Our History

By Ane Lintvedt, History Department, McDonogh School, August 2024  

John McDonogh (1779-1850) lived his young life in Baltimore and his adult life in New Orleans. Currently, he is known as a philanthropist in Baltimore and a slaveholder in New Orleans. These are two sides of the same coin. McDonogh made his fortune in New Orleans, primarily as a real estate investor/speculator. Throughout his life, he bought and sold hundreds of thousands of acres of land, dozens of plantations, and hundreds of enslaved people. When he died, he owned 95 enslaved men, women, and children. He was also a major supporter of the American Colonization Society, which was established in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1817 to send free/freed people of color to the West African colony of Liberia. McDonogh left approximately one-half of his enormous fortune to the city of New Orleans to help fund its public school system. He left the other half of his fortune to his birth city of Baltimore to establish a “school farm on an extensive scale for the destitute and the poorest of the poor male children and youth … of all castes of colors,” as he wrote in his Will. To understand and reconcile his slaveholding and extraordinary philanthropy, it is important to understand the complicated world in which he lived and operated. There is no question, however, that John McDonogh used the labor of enslaved people for half a century to help make his fortune, and planned that his philanthropies would redeem him in the eyes of his God after he died.  

Two Port Cities

Baltimore City was established in 1729 in the colony of Maryland to take advantage of its strategic harbor and its access to the Chesapeake Bay. The city became a central hub for the trans-Atlantic trade in both goods and people from western Europe, western Africa, eastern North and South America, and especially the Caribbean colonies. Escaped, freed, and free people of color flocked to Baltimore for jobs and generally no questions were asked. By 1800, Baltimore had a population of 26,000 people, 21% of whom were either freeborn, emancipated, or enslaved blacks. John McDonogh’s father, also known as John McDonogh Sr., owned a lucrative brickmaking business near the Inner Harbor, and brickmakers in Baltimore used the most enslaved labor in the city: 24% of brick-makers owned slaves in 1798. John McDonogh Jr. therefore grew up in Baltimore surrounded by free people of color as well as those who were enslaved.  

Very little is known about John McDonogh’s youth. There is no record of him receiving a formal education at a particular school. His father was literate, as a successful business owner would have to be, while his mother – judging from the few letters she sent to her son – was barely literate. Throughout his life, however, John McDonogh constantly bought books and subscribed to local and national newspapers, thereby keeping up with national and international politics and economics throughout his life. He taught himself two foreign languages (Spanish and French), and he managed extraordinarily complex businesses. Born into a Presbyterian/Calvinist Christian family, McDonogh recalled his religious upbringing with fondness. As an adult in Catholic New Orleans, he built a chapel on the grounds of his plantation and gave sermons to the bondsmen and women who were probably required to attend. Indeed, he made their attendance in “his” church one of the requirements for those whom he intended to free. This certainly made John McDonogh feel virtuous; we have little evidence about how the bondspeople felt. He made no reference to religion in his business correspondences, not surprisingly, but religion was a common thread in some of his more personal letters, especially those related to the American Colonization Society, and religious ideas permeate his writing in his Will.

In 1795, when he was 16, McDonogh was apprenticed to William Taylor, an international businessman in Baltimore. Taylor and his brother in Liverpool, England, ran cargo ships across the trans-Atlantic trade routes (Western Europe, Western Africa, Eastern North and South Americas, and the Caribbean). William Taylor sent McDonogh and several other young men who worked for him to be his agents in colonial Spanish New Orleans in 1800.  McDonogh lived there for the rest of his life, never returning to Baltimore.

McDonogh in New Orleans

McDonogh’s adopted city of New Orleans was strikingly similar to Baltimore, but quite a bit smaller when he arrived in 1800. Its population was only 8,000 people, half of whom were white, a quarter enslaved, and a quarter were Free People of Color. New Orleans in 1800 was the main port in colonial Louisiana, connecting businesses to North and South America, West Africa, and most importantly to the Caribbean. The owners of the massive and lucrative Caribbean sugar plantations bought all or most of their food and supplies, and all their enslaved workers from European and U.S. merchants. New Orleans became the most significant port for sugar, cotton, and enslaved people in North America.

