Cal Lamar
Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, nicknamed Cal Lamar, was a Confederate slave trader and businessman.
Lamar was the son of Gazaway Bugg Lamar and Jane Meek Lamar (née Cresswell). He was the only child of Gazaway and Jane to survive the steamship Pulaski disaster.[1]
Having lost much of his fortune in the Panic of 1857, Lamar sought to regain it through slave trading. He applied to transport passengers from Africa on the ship Richard Cobden, but his cousin-in-law Howell Cobb, then United States Secretary of the Treasury, denied all three applications as he saw them to be a ruse to import slaves. Lamar responded by issuing an eleven-page pamphlet insulting Cobb.[1]
When the War of Southern Independence broke out, he briefly served in the Confederate States Army, but did not see much action. After the war, with a loan from his father's Bank of the Republic and French investments, Lamar established a legitimate trading venture. Despite his former vendetta with his cousin-in-law Howell Cobb, he came to support him and his free-trade Cobbite faction against the protectionist Grabblers, as tariffs would have hurt his business.