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2 results

Williams' Gang
  • A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts
  • Jeff Forret
  • Published online:
    16 January 2020
    Print publication:
    16 January 2020
  • William H. Williams operated a slave pen in Washington, DC, known as the Yellow House, and actively trafficked in enslaved men, women, and children for more than twenty years. His slave trading activities took an extraordinary turn in 1840 when he purchased twenty-seven enslaved convicts from the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond with the understanding that he could carry them outside of the United States for sale. When Williams conveyed his captives illegally into New Orleans, allegedly while en route to the foreign country of Texas, he prompted a series of courtroom dramas that would last for almost three decades. Based on court records, newspapers, governors' files, slave manifests, slave narratives, travelers' accounts, and penitentiary data, Williams' Gang examines slave criminality, the coastwise domestic slave trade, and southern jurisprudence as it supplies a compelling portrait of the economy, society, and politics of the Old South.

  • Chapter 2 - The Yellow House

  • Jeff Forret, Lamar University, Texas
  • Book:
    Williams' Gang
    Published online:
    16 January 2020
    Print publication:
    16 January 2020, pp 34-54

  • Summary

    William H. Williams arrived in Washington, D.C., and set up his own, independent slave–trading operations in the mid–1830s, shortly before the Panic of 1837 brought an abrupt end to the "flush times" of the preceding years. Slave narratives and travelers’ accounts document the visibility of Williams’ slave pen, dubbed the Yellow House, and the horrors experienced by those held captive inside.