In 1858, 50 years after the U.S. government banned the importation of African slaves, a band of perfidious cretins from Savannah, Geo., set sail on the fast boat Wanderer and brought more than 400 African slaves back to the state. It was an act of outright defiance against the law, an act meant to further separate abolitionists and proponents of slavery, an act that serves to remind us both how inevitable this country’s Civil War was, and how not so long ago at all, men and women in this country held some pretty horrific beliefs.
Erik Calonius tells the tale of this last slave raid in THE WANDERER: THE LAST AMERICAN SLAVE SHIP AND THE CONSPIRACY THAT SET ITS SAILS, a short and snappy old-style history, with a couple of historian’s tricks that will grate on some readers’ sensibilities. The very gracious author’s note at the beginning explains what he’s about and how he felt the need to add conversations, emotions and the dreaded “what they must have thought” to the book in order to present a coherent story. There are notes and sources, though they are (as usual) placed barbarically in the back and only refer to page numbers, and there’s an excellent index.
Deftly, Calonius tells us of one Charles Lamar of Savannah, a fire-breathing pro-slavery radical who, with his thuggish friends, basically ruled the city and who could not be gainsaid. His plan was to reopen the African slave trade along with other radicals such as William Yancey and Leonidas Spratt. Their desire was to import more slaves to Southern shores, and to expand slavery into the Western territories.
For some, there was a further goal: to distance themselves from the North, even to the point of secession, in order to maintain the institution of slavery. As the extremist abolitionists slowly gained control of the North’s political appointees and mores, the extremist slavers in the South did the same. The country was dividing.
Calonius wraps all of this nation-changing history into the specific tale of the ship, its construction and sailing under the banner of the New York Yacht Club (!), its voyage and return, and perhaps most disturbingly of all, the legal aftermath. Lamar and his cohorts were discovered, and the federal government moved to prosecute. In the charged political climate, they had to move carefully, painstakingly assembling evidence, carefully constructing an airtight case.
And it all goes wrong. Lamar’s influence was too great, the respect for the Union crumbling too much in the Southern states, and the prosecution fails. It’s at this point in the story — when solid Georgian citizens are breaking people out of jail, threatening judges in the street, and legal representatives in the area are actively confounding the law — that you realize there was no hope for an amicable settlement in the fight between North and South, and that a war had to be waged.
This is an excellent addition to any Civil War buff’s library, and a smart debut for a smooth writer. —Mark Rose
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- BULLETS, BROADS, BLACKMAIL & BOMBS >> Swords, Sorcery, Sandals & Slave Girls
- The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South
- The Darwin Conspiracy
- The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines
- The Hellfire Conspiracy
