Henry F. Slatter

Henry Flewellen Slatter was a 19th-century American slave trader. Among other things, Slatter escorted coastwise shipments of people from slave jail of his father Hope H. Slatter in Baltimore to the slave depot of his uncle Shadrack F. Slatter in New Orleans. H. F. Slatter died of tuberculosis in his father's home state of Georgia.

Biography

Henry F. Slatter was Hope H. Slatter's son and Shadrack F. Slatter's nephew. Historians believe he was an integral part of the Slatters' interstate trading operation between Baltimore, Maryland and the New Orleans slave market. Henry F. Slatter appears as "shipper" on a number of Baltimore to New Orleans slave-ship manifests.
In April 1845, Henry Slatter sold 15 people to Mrs. Helene A. Olivier Reggio in New Orleans. In August 1845, three menJonathan Means Wilson, William H. Williams of the Yellow House in Washington, D.C., and Henry Slatterall placed identical ads in the New Orleans Bee stating that Mr. Edward Barnett was their "duly authorized agent" while they were gone from the city. Historian Alexandra J. Finley describes Barnett as a "go-to notary for slave traders" who worked at one time as an agent for Wilson.
According to the Digital Library of American Slavery database of race and slavery petitions:
Henry Slatter was listed as a negro trader in the 1846 New Orleans city directory, working at the corner of Esplanade and Moreau. In October 1846, H. F. Slatter of 56 Esplanade in New Orleans advertised a horse, buggy, and harness, offered for sale "on account of departure." From January 1847 to June 1847, H. F. Slatter ran a "Cash for Five Hundred Negroes" in Baltimore papers that was later noticed in abolitionist William I. Bowditch's Slavery and the Constitution book of 1849. In September 1848 he bought Montgomery Hall in Montgomery, Alabama. Slatter died of consumption in Macon County, Georgia, in 1849 at age 31. He is buried in company with a number of other Slatters in Clinton Cemetery, Jones County, Georgia.