Delony, Edward

Born: 1802-04-24 Virginia

Died: 1867-09-27 Mississippi

Flourished: Louisiana

Alternate name: Delany, DeLoney

Edward Delony was a Louisiana physician, politician, pro-slavery advocate, and secessionist. He moved from his native state to Georgia, where he married Piannah Shepherd, with whom he had five children. He and his family moved to Louisiana in 1839, settling in Clinton, East Feliciana Parish, where he practiced medicine. In the 1840s and 1850s, he was a member of the Louisiana State Senate, representing East Feliciana Parish as both a Democrat and as a member of the American Party. In 1850, he was working as a physician and living with his wife and four children in East Feliciana Parish, and owned real estate valued at $4,000. In 1852, he represented East Feliciana Parish as a delegate at the Louisiana constitutional convention. In the later 1850s, Delony played a leading role in efforts to revive the international slave trade. In 1858, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a bill allowing citizens of Louisiana to import enslaved people from Brazil, Cuba, and Africa. In November 1858, Delony published an article in DeBow's Review urging the State Senate to pass the bill, arguing that the scarcity of blacks left the South without an adequate labor supply, meaning that the South could not reach full productivity. Delony's arguments failed to sway the majority of senators, and the bill did not become law. A strong advocate of state's rights and southern independence, Delony, in November 1859, established a state's rights newspaper in Baton Rouge called the Southern Aurora. In 1860, he was working as a physician in Baton Rouge and had a personal estate of $400. He was a member of the secession convention of Louisiana.

"Application for Membership, Vail Montgomery Delony," Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970, Louisville, Kentucky: National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution; Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana (Chicago: Goodspeed, 1892), 1:375; Marius M. Carriere, Jr., The Know Nothings in Louisiana (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018), 106; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), East Feliciana Parish, LA, 249; Biennial Report of the Secretary of State, State of Louisiana, (Baton Rouge: Leon Jastremski, 1886), 60; Edward Delony, "The South Demands More Negro Labor," DeBow's Review 25 (November 1858), 491-506; Joe G. Taylor, "The Foreign Slave Trade in Louisiana after 1808," Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 1, no. 1 (1960), 36-43; DeBow's Review 27 (August 1859), 242; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish, LA, 82.