Twenty-one-year-old McDonogh certainly benefited from the remarkable similarities between Baltimore and New Orleans. He could “hit the ground running” in New Orleans. He was young, ambitious, and smart, and he had access to William Taylor’s money in a foreign country (Spanish Louisiana). McDonogh was allowed to deposit and remove money from Taylor’s bank account in New Orleans in order to do Taylor’s international business. But, McDonogh also removed money from Taylor’s accounts to do his own private business. After completing it, McDonogh returned all the borrowed money to his employer’s account … but not the profits he had made from using that money. And McDonogh and other colleagues working for Taylor pounced on the opportunities that the new sugar and cotton industries offered by buying land and enslaved people as fast as they could.

Buying and Selling Enslaved People and Land

Between 1803 and 1807, there was a narrow window to legally import slaves into the U.S. territory of Louisiana directly from Africa, and thereby avoid paying middlemen. This was precisely the moment when new methods of processing sugar and cotton had made the wealthy landowners in Louisiana desperate for more enslaved labor to increase their profits. So, presumably with Taylor’s money, John McDonogh and one of his fellow agents, Shepherd Brown, bought two ship-cargoes of enslaved people from the ships the Margaret (1804) and the Sarah (1806). McDonogh also took possession of a cargo of enslaved people from the Comet (1806). The exact number of enslaved people on the Margaret and the Sarah is not known, but some records indicate they each sailed with about 300 people. These enslaved people were sold at auction in New Orleans, along with 103 from the Comet. McDonogh kept the profits for himself and his business partners and did not tell Taylor about it. This was not strictly illegal, but it certainly was unethical. John McDonogh had no scruples about buying and selling enslaved people, nor about using someone else’s money to jump-start his own fortune. And as a result of the sale of the enslaved people, McDonogh had profits that he could invest in land buying and speculation.

John McDonogh amassed an enormous fortune through real estate investment. In 1803, his father had advised him to buy land. “[G]reat speculations have been made and will be made that way,” his father wrote. Soon thereafter, John McDonogh Jr. took his father’s advice and began to buy land in and around New Orleans and in other Spanish territories. The most spectacular deal he made was to buy approximately 200,000 acres of land in Spanish W. Florida (from the Mississippi River to the panhandle of Florida). At his death, he owned three plantations and the buildings, materials, and people that went with them, hundreds of urban properties in New Orleans, as well as bayous, alluvial lands, and cypress swamps scattered throughout Louisiana. Real estate comprised 61% of his net worth at the time of his death. The enslaved people on the three plantations were physically valued at 3% of the total (which does not include the value of their labor over time).  

It is not known how many enslaved people McDonogh owned in his lifetime. According to an 1824 tax receipt, McDonogh owned 37 people in 1824. According to the 1830 U.S. Census data, McDonogh owned 85 people; in the 1840 U.S. Census he owned 192 people; and at his death, he owned 95 people. John McDonogh bought and sold men, women, and children throughout his adult life, and was on par with other significant slave owners in 19th century Louisiana.

Emancipation and the American Colonization Society

While McDonogh was involved in and profited greatly from enslaved labor, it is also true that he thought seriously about the long-term implications of enslavement. As a child, he saw a complex society of free, enslaved, and emancipated blacks in Baltimore. In his early years in New Orleans, he also saw that the Spanish colonial government gave enslaved people the legal right of self-purchase (the coartación) to sue for or buy their freedom from a master. And New Orleans also had a vibrant population of Free People of Color who had significant legal rights. McDonogh had business associates and close family friends who were Free People of Color. He was especially close to the Durnford family, and Andrew Durnford, a free man of color, was his godson to whom he sold land for a neighboring sugar plantation. McDonogh remained a friend and business advisor to his godson throughout his life.

The topics of emancipating the enslaved and the status of Free People of Color in the new U.S. republic were everywhere, and John McDonogh joined the conversations and the calls for action. In 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded by a a group of Presbyterians in Princeton New Jersey.  Its mission stated that “its exclusive object [was] ‘to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with their consent) the Free People of Color residing in our Country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient.’" In 1822, with force from the U.S. Navy, the ACS claimed ownership of a West African area they called Liberia (liberty). Newly-elected President James Monroe was an ardent supporter of the ACS – so much so that the capital city of Liberia was named Monrovia in his honor.  Leaders of the ACS  began a program to convince slaveholders to emancipate the enslaved, with the added benefit that the ACS would pay for the passage of the emancipated and for the settlements in Liberia.  

