Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/254

 Henry, where her bones found a last resting-place. Lamar was killed in battle during the civil war.

One might tell in considerable detail, too, the story of the slaver Clotilde, a schooner of three hundred and twenty-seven tons built by Captain Timothy Meagher on the Mobile River late in the fall of 1858. Timothy bought one hundred and seventy-five prime slaves in Africa, and landed them without the loss of one (a most humane voyage) near Mobile City. But it did not pay. The negroes cost too much ($8,640 gold, besides ninety cases of rum and eight cases of cloths), and only twenty-five could be sold, because of the discovery of the importation and the rush of officials for prize money. The Captain sunk in all nearly $100,000.

As to the extent of the smuggling Stephen A. Douglas said in public that he believed 15,000 slaves were smuggled into the United States in 1859. A correspondent wrote to the Tribune in 1860 that "twelve vessels will discharge their living freight upon our shores within ninety days from the Ist of June last." Douglas's position on the slaver question cost him dearly — he failed of election as President because of it.

In spite of a pretence of prosecuting the slavers detected in their work, the Government in those days practically aided them by failing to prosecute them to conviction for the crime committed. Out of sixty persons arrested as slavers, "who have been bailed from the first day of May, 1852, to the first day of May, 1862," says a report made by Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith, the following disposition had been made: Eight cases were still pending; nine had