Meredith Calhoun

Meredith Calhoun (c. 1805 – March 14, 1869) was an American landowner and slaveholder, known for owning some of the largest plantations in the Red River area north of Alexandria, Louisiana. His workers were enslaved African Americans. Calhoun played a major role in the inter-regional slave trade of the American South, acting as a broker for the purchase and sale of thousands of enslaved persons.

Biography

Calhoun and his wife Mary Taylor Calhoun inherited her paternal grandfather's land and slaves in Alabama and Louisiana. The Louisiana property, on the right bank of the Rigolette Du Bon Dieu, had a steamboat landing that became known as Calhoun's Landing and eventually, during Reconstruction, as the county seat of Grant Parish, named Colfax, named for Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax respectively. An 1842 advertisement for "valuable cotton land" (in the form of a pair of Alabama plantations from Smith's estate) reported that Calhoun lived in Huntsville during the summer and in New Orleans during the winter.

In 1836 an enslaved man in his 30s named Ransom, who had formerly been legally owned by the John Taylor estate, had gone missing and was thought to be "perhaps now lurking about Judge Wm. Smith's or Mr. Meredith Calhoon's plantations in Dallas or Autauga county." In 1840 Calhoun placed a runaway slave ad in a Huntsville newspaper seeking to recover Charles, "an excellent plasterer," about 30 years old, with notices also placed in Tuscaloosa, Louisville, and Nashville papers. While trying to sell the south Alabama plantations of his late grandfather-in-law, Judge Wm. Smith, in 1842, he stated that he lived in Huntsville during the summer and New Orleans in the winter.

Calhoun moved some of his land and slaves into sugar agriculture and production in the 1840s, with local newspaper reporting, "Several planters of the parish of Rapides are now in successful operation in the manufacture of sugar, which is pronounced by competent judges to be equal to the sugar of the Mississippi coast or lower Louisiana, both in quality and yield. The highest plantation engaged in its culture on Red River is at its confluence with the Bon Dieu, that of Meredith Calhoun, Esq., who has erected a most magnificent brick house and purgery more than 300 feet (91 m) long, and will this year make some 200 hhds. of sugar. We understand he is preparing seed extensively for the next season, when it is contemplated that his plantation alone will turn out from 700 to 1000 hhds. Thus a new agricultural era will arise on Red River." In 1847 New Orleans papers reported that Calhoun's slaves in Rapides Parish had planted 1,000 acres of sugarcane that year and that Calhoun owned "one of the largest sugar houses in the state." In 1851, a cholera outbreak killed 10 percent of the 700 people enslaved by Calhoun on four plantations in the Red River district of Louisiana. In addition to nearly 70 slaves, the doctor and an overseer died. In February 1855, the steamboat R. M. Jones delivered a consignment of 1,240 bales of cotton from Calhoun's Landing to Washington Jackson and Co., a cotton factor in New Orleans.

The Calhouns were exceptionally wealthy. As retold by an Alabama newspaper in 1911, "In those days when millionaires were not so plentiful, the fortune of the Calhouns was considered enormous. They became patrons of art, spending most of their time in foreign travel, journeying in their own traveling coach, one of the most luxurious of that age before Pullman cars were in use. For twenty-five years or more, except for occasional visits to their American home to look after large interests in Alabama and Louisiana, the Calhouns resided abroad."

American Civil War

In February 1861, Meredith Calhoun "of Georgia" was one of several Southerners presented to Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. In October 1861 the Huntsville Democrat newspaper reported that Calhoun had returned from Paris where he had sought to promote the interests of the Confederate States government: "The friends of Mr. Meredith Calhoun were agreeably surprised by his arival here, one day last week, in good health and spirits, after an abence of over twelve months in Paris. He evaded espionage, and run the gauntlet of Northern rebel hunters, by studiously ignoring the English language after his arival in Canada, and communicating with persons of the English tongue through his French attendant, who speaks English pretty well, and acted as his interpreter. He brings intelligence of the rapid progress of the public opinion Confederate in favor of government, the recognition since our victory at Manassas. As he passed through London, he says Mr. Yancey told him he anticipated the breaking of the blockade by England and France between the 15th of October and the 15th November, at farthest, in which opinion Mr. C., whose opportunities for acquiring information very favorable, fully concurs."

As of June 1862 Calhoun's house in Huntsville had been occupied by the U.S. Army which had used it as a field hospital; news reports stated that "this mansion cost $50,000, contains a large and handsome collection of paintings, statuary, &c, including some rare specimens of Mosaic tables, a facsimile of the celebrated Warwick vase, &c., and that the grounds are laid out in parterres, with elaborate elegance, It is to be hoped that these will be spared from vandal depredations." Generally known as the Calhoun House, this had originally been constructed as property of Calhoun's father-in-law, Smith, and together with the gardens and outbuildings took up a whole block "bounded by Randolph, Enstis, Greene and Lincoln streets."

In February 1864 the Huntsville paper reported that 30 men who had been enslaved by Calhoun had been "conscribed" into the U.S. Army.

Simon Legree?

There have been reports dating to the 19th century that author Harriet Beecher Stowe based the character of Simon Legree in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) on Calhoun. She depicted Legree as a cruel slave owner, and the character's name has become synonymous with greed and cruelty.

Art collection

In 1910 a Huntsville woman sold the "Meredith Calhoun collection" of art to Eli P. Clark of Los Angeles.

• “Mother of the Gracchi,” Guiseppe Sabotelli, 1837.
• “Tasso Reading Poems,” Sabotelli, 1837.
• “Pool of Bethesda,” by Droosch-Sloot, 1633, signed by the artist
• “Coliseum at Rome,” artist unknown.
• “Ruins in Greece,” artist unknown
• “Sunset," artist unknown.
• “Travelers,” artist unknown
• “Storm at Sea,” artist unknown
• “Persian Sybil,” after Giochino.
• “Madonna and Child,” after Murillo.
• "Holy Family,” a copy after Raphael, known as De la Impanala.
• “Holy Family,” a copy on wood after Raphael.
• “Madonna and Child,” a copy on wood after Raphael, known as De la Sedia.
• “Coronation of tho Virgin,” copy after Raphael.
• “Holy Family.” artist unknown, contained in fine Florentine frame.
• “Fruit Girl,” after Titian, in fine Florentine frame.
• “Lavinia,” after Titian.
• “Fortune Tellers,” after Caravogia
• “Gamesters,” after Caravogia.
• “Crucifixion of St. Andrews,” after Carlo Dolci.
• “Prayer,” an original by Carlo Dolci.
• “Aurora,” after Guido Reni.
• “Michael and the Dragon,” artist unknown.
• “Prayer,” an original marble statute by Bartolini.
• “Paris Throwing the Apple,” an original by Thomas Crawford, Rome, 1837.
• Bust of Washington by Thomas Crawford.
• Head of Ceres, a bust by Tadolini
• “Venus of the Bath,” after Canova.
• “Venus of the Box,” a statue after Canova.
• Two pieces of bronze by C. Troulllard, entitled "Pluto and Cerebus” and "Neptune.”
• One large Florentine mosaic table set in solid brass with brass pedestal and base.