Two Letters Documenting How an Alabama Confederate Politician is Exploiting His Slaves to Create Wealth, 1850

A slaveowner's chilling correpsondence of the matter-of-fact way in which slaves were used as a financial asset to enrich the Southern elite, from prominent Alabama Confederate lawyer and politician, Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson. His letters provide a stark insight into the business-like approach Southern slaveholders took in managing human property, calculating their value, and weighing their sale or hire against family financial obligations.

The first letter from N. Henry R. Dawson to his uncle details the hiring out of enslaved men, women, and children as part of routine family finances. Written from Carlonville, [AL], 1 January 1850 to (truncated) his uncle John H. Dawson, Esq. of New Orleans. Dawson states, "I have hired out our negroes and $75, men & women, including their infants. The Carpenters are also hired—Richard to Mr. Rimple for the year at $250—George for a time at $25 per month. The whole amt of hire will be near upon $1200.00. This will be enough to pay the expenses of the family & have a balance for other purposes." Dawson also contemplates the sale of certain enslaved individuals but determines that the offers he has received are too low: "I have noticed what you say about the prices of negroes & your opinion about my disposal of them. I have concluded not to sell Martha & her two daughters, I was offered $1100 cash. In the opinions of good advisers, this is too little, so I have hired them out. I hope however to sell Gunner & family—wife & two children if I can at a reasonably fair price and apply the proceeds to the payment of Uncle Octavius' mortgage." The language reveals the brutal commodification of human lives, as Dawson weighs their financial value against debts owed.

The second letter is also addressed to his uncle and discusses financial and legal matters, with a brief but stark mention of the death of an enslaved man named Pompey: "I heard from home today—all were well. Mr. Smith's Pompey is dead—he died in Mobile." Written from Cahawba, [AL], 20 February 1850. The matter-of-fact reporting of Pompey's death underscores the dehumanization of enslaved people in the records of their enslavers, treated as financial and logistical concerns rather than as individuals. Dawson also updates his uncle on legal cases: "Only one of our cases (Memphis Walsh & Co) was tried—and it gives me much pleasure to inform you that, the decisions of the Chancellor is in our favor. The same principle of Law will apply to the other cases, and I hope that at the term of the Court in June, we will be freed from further litigation. Then for a new start in Arkansas." This suggests the family's continued efforts to expand or secure their financial and land holdings in the South, which, as indicated in the first letter, were intimately tied to the labor of enslaved individuals.

Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson (1829-1895) was a lawyer and politician who later served in the Confederate Army and as the third U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1886 to 1889 under Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Approximately 10" x 7.75" and 6 pages total. Address panel on terminal leafs. Letters date from January 1 and February 20, 1850. The letters survive in very good condition, with legible handwriting and minimal signs of wear. The ink remains clear, and the folds show only slight weakening. A sobering document of the routine management of enslaved individuals within the Southern planter class, these letters are an important primary source for understanding the economic underpinnings of slavery and its entrenchment in legal and financial systems prior to the Civil War. (Inventory #: 21529)