Fontaine H. Pettis

Fontaine H. Pettis (May 24, 1858), often doing business as F. H. Pettis, was a 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 of being a native of Virginia. He was also likely something of a charlatan, accused of fraud in more than one circumstance, and convicted of perjury in Washington, D.C in 1831. President Andrew Jackson pardoned Pettis on the perjury charges, possibly due to political influence. Several surviving records suggest he periodically could not or would not pay his bills, and so he attempted to borrow money from wealthier acquaintances or, more often, simply defaulted on the obligation. Pettis also worked as a small-time salesman, advertising corn plasters for feet, and trying to sell a waterproofing process.

Family and early career Pettis was a native of Orange County, Virginia. He was the son of an American Revolutionary War veteran named John Pettis and his wife Martha "Patsy" (Reynolds) Pettis. He was a brother of U.S. Representative Spencer Pettis. According to historians at the University of Tennessee, Pettis was born around 1799. The 1850 census and New York City death records place his birth some 20 years later, around 1819. (The Library of Virginia finding aid to the Tazewell papers also notes that the outside of the letter is marked "John F.) Pettis" even though it is signed F. H. Pettis. In 1829, he wrote twice to newly elected president Andrew Jackson, asking to be appointed a federal district attorney somewhere in the west, and later asking for a government job generally; none was granted. In 1830, a buyer-beware item about him appeared in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania paper, written by an anonymous correspondent signing himself "Anti-Mason":

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 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. In September 1831, F. H. Pettis was in Washington, D.C., selling corn plasters for treatment of foot maladies. The following month, according to the editors of the multi-volume The Papers of Andrew Jackson:

Pettis then began agitating for a pardon, writing Jackson directly and getting other people, including seven of the jurors in his trial, to write to him explaining that the words "feloniously stolen" were not in his original statement to the magistrate but were added without his consent, thus his perjury conviction ought to be voided, etc. Citing in part the correspondence from the jurors, Jackson pardoned Pettis on November 16, 1831. Then, according to the editors of the Jackson papers, "On December 1, the Washington Daily National Journal charged that Pettis' crime of perjury was made still 'more atrocious' by its slander of John Cromwell, and that [Jackson] had pardoned this 'man branded with an infamous crime, for no other conceivable reason than because the culprit is a 'whole hog Jackson-man'. In reply, the Globe on December 3 recapitulated the grounds of the pardon stated in this order, quoting from William Hebb's and Thomas Swann's letters to [Jackson] on November 14 and 15. Cromwell wrote Globe editor F. P. Blair on December 17 that [Jackson] had 'been grossly imposed upon' concerning the facts of the case, and that Pettis was 'an imposter' and 'a most abandoned character' who had never intended to pay his board and whose presence had driven out his other boarders."

Following Pettis' conviction on perjury charges in the District of Columbia, sentence to prison, and pardon by a U.S. president, Pettis mailed out pamphlets promising to murder "without form or ceremony" anyone who mentioned the case in public. This pamphlet appears to be the seven-page document recorded in the Bibliotheca Americana as item w.61301 "PETTIS (F. H.) Letter to the People of the United States, Nov. 30, 1831. By F. H. Pettis. Washington. 1831." The American Antiquarian Society may hold a copy in their library in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Slave catcher Abolitionist, newspaper editor, and future U.S. Representative John French takes the measure of Fontaine Pettis in his father-in-law's newspaper, Herald of Freedom (The Liberator, September 17, 1841) Pettis' later career as a slave catcher 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 living in a free state, and could convince a court of that person's identity as escaped chattel, he was empowered to return them to that person's legal owner in a slave state. Thus, even reaching a "free state" like New York was no guarantee of liberty for a freedom-seeking American slave. As a rule, Pettis would advertise in Southern papers, instructing "masters who desired his services...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.

Pettis seemingly relocated to New York around 1833. 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 by Theodore 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 Harris:

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 of Wisconsin 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 promising could solve their problems if they would only send him in cash, from which he "has already raised a pretty handsome sum". 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."

In 1841, New York refectory owner named Moses Leach was attacked by Pettis when Leach asked that he pay his past-due bill for $125 in meals. Pettis was arrested and charged with assault. The abolitionist press took notice.

Later life Throughout 1843, Pettis was marketing something called the "Nassau Principle of Water-Proving Cloth," offering a local license for the waterproofing process to all comers. Pettis was living in New York at the time of the 1850 census, at which time he was married to an Englishwoman named Sarah. Abolitionist Emily Pierson quoted from one of Pettis' slave-catcher ads in her 1851 novel Jamie Parker, the Fugitive. 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 Green-Wood Cemetery.