Slavery for Almost One Hundred Years Before That Custom Was Recognized As a Social Disease and People Began to Fight It

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HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT, ETC. IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY

“The United States of America had human slavery for almost one hundred years before that custom was recognized as a social disease and people began to fight it. Imagine that. Wasn’t that a match for Auschwitz? What a beacon of liberty we were to the rest of the world when it was perfectly acceptable here to own other human beings and treat them as we treated cattle. Who told you we were a beacon of liberty from the very beginning? Why would they lie like that? Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd. It was as though he had an infected growth on the end of his nose the size of a walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK.” – Kurt Vonnegut, FATES WORSE THAN DEATH, page 84

THOMAS JEFFERSON

NOTE: In this series of files, you may be startled to discover, an attempt is being made to untangle the issues of slavery and race in such manner as to allow for a factoid which the US Supreme Court has not once recognized: that not all enslaved Americans were non-white. For instance seamen who were “crimped” or “shanghaied” might or might not have been black but nevertheless had been reduced by force or trickery to a longterm and dangerous condition of involuntary servitude (this term “to crimp” had originated in the 18th Century in England and characterized the occupation of luring or forcing men into sea duty either for the navy or for the merchant marine).

NOTE ALSO: Binary opposites, such as “war vs. peace,” “slavery vs. antislavery,” etc. are mirrors to each other. The problem is never which of the two is the proper alternative but rather, the problem is always how to shatter such a conceptual mirror — so that both images can simultaneously safely be dispensed with. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

Let us here attempt a graphic contrast between decency and indecency. By this decade only a very few of the slave states (such as I think Arkansas, Missouri, and perhaps Maryland) were allowing slavemasters to manumit their slaves without a special bill by the legislature. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

This was the approximate year of manumission for Elizabeth, 3rd child of Sojourner Truth. (A process of mandatory indenture had been utilized in New York State to effectively extend the condition of servitude of young slaves, after they had on the 4th of July 1827 received their formal papers.)

As of the turn of the century South Carolina had passed a law requiring that any slaves who were manumitted possess, or receive from their manumitting masters, “the capacity... to function in a free society...” The goal had been to end such abuses as the “freeing” of the aged, the infirm, and those considered by the slavemaster to be useless due to bad or depraved character. After the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion, most southern states passed such laws restricting (or prohibiting) manumission. By this decade only Delaware, Missouri, and Arkansas were allowing masters to free slaves without requiring their departure from the state. (Refer to Ira Berlin, SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS: THE FREE NEGRO IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH, NY: Pantheon Books, 1974, pages 138-153. Note 2 on pages 138-139 provides a comprehensive list of state laws regulating or prohibiting manumission.)

1980 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The rolled 24-scene panorama before which William Wells Brown lectured on the Lyceum circuit, entitled “Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave,” included painted depictions of the brig Creole and of the schooners Pearl and Franklin which had figured prominently in attempts to escape from human enslavement. (Below is a Daguerreotype of a man, evidently a lecturer, standing in front of an arctic panorama. To provide some idea of what this sort of panorama looked like, on the following screen appears a printed version of one having to do with arctic exploration, that was making the rounds during this year.)

THE FROZEN NORTH

Henry Thoreau went to one of the traveling “panorama” shows made up of painted canvas rolls then being exhibited behind lecturers on theater stages, of the Rhine, and was intrigued enough by it, and by the idea of himself as a “younger son” who would, at least traditionally, need to venture and adventure for his inheritance, that he soon went to see another panorama, one of travel up the Mississippi.

After January 10 and before February 9, 1851: I went some months ago to see a panorama of the Rhine It was like a dream of the Middle ages– I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination under bridges built by the Romans and repaired by later heroes past cities & castles whose very names were music to me made my ears tingle –& each of which was the subject of a legend. There seemed to come up from its waters & its vine-clad hills & vallys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land– There were Ehrenbreitstein & Rolandseck & Coblentz which I knew only in history. I floated along through the moonlight of history under the spell of enchanment It was as if I remembered a glorious dream as if I had been transported to a heroic age & breathed an atmospher of chivalry Those times appeared far more poetic & heroic than these Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Mississippi and as I fitly worked my way upward in the light of today –& saw the steamboats wooding up –& loooked up the Ohio & the Missouri & saw its unpeopled cliffs –& counted the rising cities –& saw the Indians removing west across the stream & heard the legends of Dubuque & of Wenona’s Cliff –still thinking more of the future than of the past or present –I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a dif kind that the foundations {One leaf missing} all this West –which our thoughts traverse so often & so freely. We have never doubted that their prosperity was our prosperity– It is the home of the younger-sons As among the Scandinavians the younger sons took to the seas for their inheritance and became the Vikings or Kings of the Bays & colonized Ice land & Greenland & probably discovered the continent of America

The Reverend Theodore Parker sheltered William and Ellen Craft, who were fleeing from slaveholders in Georgia, and married them to one another.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1981 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A correspondent for Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal was harboring the fantastical notion that the Great Dismal Swamp around Lake Drummond near Norfolk, Virginia was providing refuge for perhaps as many as one thousand runaway slaves. An army! (Shudder.)

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You may peruse the full text of all the articles in this year’s issues of the Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal online. ISSUE OF JANUARY 5 ISSUE OF JANUARY 12 ISSUE OF JANUARY 19 ISSUE OF JANUARY 26 ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 2 ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 9 ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 16 ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 23 ISSUE OF MARCH 2 ISSUE OF MARCH 9 ISSUE OF MARCH 16 ISSUE OF MARCH 23 ISSUE OF MARCH 30 ISSUE OF APRIL 6 ISSUE OF APRIL 13 ISSUE OF APRIL 20 ISSUE OF APRIL 27 ISSUE OF MAY 4 ISSUE OF MAY 11 ISSUE OF MAY 18 ISSUE OF MAY 26 ISSUE OF JUNE 1 ISSUE OF JUNE 8 ISSUE OF JUNE 15

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ISSUE OF JUNE 22 ISSUE OF JUNE 29 ISSUE OF JULY 6 ISSUE OF JULY 13 ISSUE OF JULY 20 ISSUE OF JULY 27 ISSUE OF AUGUST 3 ISSUE OF AUGUST 10 ISSUE OF AUGUST 17 ISSUE OF AUGUST 24 ISSUE OF AUGUST 31 ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 7 ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 14 ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 21 ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 28 ISSUE OF OCTOBER 5 ISSUE OF OCTOBER 12 ISSUE OF OCTOBER 19 ISSUE OF OCTOBER 26 ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 2 ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 9 ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 16 ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 23 ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 30

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ISSUE OF DECEMBER 7 ISSUE OF DECEMBER 14 ISSUE OF DECEMBER 21 ISSUE OF DECEMBER 28

According to the Congressional Globe for the 1st session of the 31st Congress, Senator Jacob W. Miller of New Jersey responded to charges by his southern colleagues, that New Jersey had become a harbor for their fugitive slaves, by commenting that: The difficulty in New Jersey has been, not about surrendering fugitive slaves to their legal masters, but rather how to get rid of those worthless slaves which you suffer to escape into our territory, and to remain there to the annoyance of our people. (Decoding this, “our people” means “white people.”)

Lewis Henry Morgan opinioned that “it is time to fix some limits to the reproduction of this black race among us.”1

Upon the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law William Cooper Nell formed a Committee of Vigilance. He increased his participation in the Underground Railroad.

Henry Youle Hind’s TWO LECTURES, ON AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY (Toronto, Canada). This would quickly be overshadowed as a textbook by the publications of John William Dawson.

Upon passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Henry Bibb fled with his 2d wife, Mary Miles Bibb, to Canada.

There, they would work to establish a Refugees’ Home Colony for other Black American immigrants, such as the ones being forwarded by the minuscule Ms. Tubman and her Equalizer. The Bibbs would publish a newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive, in the columns of which they would render the following ecologically unsound and problematic advice to fellow escaping slaves: 1. We will also find him arguing for the abolition of slavery on the grounds that once this social institution is abolished, the support system of the negro in the paternalistic benevolence of the slavemaster will be disintegrated — and the freed slaves would have to die away. 1988 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bring along your axes with which to make low at your feet the tall forest on this, the Queen’s free soil, which awaits your coming.

The slave trade was banned in the District of Columbia.

Kentucky repealed its ban on the importation of slaves.

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D.G. Lamont painted “Count Rumford’s Farewell,” a work that we can now view in a different mode from the mode in which it was painted (in the rear of this New Hampshire painting is Dinah, the family’s slave).

The negrero Martha, of New-York, was captured while about to embark 1,800 slaves. The captain would be allowed to make bail, and would therefore be able to escape punishment for this capital crime of piracy (A.H. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, pages 285-92).

The negrero Lucy Ann, of Boston, was captured by the British navy while carrying 547 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31st Congress, 1st session XIV Number 66, pages 1-10 ff).

The American negrero Navarre, trading to Brazil, was searched and then seized by a British cruiser (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31st Congress, 1st session XIV Number 66, pages 1-10 ff).

It was in about this year that the American negreros Louisa Beaton, Pilot, Chatsworth, Meteor, R. de Zaldo, Chester, etc. were boarded and searched by British patrol vessels (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31st Congress, 1st session XIV Number 66, passim). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the

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consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;2 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.3 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”4 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.5 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”6 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”7 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.8 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”9 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a 2. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 3. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 4. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 5. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 6. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 7. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 8. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 9. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1991 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”10 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”11 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”12 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”13 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.14 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and 10. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 11. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 12. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 13. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 1992 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”15 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”16 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;17 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”18 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”19 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”20 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave-holding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”21 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.22 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.23 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”24 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, 14. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 15. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 16. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 17. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 18. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 19. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 20. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 21. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 22. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 23. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 24. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1993 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.25 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.26 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.27 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,28 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 25. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 26. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. November 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. February 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. August 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. August 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. January 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. February 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — February 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. February 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 27. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 1994 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international cooperation....29 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The long and open agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, together with the fact that the South had been more or less familiar with violations of the laws since 1808, led to such a remarkable increase of illicit traffic and actual importations in the decade 1850-1860, that the movement may almost be termed a reopening of the slave-trade. In the foreign slave-trade our own officers continue to report “how shamefully our flag has been used;”30 and British officers write “that at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade is carried on under the American flag,” and this because “the number of American cruisers on the station is so small, in proportion to the immense extent of the slave-dealing coast.”31 The fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States, and centred at New York City. “Few of our readers,” writes a periodical of the day, “are aware of the extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years.”32 Another periodical says: “The number of persons engaged in the slave- trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.”33 During eighteen months of the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been fitted out in New York harbor,34 and these alone

28. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 29. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. 30. Gregory to the Secretary of the Navy, June 8, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 2. Cf. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 2d session, II. No. 6. 31. Cumming to Commodore Fanshawe, Feb. 22, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 8. 32. New York Journal of Commerce, 1857; quoted in 24TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 56. 33. “The Slave-Trade in New York,” in the Continental Monthly, January, 1862, page 87. 34. New York Evening Post; quoted in Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1995 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually.35 The United States deputy marshal of that district declared in 1856 that the business of fitting out slavers “was never prosecuted with greater energy than at present. The occasional interposition of the legal authorities exercises no apparent influence for its suppression. It is seldom that one or more vessels cannot be designated at the wharves, respecting which there is evidence that she is either in or has been concerned in the Traffic.”36 On the coast of Africa “it is a well-known fact that most of the Slave ships which visit the river are sent from New York and New Orleans.”37 The absence of United States war-ships at the Brazilian station enabled American smugglers to run in cargoes, in spite of the prohibitory law. One cargo of five hundred slaves was landed in 1852, and the Correio Mercantil regrets “that it was the flag of the United States which covered this act of piracy, sustained by citizens of that great nation.”38 When the Brazil trade declined, the illicit Cuban trade greatly increased, and the British consul reported: “Almost all the slave expeditions for some time past have been fitted out in the United States, chiefly at New York.”39

January 25: The New Orleans Catholic Mirror pointed out that American Catholics were nowhere near as inconsistent as American Protestants, in that everywhere they were united in being in favor of human enslavement. They were invulnerable to a Protestant moral theology that varied “with degrees of latitude,” Northern white Protestants being opposed to slavery and Southern white Protestants being in favor of it. (Of course, in drawing such a moral, the religious newspaper was carefully evading the fact that Catholic moral theology varied with degrees of longitude, those in Europe such as the Pope being opposed to slavery and those in America being in favor of it — disregarding the opposition that had been declared since 1839 by the person they regarded as their supreme spiritual leader.)

May 31, Friday: In processing a journal entry he had made on this date into his WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS manuscript, Henry Thoreau would be creating an enduring confusion between, on the one hand, Sippio Brister of Lincoln who had been a slave of the Hoar family and who had died in 1822 at the age of 78, and, on the other, Brister Freeman who had been the slave of Dr. John Cuming of Concord and who had died in 1820 at the age of 64, his wife Fenda Freeman, and the three Freeman children of Brister’s Hill in Concord.40 SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS TIMELINE OF WALDEN

35. Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733; quoted from a New York paper. 36. FRIENDS’ APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE COLOURED RACES (1858), Appendix, page 41; quoted from the Journal of Commerce. 37. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, pages 53-4; quoted from the African correspondent of the Boston Journal. From April, 1857, to May, 1858, twenty-one of twenty-two slavers which were seized by British cruisers proved to be American, from New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Cf. 25TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 122. De Bow estimated in 1856 that forty slavers cleared annually from Eastern harbors, clearing yearly $17,000,000: De Bow’s Review, XXII. 430-1. 38. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 33d Congress, 1st session, VIII. No. 47, page 13. 39. HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session, XII. No. 105, page 38. 1996 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 31, 1850: Close by stood a stone with this inscription In memory of Sippio Brister a man of Colour who died Nov 1. 1820 AEt. 64.

40. Thoreau’s “Former Inhabitants” chapter includes some thumbnail characterizations of erstwhile neighbors, with which Thoreau “repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.” Thoreau has attired these Concord folk in classic robes: In his imagination Brister Freeman has become the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major (234-183BCE) of the Punic Wars who defeated Hannibal at Zama, Wyman the younger is said to have been read about in Scripture, the Hugh Quoil who thought of himself as a veteran of foreign war is made to hang a fresh woodchuck pelt on his house to be “a trophy of his last Waterloo.” Refer to WALDEN, page 257 of the Princeton edition, material added to Version E in late 1852 and in 1853 and further revised in 1853-1854. There were precisely two books published during this period which dealt in such considerate terms with the lives of ordinary persons of color, WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and the initial 1854 version of NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF which is ordinarily attributed to the authorship of Frederick Douglass. We may note that at the time of the writing of WALDEN there were at least two black families in Concord, and Thoreau carefully refrains from calling attention to these families. We may presume that an adequate reason for such silence was that such literary attentions would not only have been as unwelcome to them as to Concord whites, but could not have done them any good and might very well have done them harm. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1997 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Brister’s Spring on Brister’s Hill in Walden Woods pertained to Brister Freeman of Concord and not to Sippio Brister of Lincoln

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Thoreau also recorded that according to William Wheeler of Lincoln, “a few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up — and took away two skulls” from the remains of the five grenadiers killed on April 19th near the “Ephraim Hartwell” Tavern during the retreat to Boston, that had there been interred.

To-day May 31st a red and white cow being uneasy broke out of the steam mill pasture & crossed the bridge & broke into Elija Woods grounds– When he endeavored to drive her out by the bars she boldly took to the water wading first through the meadows full of ditches & swam across the river about forty rods wide at this time & landed in her own pasture again– She was a buffaloe crossing her Mississippi– This exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my eyes–already dignified–& reflectedly on the river–which I looked on as a kind of Bosphorus. I love to see the domestic animals reassert their native right’s–any evidence that they have not lost their original wild habits & vigor.

There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina] –the rich intervales which border the stream of its song–more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other. The blossoms of the tough & vivacious shruboak are very handsome. I visited a retired–now almost unused graveyard in Lincoln to-day where (5) British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April ’75. Edmund Wheeler–grandfather of William–who lived in the old house now pulled down near the present–went over the next day & carted them to this ground– A few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up–and took away two skulls The skeletons were very large– probably those of grenadiers. Wm Wheeler who was present–told me this– He said that he had heard old Mr. Child, who lived opposite–say that when one soldier was shot he leaped right up his full length out of the ranks & fell dead. & he Wm Wheeler–saw a bullet hole through & through one of the skulls.

The water was over the Turnpike below Master Cheney’s when I returned.

May 31: {One-third page missing} main there is a correspondence–that the fences–to a considerable extent will be found to mark natural divisions– Mowing–(upland & meadow) pasture woodland–& the different kinds of tillage– There will be found in the farmers motive for setting a fence here or there some conformity to natural limits– These artificial divisions no doubt have the effect of increasing the area & variety to the traveller– These various fields taken together seem more extensive than a single prairie of the same size would. The farmer puts his wall along the edge of his cornfield– Unless the land is very minutely divided the divisions will correspond to nature.– If the divisions corresponded to natural ones, I think that {One-third page missing}

September 9: Barnum generated enormous publicity for Jenny Lind’s tour by auctioning off the best seats to her first concert in New-York. The Herald had it that: The report of the auction on Saturday of tickets to Jenny Lind’s first concert, published in yesterday’s Herald, has excited a good deal of interest in the city and the auction is the subject of conversation everywhere, particularly in reference to the first ticket, purchased by Genin, the hatter, whose establishment is next door to Barnum’s Museum, in Broadway. Some say it is a juggle and that there has been an understanding between him and Barnum. But that does not account for the “bids” made by five others, who all seemed anxious to get it. There is a better solution of the mystery than to charge it to Peter Funk. It was not that the first choice was one iota better than the second, which sold for twenty five dollars, or than another, which long afterwards was purchased adjoining the two hundred and twenty five dollar seats, for ten dollars, for, in point of “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 1999 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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fact, the seat selected by Mr. Genin, right under where Jenny Lind will stand when she sings, is by no means the best seat, and the choice shows that Mr. Genin is a far greater adept in hat-making than in music; and we may add that but very few showed a good judgment in the selection of the choice seats for which they paid so high, the best seats being yet to be sold. But Genin would not, probably, give three dollars even for a seat on the stage to hear the Nightingale sing, if he had not some other object in view than the pleasure it would give him. We will be asked what can that object be? We answer — Genin has found out a secret by which a few men in this city have realized large fortunes. He has begun to study the philosophy of advertising, and being an enterprising fellow, he calculated that he would test the truth of the philosophy by a practical application, and resolved to give five hundred dollars for the choice seat in the whole house to Jenny Lind’s first concert, rather than lose so fine a chance of advancing his interests. One gentleman asked him why he gave so much for a ticket, and if he was not a fool for doing so? “No,” said he, “I will make it pay.” Another came up, immediately after the sale, and offered him $50 premium on it if he would transfer it, and allow his name to go forth to the public as the purchaser. Genin said he would not give it for $500. We have the secret of the value of the ticket, in the fact of the kind of men who were his chief competitors for it. They were three patent medicine doctors, who have made fortunes by advertising, and regarded this as a trump card, knowing that the name of Jenny Lind would attract attention all over the country, and that their advertisements, being connected therewith, would be sure to be read. Genin calculated that this auction would be attended by a reporter from the Herald, and that if he bought the first choice ticket, his name and establishment would be recorded, and would come before a hundred times as many readers as it could by any other means. We understand he is about to follow up this idea on the night of the concert, and that he will sit in the front of the audience with an immense hat suspended over his head. Truly it is a Yankee notion. The ticket is worth $1000 to him. We think we have now explained the secret of Genin’s determination to have the first ticket. But why did the people cheer him so vehemently? For two reasons. First, for his ingenuity in advertising, by paying for a ticket to a concert, a sum that was never paid before, even in England; and secondly, because the first choice was taken from the upper ten by a tradesman. And here was a capital idea of Barnum’s for putting the people against the aristocracy in a rivalry of dollars. He is a brick in his way and deserves to make money.

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The federal legislature enacted the payment of “creditors of the late Republic of Texas.” Speculators who had bought up huge amounts of Republic-of-Texas notes bribed certain legislators to vote against this payment initially (in order to scare out the weaker holders of the notes so they would not profit), and then to subsequently vote for this payment. By knowing how the corrupt deal was going to go down, these insiders would gain enormously. One of those who profited from this insider trading was Francis Joseph Grund, who as a Washington DC insider had gotten wind of this corruption in time to get aboard for the ultimate payoff.

A compromise enabled California to enter the Union as our 31st state with slavery forbidden, by making Utah and New Mexico territories without any decision pro or con as to slavery. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

September 9, 1850: There is a little grove in a swampy place in Conantum where some rare things grow –several Bass trees –two kinds of ash –Sassafras –Maidenhair fern –the white-berried plant –ivory? –&c &c and the Sweet viburnum? in the hedge nearby. This will be called the wet year of 1850 The river is as high now Sep. 9th as in the spring– And hence the prospects and the reflections seen from the village are something novel. Roman wormwood, Pigweed Amaranth, Polygonum and one or two coarse kinds of grass reign now in the cultivated fields Though the potatoes have man with all his implements on their side, these rowdy & rampant weeds completely bury them between the last hoeing & the digging.– The potatoes hardly succeed with the utmost care. These weeds only ask to be let alone a little while. I judge that they have not got the rot. I sympathize with all this luxuriant growth of weeds such is the year. The weeds grow as if in sport & frolic You might say Green as Green briar I do not know whether the practice of putting Indigo Weed about horses’ tackling to keep off flies is well founded but I hope it is, for I have been pleased to notice that wherever I have occasion to tie a horse I am sure to find Indigo weed not far off – and therefore this which is so universally dispersed would be the fittest weed for this purpose. The thistle is now in bloom –which every child is eager to clutch once –just a child’s handful. –I sympathize with the berries now {MS torn} found anybody. {Four-fifths page missing} The Prunella – Self-heal Small purplish flowered plant of low grounds Fragrant Life Everlasting. {Four-fifths page missing} street & the village & the state in which he lived A voice seemed to say to him Why do you stay here and live this mean dusty moiling life when a worthy & glorious existence is possible for you?” But how to come out of this and actually migrate thither– All that he could think of was to practice some new austerity. To let his mind descend into his body & redeem it. To treat himself with ever increasing respect. He had been abusing himself– Those same stars twinkle over other fields than this CHARLES DUNBAR Charles grew up to be a remarkably eccentric man He was of large frame athletic and celebrated for his feats of strength. His lungs were proportionably strong– There was a man who heard him named once, and asked it was the same Charles Dunbar – whom he remembered when he was a little boy to have heard hail a vessel from the shore of maine as she was sailing by. He should never forget that man’s name. It was well grassed and delicate flowers grew in the middle of the road– I saw a delicate flower had grown up 2 feet high Between the horse’s path & the wheel track “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2001 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Which Dakin’s & Maynards wagons had Passed over many a time An inch more to right or left had sealed its fate. Or an inch higher. And yet it lived & flourished As much as if it had a thousand acres of untrodden space around it –and never knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow trouble nor invite an Evil fate by apprehending it. For though the distant market wagon Every other day – inevitably rolled This way – it just as inevitably rolled In those ruts– And the same Charioteer who steered the flower Upward – guided the horse & cart aside from it. There were other flowers which you would say Incurred less danger grew more out of the way Which no cart rattled near no walker daily passed But at length one rambling deviously For no rut restrained plucked them And then it appeared that they stood directly in his way though he had come from farther than the market wagon– And then it appeared that this brave flower – which grew between the wheel & horse – did actually stand farther out of the way than that which stood in the wide prairie where the man of science plucked it. To day I climbed a handsome rounded hill Covered with hickory trees wishing to see The country from its top – for low hills show unexpected prospects– I looked many miles over a woody low-land Toward Marlborough Framingham & Sudbury And as I sat amid the hickory trees and the young sumacks enjoying the prospect– A neat herd of cows approached – of unusually fair proportions and smooth clean skins, evidently petted by their owner – who had carefully selected them– One more confiding heifer the fairest of the herd did by degrees approach as if to take some morsel from our hands – while our hearts leaped to our mouths with expectation & delight She by degrees drew near with her fair limbs progressive making pretence of browsing – nearer & nearer till there was wafted toward us the cowy fragrance cream of all the daries, that ever were or will be – and then she raised her gentle muzzle toward us – and snuffed an honest recognition within hand’s reach– I saw ’twas possible for his herd to inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately featured as a hind– Her hide was mingled white and fawn color – and on her muzzles tip there was a white spot not bigger than a daisy And on her side toward me the map of Asia plain to see. Farewell Dear Heifer though thou forgettest me, my prayer to Heaven shall be that thou may’st not forget thyself. There was a whole bucolic in her snuff I saw her name was sumack– And by the kindred spots I knew her mother More sedate & matronly – with full grown bag – and on her sides was Asia great & small– The plains of Tartary even to the pole – while on her daughter it was Asia Minor.– She not disposed to wanton with the herdsman. And as I walked she followed me & took an apple from my hand and seemed to care more for the hand than apple. So innocent a face as I have rarely seen on any creature And I have looked in face of many heifers And as she took the apple from my hand I caught the apple from her eye. She smelled as sweet as the clethra blossom. There was no sinister expression And for horns though she had them they were so well disposed in the right place bent neither up nor down I do not now remember she had any – no horn was held toward me–

September 18: A new Fugitive Slave Act strengthened the 1793 act by substituting federal jurisdiction for state jurisdiction.

October 21: The Chicago City Council moved to not sustain the new act.

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October 30: A mass meeting in New York resolved that the act should be sustained.

The first person arrested under the act was New York freedman James Hamlet. He is arrested by a deputy U.S. Marshal as a fugitive from Baltimore. The arrest arouses so much public indignation that Hamlet is redeemed and freed.

November 1: Troops of the German Confederation entered the Electorate of Hesse to put down a revolt of the landed classes against Elector Friedrich Wilhelm II. Prussia opposed the move, in opposition to Austria.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was appointed a Knight of the Austrian Order of Franz Joseph.

In Boston on this day there was a rescue, by a Boston Vigilance Committee which would see them safely aboard a steamer headed for exile in England, of two refugees out of Georgia named William and Ellen Craft, from slave catchers emboldened by the new federal Fugitive Slave Act. During their last days in this country. Lewis Hayden of Boston would plant explosives on his front porch so that if necessary the slavecatching federal marshals could be blown away.

December 14: An issue of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal: CHAMBERS’ EDINBURGH JOURNAL ISSUE OF DECEMBER 14

Dr. Josiah Clark Nott spoke before the Southern Rights Association on the timely topic “The Natural History of Mankind, Viewed in Connection with Negro Slavery” (this address would be published in the following year).41

41. The attitude of the Southern Rights Association seems to have been that black slaves had no Southern rights. The attitude of Dr. Nott seems to have been that one sufficient reason for the appropriateness of such a political fact had been revealed by the science of biology — according to the advice of the most prominent of the learned white practitioners in that field. RACISM “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2003 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 25: When the Reverend Henry Schwan, recently arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, set up a Christmas tree in his new church, he found he had made a genuine mistake. What he generated, unexpectedly, was a surge of outrage among his parishioners. –Was this new reverend of theirs competent to make none of the necessary distinctions between the Pagan and the Sacred?

In Missouri, Christmas was traditionally allowed as a slave holiday, and so on this day of celebration, Jack Burton got “married” in a slave ceremony with Maria Tomlin, a daughter of Lewis Tomlin, the free black barber of Fayette, Missouri. A black minister was in attendance. Maria belonged to a man named McDonald but was a slave on the farm of Samuel Brown about two miles off, and she already had two children by a previous marriage to a deceased slave, Green Shepherd.

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(Notice that although white men of this period generally feared social contamination by inferior blacks, even an intimate touching, as by a barber, could be permissible, as depicted here in a Virginia barbershop — so long as the relationship was one clearly marked as an intransitive one, between a superior or customer and an inferior or servant.)

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1851

Wendell Phillips, who was noticeably reluctant and uncomfortable when it came to sharing quarters with black abolitionists while on lecture tours, knew very well that the abolitionist struggle, for white abolitionists, had nothing whatever to do with a desire to improve the conditions of life available to black Americans. At this point he gave his game away by declaring to his white friends:

“My friends, if we never freed a slave, we have at least freed ourselves in the effort to emancipate our brother man.”42 Obviously, the name of Wendell’s game would be Set-The-White-Man-Free-From-Being-His-Brother’s- Keeper. (Let the names of our favorite games be accurately descriptive! :-)

It is to be noted that this was the game that was being played in Virginia as well during this year, for there was a new law being put in effect which would oblige free blacks to leave that State of grace within a year — or be reduced again to slavery. The local version of Set-The-White-Man-Free-From-Being-His-Brother’s- Keeper, being played down south, was Go-Be-Free-Somewhere-Else, and the local version being played up north was At-Least-We-Tried-And-Are-Now-Therefore-Among-The-Righteous — but these slightly differing versions amount to very much the same sort of stupid racist bag of tricks of What-Is-Of-The-Last-Importance- Is-The-White-Man’s-Righteousness.

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42. Has it become clear to you, in view of the above, why, when in 1842 the surviving 35 of the black privateers of the Amistad mutiny had been sent back to Africa aboard the bark Gentleman, they had been sent home as mere charity wards with nobody ever thinking to return to them their prize schooner La Amistad admittedly worth $70,000 — which they had won fair and square with their blood, sweat, and tears? For sure, had it been 35 surviving free white privateers, they would not have been denied this booty which belonged to them, but because they were instead free blacks, it never even occurred to any of the white players in this legal drama to give them their prize schooner back! One of the open issues of this drama, therefore, is: what happened to the La Amistad? Where did this valuable piece of property go? Which white men were allowed to profit from it? Our history books are, of course, silent. This is a question which, due to the ingrained nature of our race prejudice, it has never occurred to us to pose:

“In those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery ... and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

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Surprise surprise! It was a white man’s game in which the person of color was but a pawn.43

Here the executive committee of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society position themselves around Robert Purvis during this year. I don’t mean to suggest that all of these folks would have totally agreed with Phillips or with his white-man’s- game of Set-The-White-Man-Free-From-Being-His-Brother’s-Keeper. I only mean to insist that that was in fact the predominant, most influential white attitude:

During this year was published in Philadelphia PA by the firm of Campbell & Powers John Campbell’s NEGRO-MANIA: BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE FALSELY ASSUMED EQUALITY OF THE VARIOUS RACES OF MEN; DEMONSTRATED BY THE INVESTIGATIONS OF CHAMPOLLION, WILKINSON AND OTHERS, TOGETHER WITH A CONCLUDING CHAPTER, PRESENTING A COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF THE CONDITION OF THE

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NEGROES IN THE WEST INDIES BEFORE AND SINCE EMANCIPATION. EMANCIPATION JAMES WILKINSON

Surprise surprise! Black people are inferior to white people.2

The first complete gorilla skeleton reached England. Previously, all that had been seen by Europeans had been a few skulls. Clearly, gorilla people were also inferior to white people.

Publication of Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s AN ESSAY ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MANKIND, VIEWED IN CONNECTION WITH NEGRO SLAVERY DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOUTHERN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, 44 14 DECEMBER, 1850.

Professor Samuel George Morton’s ADDITIONAL OBSERVATION ON HYBRIDITY.

44. The attitude of the Southern Rights Association seems to have been that black slaves had no Southern rights. The attitude of Dr. Nott seems to have been that one sufficient reason for the appropriateness of such a political fact had been revealed by the science of biology — according to the advice of the most prominent of the learned white practitioners in that field. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2009 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In London, the Reverend Josiah Henson met the Reverend John Bird Sumner, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was asked from which university he had graduated. He is reported to have responded “The U. of Adversity.”

“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

Editor Richard K. Crallé began to put out THE WORKS OF John Caldwell Calhoun in six volumes (series completed 1856, reissued 1968).

The first stationhouse constructed for the Baltimore & Ohio RR, the original one in America, was replaced by a new station.45

The opening of the New York-Hudson River RR link between New-York harbor and Albany spelled the doom of the Hoosac Tunnel project of the Fitchburg RR — although Boston’s investors would not become adequately aware of that fact for another decade of pouring money into a very difficult hole in the ground.

As a remote consequence of the Irish ecological disaster, the “potato famine,” labor was cheap in Altoona PA. Rather than build a railroad trestle, an experiment in massive construction was undertaken. An enormous earthen berm would be constructed up the side of a mountain above the town, a switchback curve of packed earth to be known as “the horseshoe,” which would make materials for this trestle structure unnecessary. By using earth, the entire cost could be the labor cost. The earthwork would be 2,000 feet long and would enable a locomotive-pulled train to ascend 122 feet in altitude. Some 450 immigrants from County Cork were recruited, on promises of $0.25 per day of labor.46 At one point conditions in the labor camp were causing such an uproar among contending factions of the Irish that the local militia was called upon to hustle 33 “prisoners” away.

45. The parking lot of the B&O company museum that was opened in 1952 is over the site of this original station and it is this replacement station built in 1851 which now serves as that exhibit’s entrance hall. 2010 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Benjamin Wade, who had joined the Republican Party, was elected to the US Senate and would ally with other anti-slavery activists such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. Over the next few years he would be

46. That’s moving dirt cheap, to coin a phrase, taking into consideration that one might expect to earn $0.75 to $1.00 a day in Concord during this period for labor such as shoveling manure and erecting fences. However, when the transcontinental railroad project would get to the point of building the grade up out of Omaha, Nebraska after the Civil War, it would be found to be possible to induce native American women, who had fewer alternatives even than Irish men (!), to carry baskets of dirt from place to place for a mere $0.15 per day of labor. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2011 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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playing an active role in the campaign against the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The Wiggins family of slaves (including the 2-year-old Thomas Greene Wiggins who would achieve fame as “Blind Tom”) was purchased at auction by “Colonel” (or “General”) James Neill Bethune, a veteran of the Mexican War, a practicing attorney at law, and a newspaper editor at the Columbus Times — who would over his lifetime be able to profit most handsomely from the income Thomas would unexpectedly be able to generate in a long series of piano concerts and demeaning stage performances.47 This piece of human property, this black pianist and mimic billed as “Blind Tom,” would be offered to the general public as an idiot. As the most popular American pianist of the second half of the 19th Century by far, the “idiot” would gross an incredible hundred thousand dollars a year, which in our era would be the equivalent of better than a million and a half per year — but these vast sums of money would never be for his own pocket but only for the pockets of the white people who were in charge of his existence. Then, when he would die after a stroke at the age of 59 after having in indignation having begun to refuse to give performances, his body would be disposed of and of course forgotten in an unmarked pauper plot in Brooklyn.

47. This Bethune also would happen to be the publisher, at the Cornerstone, who would first suggest the possibility of the South’s secession from the American union. 2012 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January: A waiter called Shadrach (Frederick Jenkins) at a popular Boston coffeehouse, the Cornhill Coffee-house, was kidnapped under the new federal Fugitive Slave Law. His kidnappers, aka “United States Marshals,” were holding him in the Boston jailhouse, in order to bring him before an unindicted co-conspirator, aka “Federal Commissioner.” Shadrach, of course, as a kidnap victim, would not be permitted to testify on his own behalf or have access to council, or have a trial by jury of his white peers in downtown Boston, although we suppose he should have been more grateful than he in fact was, that his kidnappers merely kept him in chains rather than binding and gagging him, or drugging him. In all probability his lot would have been to be sent south to slavery, because that could happen solely on the word of one white man who would testify to this unindicted co-conspirator that Shadrach was a piece of someone’s property, that had escaped. However, as it came down, black Bostonians defied Christ’s injunction not to resist evil, and marched into the courthouse, and kidnapped Shadrach right back. Some nonviolence adherents, such as Abby Kelley Foster, would never become reconciled to these direct tactics, preferring to

throw my body in the way of the kidnappers and risk my life if need be.

