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. . . . I don’t calculate to get a new dollar for an old one. All these men must be bribed. I must be paid for my time, trouble, and advances. . . . Six of those who were left at Mont’s, who were sick, died yesterday. I think the whole of them now sick will die. They are too enfeebled to administer medicine to. I am paying fifty cents a day each for all those I took up the country. It was the best I could do. . . . I tell you hell is to pay. I don’t think they will discharge the men, but turn them over for trial.

Nor were his troubles solely with the Government officials. Ina letter to Theodore Johnson, of New Orleans, he says that some of the planters with whom the negroes were left for safe keeping were proving recreant to the trust. He says:

I am astonished at what Governor Phiniz has written me. . . . . The idea of a man’s taking negroes to keep at fifty cents a head per day, and then refusing to give them up when demanded, simply because the law does not recognize them as property, is worse than stealing.

A letter from Lamar to "C. C. Cook, Esq., Blakely, Georgia,” is of interest here, though I am not able to say definitely that it refers to the Wanderer, for Lamar had two other slavers afloat. The italics are in the original:

You are aware that it is a risky business. I lost two out of three. To be sure, at first knew nothing of the business. I have learned something since, and I hope I can put my information to some account. I have been in for “grandeur,” and been fighting for a principle. Now I am in for the dollars.

Meantime arrests had been made. Captain Corrie was taken in custody on January 22, 1859. The date of Lamar’s arrest is not recorded, as far as I can learn.