William J. Minor

Minor (January 27, 1808 – September 18, 1869) was an American planter, enslaver, and banker in the antebellum Southern United States.

Educated in Philadelphia, he lived at the Concord plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, and served as the second President of the Agricultural Bank.

[3] He corresponded via mail with his overseers regularly, sending them precise instructions while living in Natchez himself.

[3] During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, Minor supported the Union and opposed secession, as he believed that would be bad for the sugar industry.

[3] Minor was arrested by U.S. forces with his son Henry in Houma in 1862; they were released a week later in New Orleans.

[6] Meanwhile, U.S. Army troops seized sugar and molasses from Minor's Hollywood and Southdown plantations, under the pretext that it had been deserted, even though overseers and servants were there.

Generals Benjamin Butler (1818–1893) and Lorenzo Thomas (1804–1875), whose forces protected Concord (his Adams County, Mississippi, plantation) on September 29, 1863, and on March 10, 1864.

[1] Both during and after the war, Minor asked for reparations for the financial losses he experienced due to the requisition of commodities by the U.S. Army forces, to no avail.

[6] By 1865, Minor agreed to pay one-third of the crop profit at the Waterloo Plantation to the laborers he had once enslaved.

[6] Minor supported Abraham Lincoln, whom he called "the most conservative & ablest man in the Washington Government.