Byline: Q.K Philander Doesticks; 1859-03-09; The New York Tribune; pages 5
Report: Antebellum Undercover
Tags: Butler, posed as, slave auction, slave-buyer
The largest sale of human chattels that has been made in Star-Spangled America for several years took place on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, at the see Course near the City of Savannah, Georgia. The lot consisted of four hundred and thirty six men, women, children and infants, being that half of the negro stock remaining on the old Major Butler plantations which fell to one of the two heirs to that estate.
Description:After inheriting his father's estate, upper-class northerner Pierce Butler (husband of English-born actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble) auctioned off half of his family's slaves to settle debt. The article, written by Mortimer Thomson under his pen-name Doesticks, was later included as a sequel to Ms. Kemble's published journals (see "What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation?").
Rights: Public domain.
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