Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 350

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(SLAVE TRADE.) Francis De Pau. Letter of recommendation by a slave ship owner, carried aboard a known voyage on the Middle Passage. Letter Signed to William Anderson of South Africa. 2 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on a folding sheet with address panel on final blank (no postal markings); mailing folds, minimal wear. Charleston, SC, 5 May 1807
Request Condition Report Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

This letter of introduction was written by a well-known slave-ship owner, on behalf of the captain of a known slave-trading voyage, to help ensure his safe passage home with a human cargo from Mozambique.

This voyage is recorded in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, demonstrating that this was not an innocent mercantile voyage to Mozambique. The ship Agent was originally based in Warren, Rhode Island and had already landed two cargoes of slaves in Charleston, SC before this voyage, the second one landing on 26 March 1807 with 157 surviving captives. The ship apparently changed ownership and captain at that point.

This letter was written on 5 May 1807, probably shortly before the Agent's departure from Charleston on a third slave voyage. Francis De Pau (1773-1836), a prolific French born slave trader, was apparently the new owner. He writes to an associate at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa: "The bearer of this letter is Cap'n Alex. Campbell of the ship Agent, with whom I have planned a voyage to Mozambique. . . . I beg leave . . . to recommend Cap'n Campbell to your attention of civility. Should he want some money for his expences, I beg you will be so glad as to advance it to him." The letter also alludes to some kind of trouble with a Captain Ross, presumably the captain of the ship Dolphin, another slave ship active from Charleston at that time: "It appears he had extricated himself of the difficulty he was involved into. He ought to be here & I look for him every day."

The letter does not mention anything about slavery or the ship's cargo--unsurprising, as the slave trade was illegal at that point. We do know from the database that the ship Agent arrived back in the United States in August with a cargo of about 200 enslaved people who were unloaded in Charleston and New Orleans.

This letter dates from the twilight of the quasi-legal trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Slave Trade Act of 1794 forbade the building or outfitting of American ships for the international slave trade. Enforcement was spotty until the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, which was passed in the United States in March 1807 but did not take effect until January 1808. The letter was written just 4 days after the Slave Trade Act of 1807 was passed in Great Britain, by which the British Navy began actively policing the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Also in This Catalogue