Burwell Lee

[This is an edited excerpt of Dr. Jennie K. Williams's forthcoming book, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Coastwise Traffic of Enslaved Persons to New Orleans, 1820-1860. Please do not cite or circulate without permission.]

On the first of April, 1825, Burwell Lee was found guilty of burglary by the court of Caroline County, Virginia. Burwell may have been enslaved prior to this moment, or he may have been free. The court’s sentence would have been the same either way, and that sentence was death.

An act passed by the Virginia State Legislature in 1819, however, authorized the state to “commute” the death sentences of both free and enslaved African Americans by selling them as slaves to purchasers who were then legally required to transport the [then or always] enslaved person(s) out of the state. As a result, most of the individuals sold by the state of Virginia were purchased by professional human traffickers, or “slave traders.”

The trader who bought Burwell Lee was Henry King. Beginning in the early 1820s, King operated out of the Eagle Hotel on E Street in downtown Richmond. King took custody of Lee on April 1, 1825, and nine months later, on January 12, 1826, he sent him to New Orleans aboard the schooner Robert Burns. The manifest of that voyage is the last known record of Lee’s life.

Burwell Lee’s experience was far from unique. Between June of 1816 and January of 1842, the Virginia State Penitentiary received a total of 441 prisoners from local jails throughout the state. All had been sentenced to death for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder. Of the 441, fourteen eventually received pardons. Another fourteen died at the penitentiary. The remaining 413 people were sold, like Burwell Lee, as slaves–including at least thirty who had been legally free prior to their conviction.

The practice of selling off free and enslaved people who had been convicted of crimes effectively reimbursed the state for compensation payments made to slaveholders who had “lost” their human property through the legal processes of conviction and sentencing. This system was thus doubly profitable for traders who, in exchange for transporting Black people out of the state, could submit claims to be reimbursed by the state for the expenses of transporting the people they acquired this way to the deep south. As a result, traders managed to accrue all the usual profits of human trafficking while avoiding its largest expense: transportation.

Of course, this system generated enormous wealth for the state. To date, Virginia has never formally acknowledged, apologized for, or attempted to redress this practice.