Alexander K. Farrar

Alexander King Farrar (c. 1814–1878) was a state senator, lawyer, slaveowner, and secession convention delegate in Mississippi.[1]

Farrar was a prominent and wealthy slave owner[2] with a large plantation near Kingston, Mississippi. He held 238 people as slaves in 1860.[3][4] He represented Adams County, Mississippi in the Mississippi Senate from 1852 to 1858. He married Ann Mary Dougharty and, after her death in the 1860s, Lue Philps Lesley.[5] He was involved in investigating the murder of a plantation manager.[2][6]

Elected as a delegate to the state secession convention held in January, 1861, Farrar was an advocate of the pro-Union position. Like many wealthy Mississippi river plantation owners, Farrar feared war would put his lands and holdings of human chattel at risk.[4] During the American Civil War, Farrar was head of the local vigilance committee of white planters who feared a slave revolt. Farrar whipped people suspected of plotting an uprising or coordinating with Union troops, some of whom died from the torture.[3] Farrar and other members of his committee claimed to have hung at least 40 enslaved people during the war, another former slave claimed that Farrar hung 88 enslaved people before Union occupation of the Natchez area brought his "reign of terror" to an end.[3] Farrar faced no consequences for his wartime actions. After the war he was involved in a plan to sell part of his plantation to freedmen.[7]

Louisiana State University has a collection of his papers.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Timothy B. (2014). The Mississippi Secession Convention: Delegates and Deliberations in Politics and War, 1861–1865. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781626743663 – via Google Books.
  2. 1 2 Wayne, Michael (1990). "An Old South Morality Play: Reconsidering the Social Underpinnings of the Proslavery Ideology". The Journal of American History. 77 (3): 838–863. doi:10.2307/2078988. JSTOR 2078988.
  3. 1 2 3 Behrend, Justin (2011). "Rebellious Talk and Conspiratorial Plots: The Making of a Slave Insurrection in Civil War Natchez". The Journal of Southern History. 77 (1): 17–52. JSTOR 27919386.
  4. 1 2 Smith, Timothy B. (2014). The Mississippi Secession Convention. University Press of Mississippi.
  5. ↑ "Farrar, Alexander K. (Alexander King), 1814–1878. Social Networks and Archival Context". snaccooperative.org.
  6. ↑ Scarborough, William Kauffman (2006). Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807131558 – via Google Books.
  7. ↑ Behrend, Justin (2015). Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South After the Civil War. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820340333 – via Google Books.
  8. ↑ "Alexander K. Farrar papers, 1804–1931 (bulk 1831–1870)". researchworks.oclc.org.
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