There was a massacre of foreigners, including Americans, at Jaffa, Turkey. The US Mediterranean Squadron would be ordered to make a demonstration along the Turkish (Levant) coast. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

February 14, Friday: We become aware through a comment in the journal that Henry Thoreau was still dipping into the new trade-press publication he had obtained last December by way of Stacy’s Circulating Library in Concord, Roualeyn George Gordon-Cumming’s account of FIVE YEARS OF A HUNTER’S LIFE IN THE FAR INTERIOR OF SOUTH AFRICA. WITH NOTICES OF THE NATIVE TRIBES, AND ANECDOTES OF THE CHASE OF THE LION, ELEPHANT, HIPPOPOTAMUS, GIRAFFE, RHINOCEROS, &C. (New York: Harper & brothers). FIVE YEARS IN AFRICA, I FIVE YEARS IN AFRICA, II

February 14, Friday: Consider the farmer, who is commonly regarded as the healthiest man– He may be the toughest but he is not the healthiest. He has lost his elacticity –he can neither run nor jump– Health is the free use & command of all our faculties –& equal development– His is the health of the ox –an over worked buffalo– His joints are stiff. The resemblance is true even in particulars. He is cast away in a pair of cowhide boots –and travels at an ox’s pace –indeed in some places he puts his foot into the skin of an ox’s shin. It would do him good to be thoroughly shampooed to make him supple. His health is an insensibility to all influence– But only the healthiest man in the world is sensible to the finest influence– He who is affected by more or less of electricity in the air– We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see– How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding –how many greater things might he he be seeing in the meanwhile. One afternoon in the fall Nov 21st I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island & meadow between the island & the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water in the lee of the island & two hawks sailing over it –(and something more I saw which cannot easily be described which made me say to myself that it the landscape could not be improved.) I did not see how it could be improved. Yet I do not know what these things can be; (for) I begin to see such objects only when I leave off understanding them –and afterwards remember that I did not appreciate them before. But I get no further than this. How adapted these forms & colors to our eyes, a meadow & its islands. What are these things? Yet the hawks & the ducks keep so aloof, & nature is so reserved! We are made to love the river & the meadow as the wind (is made) to ripple the water There is a difference between eating for strength & from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerlly devour the marrow of the Koodoo & other antelopes raw, as a matter of course –& herein perchance have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. The eater of meats must come to this. This is better than stall fed cattle & slaughter-house “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2013 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pork. Possibly they derive a certain wild-animal vigor therefrom which the most artfully cooked meats do not furnish. We learn by the January thaw that the winter is intermittent and are reminded of other seasons– The back of the winter is broken

March 24: After this date if any slaves were manumitted in Kentucky they would be required to leave the state. Also, any free Negroes returning to or coming into Kentucky, if they remained over 30 days, were to be arrested and punished by confinement.

April: In this month and the next, the Thomas Simms (Sims) affair would be furnishing Henry Thoreau with illustrative material for “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”. That is to say, the variety of kidnappers known as “slave catchers” were in the process of kidnapping a teenage Boston waiter known to them as “fugitive slave Sims.” Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would be defending, but unsuccessfully, as such kidnapping was not then a federal crime but instead a federal perpetration.48Friend Seth Concklin had spirited the wife Lavinia and the

children of Peter Still away and they had made it all the way up out of Alabama and out of the South into Indiana — but then at one point Concklin had needed to be away on an errand and, during his absence, the Still family was captured. When he tried to obtain a writ of habeas corpus he also was thrown in the Indiana jail. After murdering him, the slave-catchers would restore the black family to its Alabama slavemaster.

The Reverend Samuel Ringgold Ward was summoned from his place of residence in Syracuse, New York to the bedside of his father in Newark, New Jersey: After his escape, my father learned to read, so that he could enjoy the priceless privilege of searching the Scriptures. Supporting himself by his trade as a house painter, or whatever else offered (as he was a man of untiring industry), he lived in Cumberland County, New Jersey, from 1820 until 1826; in New York city from that year until 1838; and in the city of Newark, New Jersey, from 1838 until May 1851, when he died, at the age of 68.... In April I was summoned to his bedside, where I found him the victim of paralysis. After spending some few days with him, and leaving him very much better, I went to Pennsylvania on business, and returned in about ten days, when he appeared still very comfortable; I then, for a few days, left him. My mother and I knew that another attack was to be feared — another, we knew too well, would prove fatal; but when it would occur was of course beyond our knowledge; but we hoped for the best. My

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father and I talked very freely of his death. He had always maintained that a Christian ought to have his preparation for his departure made, and completed in Christ, before death, so as when death should come he should have nothing to do BUT TO DIE. “That,” said my father, “is enough to do at once: let repenting, believing, everything else, be sought at a proper time; let dying alone be done at the dying time.” In my last conversation with him he not only maintained, but he felt, the same. Then, he seemed as if he might live a twelvemonth....

48. Under the heading “Pacifist, Thoreau not a” on page 191 of CONCORD: CLIMATE FOR FREEDOM, a history written by the anti-pacifist Ruth R. Wheeler, the incident of the return of Thomas Simms (Sims) is cited as one of the author’s two proof-texts, demonstrating that Henry Thoreau believed in resisting evil, and was characterized as follows:

Henry Thoreau at this time (April, 1851) expressed himself at length and bitterly in his Journal. He was proud to read that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster of CONCORD but when he thought what a short time Foster had lived in Concord, he was ashamed that the Buttricks and Davises and Hosmers, descendants of the men who had fought at the bridge for their liberty, should be celebrating that fight on April 19th while themselves unwilling to do anything to help three million slaves attain their freedom. But I would have done with comparing ourselves with our ancestors, for I believe that even they, if somewhat braver and less corrupt than we, were not men of so much principle and generosity as to go to war in behalf of another race in their midst. I do not believe that the North will soon come to blows with the South on this question. It would be too bright a page to be written in the history of the race at present. History in 1861 was to show how wrong Thoreau was in this estimate.

The man who was converted to a life of violence by the violence of the Simms case was, of course, the Reverend Daniel Foster, the Concord minister who had attracted notice by praying on the dock in 1851 as Simms was being extradited from Boston to Savannah GA in 1851 — not Thoreau. Leaving the Concord church, Foster had become Chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was in attendance when Captain John Brown spoke before a joint session of the House and Senate about the Kansas troubles. Almost immediately afterward he quit his Chaplaincy and moved to Kansas, “convinced that our cause must receive a baptism of blood before it can be victorious.”

I expect to serve in Capt. John Brown’s company in the next Kansas war, which I hope is inevitable & near at hand.

(Clearly, Wheeler was neither a reader with any capacity to recognize sarcasm nor a writer with any capacity to reserve judgment.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 3, Thursday: Thomas Simms (Sims)’s arrest. The United States Commissioner in Boston, George Ticknor Curtis, ordered that teenage runaway, who had been living and working in Boston, be sent back to his owner in Georgia (who was, possibly, also his father), who in all likelihood would torture him and might well murder him by due process of law. Sims was a man seriously addicted to his pleasures, a drinker and habitué of the Ann Street bordellos. He had been something of a hard case: he carried a knife, and when arrested had cut Asa Butman pretty severely in the leg.... The abolitionists put it out that Sims had died from the whipping he got when he arrived back in Savannah that spring of 1851. But it wasn’t true. According to Leonard W. Levy’s THE LAW OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND CHIEF JUSTICE SHAW (Oxford, 1957), it had become notorious that no fugitive slave had ever been returned from Boston. Webster Whigs were dismayed that the whole state of Massachusetts was known as the cradle of “mad Abolitionism.” It had become a matter of pride, not alone in the South, that a fugitive should be seized in Boston and taken back to slavery. Then, on Thursday evening, April 3, 1851 —before the excitement of the Shadrach [Frederick Jenkins] case had subsided— the city government of Boston was presented with an opportunity to make good on its promises of loyally enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act: Thomas Sims was taken into custody as a fugitive slave belonging to Mr. James Potter, a rice planter of Chatham

The Sunday Boston Globe for February 9, 1997 featured a review of Gary Collison’s book SHADRACH MINKINS: FROM FUGITIVE SLAVE TO CITIZEN, with two handsome woodcuts and a photo of an ad for the sale of Shadrach:49 A man came from Norfolk VA to Boston with documents attesting to the fact that a waiter at Taft’s Cornhill Coffee House, Frederick Wilkins AKA Shadrach, was an escaped slave. The Commissioner of the US Circuit Court, George Ticknor Curtis, by politics a “Cotton Whig,” issued a warrant for the arrest of said runaway, who was seized as he unsuspectingly served the breakfast of US Deputy Marshall Patrick Riley. After hustling the waiter through back streets to the courthouse, Riley notified City Marshal Francis Tukey and Mayor Bigelow that he had “got a nigger.” Brad Dean summarizes: “In September 1850 the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which granted slaveholders the right to seize runaway slaves anywhere in the U.S. and carry them back to the South. The first attempt at rendition in February 1851 failed when abolitionists rescued a runaway called 49. So, what was a “Cotton Whig”? –Ronald Bailey, in considering the extended economic impact of the slave economy on industrialization in New England, has proposed that we employ a new term, the “slave(ry) trade,” so that we can refer not simply to the trade in slaves, between nations and inside our nation, but to the entire national economy that we built directly or tangentially around slave labor and its produce. This can be, he suggests, a useful shorthand which will remind us of the complex economic linkages wrought by slaveholding. New England textile mill owners and planter interests in the South and the Caribbean maintained a steady commerce of raw goods and finished supplies. The selfinterests of these groups were sometimes so close that the distinction between them broke down; individuals or families could become industrial capitalists as well as plantation owners. Bailey has cited, in detail, economic relationships between New England merchants and Caribbean plantation owners which personalize the economic relationship between northern industry and the slave plantations. Rowland Gibson Hazard, a Rhode Island manufacturer of negro cloth, was able somehow to support abolitionist principles while also producing products which directly implicated him in, to use Bailey’s phrase, the slave(ry) trade. Somehow such people were able to experience a shift in their moral values without fundamentally reassessing the consequences of their own economic activities. As a result, they could embrace antislavery sentiments, but not sufficiently to cease all economic participation in the slave(ry) trade, and not sufficiently to become ardent abolitionists. “Why,” Stachiw asks, “didn’t they expand their perceptions of moral principles to encompass the full consequences of their actions?” (One explanation that has been proferred is that their opposition to abolitionism drew less from their moral stand against it than from their opposition to what they saw as the threat to their status, as local elites, that was being presented by upstart immediatists.) 2016 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Shadrach (Frederick Jenkins) from his captors in Boston and sent him on to safety in Canada. Less than two months later, however, another runaway, Thomas Simms (Sims), was seized in Boston, but on that occasion local, state, and federal troops ensured that Sims’s owners were able to carry him back to Georgia. Henry Thoreau and hundreds of thousands of others in the North were outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law and the Sims rendition, which seemed to them flagrant violations by the federal government of the rights guaranteed to states under the US Constitution. As a consequence of these and similar actions by the federal government, the Nullification movement, which posited that a state had a right to nullify laws mandated by the federal government, garnered more serious attention in the North than it had before been accorded. Two key events immediately preceded and helped set the stage for the meeting sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on July 4th, 1854. On May 24th, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave working in a Boston clothing store, was arrested and slated to be shipped back to Virginia. Abolitionists protested at Faneuil Hall, and the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson [of Boston’s Vigilance Committee] led a failed attempt to rescue Burns from the Boston jail.”

Anthony Burns was given a new suit for the occasion and was escorted under heavy guard by the militia to a revenue cutter which returned him to slavery. (It is estimated that it cost our government some $100,000 to make him a slave again.)

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Brad Dean continues: “The second key event was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which became law on May 30. One provision of the Act was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, an action that removed the explicit prohibition of slavery in the northern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase.

Thoreau was incensed over the Burns affair. On May 29th, he began a long, scathing journal entry with these two sentences, the second of which would echo again in “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”: “These days it is left to one Mr. Loring to say whether a citizen of Massachusetts is a slave or not. Does any one think that Justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s decision?”50 The arrangements by which Thoreau joined William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and the others on the podium at Framingham are not known. The absence of his name from announcements of the event suggests that he was a last-minute addition, but we do not know whether he was asked to speak or sought the opportunity. In view of his aroused emotions at the moment and of his apparent difficulty getting Concordians to talk about the North rather than the South, it is certainly possible that the announced rally struck him as an ideal forum to get things off his chest. Minimal time to prepare was not really a problem because on the issue of slavery and Massachusetts his long-stewing thought and rhetoric had already reached the boiling point. Indeed, in writing SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”, he essentially mined his still fresh journal entries on Burns and earlier passages on the Thomas Simms (Sims) case.”

50. THE JOURNAL OF HENRY D. THOREAU, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis Henry Allen, 14 volumes. Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906, 6:313. 2018 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 7: Moncure Daniel Conway’s first sermon as a Methodist circuit-rider.51 AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

Herman Melville’s father-in-law Judge Lemuel Shaw refused to help save from slavery the teenage runaway Thomas Simms (Sims).

Soon Waldo Emerson sought consolation in his journal:

It is now as disgraceful to be a Bostonian as it was hitherto a credit.... I met an episcopal clergyman, & allusion being made to Mr Webster’s treachery, he replied “Why, do you know I think that the great action of his life?” I opened a paper today in which he pounds on the old strings in a letter to the Washington Birth Day feasters at N.Y. “Liberty! liberty!” Pho! Let Mr Webster for decency’s sake shut his lips once & forever on this word. The word liberty in the mouth of Mr Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtezan.... What a moment was lost when Judge Lemuel Shaw declined to affirm the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law!

RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW A foot-note of the Report of the Senate of Massachusetts on the case would put the matter of responsibility most succinctly: It would have been impossible for the U.S. marshal thus successfully to have resisted the law of the State, without the assistance of the municipal authorities of Boston, and the countenance and support of a numerous, wealthy, and powerful body of citizens. It was in evidence that 1500 of the most wealthy and respectable citizens —merchants, bankers, and others— volunteered their services to aid the marshal on this occasion.... No watch was kept upon the doings of the marshal, and while the State officers slept, after the moon had gone down, in the darkest hour before daybreak, the accused was taken out

51. Conway’s journal for the critical years 1851, 1852, and 1853, never published, is now present on the internet in holograph image at http://deila.dickinson.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/ownwords&CISOPTR=23390 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2019 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of our jurisdiction by the armed police of the city of Boston.

Moloch in State Street, by John Greenleaf Whittier THE moon has set: while yet the dawn Breaks cold and gray, Between the midnight and the morn Bear off your prey! On, swift and still! the conscious street Is panged and stirred; Tread light! that fall of serried feet The dead have heard! The first drawn blood of Freedom’s veins Gushed where ye tread; Lo! through the dusk the martyr-stains Blush darkly red! Beneath the slowly waning stars And whitening day, What stern and awful presence bars That sacred way? What faces frown upon ye, dark With shame and pain? Come these from Plymouth’s Pilgrim bark? Is that young Vane? Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on With mocking cheer? Lo! spectral Andros, Hutchinson, And Gage are here! For ready mart or favoring blast Through Moloch’s fire, Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed The Tyrian sire. Ye make that ancient sacrifice Of Man to Gain, Your traffic thrives, where freedom dies, Beneath the chain.

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Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn And hate, is near; How think ye freemen, mountain-born, The tale will hear? Thank God! our mother State can yet Her fame retrieve; To you and to your children let The scandal cleave. Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, Make gods of gold; Let honor, truth, and manliness Like wares be sold. Your hoards are great, your walls are strong, But God is just; The gilded chambers built by wrong Invite the rust. What! know ye not the gains of Crime Are dust and dross; Its ventures on the waves of time Foredoomed to loss! And still the Pilgrim State remains What she hath been; Her inland hills, her seaward plains, Still nurture men! Nor wholly lost the fallen mart; Her olden blood Through many a free and generous heart Still pours its flood. That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet, Shall know no check, Till a free people’s foot is set On Slavery’s neck. Even now, the peal of bell and gun, And hills aflame, Tell of the first great triumph won In Freedom’s name. The long night dies: the welcome gray Of dawn we see; Speed up the heavens thy perfect day, God of the free!

circa April: When I read the account of the carrying back of the fugitive into slavery, which was read last sunday evening –and read also what was not read here that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster of Concord I could not help feeling a slight degree of pride because of all the towns in the Commonwealth Concord was the only one distinctly named as being represented in that tea-party –and as she had a place in the first so would have a place in this the last & perhaps next most important chapter of the Hist of Mass. But my second feeling, –when I reflected how short a time that gentleman has resided in this town, – was one of doubt & shame –because the men of Concord in recent times have done nothing to entitle them to the honor of having their town named in such a connexion.

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April 12: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Thomas Lord, 29 acres of Factory Village land between Factory Road and Boxboro Road, while the Reverend Daniel Foster, temporary minister at the Trinitarian Church in Concord, prayed on Long Wharf, while the young Thomas Simms (Sims) was being marched under very heavy guard to the dock for transport aboard the brig Acorn back to a slaveholder in Savannah GA.52 Brad Dean on Daniel Foster

As the brig pulled away Simms cried out to the docks: “And is this Massachusetts liberty?” The sordid affair began to add materials to Thoreau’s journal (J 2:173-85, continuing into May) which eventually would find their way into the lecture “Slavery in Massachusetts.” TIMELINE OF ESSAYS RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/137.htm

circa April 1, 1851: When I read the account of the carrying back of the fugitive into slavery, which was read last sunday evening –and read also what was not read here that the man who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster of Concord I could not help feeling a slight degree of pride because of all the towns in the Commonwealth Concord was the only one distinctly named as being represented in that tea-party –and as she had a place in the first so would have a place in this the last & perhaps next most important chapter of the Hist of Mass. But my second feeling, –when I reflected how short a time that gentleman has resided in this town, –was one of doubt & shame –because the men of Concord in recent times have done nothing to entitle them to the honor of having their town named in such a connexion.

52. Daniel’s wife Dora Foster was for a number of years Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau’s best friend. 2022 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”: The Liberator and the Commonwealth were the only papers in Boston, as far as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited in '51. The other journals, almost without exception, by their manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the carrying back of the slave Simms, insulted the common sense of the country, at least. And, for the most part, they did this, one would say, because they thought so to secure the approbation of their patrons, not being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any extent in the heart of the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them have improved of late; but they are still eminently time- serving. Such is the character they have won. But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The free men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once. One whom I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell’s Citizen in the cars, and then threw it out the window. But would not his contempt have been more fatally expressed, if he had not bought it? Are they Americans? are they New Englanders? are they inhabitants of Lexington, and Concord, and Framingham, who read and support the Boston Post, Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier, and Times? Are these the Flags of our Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name the worst. Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime? I do not know whether the Boston Herald is still in existence, but I remember to have seen it about the streets when Simms was carried off. Did it not act its part well — serve its master faithfully? How could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities in the place of the head he has? than make his head his lower extremity? When I have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants’ Exchange.

April 19: The “Davis Guards” formed (a total of 40 men), naming themselves in honor of Captain Isaac Davis of Acton who had been shot dead on the famous April 19th at the bridge in Concord. Winthrop E. Faulkner would serve in this unit as a Captain.

As Henry Thoreau would write in “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”: Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston

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assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty — and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three million others. Now-a-days men wear a fool’s cap, and call it a liberty cap. I do not know but there are some, who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons, to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire; that was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke. The joke could be no broader, if the inmates of the prisons were to subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire the jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they enjoyed it through the grating. This is what I thought about my neighbors. Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she heard those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the events of the 19th of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12th of April, 1851. But now we have half buried that old shame under a new one.

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THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES was being placed upon bookstore shelves as Thomas Simms (Sims) was being taken from the Savannah, Georgia dock to a Savannah holding cell for negroes, and on the way there publicly tortured almost to the point of death.53 RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW PATRIOTS’ DAY

Although Nathaniel Hawthorne had utilized some of the material about Friend Thomas Maule in the construction of this fiction, the author had divided the biographical material into two Maule figures, a Matthew 53. Note that the slavemaster chose this day for the day of flogging because he was aware that this day was of peculiar patriotic significance in New England. Note also that as of this year of our national history, only a single person who had stood at the North Bridge at Concord on April 19, 1775 to await the Redcoats was still alive: this single person had been the boy who had “played” the militia minutemen to that spot. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2025 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Maule versus a Thomas Maule who had allegedly been the architect of that house possessing seven gables.54

May: Burning over the burned-over region, Sojourner Truth had since February been speaking against slavery across upstate New York. The spirits indeed move in mysterious ways, for while visiting the area she was becoming entranced by table-rappings and communications with the departed.

Carleton Mabee’s SOJOURNER TRUTH

Pages 99-100: In Truth’s time, Spiritualists played a role similar to that of “New Age” religionists in the late 1900s. The general public often ridiculed Spiritualists, and conservative churches often attacked them; Seventh Day Adventists, who were strong in Battle Creek, were among those who attacked Spiritualists, claiming they talked not to spirits of the dead but to devils. Some abolitionist-feminists such as Friend Lucretia Mott, Parker Pillsbury, and Frederick Douglass were skeptical of Spiritualists. Others tended to avoid identifying with them because they did not wish to antagonize the conventional church. But many abolitionist-feminists, including William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, and Paulina Wright Davis, despite being dubious of certain claims by particular Spiritualists, tended to believe that spiritualism not only reinforced the Christian belief in immortality, but also was a progressive development that went hand in hand with efforts to improve the status of blacks and of women. By the late 1850s most of the Progressive Friends –a movement especially of dissident Quakers in which Truth and many of her friends took part, in Battle Creek, Rochester, and elsewhere– had accepted spiritualism. By the 1860s the intermingling of Progressive Friends and Spiritualists was so pervasive that it was hard to tell them apart.

54. Edward L. Widmer is of the opinion that, just as Herman Melville was parodying Evert Augustus Duyckinck in PIERRE, Hawthorne had “probably re-created” John L. O’Sullivan, “less harshly,” as Holgrave in THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES. Widmer also mentions that Henry Thoreau, even though he did publish in O’Sullivan’s The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, was “anything but a Young American.” 2026 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 11: In a rural ghetto near Philadelphia, a no-no happened that got national attention:

Edward Gorsuch, a white Maryland man, a kind Christian master who took pride in treating his slaves well and was so distressed at the idea some of them did not want to be with him that he had trouble crediting that this might be true, led a US marshall and an armed party of relatives and neighbors in a hunt into Pennsylvania for four of his escaped slaves, and William Parker, himself an escaped slave, gave these men safety in his home 55 and organized the blacks of that integrated neighborhood, called “Christiana,” for mutual self-defense. Gorsuch first sought help from three of Parker’s white neighbors, the miller Castner Hanway, Friend Elijah Lewis, a shopkeeper, and Friend Joseph Scarlett, a farmer, but although they refused to assist him, he made a

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predawn assault on the house. He was killed and his son Dickinson Gorsuch was shot some eighty times (but

survived, which would indicate that the weapons available to these impoverished black self-defenders must have been pretty hopelessly inadequate), whereupon Parker picked up a white man’s abandoned pistol and fled toward Canada. (He took temporary refuge in upstate New York with Frederick Douglass, whom he had once

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heard speak, and this pistol would wind up years later in Douglass’s hands.)56

In the haste of his departure, William Parker left behind a large bundle of correspondence that might have incriminated individual abolitionists in slave-stealing, but fortunately Friend Levi Pownell happened upon the bundle first, recognized its significance, and burned it.

Parker’s three neighbors, as well as all black men that armed posses could round up (hunted “like partridges upon the mountain,” one person charged, that is, chosen by the color of their skin whether or not they were anywhere near that home on that night), were thrown into Pennsylvania’s Moyamensing Prison, where they were segregated into separate and very unequal cells. They were segregated into these separate and very unequal cells for quite a while, for this incident became known as the Christiana Riot and they were to be charged with treason (ordinarily people are charged with resisting a police officer in the performance of his duty, for which ordinary offense there are ordinary penalties; treason is a conspiracy or attempt to overthrow the government of the United States of America by force and violence and the penalties for that sort of conduct can be somewhat more severe).

56. Nash, Roderick. “William Parker and the Christiana Riot.” Journal of Negro History 96 (1961):24-31 2030 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The following would be printed up locally, in explanation of what had happened in all the terror and confusion of that night:

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In the aftermath a large number of local residents would be rounded up and put on trial for their lives, the capital charge being treason. Presiding at this treason trial would be the Honorable John K. Kane:

September 18, Thursday: The New-York Times went on sale, at 2 cents a copy.

The negrero Illinois brought 7 boys who had been kidnapped in the islands of the West Indies into the port of Norfolk, Virginia (HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 105, pages 12-14). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

The St. Louis Western Watchman reprinted a racist editorial that had appeared in the Toronto Colonist, about the condition of the American slaves who had been escaping to freedom in Canada: Already we have a far greater number of negroes in the province than the good of the country requires, and we would suggest the propriety of levying a poll tax on all who may come to us for the future.... We abhor slavery, but patriotism induces us to “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2033 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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exclaim against having our country overrun by blacks, many of whom are woefully depraved by their previous mode of life. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

The Concord boundaries committee perambulated the dividing line between the town and adjoining Bedford.

September 18, Thursday: Perambulated Bedford line

October 1, Wednesday: In China, the Chinese Christian leader Hung Hsiu Ch’üan entered his newly conquered city of Yongan in the Guangxi province and of course issued a stern warning that all booty was to be turned over to the central authority.

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A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE ABOUT SHADRACH IN EXILE57

SHADRACH, THE FUGITIVE: — A Montreal correspondent says of this colored fellow, whose rescue from the Boston Court house has given him such extended notoriety — Did you ever hear of one Shadrach Minkins, the one that ran away from Boston; the very same. Yes, here he is, 172 1-2 Notre Dame street. I went with Mr R. Maxcey, a gentleman from Mississippi, to see Shadrach at Mr M.’s request. Shadrach is keeping a saloon and doing well, but says he had rather live in Boston, all other things being equal. Mr M. said of Shadrach — he is a smart fellow, but he knows too much. I would not want him among my niggers.

October 1, Wednesday: 5 P m Just put a fugitive slave who has taken the name of Henry Williams into the cars for Canada. He escaped from Stafford County Virginia to Boston last October, has been in Shadracks place at the Cornhill Coffee-house–had been corresponding through an agent with his master who is his father about buying–himself–his master asking $600 but he having been able to raise only $500.– heard that there were writs out for two Williamses fugitives–and was informed by his fellow servants & employer that Augerhole Burns & others of the police had called for him when he was out. Accordingly fled to Concord last night on foot–bringing a letter to our family from Mr Lovejoy of Cambridge–& another which Garrison had formerly given him on another occasion. He lodged with us & waited in the house till funds were collected with which to forward him. Intended to despatch him at noon through to Burlington–but when I went to buy his ticket saw one at the Depot who looked & behaved so much like a Boston policeman, that I did not venture that time. An intelligent and very well behaved man–a mullatto. There is art to be used not only in selecting wood for a withe but in using it. Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent–or is it only by accident that they are twisted? The slave said he could guide himself by many other stars than the north star whose rising & setting he knew– They steered for the north star even when it had got round and appeared to them to be in the south. They frequently followed the telegraph when there was no railroad. The slaves bring many superstitions from Africa. The fugitives sometimes superstitiously carry a turf in their hats thinking that their successs depends on it. These days when the trees have put on their autumnal tints are the gala days of the year–when the very foliage of trees is colored like a blossom– It is a proper time for a yearly festival–an agricultural show. Candlelight To Conantum– The moon not quite half full.58 The twilight is much shorter now than a month ago, probably as the atmosphere is clearer and there is less to reflect the light. The air is cool & the ground also feels cold under my feet as if the grass were wet with dew which is not yet the case. I go through Wheelers cornfield in the twilight, where the stalks are bleached almost white–and his tops are still stacked along the edge of the field. The moon is not far up above the southwestern horizon. Looking west at this hour the earth is an unvaried undistinguishable black in contrast with the twilight sky. It is as if you were walking in night up to your chin. There is no wind stirring. An oak tree in Hubbard’s pasture stands absolutely motionless and dark against the sky. The crickets sound farther off or fainter at this season as if they had gone deeper into the sod to avoid the cold. There are no crickets heard on the alders on the causeway. The moon looks colder in the water. There is a great change between this and my last moon light walk– I experience a comfortable warmth when I approach the south side of a dry wood–which keeps off the cooler air and also retains some of the warmth of day. The voices of travellers in the road are heard afar over the fields. even to Conantum house. The moon is too far west to be seen reflected in the river at Tupelo cliff–but the stars are reflected– The river is a dark mirror 57. I asked around as best I could, last time I was in Montréal, and from several people who might be suspected to have some knowledge of the local scene, I got the opinion that none of the American persons of color, or any of their descendants, were still on the local scene — that there was no continuity between then and now. 58. The almanac shows October 1st to be the night of the half-full moon. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2035 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with bright points feebly fluctuating– I smell the bruised horsemint which I cannot see while I sit on the brown rocks by the shore. I see the glow-worm under the damp cliff– No whippoorwills [Whip-poor-will Caprimulgus vociferus] are heard tonight–and scarcely a note of any other bird. At 8 o’clock the fogs have begun which with the shining on them look like cobwebs or thin white veils spread over the earth– They are the dreams or visions of the meadow. The second growth of the white-pine is probably softer & more beautiful than the primitive forest ever afforded. The primitive forest is more grand with its bare mossy stems and ragged branches, but exhibits no such masses of green needles trembling in the light. The elms are generally of a dirty or brownish yellow now

October 4, Saturday: More than 500 citizens of Syracuse met to plan their response, with the mayor of Syracuse in the chair. They formed a Vigilance Committee made up of leading citizens of both races, and pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” that no person would be taken from Syracuse and returned to slavery. The meeting was addressed by the Elder of the AME Zion Church, Jermain Wesley Loguen (ultimately the church’s Bishop).

Himself a fugitive from slavery in Tennessee, the Reverend Loguen roused the commitment of his fellow citizens, swearing he would not be taken, and that he knew they would stand with him.

The Reverend Samuel Joseph May subsequently preached a sermon in which he condemned Senator Daniel Webster for his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Though himself a pacifist, he urged his listeners to defend their neighbors as vigorously as they would themselves and their families. Mayor Alfred H. Hovey pledged himself to stand with his constituents, come what may, against enforcement of the act. The Convention being in session in a nearby church, word of Jerry McHenry’s arrest quickly arrived. (Mrs. Sabine, the wife of the

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commissioner who would hear the case, may well have already leaked about the plan to make the arrest.) There was a dash to set the church bells ringing and a crowd was soon gathering at Commissioner Sabine’s office, with Jerry inside being arraigned. The crowd enabled Jerry to make it as far as the street, in irons, but then he was immediately recaptured. The arraignment ceremony was postponed and a larger room was planned. The crowd grew and grew in the street, and the second time there would be a more coordinated attempt at rescue, complete with battering ram. One of the deputy marshal defenders fired some random pistol shots out the window by way of token defense, but it was clear that this crowd was too huge and too committed and could not safely be resisted. One of the deputy marshals broke an arm while trying to make his exit through the window. McHenry injured himself by falling down a stairs, and would then lie hidden for several days at the home of a butcher of the city who was well-know for his anti-abolitionism (perfect cover), before being taken in a wagon to Oswego where he might cross Lake Ontario to the safety of Canada.

October 4, Saturday: The emigrant had for weeks been tossing on the Atlantic & perchance as long ascending the St Lawrence with contrary winds–conversant as yet in the new world only with the dreary coast of Newfondland & Labrador–& the comparatively wild shores of the river below the Isle of Orleans. It is said that under these circumstances, the sudden apparition of Quebec on turning Point Levi–makes a memorable impression on the beholder. Minot was telling me today that he used to know a man in Lincoln who had no floor to his barn but waited till the ground froze then swept it clean in his barn & threshed his grain on it He also used to see men threshing their buck-wheat in the field where it grew–having just taken off the surface down to a hard pan. Minot used the word “gavel” to describe a parcel of stalks cast on the ground to dry. His are good old English words and I am always sure to find them in the dictionary–though I never heard them before in my life. I was admiring his corn stalks disposed about the barn to dry over or astride the braces & the timbers–of such a fresh clean & handsome green retaining their strength & nutritive properties so–unlike the gross & careless husbandry of speculating money-making farmers–. who suffer their stalks to remain out till they are dry & dingy & black as chips. Minot is perhaps the most poetical farmer–who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer’s life–that I know. He does nothing (with haste and drudgery–) but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labor and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops– or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him. He has not too much land to trouble him–too much work to do–no hired man nor boy.– but simply to amuse himself & live. He cares not so much to raise a large crop as to do his work well. He knows every pin & nail in his barn. If another linter is to be floored he lets no hired man rob him of that amusement–but he goes slowly to the woods and at his leisure selects a pitch pine tree cuts it & hauls it or gets it hauled to the mill and so he knows the history of his barn-floor Farming is an amusement which has lasted him longer than gunning or fishing– He is never in a hurry to get his garden planted & yet is always planted soon enough–& none in the town is kept so beautifully clean– He always prophecies a failure of the crops.– and yet is satisfied with what he gets. His barn-floor is fastened down with oak pins & he prefers them to iron spikes–which he says will rust & give way– He handles & amuses himself with every ear of his corn crop as much as a child with its playthings–& so his small crop goes a great way. He might well cry if it were carried to market. The seed of weeds is no longer in his soil. He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather & hear the wind groan through the pines. He keeps a cat in his barn to catch the mice. He indulges in no luxury of food or dress or furniture–yet he is not penurious but merely simple. If his sister dies before him he may have to go to the alms house in his old age– yet he is not poor–for he does not want riches. He gets out of each manipulation in the farmers operations a fund of entertainment which the speculating drudge hardly knows. With never failing rhumatism & trembling hands–he seems yet to enjoy perennial health. Though he never reads a book–since he has finished the Naval Monument–he speaks the best of English

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October 5, Sunday: Someone, perhaps Samuel Joseph May, introduced the following resolution at the Liberty Party

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convention, which was adopted: Whereas, Daniel Webster, That base and infamous enemy of the human race, did in a speech of which he delivered himself, in Syracuse last Spring, exultingly and insultingly predict that fugitive slaves would yet be taken away from Syracuse and even from anti-slavery conventions in Syracuse, and whereas the attempt to fulfill this prediction was delayed until the first day of October, 1851, when the Liberty party of the State of New York were holding their annual convention in Syracuse; and whereas the attempt was defeated by the mighty uprising of 2,500 brave men, before whom the half-dozen kidnappers were “as tow,” therefore, Resolved, That we rejoice that the City of Syracuse –the anti-slavery city of Syracuse- the city of anti-slavery conventions, our beloved and glorious city of Syracuse– still remains undisgraced by the fulfillment of the satanic prediction of the satanic Daniel Webster.

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October 5, Sunday: I noticed on Friday Oct 3d that the Willows generally were green & unchanged The red-maples varied from green through yellow to bright red. The black-cherry was green inclining to yellow (I speak of such trees as I chanced to see) The apple trees green but shedding their leaves like most of the trees Elm a dingy yellow. White ash from green to dark purple or Mulberry White-oak green inclining to yellow Tupelo reddish yellow & red– Tree bushed about the head, limbs small & slanting downward. Some maples when ripe are yellow or whitish yellow–others reddish yellow–others bright red–by the accident of the season or position–the more or less light & sun–being on the edge or in the midst of the wood– Just as the fruits are more or less deeply colored. Birches green & yellow. Swamp white oak a yellowish green– Black ash–greenish yellow & now sered by frost– Bass sered yellowish. Color in the maturity of foliage is as variable & little characteristic as naturalists have found it to be for distinguishing fishes & quadrupeds &c. Observed that the wood-chuck has two or more holes–a rod or two apart– One or the front door–where the excavated sand is heaped up–another not so easily discovered–very small round without any sand about it being

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that by which he emerged–smaller directly at the surface than beneath–on the principle by which a well is dug making as small a hole as possible at the surface to prevent caving. About these holes is now seen their manure apparently composed chiefly of the remains of crickets which are seen crawling over the sand. Saw a very fat woodchuck on a wall–evidently prepared to go into winter quarters. Still purplish asters–& late golden rods–& fragrant life everlasting–& purple gerardia–great Bidens &c &c The Dogwood by the Corner road has lost every leaf–its bunches of dry greenish berries hanging straight down from the bare stout twigs as if their peduncles were broken. It has assumed its winter aspect. A Mithridatic look The Prinos berries are quite red. The panicled hawkweed is one of those yellowish spherical or hemispherical fuzzy seeded plants–which you see about the wood-paths & fields at present–which however only a strong wind can blow far.– Saw by the path-side beyond the Conant Spring that singular jelly like sort of Mushroom–which I saw last 3 spring while surveying Whites farm–now red globular /4 inch in diameter, covering the coarse moss by the ruts on the path side with jelly-covered seeds(?) 2 P M to the high open land between Batemans’ Pond & the lime kiln. It is a still cloudy afternoon rather cool As I go past Cheney’s Boathouse–the river looks lighter than the sky– The butternuts have shed nearly all their leaves, and their nuts are seen black against the sky. The White oaks are turned a reddish brown in some valleys. The Norway cinquefoil and a smaller cinquefoil are still in blossom & also the late buttercup My companion remarked that the land (for the most part consisting of decayed orchards–huckleberry pastures and forests) on both sides of the Old Carlisle road, uneven and undulating like the road appeared to be all in-motion like the traveller–travelling on with him. Found a wild russet apple very good–of peculiar form flattened at the poles.

