He also worked as a trader of financial instruments, specie, and stocks, and as a land agent, with a special interest in selling Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas real estate to speculators and settlers.

C. F. Hatcher started working as a slave trader when he was 16 years old, and became wealthy harvesting people from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, and transporting them south for resale to cotton and sugar planters.

Beard, Joseph Bruin, and Thomas Foster, Hatcher has been described as one of the "more notorious" slave traders working in New Orleans in the decade immediately preceding the American Civil War.

[4] He is believed to be the son of Charles Hatcher of Caswell County, North Carolina and Norfolk, Virginia, and an unidentified mother.

[10] North Carolina non-resident C. F. Hatcher could be found in Natchez, Mississippi in 1838, where he placed a newspaper ad informing the community that he had reopened the exchange office once run by G. Morgan in the Main Street auction house of Mr. F. H. Dolbear: "All kinds of money bought and sold.

[13] At Christmas 1839, a landowner named William Wynn placed a newspaper ad in the Mississippi Free Trader listing C. F. Hatcher in Natchez, Mississippi as the broker of record for the planned sale or lease of two enslaved men with horse-training expertise "both of whom were brought up in my possession and having been accustomed to horses, I prefer indulging them to placing them on cotton farm on Red River, where they are at this time destined.

[19] Again, it is not clear whether this is the father or the son, but in 1841 "counsel representing Charles Hatcher and Jason Andrews sued the Ocean Insurance Company for eight human cargoes valued at $3,300.

[22] In October 1847, an unidentified "negro child" who was the legal property of "Hatcher & Willison (traders)" died in Natchez and was buried under the authority of the Adams County sexton.

[1] Also in 1850 Hatchet dissolved his partnership with George Evans in Natchez,[24] and announced that he was an agent for "scrip for lands forfeited to the General Government prior to the year 1820".

[31] As one historian explained, "As the domestic slave trade boomed, the world of private jailing opened new entry level employment opportunities in traders' pens.

"[32] Hatcher parlayed the "fixed wage and limited liability" of work as slave jailor in a "more prosperous career in the exchange of human flesh".

[34] In November 1858 Hatcher advertised 30 slaves "just received, consisting of Field Hands, House Servants, Seamstresses, Mechanics, Cooks, Washers, Ironers, etc etc.

[2] Hatcher was dually enumerated in 1860, and was also listed as a resident of Livingston Parish, Louisiana, with real estate valued at $3,000, and personal wealth of $5,000.

His pride was his new and very commodious show-room...To his establishment all might come with their slaves, get board and lodging and find buyers—exactly as drovers and ranchmen bring their carloads of steers or sheep to the stockyards and live at the drover-hotels.

"[41]Visitors to Hatcher's slave pen "might consult the list which was constantly posted at the door 'showing the ages, qualifications, etc., of the negroes on hand.

[49] Hatcher continued this business into 1866, against a background of court proceedings and rulings in lawsuits filed against him, which had either been triggered by the circumstances of the war or predated it but had been delayed until the military and political situation settled.

[10] As his son summarized his career some 20 years after his death, C. F. Hatcher had spent his life "carrying [people] from Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, to New Orleans.