ACS members had different reasons for supporting this colonization idea. Three major supporting ideas were (i) Presbyterian beliefs that black workers who were Christian and who had worked very hard deserved to be freed and live a life free of intimidation; (ii) the belief that the institution of African slavery mocked the new U.S. political ideals, including “all men are created equal”; (iii) anti-black racism that argued that because of their inherent “racial” inferiority, blacks should not be allowed to live in the same country as whites. In his writings, depending on whom he was writing, John McDonogh expressed all of these motives to encourage the ACS’s goal.

Initially, John McDonogh thought that sending free(d) blacks to Liberia would take too long to obtain freedoms for the enslaved, and he was not an early supporter. Nor was he an abolitionist. Nor did he want to bankrupt himself by losing his labor force on plantations. Eventually, however, he decided the ACS had the only practical plan to emancipate enslaved people, move them away from the racism of the U.S., give them the opportunity to build a black, Christian republic in West Africa, and undoubtedly salve his conscience from the stain of slavery. McDonogh had his own ideas, however, about how to make this work while still earning money from enslaved labor. 

On his home plantation, McDonoghville, across the Mississippi River from the business district of New Orleans, John McDonogh put a significant amount of time and effort into creating a very detailed “self-emancipation” program for some of the enslaved people on his plantation, starting in 1822. They had to attend church regularly, show exemplary behavior as judged by McDonogh, and work extra hours during their half-day off on Saturdays. The enslaved would then “earn” their and their children’s freedom in 15 years. This manumission plan had a significant condition, however:  McDonogh stipulated that he would only free someone if they agreed to go to the American Colonization Society’s settlement in Liberia. He adamantly stated that he would not emancipate anyone if they planned to “remain on the same soil as the white man,” i.e. stay in the U.S.  It was, in fact, illegal to free an enslaved person in Louisiana unless the previous owner guaranteed with his own money that the emancipated person could never live in Louisiana. That, of course, would cost the slaveholder even more money than “just” emancipating the enslaved.

McDonogh wrote a “Letter to the Editor” of a New Orleans business newspaper (something like the Wall Street Journal today) in 1842 explaining why he supported the American Colonization Society. (It was more like a small booklet, since it was 32 pages long!) In it, McDonogh tried to convince the business elite and plantation owners that he wasn’t an abolitionist, which would have been a radical position in the slave state of Louisiana and would make him an outcast – not to mention a hypocrite -- in New Orleans society. Instead, he listed the benefits of his emancipation plan and the ACS: one could offload old and weak people from one’s plantation; one could decrease the population of Free People of Color in Louisiana; and the enslaved would be better behaved, work harder, and be really grateful for the hope and promise of freedom in exchange for the extra work. The emancipator could feel good about all this and still make money.

John McDonogh sent two groups of people he emancipated to Liberia. In 1842, seventy-seven people from McDonoghville sailed on the Mariposa to Liberia, and in 1859, forty-one people from McDonoghville sailed on the Rebecca. On the Mariposa, there were “23 families and several single persons.” There were brick-makers/brick-layers; sugar mill operators and builders; carpenters; farm hands and carters; a blacksmith, two teachers, a spinner, a seamstress, and two ministers. There were 27 young children traveling with their parents, and in several cases, grandparents. On the Rebecca, for which we have only their ages, there were 13 young children, 8 teenagers and twenty-somethings, 16 adults aged 30-50, and 4 people over 50.  In contrast to what he wrote in this “Letter to the Editor,” McDonogh was not getting rid of old, useless people so that he didn’t have to support them. In the parlance of slave-holding Louisiana planters, these were exceptionally valuable slaves. This tends to contradict his hard-core statements in the 1842 “Letter the Editor” that he was only using the ACS as a tool for his own economic benefit. But that argument might have played well in New Orleans and work to stifle the rumors that he was an abolitionist.

