry about 100 Africans at a time, Schafer said. The slave population of this period also included West Indies natives.

Slave buildings at the Kingsley Plantation, St. Augustine, FL The building on the right is made of crushed shells. It's also where the slaves undertook the dangerous and back-breaking task of processing the sugar cane.

Spanish rule returns  --  Spanish rule returned in 1784 and St. Augustine's slave center image remained. In fact, more than a quarter of the recorded population were slaves. According to a 1784 report by the Spanish governor back to Spain, St. Augustine recorded 574 black residents and 1,418 white residents, without distinction of free or slave. In 1797, the census recorded 1,007 white residents, 483 slaves and 102 free black residents.

By 1802, St. Augustine had been back under Spanish rule for almost 20 years. The slave trading business was changing worldwide as European countries, and the American colonies started banning the importation of African slaves. Spain did not.

"You have Liverpool, a center for the slave trade and all these ships from Africa there and suddenly, there is a ban," Schafer said. "So they pack up and head for [ports in] Fernandina and St. Augustine," he said.

 

The second Spanish occupation continued until 1821, when Spain transferred Florida to the United States. Parker said the slave culture in St. Augustine expanded because it not only included the slaves who returned with Spanish owners in 1784, but it still had some from the British period, African born and American born.

In this second Spanish period, she said, the slaves were also holding "jobs" when they are not working for their owners. This was an attempt to buy their freedom. They worked as butchers, seamstresses, rowers for boats. They held parties to sell products.

"Whatever they did, it took a long time," she said. "Most would have been paid only 1 1/2 to 2 pesos a day and the minimum to buy their freedom would have been about 400 pesos."

Parker said public slave sales likely were held on the steps of Government House at the opposite end of the town market on the Plaza de la Constitucion. But private sales also took place in town.

"They were private sales between owners and they may have been at the market to do other business when they did this," she said. (source: Florida Times Union)

Selling "Fancy Girls"

Slave Market, ca. 1850-1860.

New Orleans and Lexington, Kentucky, had active markets in "fancy girls," beautiful young girls and women, often mulatto or quadroon, who were sold not as domestics but as concubines. They were presented at auction well dressed and coiffed, sometimes with jewelry. In the 1850s, beautiful teenage girls were valued at more than $1,500 (close to $30,000 in today's dollars), which made them as "expensive" as prime male field hands. Buying a "fancy girl" was a status symbol for traders, gamblers, and saloonkeepers. Because New Orleans attracted a large population of gamblers, debauchees and revelers for Carnival, it was the largest market for those girls and young women who were sent there from the Upper South.

South Carolina Slave Auction Advertisement: March 5, 1855

Among the enslaved people who were sold at this particular auction in 1855, were 23 individuals that ranged from infants to 60 years old. Enslaved women represented an overwhelming majority of this sale (78%); Seventy percent (70%) were between the ages of 1-30 years old, 21% were between 31-40 years old and two 60 years old. This is a repeating pattern of the youthful skew of slaves who were sold at auction.

J.S. Ryan is the Old Slave Mart located in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Slave Mart at Charleston, South Carolina

Slave Market, Charleston, South Carolina

"Slavery in Charleston: A chronicle of human bondage in the Holy City," by Brian Hicks, April 2011, the Post and Courier: Charles Carleton Coffin would be haunted by the sight for the rest of his life.

Behind the iron gate of the "MART," Coffin found a long hall lined with benches down one wall, a platform on the other and, beyond it, a four-story brick building with grated windows and iron doors.

He was standing in both a prison yard and an auction house.

Coffin, a reporter with the Boston Journal, was one of the first newspapermen to reach Charleston after the Confederate military abandoned it in February 1865. He immediately set out in search of the city's largest slave market so he could describe it for his readers in Massachusetts.

As Coffin stood looking at the auction block, he heard a voice behind him.

"I was sold there upon that table two years ago."

Her name was Dinah More, Coffin would later write, and she was one of the thousands of enslaved Africans who had passed through that gate as property.

