I ask because I had read that in the 1800s, after the passage of the Slave Trade Act some Americans raided Black Seminole villages in Spanish Florida in an attempt to enslave them, but I don't know how widespread (or legal) this practice was. Were black people in Canada, Mexico, etc. potentially at risk during this period as well?
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Potentially in the sense that it could happen in theory, absolutely. People can be kidnapped from anywhere, but that's just telling us that it's not literally impossible. I'm not aware of any high profile or frequent efforts to steal people out of Canada or Mexico. Spanish Florida is a different story and was known as a popular spot to smuggle enslaved people into the country in defiance of the rarely-enforced American law on the subject. I went into a case study of Floridian smuggling in an old answer. That deals specifically with people trafficked from abroad, but anyone trying to illegally import a large number of enslaved people would probably have done similar. Individual kidnappings are much harder to track.
So then, a rerun:
I learned of David Brydie Mitchell's case from Don Fehrenbacher's The Slaveholding Republic, but he only gives it a casual mention and a footnote:
The most notable scandal ivolved David B. Mitchell, a former governor of Georgia serving as a federal Indian agent, who was accused of complicity in the illegal importation of about a hundred Africans from Amelia Island in 1817. Attorney General William Wirt, after investigating the charges, concluded that Mitchell had "prostituted his power...from mercenary motives. President James Monroe removed him from office. [Fehrenbacher, 152]
The Sources
Fehrenbacher leaves it there, citing DuBois' book on suppressing the trade and Wirt's original report. I chased down both references. DuBois basically says the same thing as Fehrenbacher does and has the same citation back to Wirt's report to Monroe, which is in American State Papers, Class X [Miscellaneous], Volume II (pages 957-975) because the Senate asked for a copy. The Internet Archive's PDF respects the original page numbers, praise Clio.
The report is a bit of a mess, which Wirt himself sort of admits. He complains of having to sort through upwards of seventy documents. Some were sworn testimony, some not, some hearsay, many contradicting others. I found a single journal article on the affair, which sheds a little additional light. Shingleton looked at the same documents that Wirt did, so far as I can tell, but the meat of his paper is in wrestling it into a more readable narrative that he then uses to argue "see, sometimes slave smugglers got caught." He's useful in that he makes clear military involvement that is more ambiguous with Wirt.
The Story
David Brydie Mitchell was the Scottish-born governor of Georgia, serving his third term when James Monroe appointed him Indian agent to the Creek Nation. Mitchell looked at his governor's salary, $2,000, the Indian agent's salary, $2,000, and chose between them on the highest principle: Indian agents served at the pleasure of the president during good behavior but governors had to face re-election. He went with the tenure track job. (The last guy in this post held it from Washington's administration onward.) I have some conflicting sources on when Mitchell's tenure begins. He ceased being Governor on March 4, 1817, but his appointment dates to November 4. From context, it looks like he was serving as agent-designate or acting agent during the summer. .
The Creek Agency is on the Flint River, a bit to the south of where the Walking Dead shoots. There's a historical marker. In 1817, this is off the beaten path. Before Mitchell went himself, he sent his son William and another guy, a Captain John St. Thomas, ahead to plant him some corn. (Thomas is "a relation by affinity," which I think means lived with Mitchell and was possibly related by marriage too.) These three are unhelpfully referred to by their titles in the Wirt report, as often as not. Mitchell pere is General Mitchell, Mitchell fils Captain Mitchell, and then Thomas is another captain. Thomas seems to have a commission in the US Army, but the others are Georgia militia.
Mitchell has some dealings with William Bowen, who is an agent of the Savannah and Augusta mercantile firm of Erwin, Groce, & Co. During the summer of 1817, he pays Bowen $10,000 to supply the Creeks with unspecified goods. Bowen delivered those goods to the Creeks at Fort Hawkins around July. That same summer, witnesses report conversations with Mitchell about importing slaves.
