On December 6, 1836, Charles Carroll V sent fifty-one members of his enslaved workforce to a place that was all but universally dreaded among unfree African Americans in the Chesapeake: Louisiana. By the time the group departed aboard the brig Harriet on that winter morning, however, Carroll’s mind had been made up for quite some time.

Back in 1828, Carroll’s brother-in-law, the planter and politician John Lee, had become part-owner, along with his (Lee’s) brother-in-law, Outerbridge Horsey, of a sugar plantation near Thibodaux in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. Truth be told, the Horsey-Lee venture was a failure by any measure, one that ended, just eight years after it began, with the court-ordered sale of the plantation, its equipment, and several dozen enslaved people, many if not all of whom had been forced to depart Maryland in order to labor on that plantation. And yet, after the sale, Lee hardly appears to have suffered greatly from grief or regret. In fact, in the very same letter in which he informed Carroll, back in Maryland, of his venture’s demise (“The plantation on the Lafourche & forty-nine slaves were sold at public auction for $78,900—cash”), Lee urged Carroll to make his own investment in Louisiana sugar.  “Be assured that the early part of the ensuring year will be the last opportunity for some years to purchase [a sugar plantation] on reasonable terms.” 

By November, Carroll had made up his mind. He would not buy a plantation in Louisiana outright, at least not yet, but he had another idea. In between harvest and planting, Carroll often leased members of his workforce to other enslavers in the vicinity: a way making sure the people he enslaved were never not making him money. So, Carroll figured, why not scale that model up? He and Hollingsworth worked out a deal. Carroll would send a few dozen people to labor on Hollingsworth’s plantation, and Hollingsworth would give Carroll a share of the resulting profits. In all probability, though, money and an introduction to the business of sugar were not the only advantages Carroll saw in this scheme, because—and whether or not he admitted it to Hollingsworth—Carroll had been struggling with what he referred to as “discipline” problems on his Doughoregan plantation for quite some time. As far as “punishments” went, there was very little enslaved people feared quite as much as Louisiana.

To begin, for enslaved persons, exile to Louisiana was synonymous with separation—usually permanent—from deeply rooted communities and families. The fifty-one people Carroll sent to New Orleans aboard the Harriet, for example, represented the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation descendants of survivors of the Middle Passage who had been purchased by Charles Carroll V’s great-great-grandfather, Charles Carroll I, roughly a century and a half prior. For the Carroll people and the thousands of other enslaved men, women, and children who were cast out of the Chesapeake in the antebellum era, the voyage to Louisiana was thus a rupture unlike anything in recent memory. 

And yet, the specter of Louisiana can be only partly explained by its distance from Virginia and Maryland. After all, no matter where they were from, enslaved people dreaded Louisiana for the very same reason: the presence, in that state, of sugar plantations.

On sugar plantations, enslaved people endured—to quote Frederick Douglass’s assessment—“lives of living hell.” Even the the tropical climate they required conspired against survival. Yellow fever, measles, malaria, and cholera came in waves throughout the antebellum period, spreading rapidly each time from plantation to plantation along the rivers and bayous of the coastal parishes. These plagues spared no class or race, but enslaved people from the Chesapeake were especially vulnerable because they had little to no immune resistance to them. 

Then there was sugar cultivation itself, every stage of which, from planting to harvesting to processing, was labor intensive, dangerous, and time-sensitive, since cane begins to rot from the inside out as soon as it is harvested. Injuries common on sugar plantations included blindness caused by the toxic fumes released by boiling cane, the loss of limbs caught in the grinding rollers used to press juice out of the thick stalks, and flesh wounds caused by swinging machetes. Forced to perform extremely dangerous work  at extremely dangerous speeds in extremely dangerous conditions, enslaved people died at staggering rates.  In fact, according to George William Featherstonhaugh, who visited Louisiana in the 1830s, the “duration of life for a sugar mill hand [did] not exceed seven years” after his or her. arrival on the plantation. Likewise, the historian Michael Tadman found that throughout the sugar parishes, deaths outpaced births among enslaved people. As they disembarked in New Orleans on the first day of 1837, then, the Carroll fifty-one, especially the many elders and young children among them, had every reason to fear for their lives.

Four days after the Harriet’s arrival, the man Charles Carroll V had hired to oversee the fifty-one on their journey to New Orleans, Elijah Merryman, drafted a hasty note back to his employer apprising him of the particulars of the voyage. As he took up his pen, however, Merryman discovered that he was not the only one with a message for Carroll.  The enslaved people in his custody had one of their own.

“Hearing I intended writing you,” Merryman wrote, “induced them nearly all to make a request that I should name them to you in affectionate terms, as also to their relatives and fellow servants.”

I cannot speak for men, women, and children sent to Louisiana aboard the Harriet. Because I believe, however, that the work of a historian consists of distinguishing fact from fiction, I offer the following thoughts on Merryman’s missive.

I believe that in this instance at least, Elijah Merryman told the truth. I think it is very likely, in other words, that the fifty-one did request to be named “in affectionate terms” to their enslaver back in Maryland. It was, after all, Charles Carroll who had sent them to Louisiana and it was Charles Carroll who would decide when and if they ever returned. Of course they wished to be named “in affectionate terms” to that man who wielded so much power over whether they lived or died.

Perhaps, though, the fifty-one already knew how Carroll would respond, that he would not be moved. If so, they were correct. For sixteen of them, Louisiana was indeed a death sentence.

Moses Addison (47). Moses Beaver (1). Susan Cidman (7). Mark Cidman (5). Nancy Cidman (1). Isadod Conner (54). Mathew Cook (36). Lucy Cidman Cook (44). Harry Hart (54). Catherine Hart (12). Susan Hart (9).Toney Steward (53). Lucy Steward (20). Joe Stewart (17). Victory Stinchcomb (54). Rachel Stinchcomb (44).

When and where they perished is impossible to say, but they never returned to Maryland.

For very different reasons than they wished to be “named in affectionate terms” to their enslaver, then, I also believe the Carroll fifty-one expressed their collective wish to be remembered to and by their kin. My hope is that this site will be of use to those who have all along fulfilled that wish and continue to fulfill it now. 

— Jennie K. Williams 12/15/24