The start of the Civil War 150 years ago this week marked the beginning of the end for the "peculiar institution" of slavery. In 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery in the reconstructed United States, bringing great change to the country's culture and the South's economy.
By 1860, there were 4 million slaves in the United States, and 400,000 of them -- 10 percent -- lived in South Carolina. African-Americans, enslaved and free, made up 57 percent of the state's population. Charleston was the nation's capital of the slave trade, the place where many of those enslaved people first landed in the New World.

The city was built on slave labor and, for nearly 200 years, thrived under a slave economy.

Nearly a century and a half has passed since slavery was abolished, but the wounds still linger. Even in 1865, long after Charleston's slave mart had sold its last human being, the occasion was bittersweet. When Coffin told More that she was free, and would never be sold again, she was melancholy.

"O the blessed Jesus, He has heard my prayer," More said. "I am so glad; only I wish I could see my husband. He was sold at the same time into the country, and has gone I don't know where."

In the mid-19th century, it was an all-too-common story.

(eource: Post and Courier)

Charleston Slave Market

On February 17, 1865, Charles Carleton Coffin, a war correspondent for the Boston Daily Journal, traveled to Charleston to record the surrender of the city and the raising of the Stars and Stripes over Fort Sumter. Curious about the inner workings of the slave trade, and acutely aware of the interests of his Northern readers, Coffin and other journalists traveled to the State and Chalmers streets, heart of the slave-trading district. In a dispatch dated February 24, 1865, Coffin told his readers that the slave traders were not to be found in an “out-of-the-way” place.

The brokers in flesh and blood took great care to be well buttressed. They set up their market in a respectable quarter, with St. Michael’s and the guard-house, the Registry of Deeds and the Sunday-School Depository, the Court-House and the Theological Library around them to make their calling respectable. Amid these surroundings was the Slave-Mart, - a building with a large iron gate in front, above which, in large gilt letters, was the word MART.

The outer iron get opened into a hall about sixty feet long by twenty broad, flanked on one side by a long table running the entire length of the hall, and on the other by benches. At the farther end a door, opening through a brick wall, gave entrance to a yard. The door was locked. I tried my boot-heel, but it would not yield. I called a freedmen to my aid. Unitedly we took up a great stone, and gave a blow. Another, and the door of the Bastile went into splinters. Across the

yard was a four-story brick building, with grated windows and iron doors, - a prison. The yard was walled by high buildings. He who entered there left all hope behind. A small room adjoining the hall was the place where women were subjected to the lascivious gaze of brutal men. There were the steps, up which thousands of men, women, and children and walked to their places on the table, to be knocked off to the highest bidder.

In front was a gilt star. I climbed the post and wrenched it from its spike to secure it as a trophy. A freedman took down the gilt letters for me, and knocked off the great lock from the outer gate and the smaller lock from the inner door. The key of the French Bastile hangs at Mount Vernon; and as relics of the American prison-house then being broken up, I secured these.

Entering the brokers’ offices, - prisons rather, - we walked along the grated corridors, looked into the rooms where the slaves had been kept. In the cellar was the dungeon for the refractory, - bolts and staples in the floors, manacles for the hands and feet, chains to make all sure. There had evidently been a sudden evacuation of the premises. Books, letters, bills of sale, were lying on the floor ...

New Orleans Slave Market

'Lincoln At New Orleans Slave Market' Image by Joseph Boggs Beale shows American President Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) (at left, in blue trousers) as he watches a slave auction, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1831. The image was published as part of the 'Life of Lincoln: Additional View' series by the C.W. Briggs Company. (George Eastman House/Getty Images; Jan 01, 1831)

“It Was a Mournful Scene Indeed”: Solomon Northup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market"

The slave auction was one of the most barbaric practices of the harsh system of slavery. The slave trade within the United States destroyed families and tore apart communities, especially after 1840 when slavery was extended into the newer lands of the lower South and Southwest. Planters in the older settled areas of the upper South could realize substantial profits selling enslaved people, and New Orleans became the center of the trade. The resulting forced migration involved hundreds of thousands of African Americans. Some moved with their masters, but the migration also tore apart slave families residing on different plantations. Others were sold on the block, as Solomon Northup described in his Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841.

