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Court decision concerning the infamous slave ship 'Wanderer'...
Court decision concerning the infamous slave ship 'Wanderer'...
Item # 700743
May 15, 1860
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER, Washington, D.C., May 15, 1860
* Slave ship - slaver "Wanderer"
* Last documented shipment of slaves
* South Carolina court decision
Page 2 has over half a column taken up with: "Decision On The Slave Trade" which deals with the rather infamous case of the slave ship 'Wanderer', about which much can be found online.
Four pages, large folio size, a bit irregular at the spine from disbinding, good condition. Folder size noted is for the issue folded in half.
AI notes: In 1859–1860, Judge Andrew Gordon Magrath, presiding in Charleston, rendered a pivotal decision in the Wanderer slave ship case, which involved one of the last known illegal shipments of enslaved Africans to the United States. Magrath dismissed key federal charges against the ship’s owners and captain, ruling that transporting enslaved people from Africa did not constitute piracy under the 1820 federal statute, because, in his legal interpretation, piracy required the forcible seizure of property on the high seas, and enslaved people were legally considered property rather than victims of unlawful seizure. He also challenged the authority of the U.S. Attorney General to direct the dismissal of prosecutions via nolle prosequi, asserting that local courts retained control over the case. His decision effectively shielded the Wanderer defendants from serious federal punishment, reflecting the broader resistance of Southern jurists to enforcing anti–slave trade laws and illustrating the deep sectional divisions over slavery in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.
Category: Pre-Civil War
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