(SLAVERY ABOLITION) John Mattingly Letter from a slave trad

Sale 2598 - Lot 29

Price Realized: $ 875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) John Mattingly. Letter from a slave trader regarding the purchase of a girl. Autograph Letter Signed to C. Goode. one page, 9 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches; moderate wear and foxing, folds, lacking integral blank. St. Louis, MO, 12 July 1856

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John Mattingly was a successful slave dealer who did business in Lexington, KY and St. Louis, MO from at least 1848 onward. The abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson visited St. Louis in 1856 to make an investigation of the slave trade, and mentions Mattingly twice in his account (Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of His Life, pages 183, 187). Mattingly's advertisement is reproduced in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," page 146.

This letter reads in part: "I will or was to leave for K'y on this day week, tho if you will bring your girl down on next Saturday which is this day week or on Monday week, I will wait for you by you writing me word that you will bring her shure. . . . If you conclude to come next Saturday . . . please let me know it before hand so I may have the money out of the bank to pay you for the girl."