The very amiable, pious-hearted Mr. Theophilus Freeman, partner or consignee of James H. Burch, and keeper of the slave pen in New-Orleans, was out among his animals early in the morning. With an occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the younger slaves, it was not long before they were all astir, and wide awake. Mr. Theophilus Freeman bustled about in a very industrious manner, getting his property ready for the sales-room, intending, no doubt, to do that day a rousing business.

In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads. We were now conducted into a large room in the front part of the building to which the yard was attached, in order to be properly trained, before the admission of customers. The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other. The tallest was placed at the head of the row, then the next tallest, and so on in the order of their respective heights. Emily was at the foot of the line of women. Freeman charged us to remember our places; exhorted us to appear smart and lively, - sometimes threatening, and again, holding out various inducements. During the day he exercised us in the art of “looking smart,” and of moving to our places with exact precision.

After being fed, in the afternoon, we were again paraded and made to dance. Bob, a colored boy, who had some time belonged to Freeman, played on the violin. Standing near him, I made bold to inquire if he could play the “Virginia Reel.”He answered he could not, and asked me if I could play. Replying in the affirmative, he handed me the violin. I struck up a tune, and finished it. Freeman ordered me to continue playing, and seemed well pleased, telling Bob that I far excelled him - a remark that seemed to grieve my musical companion very much.

Next day many customers called to examine Freeman’s “new lot.” The latter gentleman was very loquacious, dwelling at much length upon our several good points and qualities. He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale.

One old gentleman, who said he wanted a coachman, appeared to take a fancy to me. From his conversation with Burch, I learned he was a resident in the city. I very much desired that he would buy me, because I conceived it would not be difficult to make my escape from New-Orleans on some northern vessel. Freeman asked him fifteen hundred dollars for me. The old gentleman insisted it was too much, as times were very hard. Freeman, however, declared that I was sound and healthy, of a good constitution, and intelligent. He made it a point to enlarge upon my musical attainments. The old gentleman argued quite adroitly that there was nothing extraordinary about the nigger, and finally, to my regret, went out, saying he would call again. During the day, however, a number of sales were made. David and Caroline were purchased together by a Natchez planter. They left us, grinning broadly, and in the most happy state of mind, caused by the fact of their not being separated. Lethe was sold to a planter of Baton Rouge, her eyes flashing with anger as she was led away.

New Orleans Slave Quarters

The same man also purchased Randall. The little fellow was made to jump, and run across the floor, and perform many other feats, exhibiting his activity and condition. All the time the trade was going on, Eliza was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy him, unless he also bought her self and Emily. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived. The man answered that he could not afford it, and then Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. Freeman turned round to her, savagely, with his whip in his uplifted hand, ordering her to stop her noise, or he would flog her. He would not have such work - such snivelling; and unless she ceased that minute, he would take her to the yard and give her a hundred lashes. Yes, he would take the nonsense out of her pretty quick - if he didn’t, might he be d—d. Eliza shrunk before him, and tried to wipe away her tears, but it was all in vain.

She wanted to be with her children, she said, the little time she had to live. All the frowns and threats of Freeman, could not wholly silence the afflicted mother. She kept on begging and beseeching them, most piteously not to separate the three. Over and over again she told them how she loved her boy. A great many times she repeated her former promises - how very faithful and obedient she would be; how hard she would labor day and night, to the last moment of her life, if he would only buy them all together. But it was of no avail; the man could not afford it. The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall must go alone. Then Eliza ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her - all the while her tears falling in the boy’s face like rain.

Freeman damned her, calling her a blubbering, bawling wench, and ordered her to go to her place, and behave herself; and be somebody. He swore he wouldn’t stand such stuff but a little longer. He would soon give her something to cry about, if she was not mighty careful, and that she might depend upon.

The planter from Baton Rouge, with his new purchases, was ready to depart.