Some red maples have entirely lost their leaves– The black birch is straw colored. The rocks in the high open pasture are peculiar & interesting to walk over–for though presenting broad & flat surfaces–the strata are perpendicular producing a grained & curled appeareance–this rocky crown like a hoary head covered with curly hair–or it is like walking over the edges of the leaves of a vast book. I wonder how these rocks were ever worn even thus smooth by the elements. The strata are remarkably serpentine or waving. It appears as if you were upon the axis of elevation geologically speaking. I do not remember any other pasture in Concord where the rocks are so remarkable for this. What is that fleshy or knot-fleshy root which we found in the soil on the rocks by Bateman’s pond–which looked so edible? All meadows and swamps have been remarkably dry this year & are still notwithstanding the few showers and rainy days. Witch hazel now in bloom I perceive the fragrance of ripe grapes in the air, and after a little search discover the ground covered with them where the frost has stripped the vines of leaves–still fresh & plump & perfectly ripe. The little conical burrs of the agrimony stick to my clothes. The pale lobelia still blooms freshly– The rough hawkweed–holds up its globes of yellowish fuzzy seeds as well as the panicled. The clouds have cleared away the sun come out & it is warmer & very pleasant. The declining sun falling on the willows &c below Mrs Ripleys & on the water–produces a rare soft light–such as I do not often see– a greenish yellow. The milk weed seeds are in the air. I see one in the river–which a minnow occasionally jostles. (stood near a small rabbit hardly half grown by the old carlisle road) I hear the red wing black-birds [Agelaius phoeniceus] by the river side again as if it were a new spring. They appear to have come to bid farewell. The birds appear to depart with the coming of the frosts which kill the vegetation & directly or indirectly the insects on which they feed. The American bittern Ardea Minor [American Bittern Botaurus lentiginosus] flew across the river trailing his legs in the water scared up by us– This according to Peabody is the boomer– [stake driver] In their sluggish flight they can hardly keep their legs up. Wonder if they can soar 3 59 8 Pm to Cliffs: Moon /4 full. The nights now are very still for there is hardly any noise of birds or of insects. The whippoorwill [Whip-poor-will Caprimulgus vociferus] is not heard–nor the mosquito–only the occasional lisping of some sparrow. The moon gives not a creamy but white cold light–through which you can see far distinctly. About villages You hear the bark of dogs instead of the howl of wolves– When I descend into DOG the valley by Wheelers grain field I find it quite cold. The sand slopes in the deep Cut gleam coldly as if covered with rime. As I go through the Spring woods I perceive a sweet dry scent from the underwoods like that of the fragrant life everlasting. I suppose it is that. To appreciate the moonlight you must stand in the shade & see where a few rods or a few feet distant it falls in between the trees. It is a “milder day” made for some inhabitants whom you do not see. The fairies are a quiet gentle folk invented plainly to inhabit the moonlight. I frequently see a light on the ground within thick & dark woods–where all around is in shadow & haste forward expecting to find some decayed & phosphorescent stump–but find it to be some clear moon light that falls in between some crevice in the leaves. As moonlight is to sunlight so are the fairies to men Standing on the Cliffs no sound comes up from the woods. The earth has gradually turned more northward– the birds have fled south after the sun–& this impresses me as well by day or by night as a deserted country– there is a down-like mist over the river and pond–and there are no bright reflections of the moon or sheeniness 59. The full moon would be on the night of the 8th. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2041 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from the pond in consequence–all the light being absorbed by the low fog.

October 6, Monday: Colonel Winthrop Emerson Faulkner of Acton was selected to be Marshal and the Reverend Barzillai Frost of Concord was selected to be Chaplain during the ceremony of dedication of the Davis Monument on Acton Common.

With aid from the Underground Railroad stationmaster of Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass, Jerry McHenry was taken from his cover in the home of the supposedly anti-abolitionist butcher (perfect cover) of Syracuse, in a wagon to Oswego, where he crossed Lake Ontario along with two other such fugitives to Canada and exile/freedom.60

October 6, Monday: 12 M to Bedford line to set a stone by river on Bedford line. The portion of the river between Bedford and Carlisle seen from a distance in the road today as formerly has a singularly etherial celestial, or elysian look. It is of a light sky-blue alternating with smoother white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently–like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed more gloriously & heavenly fair & pure than the sky itself. It is something more celestial than the sky above it. I never saw any water look so celestial. I have often noticed it. I believe I have seen this reach from the hill in the middle of Lincoln. We have names for the rivers of hell but none for the rivers of heaven, unless the milky way be one. It is such a smooth & shining blue–like a panoply of sky-blue plates– Our dark & muddy river has such a tint in this case as I might expect Walden or White Pond to exhibit if they could be seen under similar circumstances–but Walden seen from Fair Haven is if I remember–of a deep blue color tinged with green. Cerulian? Such water as that river reach appears to me of quite incalculable value, and the man who would blot that out of his prospect for a sum of money–does not otherwise than to sell heaven. Geo. Thatcher, having searched an hour in vain this morning to find a frog–caught a pickerel with a mullein leaf. The White ash near our house which the other day was purple or mulberry color is now much more red. 1 4 61 7 /2 PM to Fair Haven Pond by boat. the moon /5 full, not a cloud in the sky. paddling all the way. The water perfectly still & the air almost–the former gleaming like oil in the moonlight. with the moon’s disk reflected in it. When we started saw some fishermen kindling their fire for spearing by the river side. It was a lurid reddish blaze, contrasting with the white light of the moon, with a dense volumes of black smoke from the burning pitch pine roots, rolling upward in the form of an inverted pyramid. The blaze reflected in the water almost as distinct as the substance. It looked like tarring a ship on the shore of the styx or Coceytus. For it is still and dark notwithstanding the moon–and no sound but the crackling of the fire. The fishermen can be seen only near at hand though their fire is visible far away and then they appear as dusky fuliginous figures, half enveloped in smoke, seen only by their enlightened sides–like devils they look–clad in old coats to defend themselves from the fogs–one standing up forward holding the spear ready to dart while the smoke & flames are blown in his face–the other paddling the boat slowly & silently along close to the shore with almost imperceptible motion. The river appears indefinitely wide–there is a mist rising from the water which increases the indefiniteness. A high bank or moon-lit hill rises at a distance over the meadow on the bank–with its sandy gullies & clam shells exposed where the Indians feasted– The shore line though close is removed by the eye to the side of the hill– It is at high water mark– It is continued till it meets the hill. Now the fisherman’s fire left behind acquires 60. Indictments would be returned against 19 rescuers, not including Gerrit Smith or the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, who later both would publicly acknowledge that they had been involved. Church Elder Jermain Wesley Loguen would be among those taken to Auburn NY for arraignment. The accused were bailed out by, among others, William H. Seward, currently a US Senator from New York after having served as that state’s Governor. The proceedings would drag on for a couple of years but would eventuate in the conviction of only one of the rescuers –a black man of course– named Enoch Reed. This one conviction would be appealed, but this one fall guy would die before the appeal on his behalf could be processed. Such indeterminate prosecution would not, however, bring this story to its conclusion. President Millard Fillmore would be presented with the shackles that had been cut off of Jerry, nicely boxed. Judge Lawrence would be presented with “30 pieces of silver” by a group of ladies of Syracuse (the pieces of silver used for this nice gesture were 3-cent coins.). Gerrit Smith and others would obtain an indictment against Marshall Allen for kidnapping, in order to manufacture an occasion for arguing against the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The federal marshall would, it goes without saying, be acquitted. Over the succeeding anniversaries of the dramatic event, Jerry Rescue commemorations would be attracting crowds to hear speakers such as the Reverends Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Samuel Joseph May, Friend Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, and of course the helpful Rochester NY Underground Railroad stationmaster Frederick Douglass. The main address at such annual self-celebrations would typically be delivered by the millionaire backer and some of these addresses have been preserved among the Gerrit Smith Papers at Syracuse University. 61. The full moon would be on the night of the 8th. 2042 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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some thick rays in the distance and becomes a star–as surely as sun light falling through an irregular chink makes a round figure on the opposite wall so the blaze at a distance appears a star. Such is the effect of the atmosphere. The bright sheen of the moon is constantly travelling with us & is seen at the same angle in front on the surface of the pads–and the reflection of its disk in the rippled water by our boatside appears like bright gold pieces falling on the river’s counter.– This coin is incessantly poured forth as from some unseen horn of plenty at our side (I hear a lark singing this morn Oct 7th and yesterday saw them in the meadows. Both larks [Eastern Meadowlark Sturnella magna] & blackbirds are heard again now occasionally seemingly after a short absence, as if come to bid farewell) I do not know but the weirdness of the gleaming oily surface is enhanced by the thin fog. A few water bugs are seen glancing in our course. I shout like a farmer to his oxen–and instantly the woods on the eastern shore take it up & the western hills a little up the stream, and so it appears to rebound from one side the river valley to the other till at length I hear a farmer call to his team far up as Fair Haven bay whither we are bound. We pass through reaches where there is no fog–perhaps where a little air is stirring– Our clothes are almost wet through with the mist–as if we sat in water. Some portions of the river are much warmer than others. In one instance it was warmer in the midst of the fog–than in a clear reach. In the middle of the Pond we tried the echo again 1st the hill on the right took it up; then further up the stream on the left; and then after a long pause when we had almost given it up–and the longer expected the more in one sense unexpected & surprising it was we heard a farmer shout to his team in a distant valley far up on the opposite side of the stream much louder than the previous echo–and even after this we heard one shout faintly in some neighboring town. The 3d echo seemed more loud and distinct than the second. But why I asked do the echoes always travel up the stream– I turned about and shouted again–and then I found that they all appeared equally to travel down the stream, or perchance I heard only those that did so. As we rowed to Fair Havens eastern shore a moon-lit hill covered with shrub oaks–we could form no opinion of our progress toward it, not seeing the water line where it met the hill–until we saw the weeds & sandy shore & the tall bullrushes rising above the shallow water the masts of large vessels in a haven. The moon was so high that the angle of excidence did not permit of our seeing her reflection in the pond. As we paddled down the stream with our backs to the moon, we saw the reflection–of every wood & hill on both sides distinctly These answering reflections–shadow to substance,–impress the voyager with a sense of harmony & symmetry–as when you fold a blotted paper & produce a regular figure.– a dualism which nature loves. What you commonly see is but half. As we paddle up or down we see the cabins of muskrats faintly rising from amid the weeds–and the strong odor of musk is borne to us from particular parts of the shore. also the odor of a skunk is wafted from over the meadows or fields. The fog appears in some places gathered into a little pyramid or squad by itself–on the surface of the water. Where the shore is very low the actual & reflected trees appear to stand foot to foot–& it is but a line that separates them & the water & the sky almost flow into one another–& the shore seems to float. Home at 10.

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Winter: Late in the year, in rural Missouri, Maria Tomlin Burton gave birth to Jack Burton’s infant, a child who evidently would belong not to itself, not to its biological mother, not to its mother’s slave pseudohusband its biological father, and not even to its mother’s white master Mr. McDonald, but instead under Missouri law to Samuel Brown, the white man who owned the farm to which its mother was currently assigned — who it goes without saying owned also any and all “livestock” being born on his farm.

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Early December: Early in the month, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May defended his principle of nonviolence in the public newspaper, in response to the “nauseating hypocrisy” allegation of George F. Comstock (the attorney who was defending US Marshal Henry W. Allen against a kidnapping lawsuit brought by Jerry McHenry’s defenders), that any problem anyone had with obedience to unjust laws was a mere excuse. He pointed out that our Founding Fathers’ moral of 1776 (that Americans might turn to violence to free themselves from domination and be honored in memory for having so done) would be rather more legitimate as a moral principle applied by black slaves, than as one applied by free white citizens: It is no more fair in you to charge me with desiring to plunge my country into the horrors of servile and civil war, than it would be to charge, that I was eager to be engulfed in the ocean, because I have said that I would rather be drowned than burned to death. According to May, it was no matter of choosing between the continued existence of war and the continued existence of servitude. It was, rather, a matter of our resolving to enter upon a state of existence far more just than either of these alternatives. Meanwhile, he recognized that there were differences between personal circumstances, and although he would seek to hold the free citizen to a higher standard, he could not find it in

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his heart to focus upon the abject slave’s inability immediately to rise to such a “higher principle.”

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December 6, Saturday: The group of about 100 armed white men under the leadership of Lieutenant Thomas Sweeny, who had been besieged in their Camp Independence since November 12th, at this point made their move out of the native American controlled territory and back to the white settlements.

In Concord, Henry Thoreau was surveying a six-acre woodlot near Annursnack Hill for Samuel Barrett and did not make an entry in his journal. This woodlot had belonged to the Lorings and was being sold to George Brooks. The bill for the survey was $3.00. Neighbors mentioned on the survey papers are Prescott, Barrett, Billings,62 and Easterbrook.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_surveys/5.htm Meanwhile, in New-York, Walt Whitman was witnessing the landing of Lajos Kossuth, with cannon salutes, a grand parade down Broadway, a banquet for 400 at the Irving House, and a torchlit procession. This great white advocate of liberty was here in our great whitman land of liberty at last! Whitman wished courage “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire.”

Incidentally, note the “Kossuth hat.” Although it doesn’t show in this particular illustration, such a hat sported an ostrich plume.

62. I imagine this is not Boston’s illustrator and architect Hammatt Billings, but perhaps the home of Nathaniel and John Billings on Old Concord Road? “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2047 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This is what Broadway Avenue would look like, nine years later:

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a ceremony of an entirely different order was being transacted. William Parker’s three white neighbors, as well as all black men that armed posses could hunt “like partridges upon the mountain” (as one person described the event), that is, culprits who had been singled out merely by their availability and the color of their pelt regardless of whether they were anywhere near that home on that night in September, were being arraigned for treason against the United States of America, on the allegation that refusal to assist Gorsuch and his marshall, equally with resisting the marshall, amounted to making war. It seems that the no-nos the nation derived from this incident were not “what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world” but “something has gone seriously awry when white men refuse to side with their own race,” and not “resist not evil” but “we can’t let niggers know how to use guns.” Friend Lucretia Mott and her associates were in the courtroom “knitting furiously.” Each man wore a red, white, and blue knitted scarf around his neck.

This charge of conspiring to make war could of course not be sustained, but Judge John Kane made a remark about “itinerant female agitators” that indicated he would have found the defendants guilty if there had been

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any way to do so. This case became central in the ongoing debate within the antislavery movement over resort to violence in the face of injustice. Friend Lucretia Mott summed up her position with the thought that we all know, of course, that good is of God, and therefore we must be mistaken if we ever suppose it can come from our doing evil. I am bringing this incident to your attention because it bears on the issue of whether Thoreau was a nonviolenter. Mott holds unimpeached credentials as a nonviolenter, and Thoreau’s credentials as a nonviolenter have been attacked by his biographer Richardson on the basis of his reaction to the Harper’s Ferry raid of 1859, and yet it is clear that had the black activist William Parker been captured and put on trial for the murder of this white master, Mott would have reacted in exactly the same way Thoreau reacted to John Brown’s conduct. In fact Mott’s deportment and words in the case of this charge of treason in the “Christiana riot” in 1851 exactly parallel Thoreau’s deportment and words in the case of John Brown. We note especially the words that Thoreau would have read about John Brown as a moral hero in the presence of the widow Brown, over the grave at North Elba on July 4, 1860: John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history. If any person, in a lecture or conversation at that time, cited any ancient example of heroism, such as Cato or Tell or Winkelried, passing over the recent deeds and words of Brown, it was felt by any intelligent audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched. For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent. It appeared strange to me that the “little dipper” should be still diving quietly in the river, as of yore; and it suggested that this bird might continue to dive here when Concord should be no more. I felt that he, a prisoner in the midst of his enemies and under sentence of death, if consulted as to his next step or resource, could answer more wisely than all his countrymen beside. He best understood his position; he contemplated it most calmly. Comparatively, all other men, North and South, were beside themselves. Our thoughts could not revert to any greater or wiser or better man with whom to contrast him, for he, then and there, was above them all. The man this country was about to hang appeared the greatest and best in it. Years were not required for a revolution of public opinion; days, nay hours, produced marked changes in this case. Fifty who were ready to say, on going into our meeting in honor of him in Concord, that he ought to be hung, would not say it when they came out. They heard his words read; they saw the earnest faces of the congregation; and perhaps they joined at last in singing the hymn in his praise. The order of instructors was reversed. I heard that one preacher, who at first was shocked and stood aloof, felt obliged at last, after he was hung, to make him the subject of a sermon, in which, to some extent, he eulogized the man, but said that his act was a failure. An influential class-teacher thought it necessary, after the services, to tell his grown-up pupils that

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at first he thought as the preacher did then, but now he thought that John Brown was right. But it was understood that his pupils were as much ahead of the teacher as he was ahead of the priest; and I know for a certainty that very little boys at home had already asked their parents, in a tone of surprise, why God did not interfere to save him. In each case, the constituted teachers were only half conscious that they were not leading, but being dragged, with some loss of time and power. The more conscientious preachers, the Bible men, they who talk about principle, and doing to others as you would that they should do unto you — how could they fail to recognize him, by far the greatest preacher of them all, with the Bible in his life and in his acts, the embodiment of principle, who actually carried out the golden rule? All whose moral sense had been aroused, who had a calling from on high to preach, sided with him. What confessions he extracted from the cold and conservative! It is remarkable, but on the whole it is well, that it did not prove the occasion for a new sect of Brownites being formed in our midst. They, whether within the Church or out of it, who adhere to the spirit and let go the letter, and are accordingly called infidel, were as usual foremost to recognize him. Men have been hung in the South before for attempting to rescue slaves, and the North was not much stirred by it. Whence, then, this wonderful difference? We were not so sure of their devotion to principle. We made a subtle distinction, forgot human laws, and did homage to an idea. The North, I mean the living North, was suddenly all transcendental. It went behind the human law, it went behind the apparent failure, and recognized eternal justice and glory. Commonly, men live according to a formula, and are satisfied if the order of law is observed, but in this instance they, to some extent, returned to original perceptions, and there was a slight revival of old religion. They saw that what was called order was confusion, what was called justice, injustice, and that the best was deemed the worst. This attitude suggested a more intelligent and generous spirit than that which actuated our forefathers, and the possibility, in the course of ages, of a revolution in behalf of another and an oppressed people. Most Northern men, and a few Southern ones, were wonderfully stirred by Brown’s behavior and words. They saw and felt that they were heroic and noble, and that there had been nothing quite equal to them in their kind in this country, or in the recent history of the world. But the minority were unmoved by them. They were only surprised and provoked by the attitude of their neighbors. They saw that Brown was brave, and that he believed that he had done right, but they did not detect any further peculiarity in him. Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or to appreciate magnanimity, they read his letters and speeches as if they read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic statement, — they did not know when they burned. They did not feel that he spoke with authority, and hence they only remembered that the law must be

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executed. They remembered the old formula, but did not hear the new revelation. The man who does not recognize in Brown’s words a wisdom and nobleness, and therefore an authority, superior to our laws, is a modern Democrat. This is the test by which to discover him. He is not willfully but constitutionally blind on this side, and he is consistent with himself. Such has been his past life; no doubt of it. In like manner he has read history and his Bible, and he accepts, or seems to accept, the last only as an established formula, and not because he has been convicted by it. You will not find kindred sentiments in his commonplace book, if he has one. When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are noble themselves. I was not surprised that certain of my neighbors spoke of John Brown as an ordinary felon, for who are they? They have either much flesh, or much office, or much coarseness of some kind. They are not ethereal natures in any sense. The dark qualities predominate in them. Several of them are decidedly pachydermatous. I say it in sorrow, not in anger. How can a man behold the light who has no answering inward light? They are true to their right, but when they look this way they see nothing, they are blind. For the children of the light to contend with them is as if there should be a contest between eagles and owls. Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He’ll be as dumb as if his lips were stone. It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a freeman, even. Editors persevered for a good while in saying that Brown was crazy; but at last they said only that it was “a crazy scheme,” and the only evidence brought to prove it was that it cost him his life. I have no doubt that if he had gone with five thousand men, liberated a thousand slaves, killed a hundred or two slaveholders, and had as many more killed on his own side, but not lost his own life, these same editors would have called it by a more respectable name. Yet he has been far more successful than that. He has liberated many thousands of slaves, both North and-South. They seem to have known nothing about living or dying for a principle. They all called him crazy then; who calls him crazy now? All through the excitement occasioned by his remarkable attempt and subsequent behavior the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defense of her citizens who were likely to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, was wholly absorbed in a liquor- agency question, and indulging in poor jokes on the word “extension.” Bad spirits occupied their thoughts. I am sure that no statesman up to the occasion could have attended to that question at all at that time — a very vulgar question to attend to at any time! “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2051 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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When I looked into a liturgy of the Church of England, printed near the end of the last century, in order to find a service applicable to the case of Brown, I found that the only martyr recognized and provided for by it was King Charles the First, an eminent scamp. Of all the inhabitants of England and of the world, he was the only one, according to this authority, whom that church had made a martyr and saint of; and for more than a century it had celebrated his martyrdom, so called, by an annual service. What a satire on the Church is that! Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones. What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see what a work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles- lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well? He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history. What a variety of themes he touched on in that short space! There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard. The death of [Washington] Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors. Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them. This unlettered man’s speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as “It will pay.” It suggests that the one great rule of composition –and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this– is, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly. We seem to have forgotten that the expression, a liberal education, originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely was considered worthy of slaves only. But taking a hint from the word, I would go a step further, and say that it is not the man of wealth and leisure simply, though devoted to art, or science, or literature, who, in a true sense, is liberally educated, but only the earnest and free man. In a slaveholding country like this, there can be no such thing as a liberal education tolerated by the State; and those scholars of

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Austria and France who, however learned they may be, are contented under their tyrannies have received only a servile education. Nothing could his enemies do but it redounded to his infinite advantage — that is, to the advantage of his cause. They did not hang him at once, but reserved him to preach to them. And then there was another great blunder. They did not hang his four followers with him; that scene was still postponed; and so his victory was prolonged and completed. No theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect to his behavior and words. And who, think you, was the manager? Who placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a symbol, between his prison and the gallows? We soon saw, as he saw, that he was not to be pardoned or rescued by men. That would have been to disarm him, to restore to him a material weapon, a Sharps’ rifle, when he had taken up the sword of the spirit — the sword with which he has really won his greatest and most memorable victories. Now he has not laid aside the sword of the spirit, for he is pure spirit himself, and his sword is pure spirit also. “He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, Nor called the gods with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right; But bowed his comely head Down as upon a bed.” What a transit was that of his horizontal body alone, but just cut down from the gallows-tree! We read, that at such a time it passed through Philadelphia, and by Saturday night had reached New York. Thus like a meteor it shot through the Union from the Southern regions toward the North! No such freight had the cars borne since they carried him Southward alive. On the day of his translation, I heard, to be sure, that he was hung, but I did not know what that meant; I felt no sorrow on that account; but not for a day or two did I even hear that he was dead, and not after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. I never hear of a man named Brown now –and I hear of them pretty often– I never hear of any particularly brave and earnest man, but my first thought is of John Brown, and what relation he may be to him. I meet him at every turn. He is more alive than ever he was. He has earned immortality. He is not confined to North Elba nor to Kansas. He is no longer working in secret. He works in public, and in the clearest light that shines on this land.

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And it is also worthy of note that on October 25-26, 1860 (published November 3) Friend Lucretia Mott, the foremost spokesperson for nonviolence in the abolitionist movement in America, brought forward the position she had originally taken in regard to the “Christiana riot” near Philadelphia in 1851 by declaring

It is not John Brown the soldier we praise, it is John Brown the moral hero.

We might be tempted to declare that Thoreau was the most belligerent nonresistor of evil the world had yet seen, but in fact that description had already been awarded to someone. It was awarded by Robert Purvis to Friend Lucretia, and (despite what was said in the heat of the Civil War by Horace Greeley’s newspaper in New-York, in mockery of her) there is no shadow of a doubt that Friend Lucretia was for the totality of her life a convinced disbeliever in all violence.

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1852

Senator James Mason of Virginia called again for payment of Spain’s La Amistad claim.

[Of course, the schooner in question did not belong to Spain, or to any Spaniard or Spaniards. It was a prize vessel, and it belonged to the surviving 35 of the black privateers of the mutiny who had been sent back to Africa aboard the bark Gentleman, who had been sent home as mere charity wards with nobody ever thinking to return to them their conquest which they had won fair and square with their blood, sweat, and tears, admittedly worth $70,000. For sure, had it been 35 surviving free white privateers, they would not have been denied this booty which belonged to them, but because they were instead free blacks, it had never even occurred to any of the white players in this legal drama, such as the collective wit of the seven Supreme Court justices involved in puzzling out this puzzle, to give them their prize schooner back! One of the open issues of this drama, therefore, is: what actually had happened to the schooner La Amistad? Where had this valuable piece of property gone to? Which American white men had been allowed to profit from it? Our history books are, of course, silent — this being a question which it has never ever occurred to us to pose.] THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

The skipper and the mate of the schooner Pearl that had been captured while picking up slaves along the American coast to transport them to freedom, Edward Sayer and Daniel Dreyton, were pardoned and released from a Southern prison. Go thou and sin no more.

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During the greatest flood since whites had settled at Harpers Ferry, waterpower dams on the Potomac River and Shenandoah River suffered considerable damage.

Professor Henry Youle Hind became the first editor of the Canadian Institute’s Canadian Journal: a Repertory of Industry, Science and Art (Toronto), the initial scientific periodical in Canada, a position he would fill until 1855.

The fundamental and profound idea, that the quantity of energy in the universe available for useful work was a quantity which was perpetually being depleted without renewal, with a consequent inevitable increase of randomness construed as disorder, a quantity which would eventually decrease to zero as the universe became flat and static, burst upon our intellectual world as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Once this was conceived of, degeneration began to seem utterly inevitable. From this point in our intellectual trajectory forward none of our thoughts about the end and purpose of life would be the same as before — except of course for our thoughts about racial purity and the inexorable advance of race mixture (amalgamation), which would in a strange manner be subtly reinforced by this idea of the general amalgamation and degeneration of the universe!

Mary Ann Shadd, a product of this detested racial amalgamation and constantly on the lookout for someplace in this woebegone universe where she might find acceptance and a home, in this year published a pamphlet entitled “A Plea for Emigration or Notes on Canada West in Its Moral, Social, and Political Aspect: Suggestions Respecting Mexico, W. Indies and Vancouver’s Island / For the Information of Colored Emigrants.” She extolled the virtues of Canada in her pamphlet and urged free American blacks, under threat from the new Fugitive Slave Law, to venture north. She cited the common language, culture, and religion as the primary reasons for American blacks to consider Canada first. Her agenda was that perhaps Canada could become the place where American blacks could successfully integrate, amalgamate, merge into the general cultural context, and then no longer live lives in which they were reduced to being objects for “special

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attention.”

The document subverted pro-slavery allegations that the British would expropriate and exploit the labour of emigrating blacks even more severely than the slave owner. “The master tells [the slave],” explains Lewis Clarke in his slave narrative, that “if he goes to Canada the British will put him in a mine under ground, with both eyes put out, for life.” Better let the Colonizationists send you back to Africa where you belong. Shadd responded that “Tropical Africa, the land of promise of the colonizationists [teemed] with the breath of pestilence, a burning sun and fearful maladies.” Africa was death. When Shadd does broach the topic of racism, under the sub-heading “Churches—Schools,” she offers an explicit indictment of Black, rather than White, racism. She observes that Black racism toward Whites is encouraged by the fugitive leadership’s insistence on segregated institutions (churches, schools, and segregated communities such as Josiah Henson’s Dawn settlement), contending that “their influence on colored people is fatal.” It would be a fatal mistake for Blacks to respond to the wickedness of white racism by imitating it. Shadd launched her public attack not only on segregated institutions in general but, in particular, on the lucrative little pyramid of local power at the apex of which sat prominent abolitionists Henry Bibb and Mary Bibb, ostensibly servants of the needs of the rapidly growing fugitive community. Shadd pointed out that the Bibbs’s insistence upon segregated institutions had less to do with the collective welfare of the fugitive population than with their own standing as unchallengeable spokespersons for and leaders of the fugitive community: [T]here are those who pretend to have been enlightened, and to have at heart the common good, whose influence and operations he will find designedly counteracting his conscientious efforts, the more effectively appealing to a common origin and kindred sufferings, secretly striking behind and bringing his character as a missionary, and his operations, into discredit in the eyes of a sympathizing Christian community. Shadd first chose to settle in Windsor, Canada West (present-day southern Ontario), on the advice of Henry Bibb and Mary Bibb. The relationship between Shadd and the Bibbs thus appears to have begun on a promising note — but the honeymoon turned out to be short-lived, as a bitter feud would begin over the vital issue of integrated versus segregated schools.

Due to the boycott of race segregation of the public schools, the enrollment at Boston’s all-black Smith School stood at 54.

Remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy, for many pious Bostonians in Henry Thoreau’s day, amounted in practice to listening to the Reverend Theodore Parker preach a sermon at his downtown megachurch. Parker’s key text was Luke 21:33, which declaimed that Heaven and earth shall pass away but not My Words, because this provided him with a doctrine of religious progress. All we Anglo-Saxons have to do is wait in the flock of a megachurch leader like the Reverend Parker, and over the course of time all that is accidental and peripheral and, to use Parker’s own term of art, transient, will reveal itself as Transitory by its very changeableness, and therefore as part of Error. What is left is absolute, true religion. Therefore our Anglo- Saxon agenda must be to purge “the negro in us” and become really white. Parker worked so much crowd- pleasing stuff into his “28th Congregational Society” that by 1852 he was able to begin to hold the worship services of this society in the new Boston Music Hall, which boasted 1,500 comfortable seats of a Sunday

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morning. In other words, God-loving Parker was the Robert Schuller of his century, on the eastern seaboard instead of the western, near Faneuil Hall rather than near Disneyland.

An Anglo-Saxon with common sense does not like this Africanization of America.

horrified at slavery

But wait, wait! –Wasn’t this Anglo-Saxon Reverend Parker one of the forefront anti-slavery fighters of his day? Wouldn’t he become a member of the Secret “Six” devoted to ending human slavery? Wasn’t he risking the charge of treason to rectify this shame? Doesn’t that mean that he just couldn’t be a racist? Get a clue, he wanted to end slavery not because he was not a racist, but because he was a racist. Just as he wanted to purge “the negro in us,” he wanted to purge our society of its black Americans. They had no business being here and were to have no place here. Hear him: “An Anglo-Saxon with common sense does not like this Africanization of America.” Getting rid of the possibility of our enslaving them was merely an advance step to purging the negro from our society entirely!

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Using the pen name “Agricola,” William Elliott had expressed his ideas in favor of race slavery and in opposition to disunion in a series of letters to newspapers, and these were collected and published as THE LETTERS OF AGRICOLA.

From a lithograph published by Nathaniel Currier in this year, we can see that the intimate connection between our nation’s Founding Fathers and the peculiar institution of race slavery had not been nearly so problematic in this antebellum year, as it has become in more recent times. Here is President George Washington, captured in the act of doing his white-masterly stuff at Mount Vernon:

By way of a medium at a seance with the supernatural, in this year the spirit of the deceased Nathaniel Peabody Rogers would be made to offer to William Lloyd Garrison the revealed truth that immediatism was wrong. To force a slavemaster to free his slaves would be to make that slavemaster become the slave of the enforcing power. But such a course of action would not be to eliminate slavery, rather it would be to perpetuate it. The spirit of Rogers professed that it had learned during its afterlife that those who are enslaved must wait until the slavemasters have themselves persuaded themselves freely, of the iniquity of their being slavemasters — and

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have freely and voluntarily granted to them their uncoerced manumission.

Birth of Allen Huger Nott.

The Sand River Convention signed by Great Britain and the Boers in South Africa contained a clause forbidding slavery.

The fundamental and profound idea, that the quantity of energy in the universe available for useful work was a quantity which was perpetually being depleted without renewal, with a consequent inevitable increase of randomness construed as disorder, a quantity which would eventually decrease to zero as the universe became flat and static, burst upon our intellectual world as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Once this was conceived of, it began to seem utterly inevitable. From this point in our intellectual trajectory forward none of our thoughts about the end and purpose of life would be the same as before — except of course for our thoughts about racial purity and race mixture (amalgamation), which would in a strange manner be subtly reinforced by this idea of the degeneration of the universe!

During the 1840s, in Virginia, the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s uncle George Washington Conway had fallen in love with a neighbor’s slave, of mixed race, and gotten her pregnant. Then he had done the decent thing. Marry her? –No, that decent thing was quite impossible in Virginia, so he did the next best, he purchased her. They had simply matched the external pretense, the pretense of the law, that she was enslaved, with an internal pretense, the pretense of the heart, that she was enwifed. He had become de facto her loving husband. We don’t know much about this couple, for such people quickly became invisible in the Old South, but we do know that in this year of 1852 they were living on a small farm in the woods, with an elderly black woman, and with their two mixed-race children. (Legally, the black woman, the mulatto woman, and the two mulatto children were the slaves of G.W. Conway. But the only way we can distinguish this George Washington Conway in the records from which he is almost totally absent, as a white man, is that in these records, such as in the two censuses which were taken during his lifetime, he is listed under his full name within a context in which everyone around him has only a given name. Moncure would comment, later, that “Even my father declares that he is the best-hearted of the family.”)

THE PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENT AS MAINTAINED BY THE MOST DISTINGUISHED WRITERS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

To the current regulations for emigration, the British parliament added at this time that the number in each berth had to be reduced from four to two. The older 6-foot square berths were to be divided into two by a plank. Still, each emigrant would be allowed only a lying area 6 feet in length and 1 foot 6 inches in width. Single men were to be accommodated separately from traveling families. Sick bays, and at least four privies, were to be provided. The emigration officer was empowered at this point to reject any cargo which in his opinion might endanger the life, safety, or health of the emigrants. It was specified that food was to be issued daily, and that it was to be cooked. On vessels carrying more than 400 emigrants, there were to be two cooks. Any vessel carrying more than 100 emigrants was required to employ a passenger steward. The requirement for the presence of surgeons was eased so that only vessels carrying more than 500 passengers needed to have one on board.

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An expanded version of Richard Hildreth’s 1836 THE SLAVE; OR, MEMOIRS OF ARCHY MOORE, a fictional slave autobiography frequently cited as the first American antislavery novel, was published. The voice the author constructed for his point-of-view character in this book, retitled THE WHITE SLAVE: ANOTHER PICTURE OF SLAVE LIFE IN AMERICA, has been considered by some commentators to be “uncannily similar in many ways” to Frederick Douglass.

In this year Henry Hughes’s scientific TREATISE ON SOCIOLOGY: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL was espousing the following attitude in regard to the racial amalgamation which had generated among us a person of the sort of Frederick Douglass:63 Hybridism is heinous. Impurity of races is against the law of God. Mulattoes are monsters. The law of nature is the law of God. The same law which forbids consanguineous amalgamation forbids ethical amalgamation. Both are incestuous. Amalgamation is incest. Robert Hairston, an ailing Mississippi slavemaster who was apparently without offspring, revealed in the process of dictating his will that in actuality he was not childless. He revealed that he had fathered a child by a slave, and that it was a mulatto girl child presently five years of age. He instructed that this child be set free and receive his entire estate, which consisted of real estate, cash, and human property worth in excess of a million dollars. After his death, the white Hairstons would send the mulatto slave offspring in question to a distant plantation, announce that she was dead, denounce their dearly departed as having gone insane in his last days — and keep the estate for themselves.

February 5: Alabama modified somewhat its procedure for disposing of the slaves that it had confiscated due to illegal importations. By code approved on this date: — §§ 2058-2062. If slaves have been imported contrary to law, they are to be sold, and one fourth paid to the agent or informer and the residue to the treasury. An agent is to be appointed to take charge of such slaves, who is to give bond. Pending controversy, he may hire the slaves out. Ormond, CODE OF ALABAMA, pages 392-3. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Again we can see that interdicting the slave trade had nothing whatever to do with the welfare of the slave. SLAVERY

February 5, Thursday: Suppose that an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature (as in architecture) should we be any more likely to attain to a truly beautiful & forcible style? Buonaparte said pretty truly Speak plain, the rest will follow. I do not believe that any writer who considered the ornaments– & not the truth simply ever succeeded. So are made the belles lettres & the beaux arts & their professors which we can do without. The sky last night was a deeper more caerulean blue than the far lighter & whiter sky of today. The national flag is the emblem of patriotism, and whether that floats over the Government-House or not – is even, in times of peace, an all absorbing question. The hearts of millions flutter with it. Men do believe in symbols yet & can understand some. When Sir F Head left his Government in Upper Canada & the usual Farewell had been said as the vessel moved off he standing on the deck pointed for all reply to the British Flag floating over his head – and a shriek rather than a cheer went up from the crowd on the pier, who had observed 63. There was a jingle, at about this time, that had been concocted by some abolitionist women, that contained a disturbingly ambivalent racial message. It countered the common charge that abolitionists sought the unthinkable –sexual integration of blacks and whites– by making the claim that the real “amalgamationists” were planters who were raping their female slaves in order to breed mulattoes. The jingle –“by immediate emancipation / We hope to stop amalgamation”– addressed such concerns only by endorsing the underlying racist premise. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2061 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his gesture. One of the first things he had done was to run it up over the Government House at Toronto – & it made a great sensation. Time never passes so rapidly and unaccountably as when I am engaged in recording my thoughts. The world may perchance reach its end for us in a profounder thought – & Time itself run down. I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty & significance which the subsequent botanist never retains. The trunks & branches of the trees are of different colors at dif. times & in dif. lights & weathers. in sun, rain, & in the night. The oaks bare of leaves on Hubbards hill side are now a light grey in the sun and their boughs seen against the pines behind are a very agreeable maze. The stems of the white pines also are quite grey at this distance with their lichens. I am detained to contemplate the boughs –feathery boughs of the white pines, tier above tier, reflecting a silvery light– with intervals (between them) through which you look, if you so intend your eye, into the darkness of the grove. That is you can see both the silvery lighted & greenish bough –& the shadowy intervals as belonging to one tree– or more truly refer the latter to the shade behind. Read the Englishmans history of the French & Ind. wars –& then read the Frenchmans — and see how each awards the meed of glory to the others monsters of cruelty or perfidy We have all sorts of histories of wars– One omits the less important skirmishes all-together – another condescends to give you the result of these & the number of killed & wounded – & if you choose to go – further & consult tradition and old MSS — you may learn whether the parson was killed by a shot through the door or tomahawked at the well.

