I S A A C   P H I L L I P S

Nine days later, one of Slatter’s lackeys marched Phillips and 32 other enslaved people out of the jail and down to the harbor. At the water’s edge, they boarded the vessel, the 259-ton brig Catherine, that would carry them out into the Chesapeake Bay, down the Atlantic coastline, and up the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

The Catherine reached New Orleans after a nineteen-day voyage on February 11, 1843. From the dock, Isaac and his fellow captives entered the custody of Hope Slatter’s brother and business partner, Shadrach F. Slatter.

Over the next several weeks, Shadrach Slatter sold each of the men, women, and children who had arrived on the Catherine. The majority went to Louisiana men—cotton and sugar planters mostly. But not Isaac. Slatter sold him, instead, to one Charles Brown of Franklin County, Arkansas.

So it was that after being forcibly carried hundreds of miles down the Atlantic, Isaac Phillips found himself traveling up the Mississippi River aboard a steamboat.

Years later, Isaac Philips would refer to Brown as a “friend.” Whatever his reasons for this assessment, Isaac was not with Brown long. Just months after purchasing him, Brown hired Isaac out to Alseph Dein of Carroll Parish, Louisiana.

Alseph Dein and his brother, Alfred Dein, had arrived in Louisiana around the same time as Isaac. Natives of Prussia, the Deins may or may not have spoken much English. In April of 1843, Alfred purchased land in of Tensas, Concordia, and Red River Parishes. At first, Alseph ived with his brother on the land in Concordia Parish, but soon he decided it was time to set out on his own. That’s when he headed north to Carroll Parish, just below the Arkansas border.

By the time of Alseph Dein’s arrival, however, all of the good land in Carroll Parish, especially the parcels adjacent to the Mississippi River—an area known as Lake Providence—had been claimed by planters with far more money and slaves than Alseph Dein.  So, Dein settled in the swamps several miles south of town, building a shack on a piece of land all but surrounded by the alligator-infested waters of Joe’s Bayou. This is where Isaac Phillips arrived sometime in late 1843 or early 1844. The scene before him—the almost-house of an almost-planter on an almost-island—could not have boded well.

If Dein dreamed of becoming an extensive landholder like his brother, his shack in the swamps was an awfully meager start. Its only furniture consisted of two log chairs and two beds, presumably one for Dein, and one for the three enslaved people, including Isaac, whom Dein claimed as property. Aside from livestock (two mares, two colts, and a yoke of oxen), Dein’s only other possessions included a single blanket, two and a half kegs of nails, a pair of “fire dogs” (iron or other metal rests for holding logs in a fire) two grind stones, two cross-cut saws, one box containing miscellaneous tools, a sack of coffee, ten gallons of molasses and about half a barrel of salt. The shack itself was worth about $100, and the entire estate, excluding enslaved people, amounted to $394.50.

In short time, Isaac discovered that the Dein plantation was nothing short of a hellscape, especially after the other two enslaved people in Dein’s custody managed to escape. Then it was just Isaac Phillips, stuck on an island with a man who would occasionally stake him to the ground, whip him severely, and then pour saltwater over the wounds. Dein was also fond of threatening to kill Isaac Phillips. As Isaac grew increasingly desperate, Alseph Dein looked to augment his work force. Before long, he purchased a man named Lewis for $600 from a man named James Hall. Hall lived near Carroway Lake, just a mile or so from Joe’s Bayou. After the sale, however, Dein was dissatisfied, and he charged Hall with fraud. Lewis hadn’t belonged to James Hall in the first place, Dein insisted. He wanted a refund. Hall refused. The two slaveholders reached a stalemate.

According to Phillips’ later accounts, that’s when Hall hatched a new plan: Alseph Dein would have to die, and Phillips and Lewis would have to kill him. Afterward, Hall promised, he would help the two escape, as long as they first stole and delivered to him two pieces of gold and a hundred-dollar note from a trunk in Dein’s home. Isaac Phillips and Lewis deliberated for a week before they agreed. It was June of 1844. Under the cover of darkness, Lewis and Isaac crept into the shack as Dein slept. As Hall waited outside, Phillips held Dein in place and Lewis smothered him with a blanket. Then they carried the body outside and laid it in the muck of Joe’s Bayou, careful to arrange the corpse just so, in hopes that it would appear as if Dein had died of an accidental drowning. Then the deed was done.

On November 5, 1844, the Court of Probates of Carroll Parish held an estate sale of Dein’s few worldly possessions at his old shack on Joe’s Bayou. Dein’s brother Alfred was the sole purchaser.

Appearing last on the list of auctioned-off items was the following: “Interest in negro when executed.” Thus the State of Louisiana, which compensated enslavers for enslaved persons who were executed, and Alfred Dein conspired to profit off of Isaac Phillips even in death. But this was not to be—at least, not yet.

With his execution imminent, Isaac Phillips managed to break free of the Lake Providence jail, as did James Hall and Lewis. What became of the latter two remains largely unknown, but Isaac Phillips managed to elude capture and—almost inconceivably—to travel all the way back to Maryland. Living under the alias “Isaac Lee,” Philips avoided detection for all of three years: time he spent with a wife, whose name remains unknown, and perhaps with their children. But, one day in 1847, Phillips returned to West River, his old neighborhood in Anne Arundel County, on a visit, most likely to family. There, he was recognized and arrested one last time. He was confined to the Baltimore City Jail: the place his first forced journey South had begun.

Baltimore officials held Isaac Phillips for three months—from October to January 1848—while the State of Louisiana undertook the “necessary proceedings for establishing his identity.”  Phillips gave three confessions during this period. The first two, given in October of 1848, admitted that he was the fugitive known as Isaac Phillips, but denied his involvement in the murder. By January, however, Phillips had lost hope. His extradition to Louisiana was just days away when he told his story once more, this time in great detail, to two reverends who visited him in prison. In this final confession, Phillips admitted his role in the murder. A few days later, he was shipped back to Lake Providence. Whether Isaac Phillips was ultimately executed remains a mystery.

BASED ON ORIGINAL RESEARCH BY JENNIE K. WILLIAMS, PH.D.