Although the 407 Africans aboard were illegal cargo, a group of Southern planters, led by Charles Lamar of Savannah, Georgia, conspired to acquire the slaves. He and his cohorts hoped their actions would lead to a reopening of the slave trade and secession from the Union.[32] Many of the Wanderer slaves were put on barges and trains going to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. About half were sent aboard the steamboat Augusta, which sailed up the Savannah River to a plantation owned by Charles Lamar’s cousin Thomas Lamar. From there, many were sent to work in northern Georgia and South Carolina, including in the Edgefield area.
In 1908 anthropologist Charles Montgomery interviewed seven of the Wanderer Africans living in the Edgefield County, Aiken County, and Augusta area: Tucker Henderson, Tom Johnson, Lucy Lanham, Ward Lee, Katie Noble, Romeo Thomas, and Uster Williams.[33] Based on Montgomery’s writings, Kikongo language scholars John Thornton and Linda Heywood assert that Tom Johnson, Lucy Lanham, Katie Noble, and Romeo Thomas came from the same area of Madimba in the valley of the Mbidizi River in the Kingdom of Kongo