Great Slave Auction

Slaveholder and absentee plantation owner Pierce Mease Butler authorized the sale of approximately 436 men, women, children, and infants to be sold over the course of two days.

[4] Pierce Mease Butler frequently engaged in risky business speculation, resulting in financial loss in the Panic of 1857.

[6] Savannah was chosen for the auction due to its proximity to the Butler estate and its status as a large center for slave trading.

A gang of 460 negroes, accustomed to the culture of rice and provisions, among them are a number of good mechanics and house servants, will be sold on the 2d and 3d March next, at Savannah, by J.

[17] Customers from Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana descended upon Savannah in hopes of getting good deals.

Most sold were rice and cotton field workers; others were skilled coopers, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and cooks.

[19] Mortimer Thomson (who wrote under the pseudonym "Q. K. Philander Doesticks"), a popular journalist during the time, memorialized the event.

After the sale, he wrote a long and scathing article describing the auction in the New York Tribune titled, "What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation.

"[21] Tom Pate, a Vicksburg trader, bought a man, his wife, and his two sisters at the sale with the guarantee that they were not to be separated under the auction terms.

Somers, finding out later about the sales agreement in Savannah about the families not being separated, returned the girl to Pate, demanding his money be refunded.

[22] After the slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Confederate States' defeat, some returned to Butler Island to work for wages, and some bought land in the area.