MAJOR JOHN LOVING states a conversation which he had with General Mitchell, to this effect: Loving informed the agent that he (Loving) was desirous of making a purchase of Africans at Amelia Island, or elsewhere, within the Floridas, provided the same could be done safely and legally. Upon these points the agent's opinion was requested; and he was further asked whether he would allow Africans to be introduced through the Indian country. The reply of the agent was, that he had been thinking of such a purchase himself, and that Loving might bring any Africans whom he might purchase through the Indian country, with safety, to the agency, where he (the agent) would protect them. Loving having stated that he expected to make his residence at Fort Hawkins, the agent suggested that the negroes might be removed, if Loving wished it, to the reserve, where he (Mitchell) thought they might be disposed of to advantage.
Fort Hawkins is a nearby military post, incidentally.
After that they got into the nuts and bolts of planning a route, which Loving took notes on. Loving later lost the notes -thanks, jerk- but remembered that it would take him from Amelia Island -Spanish territory in St. Mary's river, right on the Georgia border-, through Creek territory, and up to the Agency. This conversation took place in July of 1817, the same time that Bowen was transacting business.
We also have the word of a Thomas S. Woodward that soon after Mitchell's appointment (which could be November or could mean in the summer, I can't tell which) that a Colonel John Howard who asked him if he could go to Amelia and buy some slaves to import. Woodward refused because 1) It's illegal under US and Georgian law and 2) he doesn't have that kind of money.
Colonel Howard replied, that if the witness would go to that country, for that purpose, General D.B. Mitchell would furnish him with money, and draw a certain part of the profits, and that the negroes, if purchased, could be brought up through the Creek nation, by way of the agency, undiscovered, and then be disposed of to the best advantage
And in August, a Christian Breithaupt had a visit from one Jared E. Groce, the Groce of Erwin, Groce, & Co. Groce gave him an attaboy on a land purchase he'd transacted and told him that he knew a better way to make bank with a much quicker turnaround. Groce himself was tapped out, but together they could make a tidy sum. Breithaupt asked how and Groce hemmed and hawed a bit before getting down to it: "Do you know what is carrying on in Amelia Island?" Breithaupt got it and objected that the scheme would break the law and put them in personal danger. Groce said he a plan, but broke off when someone else came up to them and might overhear.
Let's roll back to July for a moment. That's the month that Loving gets the news he can smuggle slaves into the country with Mitchell turning a blind eye. It's also the month Bowen sells off his $10,000 of goods to the Creeks. Once he finished that off, he went to visit South Carolina, where he had friends, and passed through Augusta on the way. Augusta is home to Andrew Erwin, an Erwin of Erwin, Groce, & Co. Then he's at Savannah where he meets James Erwin, another Erwin of the aforementioned. He learns you can make a lot of money trading at Amelia Island and gets $25,000 from James to buy sugar and coffee.
Bowen went down to Florida and damned if sugar and coffee were just too gosh-darned high. He's all set to go home, but he misses his ship "accidentally". Damn the luck. While he's waiting for another boat, a ship full of slaves arrives at Amelia, 110 in the hold of a pirate named Aury. Bowen has that sugar and coffee money just burning a hole in his pocket, so he's "induced to change the subject of his speculation" and buys the people. The purchase takes place on October 18.
Bowen doesn't want to move all those people then and there, so he picks out the sixty or so best of the lot, boards the rest, and sets out by an Indian trail from St. Augustine to the Flint River. Bowen says he intended to go to West Florida, got got worried about the security of his human property. He strikes off into the wild and gets to about sixty miles south of the Agency before hitting the Flint. There he gets news of the Seminole War and is scared all over again. Also he ran low on food. So he just has to go to the Creek Agency, where he arrives in the first week of December
having travelled, by chance, over the exact route which Loving states General Mitchell to have indicated to him
You can believe Bowen lying or you can believe the men he hired to help him move the slaves. They understood themselves as engaged to move Bowen's slaves to the Creek Agency, which they did. On arrival at the agency, where per Bowen's story no one should have expected them, they built housing for the slaves on Mitchell's land and set them to work.