Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/366

 358 Southern Historical Society Papers.

that as a gentleman of wealth, he and some friends were making a pleasure cruise to India.

The dinner was a great success. Champagne flowed like water, and everyone, except Lamar, became intoxicated. While the revel was at its height, Lamar asked one of the guests if he did not think the Wanderer would make a capital slaver; a sally which excited uproarious laughter and applause among her Majesty's representa- tives, who declared that Lamar was a trump. That night the man- of-war sailed away in pursuit of an imaginary slaver, that, according to which Lamar had previously set in circulation, was down the coast loading negroes.

The rest of the story is soon told. The Wanderer ran up to Brazziville, took on 400 negroes, set sail for the United States, and landed them on the coast of Georgia. Lamar' s plan was to scatter the negroes about on a number of plantations until matters quieted down sufficiently to sell them. He succeeded in the first part of this programme, but not the last. The friends whom he depended upon turned traitors; he was arrested, hauled before the Federal courts, and the negroes, from whose sale he counted upon reaping a fortune, were seized by the United States marshal, pend- ing orders from the court. Such, however, was not the case with all the negroes. Over one-third of them were appropriated, hidden, sold, etc., by those whom Lamar regarded as friends, and upon whom he depended for the successful execution of his plan, and it is this phase of the matter with which Representative Bartlett is fa- miliar, and about which he relates the following incident:

" My father," he said, "was a member of the Georgia Senate, which was in session in the old capitol of Milledgeville at the time of the arrival of the Wanderer and the arrest of the owners of that vessel. From what he has told me of the matter, I imagine that it was the greatest sensation that ever broke the calm of old Milledge- ville. The owners of the vessel were highly connected with the best families of Georgia, and many of their relatives were residents of the old State capital. To cap the Climax, the cargo of the Wan- derer was landed upon the estate of one of the State senators, serv- ing in the Legislature then in session, and who was obliged to answer a great many embarrassing and irritating questions.

"What made matters worse, the owners of the Wanderer selected this plantation as a base from which to distribute their human cargo about among other plantations of the sea-coast region, and what we call the ' wire-grass section ' of Georgia. The matter was discussed