Background
Stephen Duncan was born on March 4, 1787 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Stephen Duncan was born on March 4, 1787 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Dickinson College.
He became the wealthiest cotton planter in the South prior to the American Civil War, and in 1860 was the second-largest slave owner in the country. He received a medical degree from Dickinson College. In 1808, shortly before the War of 1812, Duncan moved as a young man to Natchez, Mississippi Territory, a developing river town that was important to trading along the Mississippi River.
In the antebellum South, Natchez became a thriving city thanks to the booming cotton industry.
Duncan purchased Auburn plantation from Lyman Harding in 1827. In Natchez, he worked as a banker and planter.
He served as the President of the Bank of Mississippi. Duncan owned the following cotton and sugar plantations: L"Argent, Camperdown, Carlisle, Duncan, Duncannon, Duncansby, Ellisle, Homochitto, Middlesex, Oakley, Rescue, Reserve, Attakapas, and Saragossa.
Duncan sold his crops through the merchant firm Washington, Jackson & Company in New Orleans, instructing them to sell it through their subsidiary Todd, Jackson & Company in Liverpool, England.
The revenue derived from the cotton and sugar sales would then go to Charles P. Leverich & Company, a bank headquartered in New New York His plantations yielded returns of United States$150,000 every year. As a result of these financial transactions, Duncan became the richest cotton planter in the South before the war.
He reinvested his money in Northern railroad securities and in Midwestern public lands.
In the 1850s, he owned over 1,000 slaves, making him the largest resident slave holder in Mississippi. By 1860, Duncan"s ownership of 858 slaves in Issaquena County made him second nationally to the estate of Joshua John Ward (1800-1853) of South Carolina, which controlled 1,130.
In 1830, Duncan, along with planter James Brown, a former sugar planter and United States Senator from Louisiana, purchased 400 acres (16 km2) of land in the Huron Tract in Ontario, Canada, to establish the Wilberforce Colony of free American blacks. Most came from Cincinnati, Ohio, fleeing discrimination and especially a violent riot in 1829.
In the 1830s, prior to the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and together with major slave owners Isaac Ross (1760-1838), Edward McGehee (1786-1880), John Ker (1789-1850), and educator Jemeriah Chamberlain (1794-1851), president of Oakland College, Duncan co-founded the Their goal was to relocate (repatriate) free blacks and newly-freed slaves to the colony of Liberia on the African continent.
The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society, but it focused on freedmen in Mississippi, a large slave state. During the Civil War, Duncan opposed secession and the Confederate States Army. As a result, he was ostracized by other Southerners.
He had investments worth $1,060,000 unrelated to his plantations, and he would be able to live comfortably regardless of the outcome of the war.
In 1863, he left Natchez and moved to New York City. Duncan died on January 29, 1867, in New York City.
He was buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1911, his heirs donated the Auburn mansion and its gardens to the city of Natchez.