Name/Title
Farmer's Almanack and slave trader's cardEntry/Object ID
2023.9.1Scope and Content
"The Farmer's Almanack, Calculated on a New and Improved Plan, For the Year of our Lord, 1817," Number XXV, by Robert B. Thomas, Printed in Boston for West and Richards. Attached to the almanack by a thread loop is a business card for Nathan Bedford Forrest, "Dealer in Slaves," No. 87 Adams Street, Memphis, Tennessee. On the reverse of the card is "George E. Tuxbury / Union / S.C. /1866"Dimensions
Height
6-7/8 inWidth
4-1/8 inInterpretative Labels
Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
It is a mystery as to why a slave dealer's business card came to be attached to this 1817 Farmer's Almanac. The card belonged to Nathan Bedford Forrest, who operated his slave-trading site at 87 Adams Street, the center for the slave trade in Memphis; he lived next door at 85 Adams. In the mid-1850s, Memphis emerged as a regional hub for the southern slave trade. Most of the enslaved people purchased there ended up on plantations in the Mississippi Delta or farther south. Forrest appears to have been unique among Memphis traders in his willingness to engage in the smuggling of Africans into the United States, in clear violation of federal law. In 1859, he sold seven Africans "direct from the Congo" at his yard.
Forrest made a great deal of money in the slave trade and was well respected in Memphis, becoming a city alderman in 1858. When the Civil War broke out, he went off to fight for the Confederacy. He rose through the ranks to become a cavalry general. After the war, Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869.