“The seizure of an African by the landing of the crew of a vessel with intent to make  

him a slave on a foreign land, is kidnapping, and its consummation on the high  

seas is within the power of Congress to define and punish piracies.” 

—Justice James M. Wayne (Charge to the Grand Jury, 1859) 

The Wanderer and The United States Customhouse 

U.S. Supreme Court Justice James M. Wayne (see PFS #75) was sent to Savannah by President James Buchanan to preside over a politically delicate trial that had enraged abolitionists throughout the country and was popularized by an extensive 100-article series published in The New York Times. 

The importation of slaves had been illegal in the United States for 50-years. But laws have never stopped law-breakers. In 1858, 35-year-old Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, a well-known aristocratic member of a wealthy Savannahian high-society family, masterminded an audacious expedition to illegally reopen the Atlantic Slave Trade to America, and thereby cause violent discord throughout the nation. 

You can find all the details of that story spelled out in a fabulous book of history by Erik Calonius, entitled The Wonderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy that Set Its Sail (2006). 

At the heart of the conspiracy was Charley Lamar, the leader of a group of fire-eating proslavery-agitators. President James Buchanan, a Democratic states’ rights advocate from Pennsylvania, believed political-agitators determined to inflame violent passions both North and South, were intent on helping elect an Anti-Slavery Republican President, and thereby irrevocably split the country in two. 

In Savannah, passions ran deep. A teacher at the Massie School (see PFS #72) was discharged for expressing abolitionist sentiments, while a young man was tarred and feathered for doing the same. Meanwhile, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in October 1859 ‘to purge this land with blood’ added to the turmoil. Blacks in Savannah faced a new city ordinance forbidding them ‘to gather in crowds.’ 

Justice Wayne presented a 20-page brief to seek an indictment of Lamar and his co-conspirators. A Savannah Grand Jury of 18-men brought indictments. Wayne’s charge to the jury is a history lesson of the laws against the slave trade. Wayne, himself from Savannah, had long been both a slave owner and against the importation of slaves. He also co-wrote the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. 

But Wayne also was a pro-Union man and hoped to help avert an impending Civil War that the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, ending the Missouri Compromise, had so inflamed. 

There were six trials involving The Wanderer conspiracy without a single conviction. The trials were held at The United States Customs House, the first commission in Savannah for architect John S. Norris, completed in 1852. Between trials, Lamar fought a pistol duel with a witness against him. To finally end the saga, Lamar pled guilty to the charge of ‘breaking a friend out of jail’ and received a 30-day sentence and a $250 fine. His true crime: Eighty Africans died while onboard The Wanderer en route to Georgia. 

By November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected our sixteenth President. Federal legal authority became moot in a state like Georgia, which was on the verge of succeeding from the Union. Justice Wayne returned to Washington and served out the Civil War sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Lamar’s attempt to reopen the illegal slave trade failed. The South did not rise in support. Even the Confederate Constitution, adopted in March 1861, ironically banned the African slave trade. Perhaps it was karma: Charley Lamar died in a Confederate uniform; shot in Columbus, Georgia, eight days after the Civil War officially ended. His father was later an unindicted suspect in Lincoln’s assassination.