<p>Built and licensed in Mobile, Alabama in 1855, the Clotilda (or Clotilde) was a two-masted
schooner that measured eighty six feet long by twenty three feet wide. She had a copper hull and
measured 120 tons. According to the records, the ship’s first voyage transporting cargo was on
January 25, 1856, when she departed for Havana, Cuba carrying 70,000 feet of lumber.
Throughout the next four years, the Clotilda continued to ferry goods between Mobile, domestic
ports in Texas and Louisiana, and foreign ports in Cuba and Mexico, establishing itself as a
reliable cargo vessel.</p>
<p>The Clotilda, commanded by Captain Foster, entered Mobile Bay on July 7, 1860 carrying 103
slaves from “a foreign kingdom, place, or country” fifty-two years after the United States legally
abolished the international slave trade. The information given in the Final Record Book lists 103
slaves, followed by “more or less,” as well as the date of July 7, 1860. Several books and other
publications have referenced sources that list 110 slaves and give some alternate dates: July 8
and July 9 of the same year, as well as autumn of 1859. This would make the Clotilda the last
known ship to bring slaves to the U.S., unloading her cargo just over eighteen months after the
Wanderer landed at Jekyll Island, Georgia.</p>
<p>While they do not appear to be members of the crew or sponsors of the ship, Burns Meaher and
John Dabney “reserved” a number of the slaves prior to their importation and acquired them
when they arrived in Mobile. The first summonses and writs of seizure for Meaher and Dabney
were issued on July 27, 1860; however, the orders were not executed until December 17 and 20
1860, respectively, by giving the defendants the information verbally. The returns for both writs
of seizure yielded a predictable result: the slaves were not found. Thus, the cases against Meaher
and Dabney were dismissed on January 10, 1861, just months prior to the start of the Civil War.
Of note, John M. Dabney appears again in the Mobile Circuit Court records in 1876 for a
criminal violation of the Enforcement Acts (1870-71).</p>
<p>These records in the custody of the National Archives at Atlanta provide a cursory account of the
Clotilda and its role in this significant event in U.S. history. There have been several books and
articles published that offer more details about the ship’s owner, its voyage to Africa, the land of
the slaves’ origin, their lives as slaves, and their post-emancipation lives in Mobile.</p>
