A group of slaves suspected of brutally attacking a slave patrol in Fairfax County, Virginia, on leap day night of 1840 were placed on trial before a Virginia court of oyer and terminer, which found two of them - the brothers Alfred and Spencer – guilty and sentenced them to death for the crime. The local community divided in its response to the verdict. Whereas some whites in the area welcomed the slaves’ impending executions, others lobbied the governor for a commutation of sentence to spare their lives. Virginia governor Thomas Walker Gilmer reprieved the sentence of one of the brothers to sale and transportation outside the United States of America, but permitted the other brother to hang at the gallows.

After a protracted bidding war, William H. Williams’ agent, Rudolph Littlejohn, purchased Alfred and twenty–six other enslaved convicts out of the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, under an agreement to carry them outside the United States for sale. The convicts were conveyed to the Yellow House and confined there until marched to the coastal slaving vessel the Uncas for transport. After the slave ship set sail, Alexandria mayor Bernard Hooe, a friend of Alfred’s master, expressed his suspicions to Virginia governor Thomas Walker Gilmer that the convict slaves would be sold within the United States, contrary to Virginia law. Gilmer alerted authorities in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, to be on the lookout for Williams and his shipment of enslaved felons. When Williams arrived in Mobile Bay and explained to mayor Edward Hall that he was taking the slaves to Texas for sale, Hall denied the slave dealer entry into the city but permitted him to continue on his journey.