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12016-04-05T22:37:31-07:00Calvin Schermerhorn72410f8bbde58a1e8e60023cf6749d711494714689061Chapter 3plain2016-04-05T22:37:31-07:00Calvin Schermerhorn72410f8bbde58a1e8e60023cf6749d7114947146John Craig Marsh was failing in the New York City dry goods business in 1817 when he decided to reinvent himself as a Louisiana sugar planter. To cut start-up costs he bought enslaved New Jerseyans cheaply and transported them to New Orleans illegally, taking along African-descended contract workers from New York. Marsh was an unlikely slave smuggler. The twenty-eight-year-old New Jersey native had left the family farm in Rahway and gone into the clothing business with a partner, Aaron Coe. They offered styles from Bordeaux, France, and South Carolina, among other places. Marsh and Coe also sold styling products such as beeswax. Political and economic developments upset the clothing business while opening new opportunities on the republic’s southwestern frontier. Marsh’s shift from clothing to sugar was a microcosm of that larger transformation.
