"Forrest, Jones & Co...Dealers in Slaves". The Charleston Daily Courier. Vol. LXI, No. 18, 510. Charleston, South Carolina, 17 March 1860.

A rare, 1860 newspaper advertisement for the successful slave trading business of Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877). The advertisement reads in full: "Forrest, Jones & Co., 89 Adams-Street, Memphis, Tenn., Dealers in Slaves. They Board, and Sell on Commission, and keep constantly on hand, a good assortment of Virginia, Georgia and Carolina Negros. 500 Negros Wanted. I will pay more than any other person, for No. 1 Negros, suited to the New Orleans market."

After his early life in Tennessee, Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) moved with his family to Salem, Mississippi, where he became the primary caretaker for his family upon his father's death in 1837. His early business ventures including a livery stable, a stagecoach line, and a brickyard. He also gained a reputation as a gambler and speculator. His immense pre-war wealth, however, came from the business of slave trading which he entered in 1851. Considered one of the "big four" slave traders in Memphis, he is estimated to have sold thousands of enslaved people between 1851 and 1860. Forrest brought his brothers into the business with him, and in 1860, he formed a partnership with William H. Forrest of Memphis and S.S. Jones of De Soto, Mississippi, both of whom are listed here. (Chase C. Mooney. Slavery in Tennessee. Westport, Connecticut: Negro Universities Press, 1971, pp. 49-50).

Forrest began amassing land in the late 1850s, acquiring several cotton plantations in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee. This advertisement is from near the end of his slave trading career, just a few months before he enlisted with the Confederate Army on 14 June 1861, joining the Tennessee Mounted Rifles.

[Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Emancipation, African Americana, African American History, Black History, Newspapers, Ephemera, Books, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Nathan Bedford Forrest]