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May-August: From May until August, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May was making a 2d inspection of the settlements of escaped slaves along the border inside Canadian territory, for the benefit of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Upon his return he would report that although these black Americans in exile were comparatively prosperous, the unpleasant truth was that the racial prejudice they were encountering in Canada was as extreme as any they had endured inside the United States of America.

When in August the warriors of the Yuma asked for peace talks, the troops of Lieutenant Thomas Sweeny approached with fixed bayonets and the native Americans felt they needed to retreat. However, they would

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again request these peace talks.

Henry Thoreau’s “A Poet Buying a Farm” appeared in Sartain’s Union Magazine (this essay is related to the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 5th paragraphs of “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” with slight variations of wording and of punctuation, plus a snippet from “Sounds”). This magazine would then fold, and so we don’t know whether Thoreau would have wanted to continue with this sort of piecemeal publication:

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WALDEN: At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer’s premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm

PossibleSiteOfHouse1.mp3 at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it, –took every thing but a deed of it, –took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk, –cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? –better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may PossibleSiteOfHouse2.mp3 be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard woodlot and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

WALDEN: My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms, –the refusal was all I wanted,– but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell Place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife –every man has such a wife– changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,– “I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.”

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WALDEN: I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.

WALDEN: All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale, (I have always cultivated a garden,) was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

June 29: Henry Clay died of tuberculosis in Washington DC. According to the text of his will, which you may inspect at http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/KLP/gallery/clay1991/page-4.gif and http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/KLP/ gallery/clay1991/page-5.gif, he had set up a scheme for the gradual manumission of those of his slaves who were female, and for their issue, and sending them off to Africa. Although we don’t know whether any of Clay’s slaves actually obtained their manumission in accordance with this will, or actually were sent to Liberia in accordance to this will, there is an intriguing question (a question of the sort that might be asked by Charlie McCarthy of Edgar Bergen): What do you suppose it might have been that would have motivated a Southern gentleman to free his female slaves and their issue while freeing neither his male slaves nor their issue?

You don’t suppose, that there may have been a wooden puppet hiding in his woodpile?

Henry David Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” It would be combined with an entry made on September 7, 1851 to form the following:

[Paragraph 6] I cannot easily buy a blank book to write thoughts in; they are all ruled for dollars and cents. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

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Our national birthday, the 4th of July: To avoid having a bunch of public drunkenness and carousal on the Lord’s Day, Marblehead, Massachusetts had already celebrated its 4th, on the 3rd.

In Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass laid it on the line. Listen up, you people: “To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot St., Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave-ships in the basin, ... with their cargoes of human flesh, ... There was at that time a grand slave-mart kept at the head of Pratt street, by Austin Woolfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming ‘handbills,’ header, Cash for Negroes. These men were generally well dressed, and very captivating in their manners, ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother, by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.” ... “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages.”64

64. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 48th birthday.

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Fifteen of Douglass’s relatives had been sold south. To illustrate Douglass’s childhood memories of Austin Woolfolk’s activities in Baltimore, Maryland, here is one of Woolfolk’s actual ship manifests, depicting him in the process of shipping south for sale a coffle of 26 black Americans in 1821:

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July 14, Wednesday: It was after the Hawthornes completed their move from Lenox, Massachusetts to West Newton 65 that THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE appeared. This novel had, in the judgment of Henry James, Margaret Fuller as Zenobia, a major character who commits suicide from unrequited love. The novel also mentioned her by name in a most disconcerting manner, as a friend of the narrator:

As I did not immediately offer to receive the letter, she [Priscilla] drew it back, and held it against her bosom, with both hands clasped over it, in a way that had probably grown habitual to her....it forcibly struck me that her air, though not her figure, and the expression of her face, but not its features, had a resemblance to what I had often seen in a friend of mine, one of the most gifted women of the age. I cannot describe it. The points, easiest to convey to the reader, were, a certain curve of the shoulders, and a partial closing of the eyes, which seemed to look more penetratingly into my own eyes, through the narrowed apertures, than if they had been open at full width. It was a singular anomaly of likeness co-existing with perfect dissimilitude.... “Priscilla,” I inquired, “did you ever see Miss Margaret Fuller?” “No,” she answered. “Because,” said I, “you reminded me of her, just now, and it happens, strangely enough, that this very letter is from her!” Priscilla, for whatever reason, looked very much discomposed. “I wish people would not fancy such odd things in me!” she said, rather petulantly. “How could I possibly make myself resemble this lady, merely by holding her letter in my hand?” “Certainly, Priscilla, it would puzzle me to explain it,” I replied. “Nor do I suppose that the letter had anything to do with it. It was just a coincidence — nothing more.”

Rufus William Griswold appeared in THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE as “Doctor Griswold.”

In this year Nathaniel also authored a campaign biography of Franklin Pierce that would make him deserving of a political plum. In this writing he did not name a cow after Fuller or suggest that she might commit suicide, or vent any of his other pet peeves, but he did something far worse: this writing was utterly condemnatory of the sort of abolitionist anti-slavery activities of which his neighbor Henry Thoreau, among others, had been

65.A claim of copyright has been made for THE SCARLET LETTER in 1962, for FANSHAWE and THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE in 1964, for THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES in 1965, and for THE MARBLE FAUN in 1968, by Ohio State UP. (We presume that those ostensibly appropriative and global copyright claims could actually have covered not more than whatever value was added to the works by that press at that time, such as their reformatting and pagination and suchlike.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2069 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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guilty, and yet it was not an honest or sincere piece of writing.

Statesman Chum and Pretty Boy

President Franklin Pierce was in fact a proslavery drunkard whose qualification to be President was that he had been a undistinguished general in the war against Mexico. Horace Mann, Sr. commented in regard to the writing of this campaign biography that if Hawthorne could make out Pierce to be a great man or a brave man, “it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote.” Hawthorne handled the hot matter of slavery in this campaign biography by suggesting that, for the present, slavery seemed to be in accord with God’s great plan, and that if we simply let it be, eventually in God’s good time –if indeed it was his will that it should be vanquished– human slavery would “vanish like a dream.”

And, the creative writer insisted, this was not mere puffery, it was what he really believed, those “are my real sentiments.” The opportunistic careerism of Pierce, it seemed, had been founded upon the highest moral principle, that of getting results, that of satisfying one’s lust to leave one’s mark upon the world which one has habited. So conveniently, these cronies had overseen the entire course of human history and had observed globally the fact that:

There is no instance, in all history, of the human will and intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it adopted to that end.

Thoreau was continuing his reading in the racist volume about human skulls by Professor Samuel George Morton of the University of Pennsylvania, and making notes in his Indian Notebook #6 and his Fact Book:66 CRANIA AMERICANA

July 14. A writer who does not speak out of a full experience uses torpid words, wooden or lifeless words. such words as “humanitary,” which have a paralysis in their tails. Is it not more attractive to be a sailor than a, farmer? The farmer’s son is restless and wants to go to sea. Is it not 66. Note carefully here, how our guy’s spirit seems incapable of being harmed by the toxic nature of these racist materials! Isn’t that simply marvelous? Can that be described by any other word than “marvelous”? 2070 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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better to plow the ocean than the land? In the former case the plow runs further in its furrow before it turns. You may go round the world before the mast, but not behind the plow. Morton quotes Wafer as saying of some albinos among the Indians of Darien that “they are quite white, but their whiteness is like that of a horse, quite different from the fair or pale European, as they have not the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion.... Their eyebrows are milk-white, as is likewise the hair of their heads, which is very fine, inclining to a curl, and growing to the length of six or eight inches.... They seldom go abroad in the daytime, the sun being disagreeable to them, and causing their eyes, which are weak and poring, to water, especially if it shines towards them yet they see very well by moonlight, from which we call them moon-eyed.” E.C. DRAKE In Drake’s “Collection of Voyages.” Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks, methinks, is there “the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion,” but we are, perchance, intellectually and morally albinos, children of Endymion whose parents have walked much by moonlight. Walking much by moonlight, conversing ENDYMION with the moon, makes us, then, albinos. Methinks we should rather represent Endymion in colorless marble, or in the whiteness of marble, than painted of the ruddy color of ordinary youths. Saw to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies dispersing before us, [as] we rode along berrying on the Walden road. Their yellow fleets are in the offing. Do I ever see them in numbers off the road? They are a yellow flower that blossoms generally about this time. Like a mackerel fleet, with their small hulls and great sails. Collected now in compact but gorgeous assembly in the road, like schooners in a harbor, a haven; now suddenly dispersing on our approach and filling the air with yellow snowflakes in their zigzag flight, or as when a fair wind calls those schooners out and disperses them over the broad ocean. How deep or perhaps slaty sky-blue are those blueberries that grow in the shade! It is an unexpected and thrilling discovery to find such ethereal fruits in dense drooping clusters under the fresh green of oak and hickory sprouts. Those that grow in the sun appear to be the same species, only to have lost their bloom and freshness, and hence are darker. [Vide page 283] The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them. Trees have commonly two growths in the year, a spring and a fall growth, the latter sometimes equalling the former, and you can see where the first was checked whether by cold or drouth, and wonder what there was in the summer to produce this check, this blight. So is it with man; most have a spring growth only, and never get over this first check to their youthful hopes; but plants of hardier constitution, or perchance planted in a more genial soil, speedily recover themselves, and, though they bear the scar or knot in remembrance of their disappointment, they push forward again and have a vigorous fall growth which is equivalent to a new spring. These two growths are now visible on the oak sprouts, the second already nearly equalling the first. Murder will out. Morton detects the filthiness of the lower class of the ancient Peruvians by the hair of old mummies being “charged with desiccated vermin, which, though buried for centuries in the sand, could not possibly be mistaken for anything else.”

(Thoreau would use the material about the albino “tribe” of native Americans, which he had obtained from Drake’s “Collection of Voyages” and mentioned in the above journal passage, in his essay “Night and Moonlight.”)

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October 1, Friday: In Syracuse NY, the 1st annual “Jerry Celebration” honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Although the assembly was denied the use of all public facilities, some 5,000 people were able to hear orations by Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Friend Lucretia Mott, Gerrit Smith, and Lucy Stone in the engine rotunda of the Syracuse Railroad, 150 feet from side to side, made available by John Wilkinson.67

The Reverend Samuel Joseph May’s annual “Jerry Celebrations” would continue undaunted until, finally, civil war would break out in America.

The old, slow cargo vessel that had rescued Alfred Russel Wallace from off the face of the waters had finally docked in England –after a passage of some eighty days and after several times nearly foundering in a series of storms– and so he made his way back to London without his specimens. From this point until March 1854, he would work primarily out of the metropolis.

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1853

From this year into 1857, the pro-slavery presidency of Franklin Pierce (Democrat). The newly elected president would declare in his inauguration address that the US Constitution maintained slavery as an “admitted right.” There wasn’t any amount of pandering to the slave power, that this good ol’ buddy of Hawthorne of Concord wasn’t willing to do. Pierce’s bodyguard during his Presidency would be Thomas O’Neil — but this wouldn’t prevent a citizen from egging him on the porch of the White House. Peirce would be, per some estimations (estimations made prior to the arrival on the scene of George W. Bush), the sorriest president we have as yet had.

(Note the horse-drawn carriage in the illustration above. How would we know whether the driver was Franklin Pierce? Obviously, we don’t. A case against Peirce, for running down an elderly woman in his carriage, had to be dropped in this year for lack of evidence.)

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In the South, in Fairfield, South Carolina in the fall of 1843, one John Brown had been sentenced “to hang by the neck until your body be dead” for having aided a South Carolinan who was trying to escape from enslavement. But this had not been the famous northern interloper of 1859, Captain John Brown, this had been a man from Maine named John L. Brown. The national and international petitions for clemency in this case, flowing across the desk of Governor James Henry Hammond (1810-1864), had caused the governor to commute the sentence of death and then to respond at length in defense of the institution of chattel slavery and in opposition to the practice of slave stealing, and the Charleston SC Mercury had subsequently put his thoughts out in the form of pamphlets — and at this point they were being republished as PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENT, and in 1860, this Southern gentleman’s responses would receive additional general publication. Meanwhile, in the North, the challenge to those Unitarian ministers who supported the Fugitive Slave Law because they supported obedience to law and/or supported the Federal Union, that they were the same as “traffickers IN HUMAN FLESH,” which had been initiated in the spring of 1851 by the Reverend Samuel

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Joseph May, came to a conclusion of sorts, with instructions going out to ministers that the debate over slavery was driving away potential converts to Unitarianism, and that therefore they should avoid discussion of the peculiar institution of slavery, avoid discussion of Daniel Webster, and avoid discussion of the merits of the Fugitive Slave Law — and that those Unitarian ministers who found themselves unable to avoid such discussion would be finding themselves out of a job.

In sum: at this juncture in the South one might lose one’s life, for opposing the Fugitive Slave Law, or in the North one might lose one’s livelihood, for opposing the Fugitive Slave Law. What would be the solution? The New-York Herald Tribune declared in favor of the deportation of American blacks to Africa, on grounds of inherent racial inferiority.

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Stewart Taylor became a wagonmaker.

At the age of 4, the slave “Blind Tom” sat down at the piano and proceeded to recreate one of the pieces his owner’s daughter Mary had been studying.

The Howells family moved to Ashtabula and Jefferson OH. William Dean Howells’s first published fiction, “A Tale of Love and Politics, Adventures of a Printer Boy,” appeared in the Ashtabula Sentinel. We have not yet had the opportunity to read this piece, but trust that it was a tragedy with a happy ending:

“What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.” — William Dean Howells

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January 7: Henry C. Wright reported in the Liberator that a medium had informed him, in a seance at an Ohio farmhouse, that his brother Chester had died of apoplexy on a certain date in a certain town.

On this day in New Orleans, the rescuer of Solomon Northup was obtaining a pass by which the man could travel back into his Northern freedom:

State of Louisiana - City of New-Orleans: Recorder’s Office, Second District. To all to whom these presents shall come: - This is to certify that Henry B. Northup, Esquire, of the county of Washington, New-York, has produced before me due evidence of the freedom of Solomon, a mulatto man, aged about forty-two years, five feet, seven inches and six lines, woolly hair, and chestnut eyes, who is a native born of the State of New-York. That the said Northup, being about bringing the said Solomon to his native place, through the southern routes, the civil authorities are requested to let the aforesaid colored man Solomon pass unmolested, he demeaning well and properly. Given under my hand and the seal of the city of New-Orleans this 7th January, 1853. [L.S.] “TH. GENOIS, Recorder.

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January 17: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

Solomon Northup arrived back in Washington DC at the end of a kidnapping amounting to twelve years.68

68. There would be over fifty slave escape narratives such as this one published between 1815 and 1865. (Waldo Emerson would term such the 1st truly American literary genre.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2079 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7

Solomon Northup. TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE. NARRATIVE OF SOLOMON NORTHUP, A CITIZEN OF NEW-YORK, KIDNAPPED IN WASHINGTON CITY IN 1841 AND RESCUED IN 1853, FROM A COTTON PLANTATION NEAR THE RED RIVER IN LOUISIANA. Auburn: Derby And Miller. Buffalo: Derby, Orton And Mulligan. London: Sampson Low, Son & Company, 47 Ludgate Hill, 1853. (Osofsky, Gilbert, comp. PUTTIN’ ON OLE MASSA; THE SLAVE NARRATIVES OF HENRY BIBB, WILLIAM WELLS BROWN, AND SOLOMON NORTHUP. NY: Harper & Row, 1969)

Mid-August: In rural Missouri, when Jack Burton reached “the age of manhood” his owner Moses Burton sold him for $1,000 to the McDonald who owned his wife Maria Tomlin Burton. However, Mr. McDonald happened to reside at some 30 miles distance from the farm where the wife labored and as it turned out, he would refuse permission for the slave husband to travel that distance to visit his wife and infant child. Burton was told he could instead pick out a new woman for himself from amongst the local slaves of his present owner, and start himself a new family. –No big deal, right?

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September 23, Friday: Spain appointed the Marquis Juan de la Pezuela as Captain General of Cuba. This man was well known as an opponent of human slavery, and was assigned the task of suppression of the slave trade. THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY

In Mobile, Alabama, a 4th child of Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and Sarah (Sally) Deas Nott, Edward Fisher Nott, succumbed to yellow fever at the age of 18 or 19.69

69. The Nott children who would survive would be James Deas Nott II, then age 12, Henry Nott, then age 11, and Josiah Nott, Jr, then age 7 or 8 (out of a total population in the city of Mobile of about 25,000, the final tally of this epidemic would be 1,331). Of the three boys who would not succumb during this epidemic, the two old enough to become soldiers would be killed, one at Shiloh in 1862 and the other at Chickamauga in 1863. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2081 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 25, Sunday: On a Sunday toward the end of September, which may have been this day or may have been the 18th, Mr. McDonald having been summoned to a church meeting in regard to another slaveowning member of the congregation (someone who allegedly was in need of extra spiritual guidance because allegedly he had just whipped one of his slaves to death), Jack Burton seized the opportunity and one of his master’s mules and some rope, and well before dawn made his way toward the Missouri River. After several days of hiding and traveling he managed to reach Fayette and the home of his father-in-law, the free barber Lewis Tomlin. After one last visit to his wife and child, he would arm himself with a dirk, a couple of shirts, and about a dollar and a half — and make his dash toward Canada and life as a free man.

October 1, Saturday: In Syracuse NY, the 2d annual “Jerry Celebration” honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from federal marshals who had been seeking on October 1, 1851 to “return” him to his “owner.” RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

In Missouri that night, the fugitive slave Jack Burton was stealing a boat and crossing the Mississippi to the free soil of Illinois. Since he was still vulnerable to slavecatchers and bounty hunters, he would need to continue his difficult procedure of moving only during hours of darkness.

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October 8: In Kingston, Canada, Jerry McHenry had been a free man in exile for slightly more than two years, and died. I do not happen to know whether he died of the injuries sustained during the struggle of October 1, 1851 in Syracuse, New York, but at this point he was but 40 years of age and he had in fact during that struggle been badly injured — so this would seem rather likely. A lawsuit had been filed on his behalf, attempting to test the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law under which this American had been so egregiously attacked by his government, but as of the date of his death this lawsuit had met only with delay. The Reverend Samuel Joseph May’s annual “Jerry Celebrations” would of course continue undaunted, as they had to do with general freedom rather than with any particular person’s wellbeing. In Concord, Henry Thoreau began to write on what can be seen by moonlight: “I do not value any view of the universe into which man and his institutions enter at once and necessarily and absorb a great share of the attention.” –“The Moon.” During his lifetime there would be no audience for, and no response to, such an inhumanist stance.

Here was the moon on this night of October 8, 1853:

1854

The remaining Caddo Indians, the first Native Americans in what is now the USA to have been contacted by Europeans (the De Soto expedition below), were relocated from their ancestral homelands onto a reservation in Texas.

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In this period it was common to regard extraordinary physical performance as a Native American racial characteristic, to the extent that at some fairgrounds there were races for endurance and speed which were restricted to Native American athletes only. A Seneca tribesman named Albert Smith was regarded as the current dominant such “pedestrian.” At this point John Grindall and Mickey Free went to Buffalo, New York specifically to test themselves, as white men, against these Native American athletes. Mickey Free beat a Native American named Armstrong in the speed quarter-mile, in 56 seconds, and then tested himself against Native American runners named Burton, Armstrong, Louis “Red Jacket” Bennett, and an aging runner named Steeprock who had been dominant during the 1840s, in a 5-mile endurance race over 500 3-foot hurdles. Burton won. There was then a similar 7-mile race, which was awarded to a Native American named Sundown after the Native American runner Albert Smith was revealed to have knocked down one of the 700 hurdles without going back and righting it. There was also a 4.42-mile race in which Grindall defeated Sundown and a 10-mile race in which Albert Smith defeated Grindall. In none of these longer contests could Red Jacket manage to get among the winners.70

During this year and the following one, John Henry Kagi would be teaching school at Hawkinstown, Virginia — until his pupils would be led to suspect that their teacher had some sort of trepidation as to the system of race slavery prevalent in that area — upon which their teacher would be compelled to return to Ohio under a pledge never to return to Virginia.

Shame on him! He didn’t believe in human slavery! “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

70. Having been built in Rockland ME by the firm of Deacon George Thomas in the previous year, the clipper Red Jacket (named in honor of Headman Sagoyewatha of the Seneca) in this year sailed under master Asa Eldridge from New-York dockside to Liverpool dockside in but 13 days, 1 hour, and 25 minutes. This is still the record. 2084 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Having studied law under an anti-slavery judge in Elyria, Ohio, John Mercer Langston became the first black lawyer in the United States. After leaving Oberlin, Ohio and going to Virginia in 1871, he would make himself the first black American admitted to practice law before the US Supreme Court.

This was Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1854:

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During the Anthony Burns case, after Transcendentalist poets and preachers had attacked the Boston courthouse, the building had been converted into a sort of armored slavepen, in that it was guarded by a

detachment of US Marines, and two artillery companies with loaded cannons and with fixed bayonets on their rifles, as well as by the US Marshall’s guard consisting of “a gang of about one-hundred and twenty men, the lowest villains in the community, keepers of brothels, bullies, blacklegs, convicts....” Not even the judges, let alone the jurors, the witnesses, and the litigant attorneys, were being permitted inside the courthouse without first passing a cordon of men five men deep, and proving their right to be there. Boston abolitionists had offered the slavemaster of Burns the sum of $1,200 in return for a document in manumission, but had been refused.

Nothing in the whole record of the Burns affair is more striking to a modern audience or at first more off- putting than the apparent incapacity of even the most committed of the radicals to express a direct, authentic outrage on Burns’s personal behalf. Phillips’s unelaborated reference to his “suffering” is as close as they come. The evil that Parker undertakes to agitate against is the threat to the civil liberties of Northern white men. There is an oddity about this argument even on the supposition that it consciously appeals to self-interest ... if they are to be made to fight again, it must probably be for the same thing [their own personal liberty] and not ... for ... the right of another man than oneself to be free.

WENDELL PHILLIPS THEODORE PARKER At some point in the year, in regard to the enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act in regard to the Burns

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case, the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson would deliver a sermon entitled “Massachusetts in Mourning.”

After British abolitionists had “purchased” his manumission papers, redeeming him from the danger of re- enslavement under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, William Wells Brown returned to reside in the Boston area. While abroad he had created CLOTEL, which would be the 1st novel by an American of color, and he had ST. DOMINGO, a work indicative of growing antislavery militancy, in process. (He had also produced a travelogue complete with a rolled 24-scene panorama, and would produce a play, a compilation of antislavery songs, and finally three volumes of black history.)

January 7, Saturday: Friend William Henry Harvey arrived at Albany on the coast of Western Australia. After a month at Cape Riche he would hike overland through the bush to Perth to visit Fremantle, Rottnest Island (where he would live in a deserted convict establishment), and Garden Island. He would collect some 10,000 specimens of seaweed, many of them new to science.

Having been awarded a hero’s welcome when he arrived in New-York, complete with a banquet attended by prominent Americans of Irish extraction, John Mitchel, along with Thomas Meagher, began to put out The Citizen. Within a few weeks this libertarian newspaper, which obsequiously pandered to every rancid prejudice of its target audience, would be enjoying press runs of 50,000.

The publication would of course be greatly in favor of freedom for Ireland. Along the way it would also defend our inalienable right to own other human beings (that is, human slavery), would attack the great humbug of the Colonization Society, and would insist upon the unimpeachable privilege of a white man to engage in any business at all (that is, for instance, return to the international slave trade). Covering all bases, this paper would also be used to argue against the emancipation of the Jews. ANTISEMITISM RACISM

January 7 P.M. –To Ministerial Swamp. I went to these woods partly to hear an owl [Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus], but did not; but now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, loud and far, –a voice which we call the owl,– and yet so rarely see the bird. Oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound; is louder than the voice of a dear friend. Yet we see the friend perhaps daily and the owl but a few times in our lives. It is a sound which the wood or the horizon makes.

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(George Edwards’s A NATURAL HISTORY OF UNCOMMON BIRDS, 1745)

January 21: Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Hashish”71 appeared in the National Anti-Slavery Standard (14.305:137), a New-York publication listing S.H. Gay and Oliver Johnson as editors on its masthead: The Judge partakes, and sits ere long, Upon his bench a railing blackguard, Decides, off-hand, that right is wrong, And reads the ten commandments backward. (ll. 45-48)

A footnote in the publication verifies that this hash which is interfering with the judgment of the “Hashish” (marijuana-user) judge is indeed a preparation of cannabis indica. Whittier’s poem is not, however, an anti- drug poem as such, but an anti-human-enslavement poem. Drug use is recognized as a problem, but not a problematic problem. The problem is that slavery is not yet recognized to be an intoxicant, capable of deforming the judgment and the moral sense. After numerous stanzas describing the transformations wrought by hashish, Whittier offers his moral, which is that cotton intoxicates Americans more than hashish intoxicates easterners: The hempen Hashish of the East Is powerless to our Western Cotton! (51-52)

February 28: Republican party organized at Ripon, Wisconsin by former Whigs and disaffected Democrats opposed to the extension of slavery.

71. From this topical and dated poem, the fave rave Quaker hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” has been derived. 2088 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 24, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau left at 4:30 AM for the Cliffs, and in the afternoon went to Pedrick’s meadow.

This would turn out, in Boston, to be the day of Anthony Burns’s arrest. It seems Burns, a 6-footer classifiable as an “escaped slave,” had made the mistake of attempting to send a note to a brother still held in Virginia. The note had of course been intercepted by his brother’s “owner,” who had thus discovered where he was hiding.

He was arrested by US Marshall Asa O. Butman while working as a presser in a tailor shop on Brattle Street in Boston, and accused of running away from his owner Mr. Charles Francis Suttle.72 Thomas Wentworth Higginson would lead an assault on the jail, and in the attempt to rescue Burns, a deputy named James Batchelder would be killed.73

72. At the time of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, according to Lawrence Lader’s THE BOLD BRAHMINS (NY: Dutton, 1961, page 140), there were some 600 “runaway slaves” living and working in the city of Boston. 73. James Batchelder was either shot or stabbed, either by an abolitionist on purpose or by accident or by another police agent on purpose or by accident. What we know for sure is that he quickly bled out after his femoral artery was “nearly divided.” It would be said that he had received the wages for his sin of favoring human enslavement, but it needs to be mentioned that we do not know how many children this Irish immigrant had in some Boston tenement, to feed and clothe. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2089 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A telegram originating in Washington DC, allegedly from President of the United States of America Franklin Pierce,74 sided with the kidnappers of Burns but offered a quite ambiguous sentiment,

The law must be executed.

indeed one with which all anarchists everywhere would be able most heartily to concur: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would be the attorney for the defense. The trial would cost more than $40,000.00 and would be lost. In the course of all this lawyer Dana would be assaulted at night by a hired thug.75 Democrats had dragged cannon from the Custom House to the Common, and were there firing off salutes to the new Kansas-Nebraska Act extending the territory of American slavery, at 8PM while Anthony Burns was being taken into custody as he walked home along Brattle Street. (Caleb Page, a Boston truckman who had gone along with Butman to arrest Burns, would later be outraged when informed that he had helped in the recapture of an escaped slave — Butman had assured his hired day-deputy that he was merely assisting in the capture of a thief which technically under the law was a correct explanation as, under the law as it then existed, Burns was stealing himself and his services from their rightful owner. The next day in court there a broken bone would be seen to be protruding from his right hand, but this had not been the result of harm he had sustained while he was being taken into custody, for as a child that hand had been damaged in some machinery at a shop to which his owner had hired out his labor. Dana would describe the “scarred” right hand for the court record as “a bone stands out from the back of it, a hump an inch high, and it hangs almost useless from the wrist, a huge scar or gash covering half its surface.” I do not know whether this meant that the white bone was protruding permanently through the skin, or whether this meant that the deformed bone made a pronounced lump under the skin.)

Brad Dean summarized: “In September 1850 the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which granted slaveholders the right to seize runaway slaves anywhere in the U.S. and carry them back to the South. The first attempt at rendition in February 1851 failed when abolitionists rescued a runaway called Shadrach (Frederick Jenkins) from his captors in Boston and sent him on to safety in Canada. Less than two months later, however, another runaway, Thomas Simms (Sims), was seized in Boston, but on that occasion local, state, and federal troops ensured that Sims’s owners were able to carry him back to Georgia. Thoreau and hundreds of thousands of others in the North were outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law and the Sims rendition, which seemed to them flagrant violations by the federal government of the rights guaranteed to states under the US Constitution. As a consequence of these and similar actions by the federal government, the Nullification movement, which posited that a state had a right to nullify laws mandated by the federal government, garnered more serious attention in the North than it had before been accorded. Two key events immediately preceded and helped set the stage for the meeting sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on July 4, 1854. On May 24, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave working in a Boston clothing store, was arrested and slated to be shipped back to Virginia. Abolitionists protested at Faneuil Hall, and the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson led a failed attempt to rescue Burns from the Boston jail. Burns was escorted under heavy guard by the militia to a revenue cutter, which returned him to slavery. The second key event was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which became law on May 30. One provision of the Act was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, an action that removed the explicit prohibition of slavery in the northern

74. Although this telegram must have been a fraud –since President Pierce was never indited as a co-conspirator in this kidnapping of Burns– our history books say nothing further about the source of the telegram and appear to have little interest in uncovering who it was in Washington DC who could have been behind such a slanderous misuse of a President’s name. –And recently, when Rodney King was attacked and abused by the “LAPD,” an armed and exceedingly dangerous group of bigoted criminals operating in the Los Angeles area, the same sort of slanderous attack was made on the good name of President George Herbert Walker Bush! 75.Hopefully, this hired thug was not in the employ of the White House plumbers. 2090 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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reaches of the Louisiana Purchase. Thoreau was incensed over the Burns affair. On May 29, he began a long,

scathing journal entry with these two sentences, the second of which would echo again in “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”: “These days it is left to one Mr. Loring to say whether a citizen of Massachusetts is a slave or not. Does any one think that Justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s decision?”76 The arrangements by which Thoreau joined William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and the others on the podium at Framingham MA are not known. The absence of his name from announcements of the event suggests that he was a last-minute addition, but we do not know whether he was asked to speak or sought the opportunity. In view of his aroused emotions at the moment and of his apparent difficulty getting Concordians to talk about the North rather than the South, it is certainly possible that the announced rally struck him as an ideal forum to get things off his chest. Minimal time to prepare was not really a problem because on the issue of slavery and Massachusetts his long-stewing thought and rhetoric had already reached the boiling point. Indeed, in writing “Slavery in Massachusetts,” he essentially mined his still fresh journal entries on Burns and earlier passages on the Thomas Simms (Sims) case.”

76. THE JOURNAL OF HENRY D. THOREAU, ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis Henry Allen, 14 volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906, 6:313. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2091 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 26, Friday: An annular solar eclipse (#7298) was visible (local weather conditions permitting) in a path from Washington state along the Canadian border and across New England and Nova Scotia:

ASTRONOMY In Boston, the solar eclipse was precluded by clouds and rain. However, in Roxbury, Caroline Barrett White got a view and was able to mark down the totality as occurring precisely at 5:40 PM. In Cambridge, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his journal that “Yesterday a fugitive slave was arrested in Boston! To-day there is an eclipse of the sun. ‘Hung be the heavens in black!’”

At 5:30 AM Henry Thoreau visited the climbing ivy, and in the afternoon he went to Walden Pond. Presumably he caught no glimpse of the eclipse through the clouds.

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Moncure Daniel Conway heard the Reverend Theodore Parker’s incendiary oration at Faneuil Hall:

There is a means, and there is an end; liberty is the end, and sometimes peace is not the means toward it.

Hey, that’s not bad, coming from a white man who believed his own Caucasian race to be uniquely humane, civilized, and progressive, never enslaved because able to conquer by use of the head as well as by use of the hand. (Yeah, that’s just about a quote unquote, for the Reverend Parker besides being a warmonger was also a racist.) Let’s have a war so that superior and inferior races can live together in harmony!

The lawyer Seth Webb, Jr. managed to persuade Judge Daniel Wells of Boston’s Court of Common Pleas to issue to Boston’s coroner, Charles Smith, a writ of personal replevin according to which US Marshal Watson Freeman was to surrender “the body of Anthony Burns.” Freeman, however, refused to comply with this writ. Meanwhile, there were maneuvers to raise $1,200 to purchase the escaped slave in order directly to manumit him.77 MANUMISSION

This Anthony Burns affair made Conway (among others) into an abolitionist, by forcing him to choose sides. As the industrialist Amos Lawrence of the Secret “Six” conspiracy commented,

We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.

Bronson Alcott took the train from Boston for Worcester on a mission for the Boston Vigilance Committee. He was to attract the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who had organized the guerrilla action of 1851 which had failed to rescue Thomas Simms (Sims), to head the Vigilance Committee and to take action in regard to the kidnapping of Burns.78 77. It would have been at best problematic, for such a sale of Burns to the abolitionists for $1,200 to have gone through. Under Massachusetts law, the sale of a slave within the Commonwealth would have been a criminal offense committed by the seller and punishable by a fine of $1,000 plus ten years in prison. Even if Mr. Charles Francis Suttle were to carefully phrase the transaction as a manumission financed by others rather than as a financial transaction for gain, he very well knew that this would provide his enemies with a pretext for indefinite legal harassment — a pretext upon which in the utter absence of all good will they would be quite likely to act. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2093 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 30, Tuesday: The Kansas-Nebraska Act.

In Boston, the New England Anti-Slavery Society met to try to figure out what to do, while the presser of the Brattle Street tailor shop, Anthony Burns, was on trial in the courthouse, on the charge of being a fugitive from enslavement. Behind barricades of ropes stretched across Courthouse Square, the courthouse was being guarded by regiments of US troops. The night was so cold that Thoreau had to go out and cover his watermelon plants. The Boston Post, a Democratic mouthpiece, was editorializing that “What these bold, bad men [the paper instances the Reverend Theodore Parker and aristocrat Wendell Phillips by name] are doing, is nothing more nor less than committing treason.”

A false report had appeared in the Boston Daily Times, on Monday, May 29th, that Friend John Greenleaf Whittier had offered “any aid, by money or muscle,” to effect a violent rescue of Anthony Burns. (Whittier had in fact incautiously commented in a message that had become generally known, that “anything” would be preferred to sending Burns “out of Boston as a slave.”) On this day Whittier wrote to the newspaper, offering as further explanation of the attitude he was seeking to express, that “I regard all violence as evil and self- destructive.”

In Concord in the afternoon Henry Thoreau went to Clintonia swamp and Pond.

May 30. Tuesday. Whiteweed. Spergularia rubra, apparently a day or two, side of railroad above red house. Yarrow. P.M. — To Clintonia Swamp and Pond. Saw a black snake, dead, tour feet three inches long, slate-colored beneath. Saw what was called a California cat which a colored man brought home from California, — an animal at least a third smaller than a cat and shaped more like a polecat or weasel, brown-gray, with a cat-like tail of alternate black and white rings, very large cars, and eyes which were prominent, long body like a weasel, and sleeps with its head between its fore paws, curling itself about; a rank smell to it. It was lost several days in our woods, and was caught again in a tree; about a crow’s nest.79 Ranunculus repens, perhaps a day or two; channelled peduncle and spreading calyx and conspicuously spotted leaves. The leaves of the tall buttercup are much larger and finely cut and, as it were, peltate. Pickerel are not easily detected, — such is their color, — as if they were transparent. Vetch. I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard’s Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries. In this dark, cellar-like maple swamp are scattered at pretty regular intervals tufts of green ferns, Osmunda cinnamomea, above the dead brown leaves, broad, tapering fronds, curving over on every side from a compact centre, now three or four feet high. Wood frogs skipping over the dead leaves, whose color they resemble. Clintonia. Medeola. The last may be earlier. I am surprised to find arethusas abundantly out in Hubbard’s Close, maybe two or three days, though not yet at Arethusa Meadow, probably on account of the recent freshet. It is so leafless that it shoots up unexpectedly. It is all color, a little hook of purple flame projecting from the meadow into the air. Some are comparatively pale. This high-colored plant shoots up suddenly, all flower, in meadows where it is wet walking. A superb flower. Cotton-grass here also, probably two or three days for the same reason. Eriophorum polystachyon var. latifolium, having rough peduncles. The twigs of the dwarf willow, now gone to seed, are thickly invested with cotton, containing little green seed- vessels, like excrement of caterpillars, and the shrubs look at a little distance like sand cherries in full bloom. These are among the downy seeds that fly. Found a ground-robin’s nest, under a tuft of dry sedge which the winter had bent clown, in sprout-land on the side of Heywood Peak, perfectly concealed, with two whitish eggs very thickly sprinkled with brown; made of coarse grass and weed stems and lined with a few hairs and stems of the mahogany moss. The pink is certainly one of the finest of our flowers and deserves the place it holds in my memory. It is now in its prime on the south side of the Heywood Peak, where it grows luxuriantly in dense rounded tufts or hemispheres, raying out on every side and presenting an even and regular surface of expanded flowers. I count in one such tuft, of an oval form twelve inches by eight, some three hundred fully open and about three times 78. For the attempt at rescuing Anthony Burns, see the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s CHEERFUL YESTERDAYS (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898). CAT 79. Ringtail (Bassariscus astutus) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-tailed_Cat 2094 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as many buds, — more than a thousand in all. Some tufts consist wholly of white ones with a very faint tinge of pink. This flower is as elegant in form as in color, though it is not fragrant. It is associated in my mind with the first heats of summer, or [those] which announce its near approach. Few plants are so worthy of cultivation. The shrub oak pincushion (?) galls are larger, whiter, and less compact than those of the white oak. I find the linnaea, and budded, in Stow’s Wood by Deep Cut. Sweet flag. Waxwork to-morrow. I see my umbrella toadstool on the hillside has already pierced the ground.

