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Fontaine H. Pettis
"A Piratical Attorney" Signal of Liberty, September 15, 1841
Born	c. 1819 Orange County, Virginia, U.S.
Died	(1858-05-24)May 24, 1858 Manhattan, New York, U.S.

Fontaine H. Pettis was an 19th-century American fraudster and/or attorney who specialized in recovering fugitive slaves for enslavers prior to the American Civil War. Based in Philadelphia, and later New York City, he advertised his services in southern newspapers. He is classed by most historians of slavery as a Northern slave catcher or "slave taker" even though he boasted in advertisements of being a native of Virginia. He was also likely something of a charlatan, accused of fraud and reportedly convicted of perjury in Washington, D.C.

Biography

Pettis was reportedly a native of Orange County, Virginia. Pettis was working as attorney by 1827, at which time he married a Philadelphian named Johanna M. Grotjan. In 1828 he and a partner named J. H. Lee were soliciting subscriptions for a 450- to 500-page biography of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who had died two years earlier, at the age of 83. In 1830 he warranted a buyer-beware item in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania paper from an anonymous correspondent:

A CAUTION. Mr. CLARKE,–In the Pennsylvania Inquirer of this morning, I observe an advertisement, signed F. H. Pettis & Co; announcing their intention of publishing a newspaper in the city of Washington entitled The Washington Galaxy, and Anti-Masonic Herald. The Mr. Pettis there subscribed, is doubtless the notorious F. H. Pettis, formerly of Virginia, but for several years past a resident in and about the city o of Philadelphia, who has subsisted by obtaining money from our citizens under false pretences and against whom bills of indictment were preferred for blasphemy and defrauding a poor woman under the pretence of being an attorney. He is an accomplished swindler; the subscriber is ready to prove him such, and therefore cautions the public against paying him any money, in advance, for the Herald which he represents he intends to publish. In a similar way, he defrauded many of our city by a Prospectus of a life of Jefferson, he also applied to one gentleman to assist him in getting out a book in favour of Jackson, and at the same time to another, to aid him in publishing a book in favor of Adams. Beware! Beware!. AN ANTI-MASON.

Pettis was reportedly convicted of perjury in the District of Columbia, sentenced to prison, and then pardoned by a U.S. president. He then sent out pamphlets promising to sue anyone who mentioned it.

"Take notice, all whom it may concern!" Constitutional Whig, Richmond, Virginia, December 16, 1831

Pettis' later career took advantage of the nature of fugitive slave laws and in jurisdictional differences in the rights of individuals in various U.S. states. If Pettis got hold of a fugitive slave and could convince a court of that person's identity as escaped chattel, he was empowered to return that person's legal owner in a slave state. Thus, even reaching a "free state" like New York was no guarantee of liberty. As a rule, he would advertise in Southern papers, informing "masters who desired his services were to forward him power of attorney, a description of the runaway, 'and also a fee of $20'." If the slave was to be returned to his or her owner, that would cost an additional $100.

He was advertising for clients in Richmond, Virginia in November 1834, that "being generally known through the State, he deems references unnecessary...Persons in the South, who have, or may hereafter have, runaway slaves, expected to be in either N. York or Philadelphia, may find it to their advantage to send a minutely descriptive communication, post-paid, as above". In December 1834, "P. H." wrote a letter to The Liberator abolitionist newspaper criticizing Pettis, known from his advertisements, stating "I hope you will do all in your power to give Mr. Pettis the notoriety which he seeks, and to send his name to posterity with those of Woolfolk, Washington Robie, and Franklin & Armfield." The New York Committee of Vigiliance, a civil rights and abolition advocacy group led in part by grocer David Ruggles and later Theodore S. Wright, considered Pettis a key member of what they called the New York Kidnappers Club. The group, nominally headed by New York City Recorder Richard Riker and Third Ward constable Tobias Boudinot, also included Daniel D. Nash (whom abolitionists identified as a "pimp for slave holders"), John Lyon, and another Virginian, Edward R. Waddy. As explained by historian Leslie M. Harris:

Nash, Lyon, Waddy, and Pettis acted individually or in concert as agents for slave owners, advertising their services in southern newspapers and seizing suspected fugitives on the streets of New York. They then appeared before any federal or state judge, or more likely the local magistrate and known southern sympathizer Riker, to offer oral or written proof that the person was a slave. If the judge believed the proof, the slave catcher took the person south. Anyone interfering with this process was liable to a five-hundred-dollar fine, a suit for injuries, or both.

To some extent, Pettis was opportunistically exploiting Southern paranoia about a great Northern conspiracy against their interests. In the words of historian Calvin Schermerhorn, "To most white Southerners, abolitionists were the witches and terrorists of their age: malignant, ubiquitous, and utterly real." Pettis seems to have been acutely aware of this and by the 1840s was headlining his ads "ABOLITION" and advising his readers in the District of Columbia, "There are thousands of fugitive slaves in this city and its environs, and they continue to multiply rapidly. These being, at best, very unpopular cases in this quarter, (he having the Abolitionists, the flesh, and the devil, to contend with,) it will be necessary for those wishing to secure his services" to please send money for expenses. An 1842 article in the Green Bay Republican seemingly suggested that Pettis was exploiting the anxieties of southern slave owners for his own gain, encouraging them to believe slave stealing abolitionists were at work everywhere but he could solve their problems if they would only send him a US$20 (equivalent to $631.45 in 2023) deposit in cash. Similarly, even as Pettis was advertising his services in the Alexandria Gazette newspaper of the District of Columbia, the paper was providing its readers with a general scam warning: "Putative slave catchers, the Gazette reported, informed slaveholders that their human property had been recaptured, but could not be returned until expenses were covered. Once paid, of course, the slaveholder never heard from the northerner again."

Pettis was living in New York at the time of the 1850 census, at which time he was married and reported that he was born in Virginia about 1819. In 1854, the New York Daily Herald reported that F. H. Pettis of 35 Wall Street was a "stump candidate" for Congress. Pettis died in New York in 1858 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

References

Sources

• Crothers, A. ฀Glenn฀ (2010). "Chapter 8: The 1846 Retrocession of Alexandria Protecting Slavery and the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia". In Finkelman, Paul; Kennon, Donald R. (eds.). In the Shadow of Freedom: The Politics of Slavery in the National Capital. Part 2: The Politics of Slavery in the District of Columbia. Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1801–1877. United States Capitol Historical Society. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. pp. 141–168. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1j7x7gz. ISBN 978-0-8214-4349-1. JSTOR j.ctt1j7x7gz. LCCN 2010052956. OCLC 715301069. Project MUSE book 1936.
• Goings, Henry (2012). Schermerhorn, Calvin; Plunkett, Michael; Gaynor, Edward (eds.). Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery. Carter G. Woodson Institute Series. Introduction by Calvin Schermerhorn. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3238-5. LCCN 2011036683. OCLC 752286963. Project MUSE book 14738.
• Harris, Leslie M. (2003). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Historical Studies of Urban America. University of Chicago Press. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226317755.003.0007. ISBN 978-0-226-31773-1. LCCN 2002027144. OCLC 646067953.
• Hadden, Sally E. (2001). "Chapter 4. In Times of Tranquility: Everyday Slave Patrols". Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Harvard Historical Studies No. 138. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 105–136. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1g809mv. ISBN 9780674258013. JSTOR j.ctv1g809mv. OCLC 603622768.
• Stampp, Kenneth M. (1989) [1956]. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (Reprint ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-72307-3. LCCN 56005800. OCLC 35719168.

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Categories:

• American people
• Year of birth uncertain
• 1858 deaths