Smuggler Nation (66 page)

19
. Williams,
Rum
, 102.

20
. Quoted in William L. McDowell Jr., ed.,
The Colonial Records of South Carolina: Documents Relating to Indian Affairs, 21 May 1750–7 August 1754
(Columbia: South Carolina Archives Department, 1958), 12.

21
. Williams,
Rum
, 99–100.

22
. Larzer Ziff, ed.,
The Portable Benjamin Franklin
(New York: Penguin, 2005), 117.

23
. Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin,
Drinking in America: A History
(New York: Free Press, 1987), 31.

24
. Barton H. Barbour,
Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 150–51.

25
. The 1832 law stated that no “ardent spirits” should be introduced into Indian country “under any pretence.” The 1834 revision specified various penalties, including forfeiture and a $500 fine for providing alcohol to an Indian, and forfeiture and a $300 fine for transporting alcohol into Indian country. Illegal stills could be dismantled and owners fined $1,000. Trading licenses could also be revoked. The 1847 revision established a two-year prison sentence for selling alcohol to Indians and a one-year sentence for transporting alcohol into Indian country. Indian witnesses were also given equal status as whites in legal proceedings.

26
. Anthony F. C. Wallace,
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 211–12.

27
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, x.

28
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, x.

29
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 18.

30
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 10.

31
. Hiram Martin Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West
, vol. 1 (Stanford: Academic Reprints, 1954), 23.

32
. Quoted in Gustavus Myers,
History of the Great American Fortunes
, vol. 1 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1911), 115.

33
. Charles Larpenteur,
Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833–1872
, ed. Elliott Coues (New York: Harper, 1898), 57.

34
. Quoted in Francis Paul Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 44.

35
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 10.

36
. Quoted in Francis Paul Prucha,
Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815–1860
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 74–75.

37
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 14.

38
. Quoted in William E. Unrau, “Indian Prohibition and Tribal Disorganization in the Trans-Missouri West, 1802–1862,”
Contemporary Drug Problems
21, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 528.

39
. W. J. Rorabaugh,
Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 160.

40
. Rorabaugh,
Alcoholic Republic
, 159.

41
. Detroit was created as a fur trade outpost by the Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe de Cadillac, who argued that selling alcohol to Indians was justified on sanitary grounds. With the main Indian diet based on
fish and smoked meat, Cadillac suggested that “a little brandy after the meal … seems necessary to cook the bilious meats and the crudities they leave in their stomach.” Quoted in Frank E. Ross, “The Fur Trade of the Western Great Lakes Region,”
Minnesota History
19, no. 3 (September 1938): 279. Cadillac not only profited greatly from the alcohol-for-fur trade but was also apparently a con artist and imposter, pretending to be of noble descent by creating a fake aristocratic name and family coat of arms, the same one used centuries later by the American automobile of that name. See Edward Butts,
Outlaws of the Lakes
(Toronto: Lynx Images, 2004), 16–17.

42
. In the case of early Chicago as a fur trade village dominated by Astor’s company, see John D. Haeger, “The American Fur Company and the Chicago of 1812–1835,”
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
61, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 117–39. Haeger also notes that the American Fur Company was the key in organizing the Indian treaty of 1833 that proved to be a milestone in the history of Chicago, laying the foundation for rapid population growth in subsequent decades.

43
. Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West
, 1:21.

44
. Quoted in Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West
, 1:21.

45
. More generally, Gustavus Myers writes: “Astor’s company was a law unto itself. That it employed both force and fraud and entirely ignored all laws enacted by Congress, is as clear as daylight from the Government reports of that period.” Myers adds that “if there was one serious crime at that time it was the supplying of the Indians with whisky.… To say that Astor knew nothing of what his agents were doing is a palliation not worthy of consideration; he was a man who knew and attended to even the pettiest of details of his varied business.” See Myers,
History of the Great American Fortunes
, 1:114–15.

46
. Quoted in Myers,
History of the Great American Fortunes
, 1:118.

47
. Quoted in Barbour,
Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade
, 167–68.

48
. For a detailed account of this episode, see Barbour,
Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade
, 166–71.

49
. Larpenteur,
Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri
, 74.

50
. Jeanne P. Leader, “The Pottawatomies and Alcohol: An Illustration of the Illegal Trade,”
Kansas State History
2, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 162.