May 31, Wednesday: In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went by boat to Miles Meadow.

In reading the following, please to bear in mind that one of the perennial joke explanations for the complexion of the black race, which every white Bostonian was hearing in barbershops and church socials and other venues, was that when God had made those people, He had inadvertently left them in the oven too long. They were like God’s burned cookies. This was a joke that could be made to play real well, in the case of a black man who happened to bear a name such as “Burns.” (Even a white man can be bright enough to figure out how to play around with such obvious materials.)

OK, now here’s the material of the day. There appeared in a Boston newspaper an advertisement for a burn medication known as “Russian Salve,” and this advertisement was for the nonce posing the trick question, precisely what was the difference between a slavemaster and salve. (The answer these people were poking at, we can figure out, was that while salve is good for burns, the slavemaster was bad for Burns.)

The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote again from his home in Worcester, after having obtained the benefit of legal counsel, to his mother Louisa Storrow Higginson: “I think it altogether probable, now, that I shall be arrested soon, imprisoned till the trial and perhaps after again.”

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June 2, “Bad Friday”: Louis D’Entremont Surette was born in Concord to Louis A. Surette and Frances Jane Shattuck Surette.

By 6AM, crowds were already beginning to accumulate outside the Boston courthouse.

At 7:30AM, to maintain order and to make some sort of gesture that this is after all America, a brace of horses dragged a cannon onto the square before the courthouse and a squad of US Marines trained its load of six pounds of grapeshot on the crowd.

At 8AM a martial law notice was posted, which someone read aloud to the crowd: TO THE CITIZENS OF BOSTON.

To secure order throughout the city this day, Major- General Edmands and the Chief of Police will make such disposition of the respective forces under their commands as will best promote that important object; and they are clothed with full discretionary power to sustain the laws of the land. All well-disposed citizens and other persons are urgently requested to leave those streets which it may be found necessary to clear temporarily, and under no circumstances to obstruct or molest any officer, civil or military, in the lawful discharge of his duty. J.V.C. SMITH, Mayor. BOSTON, June 2, 1854.

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At 8:45AM the defendant’s attorney, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., entered the courtroom, and was startled to observe his client Anthony Burns attired in a stylish new suit.

At 9AM Judge of Probate Edward Greeley Loring entered the chamber, and the troops outside began to drive the citizenry out of the courthouse square. The Marines began ostentatiously to “train” by going through the motions of loading, firing, and reloading their cannon, while the police began to make arrests. Judge Loring, in regard to the objection that was being raised that his rôle as a Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner of the United States of America was an unconstitutional one for judges to play, commented mildly that his duties as a Fugitive Slave Commissioner were “ministerial rather than judicial.”

Horace Mann, Sr. and E.G. Loring were old buddies from the Litchfield Law School. It had been just a brief period since Loring, who was an officer of Harvard College, had been rejected as a candidate for a law professorship because of his favoring the Fugitive Slave Law as written by James Mason of Virginia.

To prove to the court what everyone knew to be the fact, the slavemaster and his attorney displayed to the judge a copy of the Revised Code of Virginia. “On the law and facts of the case, I consider the claimant entitled to the certificate from me which he claims.” Judge Loring then signed the certificate and outside upon a signal the bells of Boston’s churches began to toll. In response to the pealing of the bells, the townspeople began to hang black bunting, and women’s black shawls and mantles, out of their windows. The streets of Boston were being patrolled by the National Guard, and by US Army cavalry, and by marines, and by artillery brigades, totaling some 2,000 soldiers –President Pierce having ordered that no expense be spared– but no quantity of mere soldiering could force local citizens to raise their flags above half-mast or take down their drapings of black bunting.

At 2:30PM the procession of troops, each with pistol by his left hand and drawn cutlass in his right, began to move toward the waterfront and, eventually, the government revenue cutter Morris that was being kept at a safe distance in the harbor, out at the mooring at Minot’s Light. Burn was moved along quick-step by the troops “down that sworded street” from the Boston courthouse in the custody of US Marshall Asa O. Butman. The Marine Band attempted to incite the crowds of citizens lining the streets to riot by playing the tune “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” so that the army would have an opportunity to do what it does best, but could not get a firefight started. The colored man was heard to comment,

There was a lot of folks to see a colored man walk through the streets.

The New England Woman’s Rights Convention was getting little done, for the delegates were out on State Street watching the colored man in the new suit being marched past. William Lloyd Garrison and the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway watched together from the window of a law office (this would get Conway in big trouble in his home town in Virginia). On the way down to Dock T, it seems that by coincidence a druggist’s stockboy from Roxbury, William Ela, who had been sent into town that afternoon to procure a bottle of ink, was in the vicinity lugging his bottle — and the troops presumed that the bottle he was carrying contained vitriol which he intended to hurl at them. The bottle of ink was smashed and the boy would be brain-damaged from being assaulted with the butts of muskets (later there would be a lawsuit for his maintenance: Ela v. J.V.C. Smith). The nervous troops also bayoneted a cart horse that happened to get in their way as Anthony Burns was being marched to the dock. There was a dock, and there was a street leading down to it; the cutter was at the end of the dock, and sometimes a cart driver does not mean to get in the way. What to do? Where a human being means nothing, what the hell is a horse supposed to mean? The white soldiers, having gotten all keyed

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up to bayonet citizens, of course bayoneted the horse. The driver of the cart was lucky they didn’t bayonet him as well.

At 3:20PM, after the troops had loaded their black captive and their brass cannon aboard the steamer John Taylor at Dock T, the steamer pulled away from the dock and began to make its way through the massed small craft in the harbor toward Minot’s Light, where the federal revenue cutter Morris was waiting.

That afternoon Henry David Thoreau had taken his mother Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau and sister Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau in his boat up the Assabet River to Castilleja and Annursnack. They wouldn’t return until about 7 PM.

By 8:30PM, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had finished writing out a version of the closing argument which he had offered, and had sent it off to the Boston Traveller to be published in their next edition. When he met Anson Burlingame, the 9PM omnibus to Cambridge having already departed, Burlingame offered to escort Dana home. As they walked together on Court Street, however, Dana was struck from behind. The lawyer’s glasses flew off and shattered. His eye was blackened and some of his teeth were chipped.80 Friend John Greenleaf Whittier would turn the Anthony Burns episode into one of his occasional poems, but –poetry to the contrary notwithstanding– the man of color’s wrists had not been in handcuffs as he had been quick-stepped “hand-cuffed down that sworded street” of sordid downtown Boston: The Rendition, by John Greenleaf Whittier. I HEARD the train’s shrill whistle call, I saw an earnest look beseech, And rather by that look than speech My neighbor told me all. And, as I thought of Liberty Marched handcuffed down that sworded street, The solid earth beneath my feet Reeled fluid as the sea. I felt a sense of bitter loss, — Shame, tearless grief, and stifling wrath, And loathing fear, as if my path A serpent stretched across. All love of home, all pride of place, All generous confidence and trust, Sank smothering in that deep disgust And anguish of disgrace. Down on my native hills of June, And home’s green quiet, hiding all, Fell sudden darkness like the fall Of midnight upon noon! And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, Blood-drunken, through the blackness trod, Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God The blasphemy of wrong.

80. The men were later identified as Luigi Varelli and Henry Huxford, who had been serving that day as part of the marshall’s guard and who were celebrating their earnings at Allen’s Saloon when they recognized Richard Henry Dana, Jr. as he passed on the sidewalk. Anthony Burns would turn out to be the last escapee from slavery to be returned from Massachusetts. His owner would not, as was feared at the time, torture him to death. He would be kept in the traders’ jail in Richmond VA until sold to a white man from North Carolina. This man would then retail him to a Massachusetts minister at Barnum’s Hotel in Baltimore in February 1855 for the sum of $1,325.00. On March 7, 1855 Burns would be feted at Tremont Temple and handed manumission papers. He would attend the School of Divinity at Oberlin College and, bless him, he would become a minister of the gospel. 2098 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“O Mother, from thy memories proud, Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth, Lend this dead air a breeze of health, And smite with stars this cloud. “Mother of Freedom, wise and brave, Rise awful in thy strength,” I said; Ah me! I spake but to the dead; I stood upon her grave!

June 2: ... I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves....

The following commentary on Thoreau’s journal entry for this day is from H. Daniel Peck’s THOREAU’S MORNING WORK: MEMORY AND PERCEPTION IN A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, THE JOURNAL, AND WALDEN (Yale UP, 1994): To “improve these seasons as much as a farmer his” is to cultivate them richly through perception and to fix them in enduring phenomenological categories. One of the most obvious signs of Thoreau’s ongoing revision of the traditional calendar in the Journal is his unceasing recording of first-observed appearances of seasonal phenomena. These observations cluster in the spring, when their myriad occurrences signify the vigorous rebirth of nature celebrated in the climatic chapter of WALDEN. Yet a close reading of the Journal reveals that Thoreau was closely attentive to “first facts” at all seasons. There are hundreds of such observations in the Journal, recorded at all times of the year and usually without commentary. In part, they are an expression of Thoreau’s deep preoccupation with origins. By searching the world for the first visible appearances of natural growth, he hopes to participate through observation in the creativity of nature — to be there at the moment of genesis. A passage from a Journal entry of June 2, 1854, expresses this desire poignantly: “I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves.” But as this example shows, the concept of beginning as it is usually expressed in the Journal is defined not by pure origination but by repetition. The necessary context for observing the “first” appearance of a seasonal phenomenon is the natural cycle; any “first” in nature is recognizable only because it has happened before. That is, Thoreau has already prepared, or recognized, a category for anticipating it; he is keyed for the observation of first facts. In the spring of 1860, we find him “on the alert for several days to hear the first birds” (March 9, 1860). Reporting the appearance of these “first birds” to his Journal is an act of confirmation as much as an act of origination; the beginning, in Thoreau, always pivots between memory and anticipation. As he puts it in a Journal entry of June 6, 1857, “Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting.” But even the most vigilant of nature’s observers cannot “be present at the birth of shadow,” and Thoreau is acutely aware of this, as he shows in an entry of March 17, 1857: “No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of

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the spring.”

June 28, Wednesday: The following item has been extracted from page 3, column 4 of the Worcester Palladium of this date by Bradley P. Dean, to add to our understanding of the context for Henry Thoreau’s delivery of a portion of “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS” on a mourning-crepe-draped platform of the 4th of July commemoration at the Harmony Grove in Framingham MA:

Meeting for True Freedom ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. THE Managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society invite, without distinction of party or sect, and without reference to varieties of opinion, ALL who mean to be known as on LIBERTY’S side, in the great struggle which is now upon us, to meet in full and earnest convention, at THE GROVE IN FRAMINGHAM, on the approaching FOURTH OF JULY, there to pass the day in no idle and deceptive glorying in our country’s liberties, but in deep humiliation for her Disgrace and Shame, and in resolute purpose —God being our leader— to rescue old Massachusetts at least from being bound forever to the car of Slavery. SPECIAL TRAINS will run on that day, to the Grove, from Boston, Worcester, and Milford — leaving each place at 9.25 A.M. Returning — leave the Grove about 5 1-2 P.M. FARE, by all these Trains, to the Grove and back, FIFTY CENTS. The beauty of the Grove, and the completeness and excellence of its accommodations, are well known. Eminent Speakers, from different quarters of the State, will be present.

In the morning of this Wednesday Thoreau went by boat to the Island. On this day Senator Charles Sumner was speechifying, quite falsely, that “In all her annals, no person was ever born a slave on the soil of Massachusetts.”81 In fact, it had been in the Bay Colony, in 1639, that there had occurred one of the earliest – if not the very earliest– project on this continent for the breeding of slaves. As the honest historian George H. Moore would point out in 1866, although there were no longer any slaves in Massachusetts, slavery was still theoretically possible as a point of Massachusetts law as of the very day of the passage of the XIIIth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865.

81. How could someone get elected who was this ignorant, or this obtuse? According to Bliss Perry, it had been Friend John Greenleaf Whittier the behind-the-scenes political manipulator who had “sent Sumner to the US Senate.” According to Claude M. Fuess, it was this Quaker single-issue-advocate politician’s “avowed aim to extort from the Massachusetts Congressmen every concession to anti-slavery principles which could be secured by any kind of strategy short of criminal methods.” 2100 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Our national birthday, the 4th of July, Tuesday: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 50th birthday.

Rowland Hussey Macy (1822-1919) had gotten started in retail in 1851 with a dry goods store in downtown Haverhill. Macy’s policy from the very first was “His goods are bought for cash, and will be sold for the same, at a small advance.” On this date Macy’s 1st parade marched down the main drag of the little New England village. It was too hot and only about a hundred people viewed his celebration. In 1858 Macy would sell this store and, with the financial backing of Caleb Dustin Hunking of Haverhill, relocate the retail business to easier pickings in New-York. (So, have you heard of the New York Macy’s department store? –Have you shopped there?)

When the mayor of Wilmington, Delaware jailed City Council member Joshua S. Valentine for setting off firecrackers, he was mobbed by a group of indignant citizens. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

Henry Thoreau went at “8 A.M. –To Framingham.”

At this abolitionist picnic celebrating our nation’s birthday and the Declaration of Independence, attended by some 600, a man the Standard described as “a sort of literary recluse,” name of Henry David Thoreau, declared for dissolution of the federal union.

Sojourner Truth was another of the speakers, although we do not know whether she spoke before of after Thoreau (the newspaper reporter who was present failed entirely to notice that Sojourner took part), nor

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whether he sat on the platform beside her. Stephen Symonds Foster and Abby Kelley Foster were present

(Abby probably brought her daughter Alla to the pic nic, for it was always a family affair, with swings for the children, boating on a nearby pond, and a convenient refreshment stand since the day would be quite hot,

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and confined her remarks to an appeal for funds), and Lucy Stone, as were Wendell Phillips, Charles Lenox

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Remond, and William Lloyd Garrison.82

When the meeting in the shady amphitheater was called to order at 10:45AM by Charles Jackson Francis, the first order of business had to be election of officials for the day. William Lloyd Garrison became the event’s president and Francis Jackson of Boston, William Whiting of Concord, Effingham L. Capron of Worcester, Dora M. Taft of Framingham, Charles Lenox Remond of Salem, John Pierpont of Medford, Charles F. Hovey of Gloucester, Jonathan Buffum of Lynn, Asa Cutler of Connecticut, and Andrew T. Foss of New Hampshire its vice presidents. The Reverend Samuel J. May, Jr., of Leicester, William H. Fish of Milford, and R.F. Wallcut of Boston became its secretaries. Abby Kelley Foster, Ebenezer D. Draper, Lewis Ford, Mrs. Olds of Ohio, Lucy Stone, and Nathaniel B. Spooner would constitute its Finance Committee. Garrison then read from Scripture, the assembly sang an Anti-Slavery hymn, and Dr. Henry O. Stone issued the Welcome.

82. There was an active agent of the Underground railroad on that platform, we may note, and it was not the gregarious Truth but the “sort of literary recluse” Thoreau. That is, please allow me to state the following in regard to the existence of eyewitness testimony, that the Thoreau home in Concord was in the period prior to the Civil War a waystation on the Underground Railway: we might reappraise Henry Thoreau’s relationship with Sojourner Truth, of whom it has been asserted by Ebony Magazine that she was a “Leader of the Underground Railroad Movement” (February 1987), by asking whether there is any comparable eyewitness testimony, that Truth ever was involved in that risky and illegal activity? Her biographer refers to her as a “loose cannon,” not the sort of close-mouthed person who could be relied upon as a participant in a quite secret and quite illegal and quite dangerous endeavor, and considers also that no such evidence has ever been produced. The Thoreaus, in contrast, not only were never regarded as loose in this manner, but were, we know, regarded as utterly reliable — and in the case of the Thoreau family home the evidence for total involvement exists and is quite conclusive. 2104 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I will quote a couple of paragraphs about the course of the meeting from the Foster biography, AHEAD OF HER TIME:

Heading the finance committee, Abby made her usual appeal for funds, Stephen called on the friends of liberty to resist the Fugitive Slave Law, “each one with such weapons as he thought right and proper,” and Wendell Phillips, Sojourner Truth, and Lucy Stone held the audience in thrall with their “soul-eloquence.” After an hour’s break for refreshments Henry Thoreau castigated Massachusetts for being in the service of the Slaveholders and demanded that the state leave the Union. “I have lived for the last month –and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience– with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country.” Thoreau’s speech is still reprinted, but William Lloyd Garrison provided the most dramatic moment of that balmy July day. Placing a lighted candle on the lectern, he picked up a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law and touched it to the flame. As it burned, he intoned a familiar phrase: “And let all the people say Amen.” As the shouts of “Amen” echoed, he burned the U.S. commissioner’s decision in the Burns case. Then he held a copy of the United States Constitution to the candle, proclaiming, “So perish all compromises with tyranny.” As it burned to ashes, he repeated, “And let all the people say Amen.” While the audience responded with a tremendous shout of “Amen,” he stood before them with arms extended, as if in blessing. No one who was present ever forgot the scene; it was the high point of unity among the Garrisonian abolitionists.

This biography of Abby Kelley, with its suggestion that Henry Thoreau’s speech, which it condenses to three sentences, must have been significant because it is “still reprinted,” overlooks the fact that Thoreau had not been granted an opportunity to read his entire lecture. A contemporary comment on the speech was more accurate:

Henry Thoreau, of Concord, read portions of a racy and ably written address, the whole of which will be published in the Liberator.

That is, Thoreau delivered a 4th-of-July oration at Framingham MA on “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS”, criticizing the governor and the chief justice of Massachusetts who were in the audience. –But, he was not

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allowed the opportunity to read his entire essay.

The whole military force of the State is at the service of a Mr. Suttle, a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom he calls his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers, all this training has been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico, and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters? These very nights, I heard the sound of a drum in our streets. There were men training still; and for what? I could with an effort pardon the cockerels of Concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had not been beaten that morning; but I could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the “trainers.” The slave was carried back by exactly such as these, i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best you can say in this connection is that he is a fool made conspicuous by a painted coat.

Note that on paper, at least, if not verbally as well, he made a reference to martyrdom by hanging: “I would side with the light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to follow.” Here is another account of the actual speech, as opposed to what was printed later, from one who was there in the audience standing before that platform draped in mourning black:

He began with the simple words, “You have my sympathy; it is all I have to give you, but you may find it important to you.” It was impossible to associate egotism with Thoreau; we all felt that the time and trouble he had taken at that crisis to proclaim his sympathy with the “Disunionists” was indeed important. He was there a representative of Concord, of science and letters, which could not quietly pursue their tasks while slavery was trampling down the rights of mankind. Alluding to the Boston commissioner who had surrendered Anthony Burns, Edward G. Loring, Thoreau said, “The fugitive’s case was already decided by God, –not Edward G. God, but simple God.” This was said with such serene unconsciousness of anything shocking in it that we were but mildly startled. — AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMORIES, AND EXPERIENCES OF MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY (Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), Volume I, pages 184-5. [Moncure Daniel Conway]

DISUNION ANTHONY BURNS EDWARD GREELEY LORING

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At the end of the morning meeting Henry Thoreau was on the platform while William Lloyd Garrison, the featured speaker, burned the federal Constitution on a pewter plate as a “covenant with death” because it countenanced the return of runaway slaves to their owners — Margaret Fuller’s grandfather Timothy Fuller Sr., who had refused to consent to that document when it was originally promulgated because of its ridiculous mincing about slavery, would have been proud of him! Thoreau’s inflammatory oratory was less inflammatory than addresses made on that occasion by Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Charles Lenox Remond, for their speeches drew comments but Thoreau’s did not. On our nation’s birthday the platform had been draped in black crepe as a symbol of mourning, as at a state funeral, and carried the insignia of the State of Virginia, which stood as the destination of Anthony Burns, and this insignia of the State of Virginia was decorated with — with, in magnificent irony, ribbons of triumph! Above the platform flew the flags of Kansas and Nebraska, emblematic of the detested new Kansas/Nebraska Act. As the background of all this, the flag of the United States of America was hung, but it was upside down, the symbol of distress, and it also was bordered in black, the symbol of death.

I think no great public calamity, not the death of Daniel Webster, not the death of Charles Sumner, not the loss of great battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns.

William Lloyd Garrison placed a lighted candle on the lectern, and touched a corner of the Fugitive Slave Law to the flame. As it burned, he orated “And let all the people say Amen” and the crowd shouted “Amen!” Then he touched a corner of the US commissioner’s decision in the Burns case to the candle flame. Then he touched a corner of a copy of the federal Constitution to the candle flame, and orated “So perish all compromises with tyranny.” As the paper was reduced to ashes, he orated “And let all the people say Amen”

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and stood with his arms extended as if in blessing.

William Lloyd Garrison (in 1865)

Moncure Daniel Conway’s comment, later, about the moment when William Lloyd Garrison set the match to the constitution, and the few scattered boos and hisses were drowned out by the thunderous “Amen” of the crowd, was:

That day I distinctly recognized that the antislavery cause was a religion.

In the afternoon Moncure Daniel Conway spoke, as a Virginian aristocrat, a child of position and privilege. Look at me! It was his 1st antislavery attempt at identity politics grandstanding. Leaning on the concept, he insisted that the force of public opinion in his home state was so insane and so hotheaded that every white man with a conscience, “or even the first throbbings of a conscience,” was a slave to this general proslavery public posture. He offered that to resist this Southern certitude, each Northerner would need to “abolish slavery in his

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heart.”83 AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

(So, you see, the white man has been self-enslaved: the problem is not so much that slavery harms the black man as that slavery harms the white man, shudder.)

Then Wendell Phillips spoke.

We know that Sojourner Truth spoke from that mourning-draped platform after a white man from Virginia had described his being thrown in jail there on account of his antislavery convictions, because in her speech she commented on this: how helpful it was for white people to obtain some experience of oppression. She warned that “God would yet execute his judgments upon the white people for their oppression and cruelty.” She asked why it was that white people hated black people so. She said that the white people owed the colored race a debt so huge that they would never be able to pay it back — but would have to repent so as to have this debt forgiven them. Nell Painter has characterized this message as “severe and anguished,” and has commented that despite the cheers and applause, “Her audiences preferred not to grapple with all she had to say.” Her humor must have been such, Painter infers, as to allow her white listeners to exempt themselves from this very general denunciation:

They did not hear wrath against whites, but against the advocates of slavery. It is understandable, no doubt, that Truth’s audiences, who wanted so much to love this old black woman who had been a slave, found it difficult to fathom the depths of her bitterness.

83. We may note how different this was from the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “kill the Negro in us.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2109 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Carleton Mabee’s BLACK FREEDOM

Americans at large often held the abolitionists responsible for the war. They argued that the abolitionists’ long agitation, strident as it often was, had antagonized the South into secession, thus beginning the war, and that the abolitionists’ insistence that the war should not end until all slavery had been abolished kept the war going. In 1863 the widely read New York Herald made the charge devastatingly personal. It specified that by being responsible for the war, each abolitionist had in effect already killed one man and permanently disabled four others. … While William Lloyd Garrison preferred voluntary emancipation, during the war he came to look with tolerance on the abolition of slavery by military necessity, saying that from seeming evil good may come. Similarly, the Garrisonian-Quaker editor, Oliver Johnson, while also preferring voluntary emancipation, pointed out that no reform ever triumphed except through mixed motives. But the Garrisonian lecturer Pillsbury was contemptuous of such attitudes. Freeing the slaves by military necessity would be of no benefit to the slave, he said in 1862, and the next year when the Emancipation Proclamation was already being put into effect, he said that freeing the slaves by military necessity could not create permanent peace. Parker Pillsbury won considerable support for his view from abolitionist meetings and from abolitionist leaders as well. Veteran Liberator writer Edwin Percy Whipple insisted that “true welfare” could come to the American people “only through a willing promotion of justice and freedom.” Henry C. Wright repeatedly said that only ideas, not bullets, could permanently settle the question of slavery. The recent Garrisonian convert, the young orator Ezra Heywood, pointed out that a government that could abolish slavery as a military necessity had no antislavery principles and could therefore re-establish slavery if circumstances required it. The Virginia aristocrat-turned-abolitionist, Moncure Daniel Conway, had misgivings that if emancipation did not come before it became a fierce necessity, it would not reflect true benevolence and hence could not produce true peace. The Philadelphia wool merchant, Quaker Alfred H. Love, asked, “Can so sublime a virtue as … freedom … be the offspring of so corrupt a parentage as war?” The long-time abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster –the speak-inner and Underground Railroader– predicted flatly, if the slave is freed only out of consideration for the safety of the Union, “the hate of the colored race will still continue, and the poison of that wickedness will destroy us as a nation.” Amid the searing impact of the war –the burning fields, the mangled bodies, the blood-splattered hills and fields– a few abolitionists had not forgotten their fundamental belief that to achieve humanitarian reform, particularly if it was to be thorough and permanent reform, the methods used to achieve it must be consistent with the nature of the reform. … What abolitionists often chose to brush aside was that after the war most blacks would still be living in the South, among the same Confederates whom they were now trying to kill.

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July 5, Wednesday: The following item has been extracted from page 2, column 2 of the Boston Commonwealth of this date by Bradley P. Dean, to add to our understanding of the context for Henry Thoreau’s delivery of “SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS” during the previous day, on the mourning-crepe-draped platform of the 4th of July commemoration at the Harmony Grove in Framingham MA:

ANTI-SLAVERY CELEBRATION AT FRAMINGHAM A meeting of Anti-Slavery people, called under the auspices of the Mass. Anti-Slavery Society, was held at Framingham yesterday. A beautiful grove near the lake, furnished a fine place for the meeting. Many people entertained themselves by taking a sail upon the lake. About two thousand persons were present, extra trains being there from Boston and Worcester. Mr. [William Lloyd] Garrison presided, and speeches were made by him, Wendell Phillips, C. L. Remond, Lucy Stone, John Pierpont, S.S. Foster, John C. Cluer, and others. At the close of Mr. Garrison’s speech he burned the Fugitive Slave Act, Commissioner Loring’s decision and the Constitution of the United States. The burning of the Slave Act and Loring’s decision was received with decided approbation; but the burning of the Constitution was witnessed with disgust and indignation by a large number of those who were assembled, some of whom vented their feelings by hisses and ou[t]cries.

RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW JOHN PIERPONT

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It is no more than fair to state that Mr. Garrison said that he did not do this as the act of the meeting, but as his own individual expression of opinion[.] But this furnishes no excuse for the proceeding. By the printed notice of the meeting, all “friends of Impartial Freedom and Universal Emancipation,” “all who reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man,” were invited to be present at Framingham. Under this invitation, anti-slavery men, who hold that the Constitution of the United States furnishes no aid whatever to slavery and that under it, the most radical anti-slavery action is legal and proper, had a right to be present, without having their feelings and principles insulted by such a performance. We speak now only of the act of discourtesy: whether it was worth while to perform an act, at this time, which could gratify only a few men, and must inevitably tend to increase the odium under which all true anti-slavery men have to labor, is another question which we do not now discuss. We take the occasion, speaking as we have no doubt we do, in behalf of a very large majority of the “friends of impartial freedom and universal emancipation,” in this community, to repudiate this act of Mr. Garrison’s, and say that they have no sympathy with it or approved of it.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON WENDELL PHILLIPS CHARLES LENOX REMOND LUCY STONE JOHN PIERPONT STEPHEN S. FOSTER

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October 1, Sunday: In Syracuse NY, the 3d annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR, wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson.

Scheduling difficulties had forced the postponement of Henry Thoreau’s lecture in Plymouth MA by one week. He responded to Friend Daniel Ricketson’s letter of August 12th, talking about visiting Middleboro Ponds and recommending William Gilpin’s books on nature, which he was just then reading.

Concord Mass, Oct 1st ’54 Dear Sir, I had duly received your very kind and frank letter, but delayed to “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2113 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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answer it thus long because I have little skill as a correspondent, and wished to send you something more than my thanks. I was gratified by your prompt and hearty acceptance of my book. Yours is the only word of greeting I am likely to receive from a dwell- er in the woods like myself, from where the whippoorwill and cuckoo are heard, and there are better than moral clouds drifting over, and real breezes blow. Your account excites in me a desire to see the Middleboro Ponds, of which I had already heard somewhat; as also of some very beautiful ponds on the Cape, in Harwich I think, near which I once passed. I have sometimes also thought of visiting that remnant of our Indians still living near you.— But then, you know there is nothing like ones native fields and lakes. The best news you send me is, not that Nature with you is so fair and genial, but that there is one there who likes her so well. That proves all that was asserted. Homer, of course, you include in your list of lovers of nature – and, by the way, let me mention here, – for this is “my thunder” lately – Wm Gilpin’s long series of books on the Picturesque, with their illus- trations. If it chances that you have not met with these, I cannot just now frame a better wish than that you may one day derive as much pleasure from the inspection of them as I have. Much as you have told me of yourself, you have still I think a little the advantage of me in this correspondence, for I have told you still more in my book. You have therefore the broadest mark to fire at. A young English author, Thomas Cholmondeley, is just now waiting for me to take a walk with him – therefore excuse this very barren note from Yrs, hastily at last, Henry D. Thoreau

1855

The free blacks of New Orleans responded enthusiastically when the state’s slave manumission policy began to be liberalized. They would soon, however, have this initial enthusiasm driven out of them, for the Louisiana legislature –among other state legislatures– would begin reacting to the great servile-insurrection scare that would begin in 1856 because a presidential candidate considered to be pro-negro was being offered by the new Republican Party. The state’s white powers-that-be would in 1857 again sharply restrict the possibility of manumission. This rancid history would reach its low point in the election of 1860. Many industrious free blacks of the South would experience a white backlash in which they would be accused of subversive sympathies with the black slaves, in a bond supposedly arising out of their African-Americans kinship and out of a common experience of white prejudice.

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It was in about this year that in New-York the American Anti-Slavery Society was producing Charles Calistus Burleigh’s SLAVERY AND THE NORTH.

By age of six the slave “Blind Tom” was improvising on the piano. He would explain that the sound of the wind or the rain or the birds had suggested his musical compositions.

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Hinton Rowan Helper’s first book was THE LAND OF GOLD. REALITY VERSUS FICTION, which warned against

white men going to California with any great expectations. Since the book was being published in Maryland and had been paid for in advance, the printer using his own political judgment simply did not set into type from the manuscript with which he had been provided any of the references to Helper’s controversial attitude of antislavery racism. Helper was of course enraged at these unexpected deletions, but he could do nothing — the printer already had his money.

HINTON ROWAN HELPER

Cassius M. Clay, by virtue of his contention that the slaveholder was the natural enemy not of the slave but of the yeomanry of poor whites, had actually been a forerunner of Helper’s attitude that the slavemasters actually were worse moral cases than the two supposed thieves he had helped lynch in California: “Thieves practice deceit on the wise; slaveholders take advantage of the ignorant.” Helper’s THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT would be begun out of these antislave and antislavery diatribes which the Baltimore printer had culled out of THE LAND OF GOLD. REALITY VERSUS FICTION as impossible of publication in the South: “I have ceased to be the submissive victim of an unmitigated despotism.” By way of this Baltimore

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printer, the slavemasters were attempting to dictate to Helper what he would and what he would not be allowed to think — and Helper wasn’t about to put up with such a suppression of his thought.

In the mid-1850s James Shepard Pike, another white racist abolitionist opportunist of the ilk of Hinton Rowan Helper, joined the Republican Party out of a “sincere belief that the Negro could not and should not be incorporated into the American democratic system.” He desired to have the Gulf States set aside as a reservation for the black tribe from Africa. He desired also, he said, that the black man immediately be allowed to vote — so that early on he would demonstrate, for all to see, his utter incapacity to take part in a civilized process. (Later, in 1871 when the prospect of black voters became more imminent, he would withdraw from this idea of allowing the black man to vote.)

February: Anthony Burns had been kept in the traders’ jail in Richmond, Virginia until he had been sold to a white man from North Carolina, and in this month this man retailed him to a Massachusetts minister at Barnum’s Hotel in Baltimore for the sum of $1,325.00. (Carefully, discretely, by way of an acceptable mediary, the black community of Boston was purchasing Burns’s freedom.) On March 7, 1855 a slave would be feted at Tremont Temple and handed his manumission papers. The former slave free at last would attend the School of Divinity at Oberlin College and become a minister of the gospel, God bless him.

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March 7: Anthony Burns, back from his 2nd enslavement at a ransom price of $1,325.00, was feted at the Tremont Temple and handed manumission papers. The former slave, free at last, would attend the School of Divinity at Oberlin College and become a minister of the gospel, pastor at the Zion Baptist Church of St. Catherine’s, Canada West.

During that spring, however, in Boston, due to the parental boycott of racially segregated school facilities, enrollment at Boston’s all-black Smith School was standing at but 28. In the petition drive to desegregate Boston’s system, William C. Nell would obtain 311 signatures and Lewis Hayden would obtain 87. A bill prohibiting all distinction of color and religion would be passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, at that time under the control of Know-Nothings. Then that bill would be passed by the Massachusetts Senate, also at that time under the control of these people.84

March 7. P. M. — To Red-Ice Pond. A raw east wind and rather cloudy. Methinks the buds of the early willows, the willows of the railroad bank, show more of the silvery down than ten days ago. Did I not see crows flying northeasterly yesterday toward night? The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle. Saw, about a hemlock stump on the hillside north of the largest Andromeda Pond, very abundant droppings of some kind of mice, on that common green moss (forming a firm bed about an inch high, like little pines, surmounted by a fine red stem with a green point, in all three quarters 84. In Massachusetts at least, this party was not only nativist and anti-immigrant but also anti-aristocratic and anti-slavery. Nothing in this blazing amazing world is so strange and strained as politics! An explanation for this phenomenon might be that the Catholic Irish, who had to compete with free blacks for the roughest and dirtiest of laboring jobs, were violently pro-slavery and, since the Know-Nothings were violently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish and the Catholic Irish were reaching what were seen as dangerous proportions, actually in Boston by that point the majority of the citizenry, then, on the principle “an enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the Know-Nothings were making common cause with the free black minority. One Know-Nothing representative is recorded as having stated that he resented the idea that some black children had to travel a long way to Black Smith, passing other schools on the way, when the “dirtiest Irish” could step directly from their teeming tenements into the nearest and most convenient public school. The Boston Pilot, a Catholic paper, suggested that this integration of the public schools was intended “as an insult” to Boston’s Catholics, who were of course all white. Boston Catholics were at this time so anti-black that they didn’t even bother to establish a segregated section in their cathedral for blacks. When a temperance speaker who had spoken against slavery in Ireland, where it was unpopular, came to speak of temperance in the Catholic churches of America, for the most pragmatic of reasons he needed to cease saying anything at all about this topic of slavery. 2118 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of an inch high), which they had fed on to a great extent, evidently when it was covered with snow, shearing it off level. Their droppings could be collected by the hand probably, [550307a.jpg (2597 bytes)] a light brown above, green next the earth. There were apparently many of their holes in the earth about the stump. They must have fed very extensively on this moss the past winter [Vide Mar. 14th.]. It is now difficult getting on and off Walden. At Brister's Spring there are beautiful dense green beds of moss, which apparently has just risen above the surface of the water, tender and compact. I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard's meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs. At his bridge over the brook it must have been a trout I saw glance, — rather dark, as big as my finger. To-day, as also three or four days ago, I saw a clear drop of maple sap on a broken red maple twig, which tasted very sweet. The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone. It is more or less branched. Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, — a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, — with a few darker streaks or marks ([DRAWING]) and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i. e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker [550307b.jpg (3940 bytes)] brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchorwise. We were walking along the sunny hillside on the south of Fair Haven Pond (on the 4th), which the choppers had just laid bare, when, in a sheltered and warmer place, we heard a rustling amid the dry leaves on the hillside and saw a striped squirrel eying us from its resting-place on the bare ground. It sat still till we were within a rod, then suddenly dived into its hole, which was at its feet, and disappeared. The first pleasant days of spring come out like a

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squirrel and go in again

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October 1, Monday: Henry Sabin Chase was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, 1st son of Augustus Sabin Chase and Martha Starkweather Chase. After graduating from Yale College he would get married on April 4, 1889 with Alice Morton.

