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April 1, 1824 - Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar

A Savannah businessman facing mounting debts, Lamar organized the 1858 voyage of the Wanderer — one of the last known successful illegal slave-trading expeditions to reach American shores, decades after the international trade had been banned. The operation delivered hundreds of captives from the Congo to Georgia for sale, in direct violation of federal law. His career represents the persistence of transatlantic slave trafficking in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, sustained by networks of capital, complicity, and deliberate evasion of enforcement.

From Wikipedia

Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar

Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar (April 1, 1824 – April 16, 1865) was an American businessman from Savannah, Georgia, best known for his leadership in an investment ring to illegally import slaves from Africa on the ship Wanderer in 1858. The ship ran blockades and brought 409 surviving Africans from the Congo to the United States for sale. The ship was later impounded. Although Lamar and numerous other defendants were prosecuted, none of them were convicted.

Born and raised in Savannah, Lamar was the son of businessman and banker Gazaway Bugg Lamar and Jane Meek Cresswell of Augusta. Most of his family was lost in the June 1838 explosion and wreck of the steamship Pulaski. Lamar took over many of his father's business interests and made investments of his own. During the 1850s, he became deeply indebted and entered the illegal slave trade.

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