Lot 439: Lewis A. Collier - Slave Trader from Richmond, Virginia

[SLAVE TRADER] Lewis A. Collier - Slave Trader from Richmond, Virginia. Apparently he did his business in several states including Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, etc. Manuscript Document Signed, New Orleans, Jan. 28, 1843, approx. 9 x 3-3/4 in. Exchange of $538 with Rowland G. Hazard. No idea what their business was about. Hazard did alot of business during the late 1830s and 40s in New Orleans. Rowland Gibson Hazard (1801-1888) was an American industrialist, politician, and social reformer from Rhode Island. He was educated in a Quaker boarding school in Burlington, New Jersey, where he developed a particular interest in mathematics. In 1819 he returned to Rhode Island to join his elder brother Isaac in the management of the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company. One of Rowland Hazard's responsibilities was selling the company's products to planters in the southern United States, particularly Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. He spent winters in New Orleans from about 1833 to 1842 to sell goods that included cotton bagging cloth, pre-cut garments, low-priced shoes, and raw "Negro cloth" for use by African-American slaves. The activity that Hazard considered "as the greatest effort of his life" (according to his granddaughter) began when he was in New Orleans on business in the winter of 1841. After he learned that a free African-American man from Newport, Rhode Island was in custody in Louisiana as an escaped slave, his investigations found that many free African-Americans were being detained under the assumption they were escaped slaves. He worked with Jacob Barker, then a New Orleans lawyer, to obtain freedom for nearly 100 people being held as slaves. The action later led to charges being filed against several public officials who were responsible for the illegal detentions. His involvement with abolitionist causes and in the Republican Party eventually caused his company to lose favor with its markets in the southern United States. This helped to prompt the Peace Dale mills' transition from making cheap cotton products to selling higher quality woolens. Hazard retired from the textile business in 1866 and invested in the Union Pacific Railroad. After Union Pacific fell into financial disarray and became a party to the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872, Hazard spent much time dealing with the company's financial affairs. Hazard has written a note signed with initials on the back side. VG.

VG