In Syracuse NY, the 4th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Father Isaac Hecker, CSSR, wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson.

On this date’s journal entry Henry Thoreau blotted his page with an inky thumbprint which we may presume to be his own. We therefore do have a sample of our guy’s print — should any medical or genetic information ever prove through the development of forensic science to be recoverable from such an image. ÆSOP

Oct. 1. Among R.’s books is Bewick’s “Æsop’s Fables.” On a leaf succeeding the title-page is BEWICK engraved a facsimile of B.’s handwriting to the following effect: RICKETSON “Newcastle, January, 1824. To Thomas Bewick & Son Dr. £ s d To a Demy Copy of Æsop’s Fables “ 18 “ Received the above with thanks Thomas Bewick Robert Elliot Bewick.”

Then there was some fine red sea-moss adhering to the page just over the view of a distant church and windmill (probably Newcastle) by moonlight, and at the bottom of the page: —

“No. 809 Thomas Bewick

his mark”

It being the impression of his thumb.85

85. Here, for comparison with Thoreau’s description, is a JPEG of the actual Thomas Bewick thumbprint:

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A cloudy, somewhat rainy clay. Mr. R. brought me a snail, apparently Helix albolabris, or possibly thyroidus, which he picked from under a rock where he was having a wall built. It had put its stag- or rather giraffe-like head and neck out about two inches, the whole length to the point behind being about three, — mainly a neck of a somewhat buffish-white or grayish-buff color or buff-brown, shining with moisture, with a short head, deer- like, and giraffe-like horns or tentacula on its top black at tip, five eighths of an inch long, and apparently two short horns on snout. Its neck, etc., flat beneath, by which surface it draws or slides itself along in a chair. It is surprisingly long and large to be contained in that shell, which moves atop of it. It moves at the rate of an inch or half an inch a minute over a level surface, whether horizontal or perpendicular, and holds quite tight to it, the shell like a whorled dome to a portion of a building. Its foot (?) extends to a point behind. It commonly touches by an inch of its flat under side, flatting out by as much of its length as it touches. Shell rather darker mottled (?) than body. The tentacula become all dark as they are drawn in, and it can draw them or contract them straight back to naught. No obvious eyes (?) or mouth. P.M. — Rode to New Bedford and called on Mr. Green, a botanist, but had no interview with him. Walked through Mrs. Arnold’s arboretum. Rode to the beach at Clark’s Cove where General Gray landed his four thousand troops in the Revolution. Found there in abundance Anomia ephippium (?), their irregular golden- colored shells; Modiola plicatula (rayed mussel); Crepidula fornica (?), worn; Pecten concentricus, alive; and one or two more. Returned by the new Point road, four miles long, and R. said eighty feet wide (I should think from recollection more), and cost $50,000. A magnificent road, by which New Bedford has appropriated the sea. Passed salt works still in active operation, windmills going; a series of frames, with layers of bushes one above another to a great height, apparently for filtering. Went into a spermaceti candle and oil factory. Arthur R. has a soapstone pot (Indian), about nine inches long, more than an inch thick, with a kind of handle at the ends, — or protuberances. A. says he uses fresh-water clams for bait for perch, etc., in ponds. I think it was to-day some one saw geese go over here, so they said.

1856

The Reverend William Taylor was explaining, in SEVEN YEARS STREET PREACHING IN SAN FRANCISCO, the origin of the term of art “to shanghai.” … but from “Shanghae in China,” there were seldom any ships returning to California. To get back, therefore, they [seamen] must make the voyage around the world…. Hence to get “crews” for Shanghae … they [ship captains] depended, almost exclusively, on drugging the men. Crews for Shanghae were, therefore, said to be Shanghaed, and the term came into general use to represent this whole system of drugging, extortion, and cruelty. The word was coming into use as a synonym for “crimping,” which itself had originated as slang (as in “to put a crimp in someone’s skull,” a crimp being a little wavy shape that a maid ironed into her lady’s ribbons). Presumably, this sort of “employer” conduct was being tolerated, in America against Americans, because of the taint here of the peculiar institution of slavery, and as soon as that taint might be removed, it should prove easy to prevent such anciliary abuses of the more vulnerable citizenry such as sailors. —Or, at least, so one might hope.

James H. Adams, governor of South Carolina, urged repeal of the 1807 law against trading in slaves.

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Free soil leaders were indicted for treason by The Kansas Territorial Legislature. Pitched battles between free- soilers and pro-slavery proponents resulted.

January 27, Sunday: At the chapel on Warren Street in Boston, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger delivered an address entitled “The charities of Boston, or, Twenty years at the Warren-street Chapel.” (This address would be printed in this year by the firm of J. Wilson in Boston.)

When the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway came to the Unitarian pulpit in our nation’s puzzle palace on this Sabbath day, straightaway he informed his audience –which included Senator Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley– that yes, his sermon was going to break his long silence on the issue of slavery. Slavery, the issue which by long agreement could not be subjected to any debate on the floor of the US Congress. People had been asking him to keep politics out of his pulpit here in Washington DC, but, he offered, slavery was morality rather than politics since it was a “question affecting humanity.” And of course the place for moralizing was the pulpit. “If moral questions should not enter here, what should?” He announced that although he did not agree that the North should leave the Union, he also did not believe that the North should be paying any attention to the South’s threats to leave the Union: “Let us, with Montaigne, fear nothing so much as fear.”

1580: “The thing I fear most is fear.”

In this sermon “The One Path” the Reverend suggested that it would be wrong to attempt “a right thing,” such as the eradication of slavery, in “a wrong way,” that is, other than through moral argument and good example. How dare he suggest there to be something immoral about human enslavement? The Washington Evening Star reported that “this city was thrown into a state of unusual excitement.” The sermon would be promptly printed in full in The National Era, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, and The Liberator. Greeley reported, in the Tribune, that the Reverend Conway “expects to lose his pastorate on account of it.” AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

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April: This month’s issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. CONSULT THIS ISSUE

A notice of Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and George Robins Gliddon’s TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE INEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D. (London: Trübner; Philadelphia) appeared in the Westminster Review, the critic expressing his satisfaction that these scientific authors had been able to derive on the basis of known scientific fact all the proper pro-slavery racist conclusions: The writers of the “Types of Mankind” have done well by this fresh and rich contribution to the science of ethnology, the result of very diligent inquiry, towards recalling attention to the question of its true philosophy. TYPES OF MANKIND

August 5: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E.Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of State, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of April 24, calling for information relative to the coolie trade.” –SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV. No. 99. (Partly reprinted in HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105.)

October 1, Wednesday: In Syracuse, New York, the 5th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1st, 1851.

November 24: Governor Adams, in his annual message to the legislature of South Carolina, offered insight into why it was that Southern white slaveholders were so utterly opposed to the international slave trade. This attitude was based entirely upon their regard for their own convenience and had nothing whatever to do with any commiseration with their slaves: It is apprehended that the opening of this trade [the slave- trade] will lessen the value of slaves, and ultimately destroy the institution. It is a sufficient answer to point to the fact, that unrestricted immigration has not diminished the value of labor in the Northwestern section of the confederacy. The cry there is want of labor, notwithstanding capital has the pauperism of the old world to press into its grinding service. If we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor we do not want, and which is, from the very nature of things, antagonistic to our institutions. It is much better that our drays should be driven by slaves —that our factories should be worked by slaves —that our hotels should be served by slaves —that our locomotives should be manned by slaves, than that we should be exposed to the introduction, from any quarter, of a population alien to us by birth, training, and education, and which, in the

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process of time, must lead to that conflict between capital and labor, “which makes it so difficult to maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions as ours do not exist.” In all slaveholding States, true policy dictates that the superior race should direct, and the inferior perform all menial service. Competition between the white and black man for this service, may not disturb Northern sensibility, but it does not exactly suit our latitude (SOUTH CAROLINA HOUSE JOURNAL, 1856, page 36; Cluskey, POLITICAL TEXT- BOOK, 14 edition, page 585. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: It was not altogether a mistaken judgment that led the constitutional fathers to consider the slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which his price cannot be reduced. That limit is not his physical well-being, for it may be, and in the Gulf States it was, cheaper to work him rapidly to death; the limit is simply the cost of procuring him and keeping him alive a profitable length of time. Only the moral sense of a community can keep helpless labor from sinking to this level; and when a community has once been debauched by slavery, its moral sense offers little resistance to economic demand. This was the case in the West Indies and Brazil; and although better moral stamina held the crisis back longer in the United States, yet even here the ethical standard of the South was not able to maintain itself against the demands of the cotton industry. When, after 1850, the price of slaves had risen to a monopoly height, the leaders of the plantation system, brought to the edge of bankruptcy by the crude and reckless farming necessary under a slave régime, and baffled, at least temporarily, in their quest of new rich land to exploit, began instinctively to feel that the only salvation of American slavery lay in the reopening of the African slave-trade. It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and words led to deeds. The movement first took definite form in the ever radical State of South Carolina. In 1854 a grand jury in the Williamsburg district declared, “as our unanimous opinion, that the Federal law abolishing the African Slave Trade is a public grievance. We hold this trade has been and would be, if re-established, a blessing to the American people, and a benefit to the African himself.”86 This attracted only local attention; but when, in 1856, the governor of the State, in his annual message, calmly argued at length for a reopening of the trade, and boldly declared that “if we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor we do not want,”87 such words struck even Southern ears like “a thunder clap in a calm day.”88 And yet it needed but a few years to show that South Carolina had merely been the first to put into words the inarticulate thought of a large minority, if not a majority, of the inhabitants of the 86. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1854-5, page 1156. 87. Cluskey, POLITICAL TEXT-BOOK (14th edition), page 585. 88. De Bow’s Review, XXII. 223; quoted from Andrew Hunter of Virginia. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2125 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Gulf States.

1857

Henry A. Murray’s LANDS OF THE SLAVE AND THE FREE: CUBA, THE UNITED STATES, AND CANADA. READ THE FULL TEXT

Professor Henry Youle Hind’s ESSAY ON THE INSECTS AND DISEASES INJURIOUS TO THE WHEAT CROPS (Toronto).

In England, the Penal Servitude Act of 1857 abolished the transportation of females.

The British traveler James L. Stirling pointed out, in LETTERS FROM THE SLAVE STATES (reprinted NY: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969), that the slavemaster reiterates his or her creed “all the oftener and more loudly from a lurking doubt of its perfect truth. The slave owner defends his position ostensibly against the Abolitionist, but in reality against his inner self.” “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

The following more extended quotation is from pages 287-91 courtesy of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook:89 In judging of the welfare of the slaves, it is necessary to distinguish the different conditions of slavery. The most important distinction, both as regards numbers and its influence on the well-being of the slave, is that between house-servants and farm or field-hands. The house-servant is comparatively well off. He is frequently born and bred in the family he belongs to; and even when this is not the case, the constant association of the slave and his master, and master's family, naturally leads to such an attachment as ensures good treatment. There are not wanting instances of devoted attachment on both sides in such cases. There is even a danger that the affection on the part of the owner may degenerate into over-indulgence. It is no uncommon

89. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. (c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997 [email protected] 2126 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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thing to make pets of slaves, as we do of other inferior animals; and when this is the case, the real welfare of the slave is sacrificed to an indiscriminating attachment. I was struck with the appearance of the slaves in the streets of Charleston on a Sunday afternoon. A large proportion of them were well dressed and of decent bearing, and had all the appearance of enjoying a holiday. I was informed they were principally houseservants belonging to the town; and there could be no doubt the control of public opinion, natural to a large city, had exercised a favourable influence on the condition of these poor people. The position of the field-hands is very different; of those, especially, who labour on large plantations. Here there are none of those humanizing influences at work which temper the rigour of the system, nor is there the same check of public opinion to control abuse. The 'force' is worked en masse, as a great human mechanism; or, if you will, as a drove of human cattle. The proprietor is seldom present to direct and control. Even if he were, on large estates the numbers are too great for his personal attention to details of treatment. On all large plantations the comfort of the slave is practically at the disposal of the white overseer, and his subordinate, the negro-driver. There are many estates which the proprietor does not visit at all, or visits perhaps once a year; and where, during his absence, the slaves are left to the uncontrolled caprice of the overseer and his assistants, not another white man, perhaps, being within miles of the plantation. Who can say what passes in those voiceless solitudes7 Happen what may, there is none to tell. Whatever the slave may suffer there is none to bear witness to his wrong. It needs a large amount of charity to believe that power so despotic, so utterly uncontrolled even by opinion, will never degenerate into violence. It could only be so if overseers were saints, and drivers angels. It is often said that the interest of the slave-owner is sufficient guarantee for the good treatment of the slave; that no man will voluntarily injure the value of his property. This reasoning assumes, first, that slave-owners will take an intelligent view of their own interests; and, secondly, that they will be guided by the passion of gain rather than by other passions. But we find the Cuba slave-owner working his slaves to death, at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum. And again, slavery is a system which evokes passions more powerful even than the love of gain. Against the action of these angry passions, the distant calculation of mere profit can avail but little with men of violent dispositions. But even if we grant the restraint placed on the passions of the master by considerations of pecuniary interest, we cannot allow the same effect to be produced on the overseer. On the contrary, the interest of the overseer is to exhibit a large production as the result of his exertions; and the more remote consideration of being a prudent husbandman of his forces will only affect a superior mind. On this point I prefer giving the opinions of slave-owners themselves. In an article in De Bow's Review, on the management of slaves, I find some interesting remarks on this subject, in a report to a committee of slaveholders. After pointing out the interest of the owners in the good treatment of their slaves, it continues:- “There is one “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2127 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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class of our community to whom all the motives referred to, to induce us to kindness to our slaves, do not apply. Your committee refer to our overseers. As they have no property in our slaves, of course they lack the check of self-interest. As their only aim, in general, is to get the largest possible crop for the year, we can readily conceive the strong inducement they have to overwork our slaves, and masters are often much to blame for inadvertently encouraging this feeling in their overseers.” It appears, then, that nothing but high principle on the part of the overseer could ensure the good treatment of the slave on large plantations. But all testimony concurs in representing the overseers as a very inferior class in point of character. A Virginian slave-owner used this language to Olmsted:- “They (the overseers) are the curse of this country, sir; the worst men in the community.” Yet these are the men on whom devolves, practically, the management of the great bulk of the agricultural slave population, in the cotton, rice, and sugar districts. Midway between house-servants and plantation-hands stand the farmservants of small proprietors. Of all slaves these are, probably, the best off. They are neither spoiled like pet domestics, nor abused like plantation cattle. They live much in the farmer's family, work with himself and his children, take an interest in his affairs, and, in return, become objects of his regard. Such is the condition of many slaves among the small farmers in the upland districts of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The same applies also to many proprietors in Texas, and, I believe, Arkansas. In general it may be affirmed, that the welfare of the slaves is in an inverse ratio to their numbers.

In this year, according to SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49 (pages 14-21, 70-1, etc.), there were at least 20 negreros from New-York, New Orleans, and other US ports.

The negreros William Clark and Jupiter, of New Orleans, Eliza Jane, of New-York, Jos. H. Record, of Newport, Rhode Island, and Onward, of Boston were captured by British cruisers (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, pages 13, 25-6, 69, etc).

The negrero James Buchanan escaped capture because it was under American colors, while carrying 300 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, page 38).

The negrero James Titers, of New Orleans, was carrying 1,200 slaves when it was captured by a British cruiser (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, pages 31-4, 40-1).

Four New Orleans negreros were operating along the African coast (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, page 30).

The negrero Cortes, of New-York, was captured (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 27-8).

The negrero Charles, of Boston, was captured by British cruisers while carrying 400 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 9, 13, 36, 69, etc).

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The Adams Gray and W.D. Miller of New Orleans were fully equipped as negreros (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 3-5, 13).

Between this year and the following one, such American vessels as the Charlotte, of New-York, the Charles, of Maryland, etc., were reported to be negreros (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, passim).

Slavery had been brought to an end in Rhode Island in 1843 and in Connecticut in 1848. In this year it was ended in New Hampshire as well and the North was poised and positioned to become self-righteous in contradistinction to the recalcitrant South. In analyzing the transition known as “gradual emancipation” in New England, Joanne Pope Melish has specified in considerable detail how the stigma of status, “slave,” gradually evolved into the stigma of being, “black”: Throughout New England the mapping of dependency from the category “slave” onto the category “person of color” was achieved by a range of practices that insisted upon a slavelike status for persons of color in freedom. Actually she has analyzed this in considerable critical detail: The meaning of “free” as it had developed in the ideology of the abolition movement was a category that existed paradoxically in two apparently contradictory semantic domains: “absence” and “availability.” The language of abolition framed the possible meanings of “free person of color” as a category to include a state of being for whites along with people of color: “free” always included the state of being “free of slavery,” which included a presumption of freedom from slaves themselves –that is, the promise of the ultimate absence of the humans occupying that category– as a desirable status for white.... In whites’ minds, formally and conceptually, free people of color had no place at all, even though they were physically still present as day or contract laborers. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;90 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this 90. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2129 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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union Liberia was finally evolved.91 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”92 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.93 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”94 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”95 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.96 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”97 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”98 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”99 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the 91. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 92. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 93. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 94. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 95. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 96. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 97. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 98. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 99. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 2130 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”100 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”101 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.102 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”103 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time 100. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 101. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 102. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2131 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”104 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;105 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”106 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”107 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”108 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slaveholding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”109 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.110 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.111 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”112 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.113 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.114 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel

103. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 104. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 105. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 106. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 107. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 108. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 109. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 110. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 111. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 112. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 113. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 2132 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.115 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,116 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international cooperation....117

114. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 115. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 116. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2133 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dr. Josiah Clark Nott left his medical practice in Mobile, Alabama and relocated to New Orleans to become chairman of the anatomy department of the medical school of the University of Louisiana.

Dr. Nott’s, George Robins Gliddon’s, and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury’s INDIGENOUS RACES OF THE EARTH; OR, NEW CHAPTERS OF ETHNOLOGICAL INQUIRY; INCLUDING MONOGRAPHS ON SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS.

Completion of publication (begun in the previous year) of Henry Hotze’s translation of Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau’s ESSAI SUR L’INEGALITÉ DES RACES HUMAINES, titled THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF RACES. Dr. Nott contributed an appendix “containing a Summary of the Latest Scientific Facts bearing upon the Question of Unity or Plurality of Species.” Each race of the human species, each one appropriate to each of the continents, had been created by God separately, as the same species but as a separate act of creation — and therefore these separate creations each appropriate to itself were not to be mingled except through human sinful interference with what obviously was God’s Plan For the World. The proper role of the white was to be master, the proper role of the black to be servant. It was the way they were created and it was the way things should be. It is what God requires of us, that we be racist. Publication of Professor Louis Agassiz’s CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA began at this point, with the Boston firm of Little, Brown, & Company, in four quarto volumes, the most notable volume of which is the 2d, on the embryology of the turtle. The Concord library would come

117. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. 2134 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to own this, and from it Thoreau would copy in 1858 into his 2d commonplace book. ACALEPHS IN GENERAL CTENOPHORAE DISCOPHORAE HYDROIDAE HOMOLOGIES OF THE RADIATA

An utterly curious event occurred in 1857, in an utterly curious place, that will require some preamble. I have mentioned that all his life Professor Agassiz insisted regardless of any evidence brought before him that each species must be a separate and distinct “thought of God” –and that God must be repeatedly rethinking organic life in a series of independent and special creations without hereditary continuity– each time life on earth is destroyed by some natural cataclysm. Now the United States was building up toward a civil war over

Louis Agassiz using his head at Stanford

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the issue of human slavery and Agassiz published his ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION, a “succinct and fervent” ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION

treatise on his theory of special creationism, the pseudoscientific account which gave his foul politics the authority of reality itself, conveniently legitimating, among other things he desired, this peculiar institution. Now, as one of the curiosities of history, although it had been Alexander von Humboldt who had helped this bigot Agassiz get the chair in natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, it was also von Humboldt who persuaded the King of Prussia –of all people, of all places– to proclaim during this very year that:

A slave who steps on Prussian soil is free.

March 4, Wednesday: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: $20 REWARD - Ran away from the subscriber on or about the 18th or 20th of November, N E G R O “Rachel Bordley,” or “Taylor,” formerly living with Morris Sotler (Not sure of this word), about thirty years of age, 5 feet, 5 or 6 inches high,118 rather bright copper color; the fore finger off at the second joint; scar on the back of the same hand; rather quick spoken; formerly the slave of William Grimes, deceased, of Baltimore county, Md. To be secured in Baltimore city jail. For the last 4 or 5 years had been hired out as a house servant in the city of Baltimore, DELIAH SIBRA Baltimore county, Md. Reference, No. 66 South Calvert street

James Buchanan became President of the United States of America, until March 3, 1861. When the Democratic Party had nominated Buchanan at its national convention, they had in effect abandoned their incumbent President, Franklin Pierce. Buchanan had since the administration of Andrew Jackson been following a distinguished career as a Senator, Congressman, Cabinet officer, and ambassador. After a proud parade and before a gala ball for 6,000 celebrants in a specially built hall on Judiciary Square, Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office on the East Portico of the Capitol. This man was to go down in history as the first bachelor elected President, and the only one to remain unmarried119 during his term of office.120 Fellow-Citizens: I appear before you this day to take the solemn oath “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” In entering upon this great office I must humbly invoke the God of our fathers for wisdom and firmness to execute its high and responsible duties in such a manner as to restore harmony and ancient friendship among the people of the several States and

118. In descriptions of runaway slaves, 5 feet 5 or 6 inches is the average height. 119. Since Grover Cleveland would marry his ward Frances Folsom during his term of office. 120. His niece Harriet Lane would assume some of the obligations normally performed by a First Lady. 2136 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to preserve our free institutions throughout many generations. Convinced that I owe my election to the inherent love for the Constitution and the Union which still animates the hearts of the American people, let me earnestly ask their powerful support in sustaining all just measures calculated to perpetuate these, the richest political blessings which Heaven has ever bestowed upon any nation. Having determined not to become a candidate for reelection, I shall have no motive to influence my conduct in administering the Government except the desire ably and faithfully to serve my country and to live in grateful memory of my countrymen. We have recently passed through a Presidential contest in which the passions of our fellow- citizens were excited to the highest degree by questions of deep and vital importance; but when the people proclaimed their will the tempest at once subsided and all was calm. The voice of the majority, speaking in the manner prescribed by the Constitution, was heard, and instant submission followed. Our own country could alone have exhibited so grand and striking a spectacle of the capacity of man for self-government. What a happy conception, then, was it for Congress to apply this simple rule, that the will of the majority shall govern, to the settlement of the question of domestic slavery in the Territories. Congress is neither “to legislate slavery into any Territory or State nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” As a natural consequence, Congress has also prescribed that when the Territory of Kansas shall be admitted as a State it “shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” A difference of opinion has arisen in regard to the point of time when the people of a Territory shall decide this question for themselves. This is, happily, a matter of but little practical importance. Besides, it is a judicial question, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending, and will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled. To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be, though it has ever been my individual opinion that under the Nebraska-Kansas act the appropriate period will be when the number of actual residents in the Territory shall justify the formation of a constitution with a view to its admission as a State into the Union. But be this as it may, it is the imperative and indispensable duty of the Government of the United States to secure to every resident inhabitant the free and independent expression of his opinion by his vote. This sacred right of each individual must be preserved. That being accomplished, nothing can be fairer than to leave the people of a Territory free from all foreign interference to decide their own destiny for themselves, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. The whole Territorial question being thus settled upon the principle of popular sovereignty —a principle as ancient as free government itself— everything of a practical nature has been decided. No other question remains for adjustment, because all agree that “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2137 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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under the Constitution slavery in the States is beyond the reach of any human power except that of the respective States themselves wherein it exists. May we not, then, hope that the long agitation on this subject is approaching its end, and that the geographical parties to which it has given birth, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, will speedily become extinct? Most happy will it be for the country when the public mind shall be diverted from this question to others of more pressing and practical importance. Throughout the whole progress of this agitation, which has scarcely known any intermission for more than twenty years, whilst it has been productive of no positive good to any human being it has been the prolific source of great evils to the master, to the slave, and to the whole country. It has alienated and estranged the people of the sister States from each other, and has even seriously endangered the very existence of the Union. Nor has the danger yet entirely ceased. Under our system there is a remedy for all mere political evils in the sound sense and sober judgment of the people. Time is a great corrective. Political subjects which but a few years ago excited and exasperated the public mind have passed away and are now nearly forgotten. But this question of domestic slavery is of far graver importance than any mere political question, because should the agitation continue it may eventually endanger the personal safety of a large portion of our countrymen where the institution exists. In that event no form of government, however admirable in itself and however productive of material benefits, can compensate for the loss of peace and domestic security around the family altar. Let every Union-loving man, therefore, exert his best influence to suppress this agitation, which since the recent legislation of Congress is without any legitimate object. It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union. Reasoned estimates have been presented of the pecuniary profits and local advantages which would result to different States and sections from its dissolution and of the comparative injuries which such an event would inflict on other States and sections. Even descending to this low and narrow view of the mighty question, all such calculations are at fault. The bare reference to a single consideration will be conclusive on this point. We at present enjoy a free trade throughout our extensive and expanding country such as the world has never witnessed. This trade is conducted on railroads and canals, on noble rivers and arms of the sea, which bind together the North and the South, the East and the West, of our Confederacy. Annihilate this trade, arrest its free progress by the geographical lines of jealous and hostile States, and you destroy the prosperity and onward march of the whole and every part and involve all in one common ruin. But such considerations, important as they are in themselves, sink into insignificance when we reflect on the terrific evils which would result from disunion to every portion of the Confederacy — to the North, not more than to the South, to the East not more than to the West. These I shall not attempt to portray, because I feel an humble confidence that the kind Providence which inspired our fathers with wisdom to frame the most perfect form of government and union ever devised by man 2138 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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will not suffer it to perish until it shall have been peacefully instrumental by its example in the extension of civil and religious liberty throughout the world. Next in importance to the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever. Our present financial condition is without a parallel in history. No nation has ever before been embarrassed from too large a surplus in its treasury. This almost necessarily gives birth to extravagant legislation. It produces wild schemes of expenditure and begets a race of speculators and jobbers, whose ingenuity is exerted in contriving and promoting expedients to obtain public money. The purity of official agents, whether rightfully or wrongfully, is suspected, and the character of the government suffers in the estimation of the people. This is in itself a very great evil. The natural mode of relief from this embarrassment is to appropriate the surplus in the Treasury to great national objects for which a clear warrant can be found in the Constitution. Among these I might mention the extinguishment of the public debt, a reasonable increase of the Navy, which is at present inadequate to the protection of our vast tonnage afloat, now greater than that of any other nation, as well as to the defense of our extended seacoast. It is beyond all question the true principle that no more revenue ought to be collected from the people than the amount necessary to defray the expenses of a wise, economical, and efficient administration of the Government. To reach this point it was necessary to resort to a modification of the tariff, and this has, I trust, been accomplished in such a manner as to do as little injury as may have been practicable to our domestic manufactures, especially those necessary for the defense of the country. Any discrimination against a particular branch for the purpose of benefiting favored corporations, individuals, or interests would have been unjust to the rest of the community and inconsistent with that spirit of fairness and equality which ought to govern in the adjustment of a revenue tariff. But the squandering of the public money sinks into comparative insignificance as a temptation to corruption when compared with the squandering of the public lands. No nation in the tide of time has ever been blessed with so rich and noble an inheritance as we enjoy in the public lands. In administering this important trust, whilst it may be wise to grant portions of them for the improvement of the remainder, yet we should never forget that it is our cardinal policy to reserve these lands, as much as may be, for actual settlers, and this at moderate prices. We shall thus not only best promote the prosperity of the new States and Territories, by furnishing them a hardy and independent race of honest and industrious citizens, but shall secure homes for our children and our children's children, as well as for those exiles from foreign shores who may seek in this country to improve their condition and to enjoy the blessings of civil and religious liberty. Such emigrants have done much to promote the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2139 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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growth and prosperity of the country. They have proved faithful both in peace and in war. After becoming citizens they are entitled, under the Constitution and laws, to be placed on a perfect equality with native-born citizens, and in this character they should ever be kindly recognized. The Federal Constitution is a grant from the States to Congress of certain specific powers, and the question whether this grant should be liberally or strictly construed has more or less divided political parties from the beginning. Without entering into the argument, I desire to state at the commencement of my Administration that long experience and observation have convinced me that a strict construction of the powers of the Government is the only true, as well as the only safe, theory of the Constitution. Whenever in our past history doubtful powers have been exercised by Congress, these have never failed to produce injurious and unhappy consequences. Many such instances might be adduced if this were the proper occasion. Neither is it necessary for the public service to strain the language of the Constitution, because all the great and useful powers required for a successful administration of the Government, both in peace and in war, have been granted, either in express terms or by the plainest implication. Whilst deeply convinced of these truths, I yet consider it clear that under the war-making power Congress may appropriate money toward the construction of a military road when this is absolutely necessary for the defense of any State or Territory of the Union against foreign invasion. Under the Constitution Congress has power “to declare war,” “to raise and support armies,” “to provide and maintain a navy,” and to call forth the militia to “repel invasions.” Thus endowed, in an ample manner, with the war-making power, the corresponding duty is required that “the United States shall protect each of them [the States] against invasion.” Now, how is it possible to afford this protection to California and our Pacific possessions except by means of a military road through the Territories of the United States, over which men and munitions of war may be speedily transported from the Atlantic States to meet and to repel the invader? In the event of a war with a naval power much stronger than our own we should then have no other available access to the Pacific Coast, because such a power would instantly close the route across the isthmus of Central America. It is impossible to conceive that whilst the Constitution has expressly required Congress to defend all the States it should yet deny to them, by any fair construction, the only possible means by which one of these States can be defended. Besides, the Government, ever since its origin, has been in the constant practice of constructing military roads. It might also be wise to consider whether the love for the Union which now animates our fellow-citizens on the Pacific Coast may not be impaired by our neglect or refusal to provide for them, in their remote and isolated condition, the only means by which the power of the States on this side of the Rocky Mountains can reach them in sufficient time to “protect” them “against invasion.” I forbear for the present from expressing an opinion as to the wisest and most economical mode in which the Government can lend its aid in accomplishing this 2140 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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great and necessary work. I believe that many of the difficulties in the way, which now appear formidable, will in a great degree vanish as soon as the nearest and best route shall have been satisfactorily ascertained. It may be proper that on this occasion I should make some brief remarks in regard to our rights and duties as a member of the great family of nations. In our intercourse with them there are some plain principles, approved by our own experience, from which we should never depart. We ought to cultivate peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations, and this not merely as the best means of promoting our own material interests, but in a spirit of Christian benevolence toward our fellow-men, wherever their lot may be cast. Our diplomacy should be direct and frank, neither seeking to obtain more nor accepting less than is our due. We ought to cherish a sacred regard for the independence of all nations, and never attempt to interfere in the domestic concerns of any unless this shall be imperatively required by the great law of self-preservation. To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom's no one will attempt to dispute. In short, we ought to do justice in a kindly spirit to all nations and require justice from them in return. It is our glory that whilst other nations have extended their dominions by the sword we have never acquired any territory except by fair purchase or, as in the case of Texas, by the voluntary determination of a brave, kindred, and independent people to blend their destinies with our own. Even our acquisitions from Mexico form no exception. Unwilling to take advantage of the fortune of war against a sister republic, we purchased these possessions under the treaty of peace for a sum which was considered at the time a fair equivalent. Our past history forbids that we shall in the future acquire territory unless this be sanctioned by the laws of justice and honor. Acting on this principle, no nation will have a right to interfere or to complain if in the progress of events we shall still further extend our possessions. Hitherto in all our acquisitions the people, under the protection of the American flag, have enjoyed civil and religious liberty, as well as equal and just laws, and have been contented, prosperous, and happy. Their trade with the rest of the world has rapidly increased, and thus every commercial nation has shared largely in their successful progress. I shall now proceed to take the oath prescribed by the Constitution, whilst humbly invoking the

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blessing of Divine Providence on this great people.

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Also, on March 4th, John Brown’s “To the Friends of Freedom” solicitation appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune:

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March 6, Friday morning at 11AM: The Dred Scott announcement was made by US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, 79 years of age.

Scott was in St. Louis at the time, hired out, working for his current owner. He didn’t even get the day off. John F.A. Sanford, the currently alleged injured party, actually was in an insane asylum. In two months he would be dead. He was actually so utterly irrelevant to the case at hand that the court system was even persistently misspelling his name. The vote was seven to two. Various of the justices disagreed with various of the comments that Chief Justice Taney was making, but none of them spoke up. Legally, this decision didn’t amount to a glass half full of warm spit, as it legitimized an expansion of slavery which in fact could never be allowed to occur, and since it refused freedom to a slave who was anyway shortly to be emancipated and then expire. The dicta of the court ignored everything known about the US history of race relations, in favor of

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setting up its own officious just-so story of what race relations in the US amounted to: for instance, the decision declared that no black had ever voted, when the justices, even the chief justice himself, well knew that to be historically about as tendentious as any falsehood ever could be.

When Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney wrote in the decision that America’s blacks had implicitly been excluded from the Declaration of Independence, his pseudohistorical argument was that allegedly American blacks “had for more than a century before [the Declaration] been regarded as beings of an inferior order.” According to Winthrop Jordan, “Until well into the nineteenth century, Jefferson’s judgment on that matter, with all its confused tentativeness, stood as the strongest suggestion of inferiority expressed by any native American.”121 While Thomas Jefferson had been directing a tepid, patronizing letter to Benjamin Banneker himself, he had meanwhile been writing letters to other white men like himself in which he had been being curtly dismissive of Banneker’s accomplishments.

For a person more obstinately holding to the doctrine of the genetic inferiority of all blacks to all whites, during an era in which educated opinion was strongly favored environmental explanations, only the foul David Hume comes to mind!

Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of Thomas Cooper, the white man who became perhaps the earliest propagator of a systematic theory of racism and who would profoundly influence an entire generation of Southern youth, including the notorious Josiah Nott.122 On whom other than this President Jefferson himself

121. WHITE OVER BLACK, page 455: “native American” would be of course his polite euphemism for “white USer.” 2146 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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might Taney have been relying? Not on James Otis, for sure, because that founding father had written “That the colonists, black and white, born here are freeborn British subjects and entitled to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the principles of common law, and acts of Parliament, but from the British constitution, which was established and the [Glorious] Revolution with a professed design to secure the liberties of all the subjects to all generations.”123

However we may deprecate Justice Taney’s thought process, his assertion must be accepted as little more than a statement of fact. Why? Because we can point to this putative, claimed author of the wording of the Declaration of Independence as incontrovertible evidence of its truth. Jefferson is without a doubt the most problematic figure in American history, despite the fact that he was recently characterized in a poll of historians as the most admired American after Lincoln.

The Scott family of slaves which had attempted to sue for their freedom on the grounds of having been kept in illegal servitude, in Fort Snelling a United States government facility in which slavery should have been forbidden in the Minnesota Territory where slavery was in fact contrary to the law (and one of them, Harriet, in fact resold by one government functionary to another, after her freedom had been promised to her by her owner, while in this U.S. facility in this free territory), was found to be still property,124 and remanded to the

122. Cooper later became the president of South Carolina College. 123. RIGHTS OF THE BRITISH COLONIES ASSERTED AND PROVED, 1766. 124. I forget: was Justice Clarence Thomas on the bench at that time? “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2147 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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custody of its current owner, who, actually, was in the process of manumitting Mr. Scott: In the first place our Blacks are attentive to their business, and are no idlers, as they are represented to be in the slave States. Secondly, they are a useful class, and here on the confines of Barbarism do as much to put a civilized aspect upon the face of society as any other class. Their barber shops are favorite places of resort for many bachelor Whites who meet there, as on a social exchange. Thirdly, the Blacks are our musicians. A negro’s music always has a charm for every ear — whether it is the music of the rosin and the bow, or the guitar, or the soft lubly voice; each separately or all combined, as of a stilly night, in a serenade.

Lizzie Scott, slave Eliza Scott, slave

Portrait of Dred Scott, slave Harriet Robinson Scott, Lizzie Scott, slave Eliza Scott, slave by an unknown artist mother of two slave girls born in 1846 born in 1838 aboard (property of New York –one of whom happened in a slave state a steamboat between Historical Society) to have been born to two parents two free territories who lived in a US in “free territory”– one of whom, technically not government installation who lived in a US at least (maybe), property unlike her in a free territory government installation should not have sister and her and yet was not set free in a free territory been being mother and father by this Government and was sold by one sworn treated as — but then she was of free men by free men agent of our government anyone else’s a black girl sworn to uphold the law to another, so she could be property. as you can see. and administer justice. the slave wife of a slave.

