Thursday, November 21, 2013  The Slave Trade, 1885: George S.
Boutwell Writes Home About His Legal Cases  Brian Bixby  George
S. Boutwell’s letters to his daughter Georgianna, “Georgie,”
were not just devoted to politics. He wrote about the other
cares of his life, whether inquiring about the asparagus on his
farm at home or apologizing to Georgie for not writing on her
birthday. And he wrote about his career. Boutwell was one of the
few specialists in international law, such as it was in those
days, and was several times The Boutwell House, Groton,
Massachusetts. retained by foreign governments to act as their
agent in American legal and political matters. In 1885 Boutwell
was litigating a case of piracy!  The story began all the way
back in 1861, when a ship flying a French flag with a captain
named Latellier docked in Port Liberté, Haiti. Haitian
authorities were suspicious, and rightly so. The ship was
American, and the captain’s name wasn’t Latellier, but Antonio
Pelletier. More importantly, he had bough