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Auction: 400 - Coins, Commemorative Medals and Stock Certificates - e-Auction
Lot: 395

Importing and Exporting Company of Georgia. Certificate for 10 Shares at $1,000 each, Savannah, June 12, 1863. No. 525. Signed by G.B. Lamar as president. Gazaway Bugg Lamar (1798-1874), cotton and shipping merchant, slave owner, blockade runner and steamboat pioneer, was the first person to use a prefabricated iron steamboat on local rivers. As General Sherman's troops approached Savannah in December 1864, Lamar took President Lincoln's loyalty oath in return for the promise that all his property rights would be restored - a high proportion of cotton in the city seized by Sherman belonged to Lamar. After the war, Lamar was arrested as a suspect in the assassination of Lincoln and held in Washington, D.C. for three months. Upon returning to Savannah, he tried to reclaim unsuccessfully his cotton from warehouses in Georgia and Florida. He was arrested and convicted by a Reconstruction military court of attempting to take government property and bribing a government official. The sentence was commuted by President Andrew Johnson shortly before his term ended. Lamar spent years trying to get compensation for his confiscated cotton, finally receiving a government settlement of $579,343.71 in 1874. He died six months later in Brooklyn, NY. Steamship top center, on the left, a sailor seated on a dock. Small edge nip lower right. Good Fine and Rare.

Estimate
$1,000 to $1,500

Starting price
$600