Louis D. DeSaussure

Louis Daniel DeSaussure (May 19, 1824 – June 20, 1888), scion of a historic and wealthy South Carolina family, was the most important and prosperous slave broker in the city of Charleston in the years immediately preceding the American Civil War.

"[2] According to scholar Michael Tadman, DeSaussure was part of the class of slave dealers "who essentially acted as auctioneers rather than as buyers and sellers in their own right.

Saussure, occupation broker, was living in parishes of St. Philip and St. Michael in the District of Charleston, in the household of his father Henry A. DeSaussure, attorney-at-law, in company with his wife and their young child, D. L.

The next prosperous "broker" earned a little more than three-fourths as much, and none of the others exceeded $5,000, which was a large business income for that time and place; half of it sufficed for a generously comfortable living.

"[12] In 1876 he called to order a "great meeting" at the Hibernian Hall in Charleston that passed a resolution refusing to pay taxes to any state government but one led by ex-Confederate general Wade Hampton III.

He was a director of the South Carolina Railroad for many years, and occupied similar positions of trust and responsibility on boards of various public companies.

In his home he was most hospitable, and delighted in those exhibitions of courtesy, which are grateful to sojourners in a strange city.After the Confederacy's defeat in the American Civil War, many "white Charlestonians displayed historical amnesia" about the institution of slavery.

"[3] The Huguenot Society, which DeSaussure joined on April 13, 1885, was apparently one of the local entities that produced post-war obituaries and biographies that scrubbed "clean the records of...leading South Carolina slave dealers.