Obviously in an attempt to transit this nation from a discriminatory system based primarily upon condition and upon geographical location into a discriminatory system based no longer in any manner upon identifiers of condition or upon identifiers of geographical location, but solely upon identifiers of race, in effect our Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney had announced, in the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of the black man Dred

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Scott, that the Congress’s “Missouri Compromise” legislation was null and void.

Our Chief Justice pointed out that, what the hey, it isn’t as if these buckras have any rights that a USer is bound to respect. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

This man had no rights that any white American was bound to respect. None at all. Nope.

Well, the actual words might have been a bit more judicious as shown, but they certainly were words to with the impact of the more mundane vocabulary I had mimicked. And in order to deploy these phrases, he had to override the clear and indisputable historical warnings of other justices and attempt directly to nullify the

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historical record that not all black Americans had been slaves: In writing the majority opinion in Dred Scott vs. Sanford, Chief Justice Taney wrote that no slave or descendant of a slave could ever be considered a citizen under the U.S. Constitution (and thus Scott had no standing to sue in federal court and was still a slave despite having accompanied his master to nonslaveholding territory) because, in his incorrect assertion, all blacks had been slaves at the time of the constitution’s framing — the incorrectness of his assertion was noted in the dissenting opinion. [Justice Curtise in dissent: “At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native- born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors on equal terms with other citizens.”] For Taney, the question of whether Scott was currently a slave or a free man had no bearing on his claim to U.S. citizenship; slavery as a legal identity was subsumed in the “prior” question of race. Thus at the very moment when sectionalist tensions were at their highest —when the “north” and the “south” seemed to designate wholly separate moral orders— the distinction between being a slave and being a freedman was elided, and that elision was given juridical sanction.

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On the following day, in their gazettes, Americans would be reading in the coldest of cold black-and-white about this significant new development in the national proslavery/antislavery struggle:

VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES

March 7: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: TEN DOLLARS REWARD - Ran away from the subscriber on the 4th inst., NEGRO BOY WM. JOHNSTON, alias BLACK BALL, 17 years of age, about 5 feet high,125 on a dark chestnut color. Had on when he left, blue pantaloons, check shirt and coarse boots, and iron collar on. The above reward will be paid if he is brought home or secured in jail so that I get him again. WM. PAUL, Washington Road Near Wartman’s Sulphur Springs Baltimore Co., Md.

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March 10: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: FIVE DOLLARS REWARD - Ran away from the subscriber, on the 25th February, an indentured or bound COLORED BOY, almost 10 years old, well grown for his age, of a dark chestnut color, by the name of JOHN HENRY THIME. Any information left with MR. LOUIS BROWN, 119 N. High Street (late Quinlin’s) will be promptly attended to. L.G. QUINLIN

April 11, Saturday: Bronson Alcott’s second conversation of the series in New Bedford.

An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun:

$100 REWARD - Ran away from the subscriber, living near Randallstown, Baltimore county, Md., on the night of the 7th instant, a NEGRO WOMAN, OMER BIAS, about twenty- seven years of age, five feet four or five inches high,126 light chestnut color, rather stout and quite fleshy. Had on when she left home a red striped linsey dress, carrying other clothes in a bundle. The above reward will be given if taken out of the State, or fifty dollars if taken in the State; in either case to be secured in jail so that I get her again. Address Dr. T.Z. OFFUTT, Woodstock, Howard county, Md.

March 11: Thaddeus Hyatt wrote to H.B. Hurd: “I must rush into Kansas in time to meet my Boat which started from Cincinnati Tuesday morning 10th inst....”

March 11. I see and talk with Rice, sawing off the ends of clapboards which he has planed, to make them square, for an addition to his house. He has got a fire in his shop, and plays at house-building there. His life is poetic. He does the work himself. He combines several qualities and talents rarely combined. Though lie owns houses in the city, whose repair lie attends to, finds tenants for them, and collects the rent, he also has his Sudbury farm and bean-fields. Though he lived in a city, he would still be natural and related to primitive nature around him. Though he owned all Beacon Street, you might find that his mittens were made of the slain of a woodchuck that had ravaged his bean-field, which he had cured. I noticed a woodchuck’s skin tacked up to the inside of his shop. He said it had fatted on his beans, and William had killed [it] and expected to get another to make a pair of mittens of, one not being quite large enough. It was excellent for mittens. You could hardly wear it out. Spoke of the cuckoo, which was afraid of the birds, was easily beaten; would dive right into the middle of a poplar, then come out on to some bare twig and look round for a nest to rob of young or eggs. Had noticed a pigeon woodpecker go repeatedly in a straight line from his nest in an apple tree to a distant brook-side in a meadow, dive down there, and in a few minutes return.

May: The Scott family of black slaves was transferred by the Chafees to Taylor Blow, who promptly issued papers in manumission for all.

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June 6, Saturday: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: RAN AWAY on the 5th instant, JERRY SIDDONS, a colored boy, (I am not sure if the age is 42 or 12) 42/12 years old; had on a new blue cloth cap, green jacket, brown pants, and no shoes. $2 reward will be given if brought to MARY TURNER, one mile out on the Hookstown road, or if secured so that she may get him. Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. BlakeH.G.O. BLAKE and wrote in his journal. Dr. Alfred I. Tauber feels that the journal entry’s “only one point of contact at a time” is expressive of Thoreau’s attitude toward time and eternity: CONCORD, June 6, 1857, 3 P.M. MR. BLAKE,—I have just got your note, but I am sorry to say that this very morning I sent a note to Channing, stating that I would go with him to Cape Cod next week on an excursion which we have been talking of for some time. If there were time to communicate with you, I should ask you to come to Concord on Monday, before I go; but as it is, I must wait till I come back, which I think will be about ten days hence. I do not like this delay, but there seems to be a fate in it. Perhaps Mr. Wasson will be well enough to come by that time. I will notify you of my return, and shall depend on seeing you all. June 23d. I returned from Cape Cod last evening, and now take the first opportunity to invite you men of Worcester to this quiet Med- iterranean shore. Can you come this week on Friday, or next Monday? I mention the earliest days on which I suppose you can be ready. If more convenient, name some other time within ten days. I shall be rejoiced to see you, and to act the part of skipper in the contemplated voyage. I have just got another letter from Cholmondeley, which may interest you somewhat.

June 6, Saturday, 1857: As I sit on Lee’s Cliff, I see a pe-pe [Olive-sided Flycatcher Contopus borealis] on the topmost dead branch of a hickory eight or ten rods off. Regularly, at short intervals, it utters its monotonous note like till-till-till or pe-pe-pe. Looking round for its prey and occasionally changing its perch, it every now and then darts off (phoebe-like), even five or six rods, toward the earth to catch an insect, and then returns to its favorite perch. If I lose it for a moment, I soon see it settling on the dead twigs again and hear its till, till, till. It appears through the glass mouse-colored above and head (which is perhaps darker), white throat, and narrow white beneath, with no white on tail.

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June 6, Saturday, 1857: Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought. Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolutions of the seasons, as two cog-wheels fit into each other. We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact. A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.

June 16: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: $50 REWARD - Ran away from the subscriber on the 11th of this month, residing near Randallstown, Baltimore county, a N E G R O M A N named MOSES, about 35 or 36 years old and about 5 feet 8 inches in height,127 full- chested, very polite and talkative when spoken to, dark brown complexion and walks very lame in one leg and uses a cane and a thick soled boot. I will give $50 if lodged in jail or put where I can get him. DR. JAMES MAGRAW Randallstown, Baltimore county

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June 26: In Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln spoke against the Dred Scott decision.

This man had no rights that any white American was bound to respect. None at all. Nope.

The 1st edition of Hinton Rowan Helper’s polemical compilation of census data THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT was published in Baltimore, expanding upon what we now have come to regard as a pleasant conceit –the idea that oppression actually is unprofitable to the oppressor– and proclaiming also the pleasant conceit that Waldo Emerson, who had originally espoused this idea in the 1844 “EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”, was America’s “most practical and profound metaphysician.” Hoo boy! What Helper was proposing amounted to a comprehensive racial boycott by all whites against all persons of color. These coloreds couldn’t help but be unfair low-price low-quality competition for decent, honest, clean white workingmen such as him. He proposed a total ostracization of any white man so unaware of the needs of white people as to utilize the labor of a nonwhite. No union with slaveholders! It would become a crime to so much as possess a copy of this racist book in the American South.

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There was a blurb by Horace Greeley in the New-York Tribune and Weekly Tribune. When Senator James Mason of Virginia read Helper’s statistical study, he considered that its intent was “to array man against man in our own States.” Helper’s attitude was plain. He minced no words. He recommended to all white Americans that for fundamental economic reasons an abolitionist is your “best and only true” friend. I will quote passim in the manner in which it is customary to quote from such a treatise on attitude as MEIN KAMPF, in illustration of the plainness of Helper’s message:128 You must either be for us or against us.... [The white masses are going to] have justice peaceably or by violence.... Do you aspire to become the victims of white nonslaveholding vengeance by day, and of barbarous massacre by the negroes at night?... [Slavery is] a perpetual license to murder.... In nine cases out of ten [slaves are] happy to cut their masters’ throats.

128. Anyone who desires to evaluate the accuracy and representativeness of the constructed paragraph of quotation is urged to consult the original, which is a quick and entertaining read if one pays attention to the textual paragraphs while ignoring the enormous quantities of utterly irrelevant and tendentious and pretentious statistical tabulation. 2156 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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HINTON ROWAN HELPER

This Emerson-admirer was an egregious case of what you would term an Antislavery Racist. —Which is to say, he was a Southern white man, from North Carolina, who owned no slaves, whose fixation was that of the victim. It wasn’t the blacks who were being harmed by slavery, it was real decent folks like him who were being harmed by slavery. All these slaves, who belonged to other people, were impacting his life! He hated the nigger who was doing him wrong, He hated the slavemaster who was doing him wrong. What he needed most urgently was a lily-white, pure America of which he could be proud, where he could stand tall. Slavery was a tainted and archaic social system that was standing in the way of white people’s cultural and material progress. Blacks were a tainted and inferior group who had no business being here in our brave New World in the first place.129

The Democrats immediately attempted to neutralize Helper’s dangerous racist abolitionism by issuing Gilbert J. Beebe’s A REVIEW AND REFUTATION OF Hinton Rowan Helper’S “IMPENDING CRISIS”. They charged that their political opponents, the Republicans, were using this treatise as their “text-book.”

A crisis would break out in the discussions of this attitude about how to achieve progress, in December 1859 during the uproar over the John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry by abolitionists.

Speaking of progress, in this year in England, Herbert Spencer’s article “Progress: its Law and Cause” began to apply his one big idea, a principle that he had derived from K.E. von Baer, that the biological development of an organism proceeds from a homogenous state to a heterogeneous state, to the solar system, to animal species, to human society, to industry, to art, to language, to science, and to the kitchen sink. This ideology- driven infatuation eventually led to his friend Thomas Henry Huxley commenting about him that Spencer’s idea of a tragedy was “a deduction killed by a fact.”

129. This interesting book has been republished in Cambridge MA in 1968. For more on this guy and his not-all-that-novel conceit that the victims were victimizing him and needed to be trumped, see Hugh C. Bailey’s HINTON ROWAN HELPER: ABOLITIONIST- RACIST (University of Alabama, 1965). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2157 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 9: There was a report about the international slave trade:

RACE SLAVERY

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July 13: Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune reviewed at length Hinton Rowan Helper’s THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT.

Greeley characterized Helper as “a spokesman — one who utters no stammering, hesitating nor uncertain sound, who possesses a perfect mastery of his mother tongue, who speaks as well from a long study and full knowledge of his subject as from profound convictions, and in whose vocabulary the words fear and doubt seem to have no place.” In Autumn 1850 Helper the fearless had voluntarily confessed to a former employer that during his teenage indenture he had pilfered small amounts, and had offered to this former employer a personal IOU for $300. In return this former employer had pledged permanent secrecy, but upon reading these reviews of his former apprentice’s abolitionist attitude, this wronged former employer would reveal Helper’s youthful indiscretion — so he could be condemned by Southern politicians as not a thinker, as nothing more than a petty thief. Here is Helper’s plan which these Southrons found so outrageous as to justify any retaliatory

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response: • The non-slaveholding whites must be organized for independent political action. • They must then exclude the slaveholders from political power. Never should there be another vote “to the Trafficker in Human Flesh.” • The non-slaveholders must cease all co-operation and fellowship with slaveholders in every phase of society — politics, religion, etc. • All patronage of slaveholders and slaveholding establishments such as slaveholding merchants, lawyers, doctors, hotels, must cease, as well as receiving and granting audiences to slaveholders. • No recognition must be granted to pro-slavery men except as “Ruffians, outlaws, and Criminals.” • All subscriptions to pro-slavery newspapers must be abruptly cancelled. • The greatest possible encouragement must be given to “Free White Labor.” • All employment of slaves by non-slaveholders must cease. • “Immediate Death to slavery,” or if this is impossible, there must be an “unqualified Proscription of its Advocates” during the period of its existence. • A tax of $60 should be levied on every slaveholder for each slave that is in his possession or that he holds between the present time and July 4, 1863. The returns from this tax should be used to transport the “Blacks” to Liberia or to colonize them in Central or South America or in some “Comfortable Settlement” in the United States. • An additional tax of $40 per year should be levied on every owner for each slave he holds after July 4, 1863. The returns from this fund should be given to the Negroes held in slavery or their next of kin to be used as they see fit. (This should be raised to $100 per year if complete abolition has not taken place by 1869. If this does not end the institution in one or two years, the tax should be placed so high as to kill it before July 4, 1876.)

Helper believed that slaves should be compensated for their prior years of servitude, but he did not believe that their labor had been actually worth all that much. Over and above their keep, this careful statistician calculated, it would be enough to compensate the liberated slaves at 26 cents for each year of life that they had labored under conditions of servitude. That is to say, a black slave’s entire lifetime of labor was worth, over and above what it cost to feed and clothe him or her, approximately as much as three or four weeks of the labor of an Irishman working at the laying of railroad track. An entire lifetime of labor in America would not be considered as in itself of sufficient value to purchase at the going rates a steerage ticket back to Africa.

Hinton Rowan Helper, obviously, was no slave to his own statistics. For instance, the census of 1850 had counted exactly 347,525 slaveholders, but Helper needed to minimize the size of this despotic class in accordance with “the greatest good to the greatest number” in order to proclaim the exaggerated nature of their undue political influence, so he found reason to round up this 347,525 figure to 200,000. The elaborate statistical argument mounted by Helper is largely bunkum. He was able to value the Northern hay crop alone, for instance, as of more market worth than all the cash crops of the Southlands, by presuming that all of it was available to be sold despite the fact that most of it of necessity went uncut each year (he was counting every blade of grass, he confessed, even of “the Western prairie”), and despite the fact that, of that grass for which there was human labor available to cut it and stack it, most never would make it to market simply because it was of course being fed to the farm livestock during the Northern winters. Over and above all this, Helper completely disregarded unhelpful complications such as the offsetting value of Southern ensilage made not from grass but from the stripped leaves of Indian corn — in other words, his nice calculations were entirely tendentious and untrustworthy, were merely a front and legitimation and cover story for his bad attitude.

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The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s sermon summarized the history of the slavery quarrel at the Washington church. In defense of his “converting the pulpit into a political forum,” he produced from his pocket and proceeded to wave before his parishioners a pamphlet, prepared in that very church five years earlier. The pamphlet was the text of a sermon which had been preached there by a Reverend Lunt. This proslavery sermon had attacked Senator William Henry Seward of New York for his “higher law” oration. The very existence of such a pamphlet demonstrated the hypocrisy of the parishioners who were then attacking their shepherd: for they “did not disapprove of the introduction of politics into the pulpit, so long as the minister said smooth things.” And Conway was off on his summer vacation in the White Mountains, by way of Boston and Concord.

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October: “General” James Neill Bethune rented a concert hall in Columbus, and for the first time the slave “Blind Tom” performed before a large audience.

Bronson Alcott wrote more about the Moore house, which he was beginning to refer to as Orchard House:

’Tis a pretty retreat, and ours; a family mansion to take pride in, rescued as it is from deformity and disgrace by those touches of grace and plain-keeping which I have contrived to give it, against the journeyman’s jibes and joiner’s void of taste or carpenter’s skill.

October 1, Thursday: In Syracuse NY, the 6th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal:

October 1, Thursday: P.M. –To second stone bridge and down Assabet home. The ash trees are a dull red, and some quite mulberry-color. Methinks it has to do with the smart frost of yesterday morning; i. e., that after the maples have fairly begun, the young red oaks, ash trees, etc., begin with the first smart frost. The pines now half turned yellow. the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast. The arbor-vitae changes with them so completely that it looks as if the lower parts were dead. All very much exposed button-bushes are brown and sere; so their yellowish season does not amount, to much away from the river.130...It seemed to me that it was no compliment to their god to suppose that he would not let them go to Ktaadn without so much ado.131 They’d better have put their shoulders to the wheel and stumped it along at a good round pace.... I boiled some rice at the carry, for our dinner, in cooking which I consider myself adept, having had a good deal of experience in it. P. said that he sometimes used it, but boiled it till it all fell apart, and, finding this mess unexpectedly soft though quickly prepared, he asked if it had not been cooked before. Washing the dishes, especially the greasy ones, is the most irksome duty of the camp, and it reminded me of that sacred band in Fourier’s scheme, who took upon themselves the most disagreeable services. The 130. Vide [4] pages forward [October 4]. 131. THE MAINE WOODS, pages 214, 215; Riv. 265. 2162 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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consequence is that they do not often get washed.

District of Columbia, Washington County On this 1st day of Oct. 1857 personally appears Mrs. Elizabeth Toole before the subscriber, a Justice of the Peace in and for the said county, and makes oath on the Holy Evangely of Almighty God that she is well acquainted with a yellow girl named Mary Virginia Howe, about eighteen years of age and knows her to be free and born free in Portsmouth, Virginia. H. Naylor J. Peace FREE PAPERS

October 13: Waldo Emerson wrote to Caroline Sturgis Tappan, wife of his friend William Aspinwall Tappan, that

If I were writing to any other than you, I should render my wonted homage to the gods for my two gossips, Alcott & Henry T., whose existence I impute to America for righteousness, though they miss the fame of your praise.

An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: $500 REWARD - RAND AWAYS AND HORSE THIEVES - Ran away from the subscriber, living in Baltimore county, Md., near the Granite Quarries, two NEGRO MEN, Brothers, ROSS and JOHN BEALL; the former left on the night of the 11th instant, taking with him one Chestnut Sorrell MARE, the property of his master. Ross has a dark complexion, nearly black, about 23 years of age, about five feet six or seven inches in height,132 and has a down look when spoken to. John left on the 10th instant, and also took a horse belonging to a neighbor. He is 18 years old, about five feet ten inches in height, black complexion, smiles when spoken to, showing very white teeth. I will give the above reward of $500 for the apprehension of both, or $250 for either one of them, to be secured in jail so that I might get them again. Communications addressed to LEMUEL OFFUTT Woodsock Postoffice Baltimore and Ohio Railroad In the same issue of the Baltimore Sun there was an advertisement inquiring into the whereabouts of a free black man (this could conceivably had been someone who was being kidnapped into slavery): ON THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER LAST, ALBERT DORSEY, aged 19 years, five feet six inches high, of well-knit frame, chestnut brown, long visage, lower lip hanging, speaks plainly, of quite and reserved manner, born free in Baltimore county, and of excellent conduct and 132. In descriptions of runaway slaves, 5 feet 5 or 6 inches is the average height. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2163 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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character, was kidnapped and secretly sent from Baltimore city. All efforts by his distressed parents and friends to learn his destination or place of concealment have failed. Any information leading to a trace of him will relieve them and be most gratefully acknowledged. Address CHAS G. LYON, ESQ., Pikesville, Baltimore county., or WM. J. WARD, ESQ., Baltimore

October 13, Tuesday: P.M. –To Poplar Hill. Maple fires are burnt out generally, and they have fairly begun to fall and look smoky in the swamps. When my eyes were resting on those smoke-like bare trees, it did not at first occur to me why the landscape was not as brilliant as a few days ago. The outside trees in the swamps lose their leaves first. The brilliancy of young oaks, especially scarlet oaks, in sprout-lands is dulled. These red maples and young scarlet oaks, etc., have been the most conspicuous and important colors, or patches of color, in the landscape. Those most brilliant days, then, so far as the autumnal tints are concerned, are over; i. e., when we may be surprised at any turn by the sight of some incredibly bright and dazzling tree or grove of trees. I noticed the first large white oaks wholly changed to a salmon-color, but not brilliant like those sproutland fires. Are very large oaks never brilliant in their tints? 133 The hickories on Poplar Hill have not lost any of their brilliancy, generally speaking. Some are quite green even. I look down into a mocker-nut, whose recesses and greater part are pure yellow, and from this you pass through a ruddy orange in the more exposed leaves to a rich crispy brown in the leaves of the extreme twigs about the clusters of round green nuts. The red of oaks, etc., is far more general now than three or four days ago, but it is also much duller, so that some maples that were a bright scarlet can now hardly be distinguished by their color from oaks, which have just turned red. The Great Fields from this hill are pale-brown, often hoary –there is not yellow enough for russet– pastures, with very large red or purple patches of blackberry vines. You can only appreciate the effect of these by a strong and peculiar intention of the eye. We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there. The pitch and white pines on the north of Sleepy Hollow, i. e. north side the hill, are at the height of their change and are falling. Maybe they are later than on the south side of hills. They are at the height of their change, generally, though many needles fallen, carpeting the ground. Pinweeds are brown; how long? Some of the large ash trees, both a black and white, are quite bare of leaves already. With the red maples, then. Looking from this hill, green begins to look as rare and interesting as any color, –you may say begins to be a color by itself, –and I distinguish green streaks and patches of grass on most hillsides. See a pretty large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow. Two pursuing each other would curve upward like a breaker in the air and drop into the hedge again. Some white willows are very fresh and green yet. This has been the ninth of those wonderful days, and one of the warmest. I am obliged to sit with my window wide open all the evening as well as all day. It is the earlier Indian summer. Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red-orange color.

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October 15: At the age of 21, Salmon Brown married with Abbie C. Hinckley at North Elba, New York. (In this photo, it is the 20th Century and he is in his old age.)

Henry Thoreau made reference to page 139 in George Field’s CHROMATOGRAPHY; OR, A TREATISE ON COLOURS AND PIGMENTS, AND OF THEIR POWERS IN PAINTING (London: New Edition, Improved; Tilt and Bogue, Fleet Street, M.DCCC.XLI). CHROMATOGRAPHY

October 15, Thursday: Rain at last, and end of the remarkable days. The springs and rivers have been very low. Millers have not water enough to grind their grists. There has been a great fall of leaves in the night on account of this moist and rainy weather; but hardly yet that touch that brings down the rock maple. The streets are thickly strewn with elm and buttonwood and other leaves, feuille-morte color. Some elms and butternuts are quite bare. Yet the sugar maples in our streets are now in their prime and show unexpectedly bright and delicate tints, while some white maples by the river are nearly bare. I see, too, that all locusts did not become crisp and fall before this without acquiring a bright color. In the churchyard they are unwithered, just turning a pale yellow. How many plants are either yellow or scarlet! Not only maples, but rose bushes, hazel bushes, etc., etc. Rue is a conspicuous pale yellow for a weed.134 I saw the other day a cricket standing on his head in a chocolate-colored (inside) fungus, only his tail-yards visible. He had sunk a well an inch deep, and was even then sinking it, perpendicularly, unconscious of what 134.Vide 20th, 1858. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2165 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was going on above. The ten days –at least– before this were plainly Indian summer. They were remarkably pleasant and warm. The latter half I sat and slept with an open window, though the first part of the time I had a little fire in the morning. These succeeded to days when you had worn thick clothing and sat by fires for some time. Our staghorn sumach has just become a very rich scarlet. So, apparently, has the large one at Mrs. Simmonds’s. They are later than the others; a yellower scarlet, almost orange. It is another example of the oddity of the Orientals that yellow “is in the east a regal color, more especially so in China, where it is exclusively royal.” (Field on Colors, 139.)135 Further west it was purple, regal and imperial. The river lower this morning than before this year. Concord Bank has suspended. CHROMATOGRAPHY

November 14, day: An advertisement for a runaway slave appeared in the Baltimore Sun: $200 REWARD - Ran away from my Farm at Reisterstown, Baltimore county, on Saturday, the 24th of October, my colored boy STEPHEN BROWN, supposed with a slave of Mr. Stocksdale; about 20 years old, not very dark, thick lips, stout for his age, stoops or rather leans forward in walking, has a drawling manner of speaking, and I think but am not sure has his name written on his arm with India ink. The above reward will be taken if brought back or lodged in jail so that I get him again. D.B. BANKS136

November 14, Saturday, 1857: ...in the most southwesterly quarry, I noticed in the side of an upright sliver of rock, where the limestone had formerly been blasted off, the bottom of the nearly perpendicular hole which had been drilled for that purpose, two or three inches deep and about two and a half feet from the ground. In this I found two fresh chestnuts, a dozen or more amphicarpaea seeds, as many apparently either prinos (?) or rose (?) seeds (single seeds and fresh), and several fresh barberry seeds mixed with a little earth and rubbish. What placed them there? Squirrel, mouse, jay, or crow? At first I thought that a quadruped could hardly have reached this hole, but probably it could easily, and it was a very cunning place for such a deposit.137 I brought them all home in order to ascertain what the seeds were and how they came there. Examining the chestnuts carefully in the evening and wondering if so small a bird as a chickadee could transport one, I observed near the larger end of one some very fine scratches, which it seemed to me might have been made by the teeth of a very small animal when carrying it, but certainly not by the bill of a bird, since they had pricked sharply into the shell, rucking it up one way. I then looked to see where the teeth of the other jaw had scratched it, but could discover no marks and was therefore still somewhat in doubt. Coming up-stairs an hour afterward, I examined those scratches with a microscope, and saw plainly that they had been made by some fine and sharp cutting instrument like a fine chisel, a little concave, and had plowed under the surface of the shell a little, toward the big end of the nut, raising it up; and, looking farther, I now discovered, on the larger end of the nut, at least two corresponding marks made by the lower incisors, plowing toward the first and about a quarter of an inch distant. These were a little less obvious to the unarmed eye, but no less plain through the glass. I now had no doubt that they were made by the incisors of a mouse, and, comparing them with the incisors of a deer mouse (Mus leucopus) whose skull I have, I found that one or two of the marks were just the width of its two incisors combined (a twentieth of an inch), and the others, though finer, might have been made by them. On one side, at least, it had taken fresh hold once or twice. I have but little

135. To explain how it is that yellow came to be the color associated with the Chinese emperor: one of the terms for emperor is Huang, a homophone for yellow, huáng. (The ahistorical Yellow Emperor Huang Ti traditionally ruling from 2698 to 2598 BCE established the crafts and guilds. Ever since excellent nonscratchy deposits of graphite were belatedly discovered in China, we have painted our pencils with this color traditionally associated with China and royalty in order to impute that they are of high quality.) 136. In 1834, a Stephen Brown had been listed in the Class Records of the Asbury Chapel (not the Reisterstown United Methodist Church) as one of 47 colored slaves who had obtained permission to hold class meetings at the chapel. Stephen Brown was listed as one of the original slaves but the record indicates “he was believed to have run off.” Might this Stephen Brown of 24 years later be a son of the Stephen Brown who had escaped from slavery in 1834? 137.Vide November 19th. 2166 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. The other nut, which had no marks on it, I suppose was carried by the star end, which was gone from both. There was no chestnut tree within twenty rods. These seeds thus placed in this recess will account for chestnut trees, barberry bushes, etc., etc., growing in chinks and clefts where we do not see how the seeds could have fallen. There was earth enough even in this little hole to keep some very small plant alive. BARBERRY

1858

“General” James Neill Bethune sublet his 9-year-old slave “Blind Tom” to the concert promoter Perry Oliver for a period of several years. Thomas was, at this early age, separated from his family to be exhibited throughout hundreds of cities on a rigorous four-shows-per-day schedule. Musicians in the audience would be challenged to a duel, and Tom would be able to reproduce anything they were able to perform. Beyond that, a musician from the audience could play a piece that Tom had never before heard, and Tom could sit beside this musician and provide a perfect bass accompaniment to the musician’s treble — simultaneously, as he or she was for the first time producing it. Then the slave could turn his back to the piano and provide an exact repetition of that composition, by means of a reversal of the keys played by his left and right hands. There seemed to be nothing that he could not do, except of course see. It would be estimated that Bethune would realize $15,000 from the arrangement and that the impresario would profit to the tune of $50,000.

Portugal decided that it would abolish slavery in its colonial possessions. But, first, of course, to ensure order and prosperity during this transition, there would need to be a 20-year period of assimilation through “apprenticeship” for these former slaves.

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138 The negrero Wanderer landed 500 slaves in Georgia (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 2d session VII, Number 8; HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 2d session IX, Number 89). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

British warships in the Caribbean began to intercept and board vessels that flew the American flag — not to search for illicit slave cargo, of course, but merely to ensure that such a ship’s American papers were legit. If the papers were to seem to have been forged (as they sometimes were), and if the ship happened to contain an illicit cargo of slaves (as sometimes it did), then they would be able to declare the ship an outlaw and proceed accordingly. If such a ship’s American papers seemed genuine, however, the British warships were under orders that they could not proceed belowdecks for an inspection of the cargo, no matter how bad said cargo smelled, and this legitimate American vessel must be allowed to go on its way. Although such a policy seems mild enough considering the ongoing international traffic in fresh slaves, there were Americans who considered it an outrage. “No-one has any right to stop any American vessel at any time for any reason!”

138. This negrero had been designed to appear to be a luxury cruise ship. It had carpeting, a library, etc. It had sailed out of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina on the 4th of July, in that disguise, fooling of course only the foolish. On its way toward the slave castles along the coast of Africa it did attract the attention of the British naval blockaders of that coast, and was boarded and searched. Then it rolled up its carpets, stored the books of its library, and reconfigured itself into a slaver in which even less than the usual amount of space was allocated to each slave being transported. There’s now an entire book about this one remarkable vessel, Erik Calonius’s THE WANDERER: THE LAST AMERICAN SLAVE SHIP AND THE CONSPIRACY THAT SET ITS SAILS, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2006. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2169 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The American negreros Mobile, Cortez, Tropic Bird were searched by patrol vessels of the British navy (HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 36th Congress, 2d session IV, Number 7, page 97 ff).

The supposedly anti-slavery Republicans in the US Senate joined with the pro-slavery forces to pass a resolution denouncing this new British policy, and the British backed way down, promising in effect not to stop any ship flying the American flag. Since the warships couldn’t check the papers of a vessel that they weren’t allowed to stop, and since any slaver could display the US flag — the British effectively would not be able to stop slave ships at all. This was fine with us, as we were for the freedom of the seas. For us, the principle of sovereignty was just everything, the needs of people of color just nothing at all. (The federal government of the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, was of course the sole significant government in the world to display such intransigence in the face of the scourge of slavery.)

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JUST DON’T GET CAUGHT

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly

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opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;139 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.140 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”141 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.142 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”143 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”144 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.145 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”146 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement 139. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 140. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 141. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 142. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 143. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 144. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 145. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 146. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 2172 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”147 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”148 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”149 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”150 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.151 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and 147. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 148. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 149. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 150. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2173 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”152 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”153 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;154 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”155 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”156 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”157 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slaveholding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”158 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.159 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.160 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”161 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, 151. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 152. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 153. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 154. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 155. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 156. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 157. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 158. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 159. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 160. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 161. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 2174 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.162 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.163 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.164 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,165 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 162. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 163. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 164. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2175 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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165. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 166. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. 2176 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Democrats in Ohio gained control of the state legislature and repealed the personal liberty law that had had been allowing fugitives to apply for a writ of habeas corpus. In the future, the runaway slaves who sought refuge around Oberlin, Ohio would become targets of slavecatchers from the South, who would be able to operate in Ohio under authority of the federal Fugitive Slave Act. A professor and his students at Oberlin College, who rescued John Price, an 18-year-old black fugitive slave who had escaped from a plantation in

Kentucky the previous winter by riding horseback over the frozen Ohio River, and made arrangements to send him to Canada, got into a certain amount of trouble. This group of rescuers who got themselves into trouble with the law included John Mercer Langston, Ohio’s first black lawyer. At the urging of President James

Buchanan, the government indicted 37 of them for violating the Fugitive Slave Law and put them on trial before US District Judge Hiram Willson. While the rescuers cooled their heels in the Cleveland jail, they were

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visited by John Brown — whose father Owen had been during the 1830s an Oberlin College trustee.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

March: The southern Senator James H. Hammond reproached his Northern colleagues on the floor of the Senate for hypocrisy, because they were pretending to be for freedom while exploiting their workers. The northern white worker was the victim of a pitiful insecurity and of starvation wage rates, he pointed out, while African- American slaves of the South were by way of invidious contrast “hired for life and well compensated.” He hurled at the northern Senators a challenge: “Your slaves are white, of your own race — you are brothers of one blood.”

In about this timeframe Louisiana was considering the possibility of importing more Africans from Africa. A bill to that effect did pass, in the US House of Representatives, but it then failed by a 2-vote margin in the US Senate (CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 35th Congress, 1st session, page 1362).

October 1, Friday: In Syracuse NY, the 7th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851.

Henry Thoreau wrote in his journal:

October 1: P.M.–To Hubbard’s Close. Clintonia Maple Swamp is very fair now, especially a quarter of a mile off, where you get the effect of the light colors without detecting the imperfections of the leaves. Look now at such a swamp, of maples mixed with the~ evergreen pines, at the base of a pine-clad hill, and see their yellow and scarlet and crimson fires of all tints, mingled and contrasted with the green. Some maples are yet

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green, only yellow-tipped on the edges of their flakes, as the edges of a hazelnut bur. Some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every way. Others, of more regular form, seem to rest heavily, flake on flake, like yellow or scarlet snow-drifts.167 The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour [?] in open grounds. The fringed gentians are now in prime. These are closed in the afternoon,168 but I saw them open at 12 M. a day or two ago, and they were exceedingly beautiful, especially when there was a single one on a stem. They who see them closed, or in the afternoon only, do not suspect their beauty. Viola lanceolata again. Was overtaken by a sudden gust and rain from the west. It broke off some limbs and brought down many leaves. Took refuge in Minott’s house at last. He told me his last duck-shooting exploit for the fifth or sixth time. Says that Jake Potter, who died over eighty some dozen years since, told him that when he was a boy and used to drive his father Ephraim’s cows to pasture in the meadows near Fair Haven, after they were mown in the fall, CAT returning with them at evening, he used to hear the wildcats yell in the Fair Haven woods. Minott tells of a great rise of the river once in August, when a great many “marsh-birds,” as peeps, killdeers, yellow-legs, etc., came inland, and he saw a flock of them reaching from Flint’s Bridge a mile down-stream over the meadows, and making a great noise. Says the “killdees” used to be common here, and the yellowlegs, called “humilities,” used commonly to breed here on the tussocks in the meadows. He has often found their nests. Let a full-grown but young cock stand near you. How full of life he is, from the tip of his bill through his trembling wattles and comb and his bright eye to the extremity of his clean toes! How alert and restless, listening to every sound and watching every motion! How various his notes, from the finest and shrillest alarum as a hawk sails over, surpassing the most accomplished violinist on the short strings, to a hoarse and terrene voice or cluck! He has a word for every occasion; for the dog that rushes past, and partlet cackling in the barn. And then how, elevating himself and flapping his wings, he gathers impetus and air and launches forth that world- renowned ear-piercing strain! not a vulgar note of defiance, but the mere effervescence of life, like the bursting of a bubble in a wine-cup. Is any gem so bright as his eye? The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of those who live beneath them.169 The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. The cat sleeps on her head! What does this portend? It is more alarming than a dozen comets. How long prejudice survives! The big-bodied fisherman asks me doubtingly about the comet seen these nights in the CAT northwest,–if there is any danger to be apprehended from that side! I would fain suggest that only he is dangerous to himself.

December: The Wanderer landed at Jekyll Island, Georgia with about 300 slaves on board.