“Don’t cry, mama. I will be a good boy. Don’t cry,” said Randall, looking back, as they passed out of the door.

What has become of the lad, God knows. It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared.

The Liquidated Slaves Of The William Barnwell Plantation House, Beaufort, South Carolina

The William Barnwell House is a historic Building in Beaufort, South Carolina and is a part of the Beaufort Historic District. It was built in 1816 by the critically acclaimed Gibbes Brothers for their sister, Sarah Reeve Gibbes. The property got its name from her husband, though, William Wigg Barnwell, who came from the prominent Beaufort family connected to Major William Hazzard Wigg, a Revolutionary War hero.

The William Barnwell House stayed with the Barnwells until 1895. It was then when the property was given to the city. The local government then used it as a schoolhouse, and then transformed it to an apartment building before shutting it down for disrepair. It was then rescued by the Historic Beaufort Foundation in 1973 from threats of demolition.

Estate Sale! By Order Of Executor. By Louis D. DeSaussure

On Wednesday, 19th Inst. at 11 o'clock a.m. will be sold in Charleston, South Carolina at the Ryan and Son's Mart in Chalmers Street, by the order of the Executor of the late Mr. and Mr. and Mrs. William Barnwell. A Prime Gang of 67 Negroes. Accustomed to the culture of Sea Island Cotton and Provisions, in Beaufort District. Amongst whom are several House Servants.

Conditions--One-third Cash; balance by Bond, bearing interest from day of sale payable in two equal Annual Instaments, to be secured by a Mortgage of the Negroes, and approved Personal Security. Purchasers to pay for papers.

The liquidation of the enslaved population of the William Barnwell Estate in Beaufort, South Carolina. According to the "List of Negroes," 70.1% 26 years old and under.

0-12 years old 18 26.8%

13-26 years old 29 43.8%

27-54 years old 18 26.8%

55- 70 years old 2 2%

Among the 18 children to be orphaned by this sale that are between the ages of 0-12 years old are: "Hector age 7, Affy age 5, Infant #1 nameless, Venus age 2, Young Patty age 3, Infant #2 without a name, Annie age 5, Ellen age 3, Isaiah a little 5 year old boy with one eye, Cimon age 3, Infant Mariah, Adam age 12, Infant Rose, an unsound Infant, Young Tannah 3 years old, and Jim age 10.

There were 29 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 13-26 years old. Children and teenagers represented the bulk of the enslaved population of the William Barnwell Plantation.

There were 18 adults between the ages of 27-55 years old, and only two people that were 70 years old.

New Orleans Slave Auction Advertisement

"Valuable Gang of Young Negroes," advertisement for a slave auction, 1840. Item # B0072. Emergence of Advertising in America. 2000. Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

Hawaii '78 - IZ

Celia, A Slave, Trial (1855): An Account

"Celia, A Slave, Trial (1855): An Account," by Douglas O. Linder: For nineteen-year-old Celia, a slave on a Missouri farm, five years of being repeatedly raped by her middle-aged owner was enough. On the night of June 23, 1855, she would later tell a reporter, "the Devil got into me" and Celia fatally clubbed her master as he approached her in her cabin. The murder trial of the slave Celia, coming at a time when the controversy over the issue of slavery reached new heights, raised fundamental questions about the rights of slaves to fight back against the worst of slavery's abuses.

Background and the Crime

Around 1820, Robert Newsom and his family left Virginia and headed west, finally settling land along the Middle River in southern Callaway County, Missouri. By 1850 (according to the census), Newsom owned eight-hundred acres of land and livestock that included horses, milk cows, beef cattle, hogs, sheep, and two oxen. Like the majority of Callaway County farmers, Newsom also owned slaves--five male slaves as of 1850.

During the summer of 1850, Newsom purchased from a slave owner in neighboring Audrain County a sixth slave, a fourteen-year-old girl named Celia. Shortly after returning with Celia to his farm, Newsom raped her. For female slaves, rape was an "ever present threat" and, far too often, a reality. Over the next five years, Newsom would make countless treks to Celia's slave cabin, located in a grove of fruit trees some distance from his main house, and demand sex from the teenager he considered his concubine. Celia gave birth to two children between 1851 and 1855, the second being the son of Robert Newsom.