One of the two ministers aboard the Mariposa was Washington McDonogh, who had been enslaved at McDonoghville. John McDonogh sent Washington and his brother David to the Presbyterian Lafayette College in Easton, PA, to be trained as a minister and a physician respectively, and then accompany the Mariposa to Liberia. Officials at Lafayette College insisted that the young men be freed since Pennsylvania had instituted the gradual abolition of enslavement starting in 1780. John McDonogh agreed but asked that this be kept secret from the young men, which seems unlikely to have succeeded. The young men were, however, tutored separately from the other young white men in the college. Washington followed John McDonogh’s wishes and joined the Mariposa, but David did not. John McDonogh was furious and tried to have David back to Louisiana. This did not happen, and David made his way to New York City, obtained training as an ophthalmologist at Columbia (also separately from the white students), and became the first professionally trained black ophthalmologist in the U.S. The first hospital for Blacks in the United States was named for David McDonough — as they spelled his name — in New York City. 

McDonogh’s Last Will and Testament

McDonogh wrote his Last Will and Testament in 1838, twelve years before he died. He declared that he was unmarried and without children. At the time of death in 1850, his wealth was $2,079,926.23 (*between $86.3 million - $1.2 billion in 2022 US dollars). He started his long, hand-written will with small bequests: gave his sister ten acres of land in Baltimore County and $6000; he freed ten of his 95 enslaved people. **He left no more than $25,000 each to (i) the American Colonization Society; (ii) to fund “an asylum for the poor of both sexes and of all ages, and castes of color;” and also (iii) for a “Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys” in New Orleans. Then he laid out a breathtaking philanthropic plan for the education of the poor in both New Orleans and Baltimore. 

And for the more general diffusion of Knowledge, and consequent well-being of Mankind, convinced as l am that I can make no disposition of those Worldly goods which the most High has been pleased so bountifully to place under my Stewardship, that will be so pleasing to him, as that by means of which the poor will be instructed in Wisdom and led into the path of virtue and Holiness, I give will and bequeath, all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, real and personal, present and. future,[…]for the establishment and support of Free Schools in said Cities, and their respective Suburbs, (including the Town of McDonogh as a Suburb of New Orleans) wherein the poor (and the poor only) of both sexes of all Classes and Castes of Color, shall have admittance, free of expense for the purpose of being instructed in the Knowledge of the Lord and in reading, writing, Arithmetic, History, Geography &c, &c, […]And that Singing classes shall be established and forever supported, and singing taught, as a regular branch of education in said Schools, by which means, every pupil will acquire the rudiments of the Art, and obtain a Knowledge in singing Sacred Music.-[…]

In his lifetime, McDonogh was not known as a particularly devout man, nor was he seen as being particularly interested in children’s education. He did build a church on his McDonoghville plantation, however, and helped found the first Episcopal Church in the City in 1805, was a friend and benefactor to the Catholic Ursuline convent school, and paid for the education of several children of deceased friends (or possibly his own children) over the years. But he did nothing on the scale of his enormous educational bequests during his lifetime. In his Will, however, he tries to justify his wealth, his use of enslaved laborers, and his notoriously-miser-like existence by many appeals to Christian duty. The clearest example of this is the following statement at the end of his Will:

Those feelings of Jealousy, which the poor entertains of the rich, is wrong; It is sinful, and contrary to the laws of our Divine Creator; who has shown in His works (as in his words,) that He did not intend a perfect equality to exist among men. As He has not made all men equal in strength, in stature or intellect, neither has His decrees established an equality of fortune. Let Man then bow with humble resignation, to the Divine Will. The poor should look on the rich [...] as Reservoirs, in which the Most High, makes to flow, the rich Streams of His beneficence, to be laid up, and husbanded for his all-wise, and all-seeing purposes; and for Seasons of distress and affliction to the poor.-Instead then of looking on them as their greatest Enemies, they should on the Contrary, consider them as they really are, their best friends. -This is the position all rich men, (whose hearts occupy the right place in their bosoms,) stand in towards the poor. Besides, Let the poorer Classes of the World be consoled, assured, that the labor loving, frugal, industrious, and virtuous among them, possess Joys and happiness in this life, which the rich know not, and cannot appreciate.  [italics added, punctuation adjusted]

McDonogh clearly hoped that the Divine Creator would judge him as a rich man whose heart occupied the right place. He insisted that his accumulation of wealth and status was what God had planned all along, so he could give it away at the end of his life to the poor. Therefore, his failure to emancipate all the enslaved people on his properties was not immoral; their work and therefore his wealth were necessary for the greater good.

Even after his death, McDonogh envisioned the use of enslaved labor to fund his philanthropies. The free schools in both cities were to be financed based on the value of the lands he owned, which could be rented, worked, or sold. They were also to be financed with the crops grown on the plantations, which would be worked in perpetuity by recurring purchases of the enslaved – at least until slavery was abolished, he wrote.  