51
. This paragraph is based on Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 67–68.

52
. Unrau calculates that by 1845 “total monetary obligations sanctioned by treaties with the removal of Indians … amounted to $26,983,068.” For a breakdown of these funds by tribe, see Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 45.

53
. Clyde N. Wilson, ed.,
The Papers of John C. Calhoun
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1980), 13:191.

54
. Quoted in Unrau, “Indian Prohibition and Tribal Disorganization,” 527.

55
. Quoted in Unrau, “Indian Prohibition and Tribal Disorganization,” 527.

56
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 9.

57
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 9.

58
. U.S. Congress,
American State Papers: Indian Affairs Volume Four Part Two 1832
(Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2005), 655.

59
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 24.

60
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 26.

61
. Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 41.

62
. Quoted in Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 52.

63
. This paragraph draws from Unrau,
White Man’s Wicked Water
, 34, 42.

64
. Quoted in Gary C. Stein, “A Fearful Drunkenness: The Liquor Trade to the Western Indians as Seen by European Travelers in America, 1800–1860,”
Red River Valley Historical Review
2, no. 2 (1974): 15.

65
. Quoted in George Frederick Ruxton,
In the Old West
, ed. Horace Kephart (New York: Outing, 1916), 166.

66
. Rufus B. Sage,
Scenes in the Rocky Mountains and in Oregon, California, New Mexico, Texas, and the Grand Prairies; or, Notes by the Way, During an Excursion of Three Years, with a Description of the Countries Passed through, Including their Geography, Geology, Resources, Present Condition, and the Different Nations Inhabiting Them
(Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1846), 28.

67
. Charles Latrobe,
The Rambler in North America
(original 1836; reprint Carlisle, MA: Applewood, 2007), 2:212.

1
. The first U.S. Census, in 1790, recorded fewer than seven hundred thousand slaves, but by the outbreak of the Civil War there were almost four million, with more than half of them connected in some form to cotton cultivation. See Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jennifer Frank,
Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
(New York: Ballantine, 2006), 26.

2
. For a comprehensive review of these state and federal laws, see W.E.B. Dubois,
The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638–1870
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1965, first published 1898).

3
. Quoted in Don E. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 141–42.

4
. On the importance of cotton, see Gene Dattel,
Cotton and Race in the Making of America
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009).

5
. Ernest Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade in the United States After 1808
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2007), 61.

6
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, xxvii, 4. On New York’s commercial rise and its connection to cotton, see Sven Beckert,
The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

7
. Warren S. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837–1862
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 13; Donald L. Canney,
Africa Squadron: The U.S. Navy and the Slave Trade, 1842–1861
(Washington, DC: Potomac, 2006), 56–57.

8
. In a twenty-year period the squadron captured only thirty-six ships. Canney,
Africa Squadron
, xiii.

9
. Fehrenbacher,
The Slaveholding Republic
, 174.

10
. It should be noted that at this point the United States wanted to be able to search British vessels, not so much to enforce antislave-trade laws but rather to enforce the Union blockade of Confederate ports. Thus, as U.S. concerns suddenly shifted, Washington’s long-standing stance against mutual search and seizure dramatically softened. American involvement in the slave trade quickly plummeted. In his annual address to Congress in December 1863, President Lincoln stated, “It is believed that, so far as American ports and American citizens are concerned, that inhuman and odious traffic has been brought to an end.” Quoted in Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed.,
Lincoln: Speeches and Writings: 1859–1865
(New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989), 538.

11
. Quoted in Daniel P. Mannix,
Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518–1865
(New York: Viking, 1962), 205.

12
. Hugh Thomas notes, for example, that from 1837 to 1860 there were seventy-four court cases in the United States on slave-trading-related charges, but few captains were convicted and the others received minimal sentences. Thomas,
The Slave Trade
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 774.

13
. Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 196–99.

14
. Ron Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader
(New York: Atria, 2006), 26.

15
. Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
, 54.

16
. Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
, 42–43; Howard,
American Slavers and the Federal Law
, 102–10.

17
. For more details, see Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon
.

18
. Obadele-Starks,
Freebooters and Smugglers
, 187.

19
. Farrow et al.,
Complicity
, 123.

20
. Quoted in Charles Rappleye,
Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 248.