Sometime before 1855, a real lover, another one of Newsom's slaves named George, entered Celia's life. On several occasions, George "stayed" at Celia's cabin, although whether for a few hours or an entire night is unknown. In late winter, either February or early March, of 1855, Celia again became pregnant. The pregnancy affected George, and caused him to insist that Celia put an end to the pattern of sexual exploitation by Newsom that continued to that time. George informed Celia that "he would have nothing more to do with her if she did not quit the old man" [trial testimony of Jefferson Jones].

Celia approached Newsom's daughters, Virginia and Mary, asking their help in getting Newsom "to quit forcing her while she was sick." It is not clear whether either of the Newsom daughters made any attempt to intervene on Celia's behalf, but it is known that the sexual assaults continued. In desperation, Celia begged Newsom to leave her alone, at least through her pregnancy, but the slave owner was unreceptive to her pleas.

On June 23, 1855, Newsom told Celia "he was coming to her cabin that night." Around 10 P.M., Newsom left his bedroom and walked the fifty yards to Celia's brick cabin. When Newsom told Celia it was time for sex, she retreated to a corner of the cabin. He advanced toward her. Celia then grabbed a stick placed there earlier in the day. Celia raised the stick, "about as large as the upper part of a Windsor chair, but not so long," and struck her master hard over the head. Newsom groaned and "sunk down on a stool or towards the floor." Celia clubbed Newsom over the head a second time, killing him [testimony of Jefferson Jones].

After making sure "he was dead," Celia spent an hour or so pondering her next step. Finally she decided to burn Newsom's body in her fireplace. She went outside to gather staves and used them to build a raging fire. Then she dragged the corpse over to the fireplace and pushed it into the flames. She kept the fire going through the night. In the early morning, she gathered up bone fragments from the ashes and smashed them against the hearth stones, then threw the particles back into the fireplace. A few larger pieces of bone she put "under the hearth, and under the floor between a sleeper and the fireplace." Shortly before daybreak, Celia carried some of the ashes out into the yard and then went to bed.

In the morning, as Newsom's family was growing concerned about Robert's disappearance, Celia enlisted the help of Newsom's grandson, Coffee Waynescot, in shoveling ashes out of her fireplace and into a bucket. Coffee testified later he decided to help when the slave said "she would give me two dozen walnuts if I would carry the ashes out; I said good lick." Following Celia's instruction, Coffee distributed the remains of his grandfather along a path leading to the stables.

Investigation and Inquest

On the morning of the 24th, Virginia Newsom searched for her father in along nearby creek banks and coves, fearing he might have drowned. By mid-morning, the search party grew to include several neighbors and Newsom's son, Harry. After fruitless hours of searching, suspicion began to turn to George, who--it was thought--might have been motivated to kill Newsom out of jealousy. William Powell, owner both of slaves and an adjoining 160-acre farm, questioned George. George denied any knowledge of what might have happened to Newsom, but then added--suspiciously--"it was not worth while to hunt for him any where except close to the house." Faced with, most likely, severe threats, George eventually provided an additional damning bit of information. He told Powell "he believed the last walking [Newsom] had done was along the path, pointing to the path leading from the house to the Negro cabin." George's comment immediately led investigators to the conclusion that Newsom had been killed in Celia's cabin.

When a search of Celia's cabin failed to turn up Newsom's body, Powell and the others located Celia doing her regular duties in the kitchen of the Newsom home. Powell falsely claimed that George had told the search party that "she knew where her master was," hoping this approach might prompt a quick confession from Celia. Instead, Celia denied any knowledge of her master's fate. Faced with escalating threats, including the threat of having her children taken away from her, Celia continued to insist on her innocence. (She undoubtedly understood that confessing to the murder of her master would be an even more serious threat to her relationship with her children.) Eventually, however, Celia admitted that Newsom had indeed visited her cabin seeking sex the previous night. She insisted that Newsom never entered her cabin, but rather that she struck him as he leaned inside the window and "he fell back outside and she saw nothing more of him." Finally, after refusing "for some time to tell anything more," Celia promised to tell more if Powell would "send two men [Newsom's two sons] out of the room."

