(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) Handy Samuel Letter arranging for a

Sale 2503 - Lot 22

Price Realized: $ 1,250

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

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Handy, Samuel. Letter arranging for a large shipment of enslaved people from Maryland to Mississippi. Autograph Letter Signed to the Rev. James Smylie, then visiting in Philadelphia. One page, 10 x 7 3/4 inches, with address panel marked "18 3/4" on integral blank; folds, light toning. Snow Hill, MD, 11 June 1827

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In the early years on the 19th century, Mississippi changed rapidly from a European colonial backwater to the world's major producer of cotton, made possible by the massive transplantation of slaves from the Upper South. A leading defender of slavery in Mississippi was the Rev. James Smylie, who established the state's first Presbyterian church. In this letter, a correspondent offers Smylie the opportunity to send more enslaved people south to his plantation from a small town on Maryland's eastern shore. "With respect to the favor you requested of me, I must beg to be excused as my friends are bitterly opposed to the purchase or trade in any respect of negroes. I have consulted some of my acquaintances and am induced to believe you can be supplied. There is now a trader here purchasing for the Natchez mkt who would be willing to make some arrangement with you, viz either purchase the negroes and deliver them at Natchez for a compensation, or supply you at that place out of his gang."