Monroe Edwards (1808 – January 27, 1847) was an American slave trader, forger, and criminal who was the subject of a well-publicized trial and conviction in 1842.

After attempting to swindle his partner out of the profits of the venture, partly with forged documents, Edwards was forced to flee the Republic of Texas to the United States.

Edwards' largest swindle involved forged letters from cotton brokers in New Orleans which he used to secure bank drafts for large sums that he then cashed.

Several sensational accounts of his offenses and trial were published after his death, and he was mentioned in Herman Melville's 1853 short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener".

By the late 1820s, Morgan had established a trading post on San Jacinto Bay near Galveston in what was then Mexican Texas.

[1][a] Unconnected with his slave trading, Edwards was arrested in 1832 as part of the Anahuac Disturbances, and was briefly imprisoned during the uprising against the Mexican government which ruled Texas.

[2][6] Edwards' next efforts in smuggling involved a new partner, Christopher Dart,[1] a lawyer from Natchez, Mississippi.

In 1835 Dart invested $40,000[7] to buy the contracts of indentured blacks in Cuba and smuggle them into Texas as slaves.

To circumvent the ban on importing slaves, traders instead reclassified them as indentured servants with 99-year contracts.

[7] After this, Edwards also established a slave market on Galveston Bay, near present-day San Leon.

Edwards then went to England, bearing forged letters of introduction from, among others, Daniel Webster[1] and the American Secretary of State, John Forsyth.

While in England, Edwards defrauded a company in Liverpool of about $20,000,[12] and then used part of the funds to repay Lord Spencer.

Tappan also sent warnings, so Edwards was unable to acquire more money in England and had returned to the United States by June 1841.

[4] The police began to search for the forger of the letters but were unsuccessful until Edwards attempted to distract their attention to an acquaintance, Alexander Powell, who happened to look much like him.

Edwards sent an anonymous letter to the New York police, stating that the forger they were hunting was sailing to England, as Powell was about to do.

[16] Another defense lawyer was John Worth Edmonds, whom Edwards paid with a forged check.

Melville used the names of contemporaneous events and people to give a contemporary feel to his short stories.

Wilkes' account is the source for the story of Kitty Clover, supposedly a slave who loved Edwards, rescued him, and followed him throughout his life.