Descriptive Summary | |
Title: Gazaway Bugg Lamar papers | |
Creator: Lamar, Gazaway Bugg, 1798-1874 | |
Inclusive Dates: 1822-1910 | |
Language(s): English | |
Extent: 5 Linear Feet 10 boxes | |
Collection Number: ms10 | |
Repository: Hargrett Library | |
Abstract: The collection consists of the personal and business papers of Gazaway Bugg Lamar from 1822-1910. The early records deal with Lamar's business dealings and include stock certificates, bills of sale for slaves, promissory notes, receipts, and correspondence. The bulk of the collection contains correspondence and documents relating to the case of Gazaway Bugg Lamar vs the United States of America concerning the Federal government's seizure of Lamar's assets after the Civil War. |
Gazaway Bugg Lamar was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1798. He and his family moved to Savannah in the early 1830s where he established himself in factoring, shipping, insurance, and warehousing. After the outbreak of the Civil War, he returned to Savannah from New York to regain control of his businesses. He traded extensively in guano, cotton, and tobacco, and formed a blockade running company in 1863.
After the war, he was arrested as a suspect in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and thrown in the Old Capital Prison in Washington. When released three months later, he tried to claim his cotton stored at warehouses in Georgia and Florida but was arrested for stealing government property and trying to bribe a government official. He was convicted and returned to prison until President Johnson commuted his sentence a few days before his term expired. Lamar spent the last years of his life relentlessly pursuing financial compensation for his confiscated cotton and six months before his death in 1874, Lamar won the largest judgment ever against the federal government for confiscated property - $580,000. He sought additional redress in the courts for the cotton for which he wasn't compensated and decreed in his will that his heirs continue the legal process.
The early records such as stock certificates, bills of sale for slaves, promissory notes, receipts for merchandise, and letters document Lamar's business dealings. The bulk of the later correspondence documents Lamar's attempt to recoup his losses during the war. With dogged determination he launched an eight-year legal battle which resulted in the U.S. Court of Claims granting its largest settlement ($580,000) to date, but not the full amount Lamar had claimed. Lamar died soon after, but instructed his heirs to continue the fight, which they did until 1919, when they were awarded an additional $75,000. The nature of the correspondence relating to Lamar's legal problems created an enormous collection of documents involving many layers of government bureaucracy, the exhaustive scope of which should prove invaluable to anyone wishing to understand Gazaway Bugg Lamar.
Gazaway Bugg Lamar papers, ms 10, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The University of Georgia Libraries.
Finding aid prepared on: 2009 April 9.
Related collections in this repository: Howell Cobb family papers, ms 1376 and Telamon Cuyler Collection, Series 1. Historical Manuscripts, ms 1170.
Related collections in other repositories:Records of Civil War Special Agencies of the Treasury Department, RG 366, NARA and Gazaway Bugg Lamar correspondence, MSS2616, Library of Congress.