[8] Rutherford's slave trading business was funded in part by Rice C. Ballard, who had once been a partner in the pioneering interstate slave-trading company Franklin & Armfield.

Funneling money through Louisville banks and providing lines of credit on his New Orleans merchants, Ballard fronted Rutherford's slave trading and took part of the proceeds...On gross sales that were the modern equivalent of several million dollars annually and brought profits of about 30 percent, he also provided Ballard with a healthy return on his stake in Rutherford's business.

[12] Meanwhile, land that Rutherford had once owned in Vicksburg, Mississippi was being put up for sale by the Warren County sheriff to cover back taxes from 1841 and 1842.

[15] He wrote in a letter of December 1842 that he would be in New Orleans for the next six months,[2] which gives a suggestion of seasonality of the U.S. interstate slave trade in general and Rutherford's annual peregrinations in particular.

In 1843, Rutherford sold four boys aged 12 and 13 named Abram, Samuel, John, and Charles to William A. Powell, a planter of the Red River valley, for $1,562.50.

[20] A slave-depot advertisement placed by Rutherford in the January 26, 1847 issue of the New Orleans Times-Picayune was noticed by a British traveler named Ebenezer Davies and republished in his 1849 book, American Scenes and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States.

[23] As of 1848, Rutherford advertised to potential buyers in New Orleans, Memphis, and Natchez, Mississippi that he had slaves for sale that had been newly trafficked from Virginia and North Carolina.

[3] In 1850 an enslaved man named Madison alias Matt was seized from C. M. Rutherford by the sheriff of New Orleans as the consequence of a lawsuit and sold "in the rotunda of the City Exchange" to James McMasters for $500.

[28] Per Bancroft in Slave-Trading in the Old South, Rutherford, Thomas Foster, and C. F. Hatcher "belonged to a class that, theoretically at least, preferred the usual two and one-half per cent commission for buying or selling for others.

"[30] In July of that year, Rutherford offered a $5 reward for the return of a six-year-old mulatto boy named Levi Franklin; he had been wearing white cotton clothing when he went missing.

"[32][33] Rutherford did another deal with Texas slavers when an enslaved man named Frank was shipped from the Lone Star State to New Orleans.

[34] Frank was hired out to do work in the city,[34] and had a 10-day bout with yellow fever during which time he was put in a "private room" for the sick at Rutherford's jail.

[35] Also in 1853, Rutherford was quoted as a reliable witness to the steamboat race between Eclipse and Shotwell, to see which ship could get from New Orleans to Louisville at a record speed.

[36] The Eclipse–Shotwell contest has been called the "most famous steamboat race before the Civil War,"[37] and Rutherford's perceived credibility may have been due in part to the strong association between the slave trade and riverine steamship traffic.

As historian Robert Gudmestad wrote: Calvin M. Rutherford, a slave dealer based in New Orleans, used steamers to communicate within his burgeoning commercial empire.

[40] In 1855, Calvin M. Rutherford sued fellow slave trader Lewis C. Robards over the dispensation of a 36-year-old enslaved woman named Emily, who was said to be worth $500.

Rutherford alleged that "[Emily] had been sent to Robards' jail to be sold at a fixed price, but no sale had been made and the defendant refused to return her to the plaintiff.

[43][44] In January 1857, Rutherford advertised a $50 reward for the return of John of Natchez, a very intelligent blacksmith who had been wearing a blue satinett suit, and a black hat, and who was likely to try to take a boat out of the city.

[58] After the American Civil War, Rutherford was listed in the 1866 New Orleans city directory as a resident living at the corner of Water and Ninth.