Remains of the Clotilda are discovered in southern Alabama
The remains of the last slave ship to arrive in America are found, near Africatown
IT BEGAN WITH a bet. Timothy Meaher, a rich plantation owner, thought he could defy a decades-old federal ban on importing Africans as slaves. He was right. On July 9th 1860 the Clotilda, a two-masted schooner whose journey Meaher financed, docked in Mobile Bay. It was the last ship to bring enslaved Africans to America. Less than five years after its arrival, the Union defeated the Confederacy—which seceded from the United States to preserve slavery in the South—in America’s civil war.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Diving into the wreck”
United States June 1st 2019
- Texan politicians put money into sensible policies
- Floods and storms are altering American attitudes to climate change
- How should America fight the next downturn?
- Remains of the Clotilda are discovered in southern Alabama
- Seven American states have criminalised FGM this year
- The sociology of country music lyrics
- Nemesis Pelosi
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