When Harry and David left, Celia confessed to the murder of Robert Newsom.

Following Celia's confession, the search party located Newsom's ashes along the path to the stables. They also gathered bits of bones from Celia's fireplace, larger bone fragments from under the hearth stone, and Newsom's burnt buckle, buttons, and blackened pocketknife. The collected items were placed in a box for display during the inquest that was to come.

Acting on an affidavit filed by David Newsom, the case of State of Missouri v Celia, a Slave commenced. Two justices of the peace, six local residents comprising an inquest jury, and three summoned witnesses all assembled at the Newsom residence on the morning of June 25. William Powell testified first, providing the jurors with an account of his interrogation of Celia the day before. Twelve-year-old Coffee Waynescot told jurors of Celia's request that he distribute what turned out to be his grandfather's ashes along the path. The third and last witness was Celia, who reaffirmed that she killed Newsom, but insisted that "she did not intend to kill him when she struck him, but only wanted to hurt him." The inquest jury quickly determined that probable cause existed that Celia feloniously and willfully murdered Robert Newsom, and the slave girl was ordered taken to the Callaway County jail in Fulton, nine miles to the north of the Newsom farm.

Doubts as to whether Celia could have pulled off her crime without help lingered, and Callaway County Sheriff William Snell allowed two men, Jefferson Jones and Thomas Shoatman, to conduct further questioning of Celia in her jail cell. Celia added some additional detail to her original story, describing the history of rape and sexual exploitation that began soon after her arrival on the Newsom farm, but she continued to deny that George played any role in Newsom's death or the disposal of his body. ...

Epilogue

In jail awaiting her execution, Celia delivered a stillborn child. As the date for her execution approached, still no word had come from Jefferson City on her appeal filed in the Missouri Supreme Court. The possibility that she might be hanged before her appeal was decided seemed ever more real to Celia's defense team and whoever else she might count among her supporters. Something had to be done.

On November 11, five days before her scheduled date with the gallows, Celia and another inmate were removed from the Callaway County jail, either with the assistance or the knowledge of her defense lawyers. The defense team, in a letter to Supreme Court Justice Abiel Leonard written less than a month after her escape, noted that Celia "was taken out [of jail] by someone" and that they felt "more than ordinary interest in behalf of the girl Celia" owing to the circumstances of her act. Celia was returned to jail--by whom it is not known--in late November, only after her scheduled execution date had passed. Following her return, Judge Hall set a new execution date of December 21--a date, the defense hoped, that would give the Supreme Court time to issue its decision on their appeal.

The Supreme Court ruled against Celia in her appeal. In their December 14 order, the state justices said they "thought it proper to refuse the prayer of the petitioner," having found "no probable cause for her appeal." The stay of execution, the justices wrote, is "refused."

Celia was interviewed for a final time in her cell on the evening before her execution. Again, she denied that "anyone assisted her...or abetted her in any way." She told her interrogator, as reported in the Fulton Telegraph, "as soon as I struck him the Devil got into me, and I struck him with a stick until he was dead, and then rolled him into the fire and burnt him up." Celia died on the gallows at 2:30 P.M. on December 21, 1855

(source: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/celia/celiaaccount.html)

Kosciuszko’s Will

Kosciuszko - Champion of Human Rights

Kosciuszko’s Will

“I, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, being just in my departure from America, do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United States thereby authorize my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing negroes from among his own as any others and giving them liberty in my name in giving them an education in trades and otherwise, and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neighbors, good fathers or mothers, husbands or wives and in their duties as citizens, teaching them to be defenders of their liberty and country and of the good order of society and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful, and I make the said Thomas Jefferson my executor of this.”

Thaddeus Kosciuszko
5th day of May, 1798

[Did Thomas Jefferson honor the will? Oh hell no!]