Coard: America’s only execution of a slave trader

Nathaniel Gordon, a 36 year old seaman from Portland, Maine, was in the slave shipping business. On August 7, 1860, after docking alongside the Congo (now known as the Zaire) River at Shark’s Point on the west coast of Africa, he loaded 897 African human beings consisting of 172 men, 162 women, and 563 children- all ranging from 40 year old adults to six month old infants- onto his ship called Erie. By the way, he preferred children because, as court records show, “They could not rise up to avenge his cruelties.”
Not only was such wickedness a crime against humanity, it was also surprisingly a crime against U.S. federal law, specifically the Piracy Law of 1820 that classified slave trading and also ship robbing as piracy, which was punishable by death.

Section four states that piracy includes the placing onto a ship “any negro or mulatto, not held to service… by the laws of either the states or territories of the United States with the intent to make such negro or mulatto a slave.” And section five states that piracy additionally includes the “delivering or selling (from a ship) of any negro or mulatto, not held to service… by the laws of either the states or territories of the United States with the intent to make such negro or mulatto a slave.”
The Erie was observed and later tracked down by the USS Mohican, which was part of America’s “African Slave Patrol,” on August 8, 1860 and it was forced to unload its captives at Monrovia, Liberia where a settlement established by the American Colonization Society had been set up for free Blacks from the U.S. Tragically, 30 men, women, and children died- actually were murdered due to the hellish conditions of the Erie- during the 15 day journey to Liberia.
Speaking of hellish conditions, consider how Harper’s Weekly in its February 21, 1862 edition described it: “The boat was overloaded with 897 negroes… and (was) so crowded… that… (a person) could squarely put his foot down without stepping on them. The stench was fearful and the filth… upon their persons indescribably offensive…. (They were) in great agony… (with) running sores… (and)… diseases of the most painful as well as contagious character (that) affected the entire load. Nastiness and wretchedness reigned supreme.”
Following a hung jury and retrial in New York City federal court and based on overwhelming evidence against Gordon, despite the zealous representation of his “Dream Team” featuring top-notch lawyers headed by former judge Gilbert Dean, he was found guilty on November 9, 1861 with an execution date set for February 7, 1862.
And while ordering that sentence on November 9, trial Judge William Davis Shipman said to Gordon: “… Think of the cruelty and wickedness of seizing nearly a thousand fellow beings, who never did you harm, and thrusting them beneath the decks of a small ship, beneath a burning tropical sun, to die of disease or suffocation or be transported to distant lands, and be consigned, they and their posterity, to a fate far more cruel than death. Think of the sufferings of the unhappy beings who you have crowded on to the Erie, of their helpless agony and terror as you took them from their native land…. Remember that you showed mercy to none… (including) helpless children…. The wicked shall not go unpunished.”

Gordon’s many supporters, including wealthy businessmen, petitioned President Abe Lincoln for a pardon. And although Lincoln did not believe in racial equality, he did oppose slavery (primarily for political and military reasons). And he responded to their request by stating, “… I am kindly enough… and can be moved to pity and to pardon the perpetrator of almost the worst crime that the mind of man can conceive or the arm of man can execute. But any man who… can rob Africa of her… (people) to sell into interminable bondage, I will never pardon.”
Lincoln then rescheduled the execution date for February 21, 1862 at 2:30 p.m. But on the evening of February 20, Gordon cowardly attempted suicide using strychnine that a supporter had snuck into his Tombs jail cell. However, although it made him sick, he didn’t die because physicians were immediately rushed to the scene. And because of that attempt and in order to avoid a successful suicide, his execution time was sped up from 2:30 p.m. until Noon.
At 12:20 p.m. on February 21, 1862, Gordon was escorted to the Tombs’ yard where he was placed on the scaffold. After requesting and receiving a glass of brandy, a hood was placed over his head as he spinelessly cried out that he had not been treated fairly by the prosecutor. His protestations were ignored. The lever was pulled. His body dropped. His neck broke. He was left swinging and hanging for 15 minutes. And after being cut down and placed on a table, he was declared dead at 12:45 pm.
Although I thought and still think I oppose the death penalty for several reasons, including but not limited to my refusal to empower the state and federal governments with the legal authority to kill people- even evil people, I gotta admit that the execution of slave traders and slave holders seems like perfect justice. What do you think?
P.S. Don’t rest in peace, Nathaniel Gordon. Instead, suffer in hell.