He also served briefly as a judge (possibly for just one special case), invested in cotton agriculture, speculated in real estate, engaged in large-scale enslavement, and advocated for pro-slavery causes.

Ballard's business records at the University of North Carolina provide valuable insights into American slavery and the slave trade, shedding light on Boyd's personal and professional endeavors.

To the splendor acquired by the Widow White, the Boyds added signed bronzes, figures in marble, and sets of oils that covered many walls.

While cash crops like cotton and sugar were cultivated on distant labor-intensive plantations, these suburban estates served primarily as showcases of opulence.

[25] On January 17, 1844, a free person of color named William Johnson made an entry in his journal stating: "Baylor Winn brought up the three servants belonging to Judge Boyd.

During an 1848 Whig Party political gathering, Boyd contended, as reported by the Natchez Mississippi Free Trader, that "Slavery ... was neither an institution nor strictly speaking property.

[36] Following the election, Boyd gained widespread attention in 1848 when his account of a casual conversation with fellow Mississippi planter Zachary Taylor spread nationwide.

Boyd recounted Taylor's belief that the appropriate response to any efforts by free states to abolish slavery nationwide would be "drawing the sword and throwing away the scabbard".

[39] Also that year, Boyd was among several financial supporters of Narciso López's freelance military invasion of Cuba, where American pro-slavery activists hoped to advance the expansion of their peculiar institution.

[46][47] Boyd's most significant political action of the decade could have been a comprehensive and scholarly speech where he upheld the Compromise of 1850 as constitutionally justified and strategically advantageous for proponents of slavery.

Additionally, he posited that slavery in the United States was attributable to Britain's actions while also alleging that abolitionism was a component of a British conspiracy against the U.S.[48] Most importantly, he opposed secession (which increasingly— or perhaps continuously since the Nullification Crisis— was being advocated by the South Carolinian political contingent led by "Mr. Rhett").

A citizen of America may go to the territories acquired from Mexico, with his wife and children, his servants, whether bound for a term of years by contract, or held for life to service and labor under the laws of a State, without fear that he will be divorced, his offspring bastardized, and his relation of master destroyed by any fancied rule of national law ... we considered we had a full right above as well as below 36° 30', and the concession was, in being willing to divide the property and take half in absolute ownership, instead of an undivided interest in the whole, liable to be interfered with by anti-slavery restrictions.In 1860, Ballard died, and Boyd was appointed as the administrator of his estate.

[56] In October 1862, "Boyd, S. S." appears on the muster roll of a Confederate militia as a member of Company B, "District Composing all North Side of Main Street" in Natchez.

[59] "RETALIATION—A few days since, a squad of Rebels came to our lines under Flag of Truce having in custody Mr. J. Lengsfield with his wife and six children, who had been, as it appears after the usual routine of imprisonment and confiscation of goods, banished "not to return to the Confederate States during the war."

After all preparations were made for the departure, the friends of Judge Boyd proposed to pay five thousand dollars for the benefit and support of refugees and citizens who, like Mr. Lengsfield, may be plundered and banished from rebel neighborhoods for being loyal to the United States flag and Government.

The result is Judge Boyd remains at home, and the new Mayor begins his poor fund, for the winter, with five thousand dollars in the city treasury.

[65][a] In 1907, a history reported that "Arlington, on the edge of the town, and approached by a winding avenue of water oaks, was the former home of Judge S. S. Boyd and famed for its paintings and fine old library; it is now owned by his daughter, Mrs. Wm.

[20] In Harnett T. Kane's telling, "Years later Arlington was mortgaged, and there came a foreclosure of building and furnishings...it lost its owner but stayed intact, to the last terra cotta figure and final crystal pendant.

The owner died, the widow left, again the building stood empty; and tales rose once more of Jane White's spirit, gliding along the damp floors.

"[67] According to descendants, as reported in Florence Ridlon's A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D:[68] The old judge was so fond of James' mother that his wife forced him to send her away to a property he owned up near Vicksburg.

"[68] In the 21st century, Boyd has gained notoriety through the preserved correspondence of his business partner, the Rice C. Ballard Papers held in the Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina.

I would do anything on earth to relieve her from her present position .... Only listen to the dictates of your own kindly nature, and you will grant the request, which I make as a matter of favor to me, and goodness to her, and as another memorial of your generosity.

[73] According to historian Sharony Green: Duffield serves as further proof that white men of this generation acted inconsistently and deliberately in their efforts to enhance and protect certain enslaved individuals, specifically, women and children in whom they had earlier had sex and along the way invested some measure of emotion.

[71]Similarly, although Boyd seems to have been the perpetrator of the violence in the case of Maria, in another instance, he fired an overseer he deemed a "monster of cruelty," who was "going on at such a rate that Steele had to protect the negroes".

According to the collection finding aid at the University of North Carolina, on May 6, 1853, Virginia, who was pregnant, wrote to Ballard from a trafficker's yard in Texas, begging for his intervention and help to prevent her sale (folder 191).

My God is it possible that any free born American would brand his character with such a stigma as that, but I hope before this he will relent & see his error for I still beleave that he is possest of more honer than that.

I no too that you have influence and can assist me in some measure from out of this dilemma and if you will God will be sure to reward you, you have a family of children & no how to sympathize with others in distress .... Is it possible that such a change could ever come over the spirit of any living man as to sell his child that is his image.

I have written to the Old Man in such a way that the letter cant fail to fall in his hands and none others I use every precaution to prevent others from knowing or suspecting any thing I have my letters written & folded put into envelope & get it directed by those that dont know the Contents of it for I shall not seek ever to let any thing be exposed, unless I am forced from bad treatment &cVirginia Boyd was likely held near Natchez until the summer of 1852 when, due to some unknown consequence of her having been raped by Boyd, Ballard decided to relocate her to the Karnac plantation near Port Gibson.

"[76] Green comments that Virginia Boyd's letter "uncovers sexual relations that routinely happened, even if they were rarely discussed, between enslaved women and white men in the plantation South".

For though the work he engaged in was among the most reprehensible in pre–Civil War America and although his transparency in preserving such a detailed record of his life can hardly absolve him of that moral taint, historians owe him a debt of gratitude.