The Clotilda, the last known slave ship to arrive in the United States, slipped into Mobile Bay on July 9, 1860, decades after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed. Its secretive and illegal voyage was likely inspired by the Wanderer, another illicit slaving ship financed just two years earlier by Charles Lamar—son of Gazaway Bugg Lamar.
Though Gazaway did not take part in the Clotilda expedition, his wealth, political clout, and defiant stance toward federal law helped create the conditions that made such voyages possible. His influence enabled his son’s earlier efforts to smuggle enslaved Africans into Georgia aboard the Wanderer in 1858—an act that drew national outrage but ended in little punishment.
Today, Gazaway Bugg Lamar is buried in Alexandria’s Presbyterian Cemetery, a city far removed from the southern ports where these tragedies unfolded—yet intimately connected to the men who shaped them.
The wreck of the Clotilda was discovered in 2019, confirming what oral histories had long preserved. Its story—and the legacy of those brought aboard—was brought to light in the 2022 Netflix documentary Descendant, which follows the community of Africatown, founded by survivors of the ship.
Lamar’s grave lies among Alexandria’s most complex Civil War-era legacies—tied to commerce, conflict, and the human cost of ambition.