A fatal reversal for 'Lucky Nat'

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HANGING CAPTAIN GORDON: THE LIFE AND TRIAL OF AN AMERICAN SLAVE TRADER

By Ron Soodalter, Atria Books, 318 pages, illus., $26

The American Civil War had more than its share of scenes fraught with symbolism, from the capitulation of Fort Sumter to Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. An episode that should be similarly well remembered is the trial and execution of Nathaniel Gordon, who in 1862 had the dubious distinction of being the only American ship captain to be executed for the crime of slave trading. For the first time, laws that equated slave trading with piracy were implemented to the fullest.

Slave traders were regarded with contempt in all parts of the United States, and because most of them were New Englanders, the South was free to agree. Gordon, too, was a Downeaster, but there was nothing special about him. A 34-year-old native of Maine, he was short, muscular and dark-bearded.

He had an adoring young wife and a 2-year-old son. He conveyed the air of a man used to giving orders, as indeed he was. In the spring of 1860, he was about to embark on his third voyage to purchase African slaves. In slave-trading circles, he was known as "Lucky Nat."

Laws against slave trading had been on the books almost since the United States had become independent, but as the author points out at length, they never had been enforced seriously. American consuls routinely provided clearance papers for ships designed as slavers. A slaver had many reasons to worry off the African coast, but prosecution was low on the list.

In early 1860, Gordon took command of the 477-ton, three-masted Erie in Havana and headed for West Africa. By August, he had reached the mouth of the Congo River, where he loaded nearly 900 Africans, paying for them with whiskey. The slaves were given a cursory physical and then jammed into the lower deck in chains.

The Erie was just leaving the Congo estuary when it was spotted by a U.S. frigate, the Mohican, part of the American squadron on the lookout for slavers. A Navy boarding party captured the Erie and put Gordon under arrest.

An American officer was appalled by what he found aboard the Erie. The captives had been packed "wonderfully close," he wrote, with the hatches locked in the equatorial heat. The slaves had been allowed no food or water, and "in their hunger and thirst, they had become clamorous for relief. ... The stench from the hold was fearful."