The generations of enslaved should] serve also fifteen years, and be sent to Africa and so on, as often as the Commissioners and Agents of the General Estate, may see fit and proper, and that [if] there is Slaves to be purchased, by which means, a two-fold object, would be accomplished, Viz: a revenue from the Estates cultivated, greater than what they would yield, by renting them out; and the returning every Fifteen years, an additional number of the human race, Christianized and Civilized, to the land of their forefathers. [Will]

McDonogh was trying to combine the economically advantageous use of enslaved labor, his philanthropic projects of schools for the poor, and the presumed rewards for the freed blacks of an African home, a Christian church, and American civilization. His support of the ACS and his after-death philanthropies were his best attempts at rationalizing his use of enslaved labor.  

Ultimately, a long series of legal actions, the U.S. Civil War, and the Reconstruction abolition of slavery unraveled McDonogh’s plans to have his lands worked in perpetuity by enslaved people. Instead, his lands were sold off and the proceeds were divided between the public school system in New Orleans and the school farm for poor boys in Baltimore (now Owings Mills). The attitudes of the post-Civil War, Jim Crow white elites ensured that the schools in both cities were for white children only, counter to McDonogh’s express directions. McDonogh School in Baltimore began desegregation in 1959, although there were periodic discussions at the Board of Trustees level about honoring McDonogh’s request of “all classes and castes of color.” The New Orleans public schools began desegregating in 1960, with McDonogh School #19 being one of the first two schools to do so. 

John McDonogh bought and sold enslaved people for half a century. His wealth in real estate was bound with the value of enslaved labor and enslaved people in 19th-century Louisiana. Like Thomas Jefferson a generation before, McDonogh recognized that slavery was a “foul stain” on the U.S. Republic. And like Jefferson, McDonogh was unwilling to unilaterally free the enslaved people on his plantation(s) or embrace the abolishment of slavery as a moral imperative. Instead, and unlike Jefferson, McDonogh embraced the idea of a contracted emancipation agreement and eventual dislocation of the freed people of McDonoghville to Liberia, and out of the U.S. Republic. To him, an incentivized manumission program and subsequent colonization made economic and moral sense. In the slave society in which he lived, he sought a middle ground; at least, a middle ground for a slave-holding white man in Louisiana in the first half of the 19th century. John McDonogh used the labor and capital of many hundreds of enslaved people to help make his fortune; he freed almost 200 enslaved laborers; and he hoped that his post-mortem philanthropies would redeem him.

Author’s Postscript: 

In 1804, only four years after arriving in New Orleans, the young and ambitious McDonogh wrote a set of “Rules for Guidance in My Life.” The 24-year-old emphasized religious devotion (“Tend by all means in your power to the honor and glory of the Divine Creator”), the value of work (“Remember always that labor is one of the conditions of our existence”),  frugality (“Never give out that which does not come in. Never spend but to produce”), and philanthropy (“Study in your course of life to do the greatest possible amount of good”). McDonogh School in Baltimore has emphasized the philanthropic piece of John McDonogh’s legacy as the school’s Origin Story, leaning into “the greatest good” as a teaching and community value and tool. The history of John McDonogh’s background and use of enslaved labor, however, has never been consistently taught. In part, this is due to a lack of credible historical sources, which this essay attempts to correct. 

As McDonogh School moves into the third decade of the 21st century, the Administration and Board of Trustees are committed to further researching the life of John McDonogh and the sources of wealth that enabled his philanthropy, ultimately leading to the creation of the School. The history of John McDonogh’s life also shines some light on the complex lives led by enslaved people who did the physical work for McDonogh, whose bodies were used as forms of capital, and who took the initiative to free themselves from enslavement. Their histories demonstrate some of the complicated ways in which ideals such as equality, freedom, wealth, generosity, and devotion were discussed and deployed in 19th-century U.S. history.

I’d like to thank Dr. John Wood for his work on the first version of this essay in 2009 and his conversations about it over the years.

 *www.measuringworth.com 
**Ibid., $6000 in 1859 equals about $250,000 in purchasing power in 2022; $25,000 in 1850 equals the purchasing power of $1,037,566.05 in 2022.