167. Excursions. pp 261, 262; Riv. 820, ~21.] ’ No. Vide forward. 168. See larks in small flocks. 169. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2179 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

When slavery had been abolished in the British Empire in the 1830s, it of course continued in India, since that was under the East India Company rather than under the empire.170 After the Sepoy Mutiny, the winding-up of the East India Company, and the assumption of control by the British Government, Indian slaves would be officially freed when slaveholding would become a criminal offense in 1861 (the start of the American Civil War and the same year that the “Tsar Liberator” freed the serfs) although in fact few would really be freed. In this year, as a gradual step along the way to that great future, the Workmen’s Breach of Contract Act put these persons into hereditary debt-bondage, under which laborers had to pay off their whole bond, and their parents’ bond, and their parents’ parent’ bond, back however many generations, before they ever could be freed. In different ways, therefore, this would continue well into the 20th century. Refer to Tanika Sarkar, “Bondage in the Colonial Context,” in CHAINS OF SERVITUDE: BONDAGE AND SLAVERY IN INDIA, ed. by Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney (Madras: Sangam Books, 1985), 97-126; the question of whether the 1859 Act really changed how debtors were treated is examined in Dharma Kumar, “Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India,” in BREAKING THE CHAINS: SLAVERY, BONDAGE, AND EMANCIPATION IN MODERN AFRICA AND ASIA, ed. by Martin Klein (Madison WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1993), pages 122-130.

Georgia prohibited the post-mortem manumission of slaves by last will and testament. The state legislature voted to permit free Africans to be sold into slavery if they had been indicted as vagrants. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

The Kansas Territory adopted the Wyandotte Constitution and banned slavery.

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At a slaveholders convention in Baltimore, complaints were registered that some service trades were being monopolized by free black laborers and entrepreneurs. However, when a resolution was offered that free blacks be expelled from Maryland, the resolution failed. One wonders! Could this be interpreted as indicating that these slaveholders held the best interests of free black Americans close to their hearts — or might this be interpreted as indicating that these slaveholders did not hold the best interests of working-class white Americans close to their hearts?

At some point during this year, that 1836 fraud about the life experiences of one “Charles Ball” who had supposedly been for 40 years a black slave in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia was published once again.171 During this year, with the publication of OUR NIG; OR, SKETCHES FROM THE LIFE OF A FREE BLACK, IN A TWO- STORY WHITE HOUSE, NORTH, Harriet E. Wilson (Mrs. H.E. Wilson) became the first black American novelist published in the United States. OUR NIG is a hybrid of autobiography, fiction, and exposé and follows the life of a free black woman in the North during the ante-bellum period (unfortunately, the novel would receive little

171. The New-York Women’s Anti-Slavery Society barred blacks from membership.

Meanwhile, Isaac Fisher edited SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES: A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF CHARLES BALL, A BLACK MAN, WHO LIVED FORTY YEARS IN MARYLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA AS A SLAVE (Lewistown, Pennsylvania: J.W. Shugert). This first of the “escape from slavery” genre was a mere fraud. On the Potomac, if a slave gives offence, he is generally chastised on the spot, in the field where he is at work, as the overseer always carried a whip — sometimes a twisted cow-hide, sometimes a kind of horse-whip, and very often a simple hickory switch or gad, cut in the adjoining woods. For stealing meat, or other provisions, or for any of the higher offences, the slaves are stripped, tied up by the hands —sometimes by the thumbs— and whipped at the quarter — but many times, on a large tobacco plantation, there is not more than one of these regular whippings in a week — though on others, where the master happens to be a bad man, or a drunkard — the back of the unhappy Maryland slave, is seamed with scars from his neck to his hips. Ball, Charles and Isaac Fisher. FIFTY YEARS IN CHAINS. NY, Indianapolis IN: H. Dayton, Dayton & Asher, 1859 Ball, Charles and Isaac Fisher. SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES: A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF CHARLES BALL, A BLACK MAN. NY: Negro UP, 1969.

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attention until Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. would discover the text in 1982).

HARRIET E. WILSON

Before publishing a novel, it appears, Wilson was already a resourceful and surprisingly successful entrepreneur, with a line of hair-care products that would eventually expand up and down the East Coast. The rich trove of advertisements that her business generated, never before collated or analyzed, offers fascinating glimpses into the America of the time and the unexpected role a black woman played during an era when most faced almost insurmountable racial and gender barriers. Beginning in 1857, two years before the publication of “Our Nig,” her advertisements began appearing in a local New Hampshire paper. Asking “Who Wants a Good Head of Hair?,” the ads promised that “Mrs. Wilson’s Hair Regenerator” was no humbug. The ads vanished from papers just months before her book was copyrighted, when - according to her own story - Wilson found herself too ill to work. Her book contains tantalizing hints about Wilson’s beginnings in business. A kind friend provided her with a “valuable recipe,” she writes. A letter in the book’s appendix attests to Wilson’s success selling products that “restore gray hair to its natural color” before she fell sick. Her only son died in 1860, and 10 weeks later Wilson returned to her hair business. To judge by the amount of advertising it generated, its growth was exponential. She connected with a white druggist - also, coincidentally, named Wilson. In 1860 and 1861, at least 1,500 ads for Mrs. Wilson’s hair products appeared in a score of papers across New England and as far south as New Jersey. They ran in nine different papers in New York state alone. In the New York Times, a wholesaler listed more than 4,000 bottles of her products for sale - if the buyer could 2182 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pay in cash. Her entrepreneurial career may have been as pioneering as her literary one. Before the Civil War, patent medicines were still in their infancy, and national cosmetic brands were unknown. Large ads such as these were just starting to appear and ones featuring portraits, as some of hers did, were very rare until after the Civil War. There is little doubt that the Mrs. Wilson whose products were sold all over the Northeast is the same woman who wrote “Our Nig.” She copyrighted the book as “Mrs. H.E. Wilson,” the same name blown into her hair products’ bottles and the name listed in early ads as the preparer of the formula. We have also uncovered surviving bottles with rare partial labels that almost certainly match her advertisements. Larger ads, intriguingly, feature what may be Wilson’s only surviving likeness. One series briefly outlines Mrs. H.E. Wilson’s business history and corresponds to what we know of the author’s growing hair-care enterprise. In some ways, Wilson’s success prefigures that of Madame C.J. Walker, the famous entrepreneur of the early 20th century who became the richest African-American of her time. Both women started selling their products door to door; and with agents in city after city, “Mrs. Wilson’s Hair Dressing and Hair Regenerator” grew into a large-scale enterprise 50 years before Madame C.J. Walker’s did. But unlike Madame Walker, Mrs. Wilson’s hair business didn’t appear to be pitched toward an African-American market. The portrait that appears in Wilson’s ads features a young woman with long wavy hair, recalling the book’s description of its heroine’s shining curls and glossy ringlets. Though those who perused the papers were meant to assume that the pretty brunette was Mrs. Wilson, few would have looked at the illustration and imagined that she was black. Wilson launched her hair business in a decade in which African- Americans were being officially shorn of their citizenship. Her ads began in 1857, the same year that the Supreme Court decided the infamous Dred Scott case declaring that blacks “had no rights the white man was bound to respect.” Had Wilson been a man in 1860, she would have been able to vote in only five of America’s 33 states. However hard-working or educated, the vast majority of free black women - North and South - were limited to jobs of service and drudgery. Wilson was one of the few to escape that life, although commercial success - as it was for many Americans - proved fragile. We don’t yet know the particulars of her business arrangement with Henry P. Wilson, but as the nation braced for the Civil War, he sold his business and the ads trickled to a stop. After the war, Harriet Wilson moved to Boston, the city she called home until her death in 1900. With her characteristic boldness, she began anew; as Hattie Wilson, she became a minor Spiritualist celebrity, joining a religious and social movement that had millions of adherents. From 1867 through the 1880s, she lectured across New England, taught Sunday school, and hosted large gatherings that included music and birthday dramatic readings. In the Banner of Light, a national Spiritualist paper, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2183 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Wilson was called “Boston’s earnest and eloquent colored medium.” Wilson is a singular figure in a well-known American tradition, that of individual reinvention. Like her book, Wilson’s life is no rags to riches story. Nevertheless, against overwhelming odds - as an author, speaker, and entrepreneur - Wilson made her mark in an era that kept most women of her race and status from doing more than imagining such a thing to be possible. — P. Gabrielle Foreman and Katherine Flynn, “Mrs. H.E. Wilson, mogul? / The curious new history of an American literary original” (February 15, 2009)

During this year the last known negrero was arriving in this nation which had supposedly outlawed the import of slaves without ever having convicted anyone of violation of said law: this was in Mobile Bay, Alabama, and this negrero was named the Clothilde.

But during this year and the next Dr. Martin Robison Delany would be leading a party of exploration, back to West Africa, to check out the delta of the Niger River as a suitable location for repatriation of American blacks.

Have you ever wondered what happened to people who got freed from slave ships? The anti-international slave trade squadron of the American Navy that was patrolling off the African coast at this point was beefed up with an additional four steam gunboats so it could set up a similar patrol off the destination end of the passage, the Cuban coast. Three American-owned slavers, the Wildfire of New-York, the William of Baltimore, and the Bogota of New-York, were captured enroute to Cuba from the Congo River and from Ouidah by the USS

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Mohawk, the USS Wyandott, and the USS Crusader, and brought into the port of Key West, Florida. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE Some 294 of the 1,432 Africans aboard died at Key West from illnesses brought on by their confinement in the holds and were buried on a local beach. After some 80 days in America, the survivors would depart Key West for Liberia, transported by the American Colonization Society with financial support from the U.S. Government. Hundreds more of them would perish before again sighting the shores of Africa, and be consigned to the waves. Key West, because of the power of the Union Navy, would remain in Northern hands, and a couple of years later Union soldiers would construct a fortification, West Martello Tower, atop the beach graves. The strip of sand would be doing service as a public beach during our current era, when some local historian would inspect an 1863 map and notice “African Cemetery” clearly marked on it.

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This was reported to have been the scene on the deck of the Wildfire:172

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nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;173 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.174 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”175 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.176 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”177 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”178 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.179 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”180 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by 173. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 174. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 175. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 176. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 177. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 178. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 179. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 180. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2187 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”181 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”182 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”183 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”184 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.185 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the 181. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 182. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 183. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 184. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 185. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 2188 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”186 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”187 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;188 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”189 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”190 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”191 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slaveholding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”192 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.193 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.194 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”195 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how

186. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 187. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 188. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 189. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 190. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 191. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 192. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 193. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 194. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 195. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2189 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.196 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.197 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.198 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,199 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation 196. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 197. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 198. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 2190 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international cooperation....200

“Blind Tom” was hired out by his slavemaster to an impresario for $15,000 per year of service, and would be marketed by this impresario as an “idiot.” Not only could this slave boy play the piano magnificently, but he could repeat word for word speeches that had just been delivered by educated white men, in Latin, Greek, and French, amazingly complete with all intonations and performance characteristics.

March 7: In the case of Ableman v Booth (62 US 506) the United States Supreme Court decided that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, because it was federal, overrode state laws of habeas corpus. This reversed the Wisconsin decision of 1854. Here is Chief Justice Roger Brooks Taney, writing for the court, opinioning that the powers and jurisdictions of state government were derivative and subordinate: The judges of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin do not distinctly state from what source they suppose they have derived this judicial power. There can be no such thing as judicial authority unless it is conferred by a Government or sovereignty, and if the judges and courts of Wisconsin possess the jurisdiction they claim, they must derive it either from the United States or the State. It certainly has not been conferred on them by the United States, and it is equally clear it was not in the power of the State to confer it, even if it had attempted to do so, for no State can authorize one of its judges [62 US 516] or courts to exercise judicial power, by habeas corpus or otherwise, within

199. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 200. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2191 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the jurisdiction of another and independent Government. And although the State of Wisconsin is sovereign within its territorial limits to a certain extent, yet that sovereignty is limited and restricted by the Constitution of the United States. And the powers of the General Government, and of the State, although both exist and are exercised within the same territorial limits, are yet separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other within their respective spheres. And the sphere of action appropriated to the United States is as far beyond the reach of the judicial process issued by a State judge or a State court, as if the line of division was traced by landmarks and monuments visible to the eye. And the State of Wisconsin had no more power to authorize these proceedings of its judges and courts than it would have had if the prisoner had been confined in Michigan, or in any other State of the Union, for an offence against the laws of the State in which he was imprisoned. On the basis of this decision Sherman M. Booth, who had years before been guilty of illegally helping an escaped slave, would again be arrested and returned his federal imprisonment in the federal Custom House in Milwaukee.

March 7: 6 30 A.M. —To Hill. I come out to hear a spring bird, the ground generally covered with snow yet and the channel of the river only partly open. On the Hill I hear first the tapping of a small woodpecker. Then I see a bird alight on the dead top of the highest white oak on the hilltop, on the topmost branches. It is a shrike [Northern Shrike Lanius excubitor]. While I am watching him eight or ten rods off, I hear robins down below, west of the hill. Then, to my surprise, the shrike begins to sing. It is at first a wholly ineffectual and inarticulate sound without any solid tone to it, a mere hoarse breathing, as if he were clearing his throat, unlike any bird that I know, –a shrill hissing. Then he uttered a kind of mew, a very decided mewing, clear and wiry, between that of a catbird and the note of the nuthatch, as if to lure a nuthatch within his reach; then rose into the sharpest, shrillest vibratory or tremulous whistling or chirruping on the very highest key. This high gurgling jingle was like some of the notes of a robin singing in summer. But they were very short spurts in all these directions, though there was all this variety. Unless you saw the shrike it would be hard to tell what bird it was.

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This variety of notes covered considerable time, but were sparingly uttered with intervals. It was a decided chinking sound – the clearest strain – suggesting much ice in the stream. I heard this bird sing once before, but that was also in early spring, or about this time. It is said that they imitate the notes of the birds in order to attract them within their reach. Why, then, have I never heard them sing in winter? (I have seen seven or eight of them the past winter quite near.) The birds which it imitated – if it imitated any this morning – were the catbird and the robin, neither of which probably would it catch, –and the first is not here to be caught. Hear – a peep, I looked up and saw three or four birds passing rather [sic], which suddenly descended and settled on this oak- top. They were robins, but the shrike instantly hid himself behind a bough and in half a minute flew off to a walnut and alighted, as usual, on its very topmost twig, apparently afraid of its visitors. The robins kept their ground, one alighting on the very point which the shrike vacated. Is not this, then, probably the spring note or pairing note or notes of the shrike? The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or peep-eep-eep, as when in distress with young just flown. When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look. I hear several jays this morning. I think that many of the nuts which we find in the crevices of bark, firmly wedged in, may have been placed there by jays, chickadees, etc., to be held fast while they crack them with their bills. A lady tells me that she saw, last Cattle-Show Day, [ ] [ ], putting up a specimen of hairwork in a frame (by his niece) in the exhibition hall. I think it represented flowers, and underneath was written “this Hare was taken from 8 different heads.” She made some sort of exclamation, betraying that there was some mistake in the writing, whereupon [ ] [ ] took it down and carried it off, but soon came back with a new description or label, “this hare was taken from 8 different heads,” and thus it stood through the exhibition. P. M.–To Ministerial Swamp. I hear of two who saw bluebirds this morning, and one says he saw one yesterday. [Vide 9th.] This seems to have been the day of their general arrival here, but I have not seen one in Concord yet. It is a good plan to go to some old orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, especially in the morning when all is still. You can thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird [Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis] lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would not have been audible to you. As I walk, these first mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight of the bare ground, especially the reddish subsoil, where it is exposed by a cutting, and by the few green radical leaves, I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of passage just arrived. There are few, if any, so coarse and insensible that they are not interested to hear that the bluebird has come. The Irish laborer has learned to distinguish him and report his arrival. It is a part of the news of the season to the lawyer in his office and the mechanic in his shop, as well as to the farmer. One will remember, perchance, to tell you that he saw one a week ago in the next town or county. Citizens just come into the country to live put up a bluebird box, and record in some kind of journal the date of the first arrival observed, – though it may be rather a late one. The farmer can tell you when he saw the first one, if you ask him within a week. I see a great many of those glow-worm-like caterpillars observed in the freshet in midwinter, on the snowy ice in the meadows and fields now; also small beetles of various kinds, and other caterpillars. I think this unusual number is owing to that freshet, which washed them out of their winter quarters so long ago, and they have never got back to them. I also see–but their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon–a great many of those slender black-bodied insects from one quarter to (with the feelers) one inch long, with six legs and long gray wings, two feelers before, and two forks or tails like feelers behind.

The last are sometimes concealed by the wings. This is what I have called for convenience Perla. They are crawling slowly about over the snow. I have no doubt that crows eat some of the above-named caterpillars, but do other birds? The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives, and the physiologist must not presume to explain their growth according to mechanical laws, or as he might explain some machinery of his own making. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface still. The ultimate expression or fruit of any created thing is a fine effluence which only the most ingenuous worshipper perceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. The cause and the effect are equally evanescent and intangible, and the former must be investigated in the same spirit and with the same reverence with which the latter is perceived. Science is often like the grub which, though it may have nestled in the germ of a fruit, has merely blighted or consumed it and never truly tasted it. Only that intellect makes any progress toward conceiving of the essence which at the same time perceives the effluence, The rude and ignorant finger is probing in the rind still, for in this case, too, the angles of incidence and “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2193 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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excidence are equal, and the essence is as far on the other side of the surface, or matter, as reverence detains the worshipper on this, and only reverence can find out this angle instinctively. Shall we presume to alter the angle at which God chooses to be worshipped? Accordingly, I reject Carpenter’s explanation of the fact that a potato vine in a cellar grows toward the light, when he says, “The reason obviously is, that, in consequence of the loss of fluid from the tissue of the stem, on the side on which the light falls, it is contracted, whilst that of the other side remains turgid with fluid; the stem makes a bend, therefore, until its growing point becomes opposite to the light, and then increases in that direction.” (C.’s “Vegetable Physiology,” page 174.) There is no ripeness which is not, so to speak, something ultimate in itself, and not merely a perfected means to a higher end. In order to be ripe it must serve a transcendent use. The ripeness of a leaf, being perfected, leaves the tree at that point and never returns to it. It has nothing to do with any other fruit which the tree may bear, and only the genius of the poet can pluck it. The fruit of a tree is neither in the seed nor the timber, – the full-grown tree, – but it is simply the highest use to which it can be put.

March 29: Walden Pond thawed.

William Andrus Alcott died in Auburndale, Massachusetts, the author of some one hundred books (during this year a 2d edition to his 1849 volume on vegetarianism would be published). VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES

Julia Dent Grant, the wife of Ulysses S. Grant, along with the other Dent daughters, had been “given” slaves as presents by their father while they were children (although presumably the titles to this property would have remained in the name of their father Fred Dent, Sr.). A year or two before, Ulysses S. Grant had either purchased William Jones, a 5'7" mulatto born in about 1825, or –we aren’t sure which– he had been gifted with Jones by Fred Dent. On the slave market in this year, a middle-aged male like Jones might have been worth between $800 and $1,000, depending on health and skills. In early 1860 the Grants would be moving from White Haven, Missouri to Galena, Illinois, and any slaves that the Grant family took along with them on their journey from Missouri to Illinois would at their destination of course be considered free. On this day (therefore?) Grant manumitted Jones.

March 29. Driving rain and southeast wind, etc. Walden is first clear after to-day. Garfield says he saw a woodcock about a fortnight ago. Minott thinks the middle of March is as early as they come and that they do not then begin to lay.

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June 21: Hinton Rowan Helper declared, in the preface which he was preparing to his new book COMPENDIUM OF THE 201 IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH. BY HINTON ROWAN HELPER OF NORTH CAROLINA, in regard to such writers as Harriet Beecher Stowe, that202 it is all well enough for women to give the fiction of slavery; men should give the facts. MISOGYNY UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

HINTON ROWAN HELPER

This clownish author also needed to ensure that his readers would understand that it was no part of his abolitionist stance to display any special friendliness or sympathy for the blacks.

(OK, Hinton, fellow, I guess we’ve all grasped that now. My gosh, you’re a handsome white man. :-)

201. This interesting book has been republished in Miami FL in 1969. For more on this guy and his not-all-that-novel conceit that the victims were victimizing him and needed to be trumped, see Bailey, Hugh C. HINTON ROWAN HELPER: ABOLITIONIST- RACIST (University AL: 1965). 202. Remember Sgt. Joe Friday? “All I want is the facts, Mam.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2195 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 9: Edmund Ruffin sadly noted that the new racist newspaper Southern Citizen had failed and that his new Irish friend, the editor John Mitchel, was leaving Knoxville, Tennessee.

An interesting report about the vicissitudes of the international slave trade was appearing in American newspapers:

August 9. I see under the railroad bridge a mass of meadow which lodged there last spring, not revealed till this low water, and this is now dense with a thrifty growth of bulrushes. Minott says that some used to wonder much at the windings of the Mill Brook and could not succeed in accounting for them, but his Uncle Ben Prescott settled the difficulty by saying that a great eel came out of Flint’s Pond and rooted its way through to the river and so made the channel of the Mill Brook. Minott says that he can remember when (it may be forty or fifty years ago) the Great Meadows were so dry one year that, they having got off all the grass and cut it quite smoothly, they talked seriously of having a regimental muster there. He assured me it would have been a good place, for the grass was cut smooth, and the earth was baked so hard that you could ride in a carriage right through the middle from the west end clear to Neck. Cannon could have been dragged about there perfectly well. I was thinking it would be rather tussocky ground for soldiers to wheel and manoeuvre on, and rather damp to camp on, but he declared not. This appeared to be good evidence for the river meadow proprietors. But when I asked him if he thought the meadows were more wet now than fifty years ago, he answered that he did “not think they were,” nor the grass any poorer. As he remembered, in one of those years, not far from the dry one referred to, there came a rain in August, when the meadows were partly cut, which raised the water so that it floated off what was left cut and went over the tops of the standing grass, and you could have gone all over the meadows in a boat, and he saw there on the meadows such an immense swarm of sea-birds of various kinds–-peeps, plover, yellow-legs, etc.–as he never saw before

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nor since. He thinks he saw so many in one flock as could not have been packed into his kitchen. He had never seen anything at all like it but once since, and that was the day after he had been to a muster with his company at Waltham –when he was a young man– and had saved the greater part of his allowance of powder on the field. The next day, after getting home, the yellow-legs were so thick on the Mill Brook meadows that he killed a bushel of them. I saw the tortoises shedding their scales a week ago. Many of the scales two-thirds off, turned up all around.

August 27, Saturday: Since whale oil for lamps had begun to be scarce in the 1850s, Canadians had been converting seeping ground oil into kerosene and using this substance in their lamps. Seeping ground oil had been noticed, by white people such as George Bissell, to be present near the ground surface at a place called “Oil Creek” near Titusville in Venango County, Pennsylvania.203 On this day Bissell’s employee Edwin Laurentine Drake began drilling what was to become the 1st successful oil well.

Gerrit Smith delivered a printed letter to John Thomas,

chairman of the Jerry Rescue Committee, declining to participate in the 1859 annual celebration of the rescue of Syracuse’s Jerry McHenry. In this writing the millionaire expressed frustration with the abolitionist movement and forecast that because the mere words of the abolitionists had failed to persuade their countrymen, “For insurrections then we may look any year, any month, any day.”

August 27. A little more rain last night. What were those insects, some winged, with short backs and say half an inch long, others wingless and shorter, like little coils of brass wire (so marked), in dense droves together on trees and fences,–apparently harmless,– especially a week or ten days ago? I was telling Jonas Potter of my lameness yesterday, whereat he says that he “broke” both his feet when he was young,–I imagined how they looked through his wrinkled cowhides,–and he did not get over it for four years, nay, even now he sometimes felt pains in them before a storm. All our life, i. e. the living part of it, is a persistent dreaming awake. The boy does not camp in his father’s yard. That would not be adventurous enough, there are too many sights and sounds to disturb the illusion; so he marches off twenty or thirty miles and there pitches his tent, where stranger inhabitants are tamely sleeping in their beds just like his father at home, and camps in their yard, perchance. But then he dreams uninterruptedly that he is anywhere but where he is. 203. There were, however, at this point, any number of pre-existing human-dug pits along Oil Creek, lined with decaying wood. Carbon testing of some of the wood from some of these pits indicate that native Americans had been well aware of the oil in this vicinity, and had been systematically collecting it, since at least 510 years ago, which is to say, since at least the Year of Our Lord 1487 before the sailing of Christopher Columbus. It is speculated that native American uses for the oil included use for ointment, use for medication, and use for waterproofing. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2197 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint, very distinct from the common pure-white ones. What is often called poverty, but which is a simpler and truer relation to nature, gives a peculiar relish to life, just as to be kept short gives us an appetite for food. Vilfa vaginaflora (?) well out. The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house, when I go to the pump, though I thought there were none on it. The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. They are suspected to have berries [SIC] in them. On the 23d I gathered perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley, long after they are done in open fields. They seem like a different variety from the common, they are so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. They do not grow densely but sparingly, now resting on the ground in the shade of their leaves, perfectly ripe. These that have ripened slowly and perfectly in the shade are the sweetest and tenderest, have the least of the bramble berry about them. Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago. There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe. If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first, and so know which formed first, you may-presume that these will ripen soonest; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root, as the oldest. Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any. Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them, like a fungus. These are as green as a leek through and through, and you’ll find yourself in a pickle if you open one. Others have a dead dark greenness, the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed, and these you may safely bet on. If the vine is quite green and lively, the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign. For fear we should not discover it before, this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness (if not mealiness) within. Of two otherwise similar, take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles, i. e., which is hollowest. The old or ripe ones sing base; the young, tenor or falsetto. Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within, but this is not to be allowed. Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated, suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose. It is very childish. One man told me that he couldn’t raise melons because his children would cut them all up. I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth, and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius’ standard, that at any rate he could not raise children in the way they should go. I once saw one of his boys astride of my earliest watermelon, which grew near a broken paling, and brandishing a case- knife over it, but I instantly blowed him off with my voice from a neighboring window before serious damage was done, and made such an ado about [IT] as convinced him that he was not in his father’s dominions, at any rate. This melon, though it lost some of its bloom then, grew to be a remarkably large and sweet one, though it bore to the last a triangular scar of the tap which the thief had designed on it. I served my apprenticeship and have since done considerable journey-work in the huckleberry-field, though I never paid for my schooling and clothing in that way. It was itself some of the best schooling I got, and paid for itself. Occasionally in still summer forenoons, when perhaps a mantua-maker was to be dined, and a huckleberry pudding had been decided on, I, a lad of ten, was dispatched to the huckleberry hills, all alone. My scholastic education could be thus far tampered with and an excuse might be found. No matter how few and scarce the berries on the near hills, the exact number necessary for a huckleberry pudding could surely be collected by 11 o’clock. My rule in such cases was never to eat one till my dish was full. At other times when I had companions, some used to bring such curiously shaped dishes that I was often curious to see how the berries disposed of themselves in them. Some brought a coffee-pot to the huckleberry-field, and such a vessel possessed this advantage at least, that if a greedy boy had skimmed off a handful or two on his way home, he had only to close the lid and give his vessel a shake to have it full again. This was done all round when we got as far homeward as the Dutch house. This can probably be done with any vessel that has much side to it. I once met with a whole family–father and mother and children–ravaging a huckleberry-field in this wise: they cut up the bushes, and, as they went, beat them over the edge of a bushel basket, till they had it full of berries, ripe and green, leaves, sticks, etc., and so they passed along out of my sight like wild men. See Veratrum viride completely withered and brown from top to bottom, probably as early as skunk-cabbage.

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October 1, Saturday: In Syracuse, New York, the 8th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored in his absence by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. RESISTING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

John Brown was at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Early in the month, the Hawthornes journeyed from the Redcar resort on the coast of Yorkshire to Leamington Spa, where Nathaniel would complete THE MARBLE FAUN.

October 1: P.M.–To the beeches. Looking down from Pine Hill, I see a fish hawk over Walden. The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit. The plateaus and little hollows are crowded with them three to five feet high, the pretty fruit, varying in size, pointedness, and downiness, being now generally turned brown, with light, converging meridional lines. Many leading shoots are perfectly bare of leaves, the effect of the frost, and on some bushes half the cups are empty, but these cups generally bear the marks of squirrels’ teeth, and probably but few acorns have fallen of themselves yet. However, they are just ready to fall, and if you bend back the peduncles on these bare and frost-touched shoots, you find them just ready to come off, separating at the base of the peduncle, and the peduncle remaining attached to the fruit. The squirrels, probably striped, must be very busy here nowadays. Though many twigs are bare, these clusters of brown fruit in their grayish-brown cups are unnoticed and almost invisible, unless you are looking for them, above the ground, which is strewn with their similarly colored leaves; i. e., this leaf-strewn earth has the same general gray and brown color with the twigs and fruit, and you may brush against great wreaths of fruit without noticing them. You press through dense groves full of this interesting fruit, each seeming prettier than the last. Now is the time for shrub oak acorns, then, if not for others. I see where the squirrels have left the shells on rocks and stumps. They take the acorn out of its cup on the bush, leaving the cup there with a piece bit out of its edge. The little beechnut burs are mostly empty, and the ground is strewn with the nuts mostly empty and abortive. Yet I pluck some apparently full grown with meat. This fruit is apparently now at its height.

1860

William Drew Robeson, a 15-year-old North Carolina slave, escaped into Pennsylvania. He would serve as a laborer for the Union Army.

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William Elliott was registered on the census as the owner of 103 slaves in St. Helena parish, and 114 in St. Paul parish.

As investment capital, the value of the nation’s slaves at this point far exceeded the cash value of all the farmlands in the South, equaling three times the cost of constructing all US railroads then in existence. Since 1800 the number of enslaved African-Americans had quadrupled, from one million to four.

A compendium of arguments was put together by a pro-slavery advocate in this year of the election that helped bring on the Civil War: COTTON IS KING, AND PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENTS / COMPRISING THE WRITINGS OF HAMMOND, HARPER, CHRISTY, STRINGFELLOW, HODGE, BLEDSOE, AND CARTWRIGHT, ON THIS IMPORTANT SUBJECT. Augusta, Georgia: Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis, 1860. The volume included the case of Dred Scott.

We note that the Dred Scott decision put the lie to states-rights doctrine, standing it on its head. Basically, the decision translated the proslavery structure of law from the level of particular state governments to the level of the national union in a transparent attempt to expand slavery from an institution “peculiar” to some jurisdictions into a national standard that could no longer be repudiated anywhere. An example of an antecedent opinion at the state level, two generations of human life before Scott, can be found in Ex Parte George, A Free Man of Colour (1 Georgia Reports Annotated, 80-93). In a lengthy argument in Chatham County Superior Court in 1806, the Attorney General of the State of Georgia had asserted that, “the constitution of this state ... was not made to establish the rights and liberties of slaves or free negroes; they are left at the disposal of the ordinary sovereignty.... [They] can derive no benefit from the constitution.” “The object and ends of fundamental laws are the organization of government, and the protection of the general rights of mankind. The slave is divested of all those rights, for which government is erected.... It obviously was the intention of the legislature [by the act of 1770] to place the free negroes upon the same footing with the slaves.” “Policy demands it of us, that no other privileges than those which flow from an imperfect state of freedom should be extended to persons of colour, or free negroes, than those enjoyed by slaves.... [A]s soon as distinctions are attempted to be made in these respects, the free negro or man of colour, will begin to feel a dignity of character, and to affect rights highly incompatible with that distance at which he ought to be kept.” Dred Scott took precedents of constitutional legal theory evolved for decades in proslavery state courts and incorporated this into the current interpretation of the federal Constitution.

We have quite forgotten, because in our post-Civil-War life experience, we remember that it was the Southerners who seceded, and we experience that it is now the Southerners who howl indignantly about their states’ rights. Before the Civil War, we must remind ourselves, it was people like Henry David Thoreau, in New England, who were the secessionists, and who were in favor of states’s rights.

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According to the Congressional Globe for the 1st session of the 36th Congress, Republican Congressman Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin quite agreed with his Democrat colleague, that the Negro citizen whether slave or free was very much out of place whenever and wherever he is in contact with the white citizen: Because he is so out of place, we propose keeping him out of the free Territories, and not allowing him, with his unpaid labor, to come in contact with white men and white labor. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

In accordance with this sentiment, that there ought in a well-ordered world be no contact whatever between white human beings and black human beings, the 9th plank of the Republican Party’s national platform vowed to bring US participation in the international slave trade finally to an end: We brand the recent re-opening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity, and a burning shame to our country and age, and we call upon congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.During this year the negrero Erie, carrying 897 slaves, was captured by a United States ship (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 36th Congress, 2d session I, Number 1, pages 41-4).

The negrero William, carrying 550 slaves, and the negrero Wildfire, carrying 507 slaves, were captured along the coast of Cuba (SENATE JOURNAL, 36th Congress, 1st session pages 478-80, 492, 543, etc.; SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 36th Congress, 1st session XI, Number 44; HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 36th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 83; 36th Congress, 2d session V, Number 11; HOUSE REPORTS, 36th Congress, 1st session IV, Number 602). W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;204 but, as Congress took no action, he at “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2201 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.205 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”206 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.207 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”208 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”209 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.210 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”211 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and 204. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 205. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 206. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 207. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 208. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 209. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 210. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 211. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 2202 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”212 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”213 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”214 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”215 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.216 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws 212. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 213. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 214. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 215. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 216. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2203 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”217 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”218 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;219 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”220 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”221 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”222 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slaveholding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”223 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.224 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.225 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”226 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.227 Finally, it must be noted

217. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 218. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 219. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 220. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 221. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 222. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 223. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 224. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 225. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 226. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 2204 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.228 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.229 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,230 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a 227. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 228. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 229. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2205 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international cooperation....231 W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The long and open agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, together with the fact that the South had been more or less familiar with violations of the laws since 1808, led to such a remarkable increase of illicit traffic and actual importations in the decade 1850-1860, that the movement may almost be termed a reopening of the slave-trade. In the foreign slave-trade our own officers continue to report “how shamefully our flag has been used;”232 and British officers write “that at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade is carried on under the American flag,” and this because “the number of American cruisers on the station is so small, in proportion to the immense extent of the slave-dealing coast.”233 The fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States, and centred at New York City. “Few of our readers,” writes a periodical of the day, “are aware of the extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years.”234 Another periodical says: “The number of persons engaged in the slave- trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.”235 During eighteen months of the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been fitted out in New York harbor,236 and these alone transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually.237 The United States deputy marshal of that district declared in 1856 that the business of fitting out slavers “was never prosecuted with greater energy than at present. The occasional interposition of

230. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 231. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. 232. Gregory to the Secretary of the Navy, June 8, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 2. Cf. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 2d session, II. No. 6. 233. Cumming to Commodore Fanshawe, Feb. 22, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 8. 234. New York Journal of Commerce, 1857; quoted in 24TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 56. 235. “The Slave-Trade in New York,” in the Continental Monthly, January, 1862, page 87. 236. New York Evening Post; quoted in Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733. 237. Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733; quoted from a New York paper. 2206 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the legal authorities exercises no apparent influence for its suppression. It is seldom that one or more vessels cannot be designated at the wharves, respecting which there is evidence that she is either in or has been concerned in the Traffic.”238 On the coast of Africa “it is a well-known fact that most of the Slave ships which visit the river are sent from New York and New Orleans.”239 The absence of United States war-ships at the Brazilian station enabled American smugglers to run in cargoes, in spite of the prohibitory law. One cargo of five hundred slaves was landed in 1852, and the Correio Mercantil regrets “that it was the flag of the United States which covered this act of piracy, sustained by citizens of that great nation.”240 When the Brazil trade declined, the illicit Cuban trade greatly increased, and the British consul reported: “Almost all the slave expeditions for some time past have been fitted out in the United States, chiefly at New York.”241

238. FRIENDS’ APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE COLOURED RACES (1858), Appendix, page 41; quoted from the Journal of Commerce. 239. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, pages 53-4; quoted from the African correspondent of the Boston Journal. From April, 1857, to May, 1858, twenty-one of twenty-two slavers which were seized by British cruisers proved to be American, from New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Cf. 25TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 122. De Bow estimated in 1856 that forty slavers cleared annually from Eastern harbors, clearing yearly $17,000,000: De Bow’s Review, XXII. 430-1. 240. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 33d Congress, 1st session, VIII. No. 47, page 13. 241. HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session, XII. No. 105, page 38. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2207 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Hinton Rowan Helper’s THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT, which had been published in 1857 in Baltimore, was republished in New-York (it having been found to be quite impossible to publish such material any longer out of Baltimore) with factual corrections as to the US economy (as if mere facts had anything to do with anything, in this contest of racial attitudes and orientations), and with (temporary) suppression of some of the more extreme of the pending consequences of this racist abolitionist attitude. This new 1860 edition was being published under the title COMPENDIUM OF THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE 242 SOUTH. BY HINTON ROWAN HELPER OF NORTH CAROLINA. The cost of publication was 16 cents the copy, and the book was expected to sell at 25 cents the copy. (Most copies would be distributed at cost.)

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The book expanded upon what we now have come to regard as a pleasant conceit –the idea that oppression actually is unprofitable to the oppressor– and favorably quoting Waldo Emerson among other of our nation’s

242. Hinton Rowan Helper. THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT. ENLARGED EDITION. New York, 1860. This book has been republished in Miami FL in 1969. His earlier book has been republished in Cambridge MA in 1968. For more on this guy and his not-all-that-novel conceit that the victims were victimizing him and needed to be trumped, see Bailey, Hugh C. HINTON ROWAN HELPER: ABOLITIONIST-RACIST (University AL: 1965).

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prime politicians and metaphysicians.

This Emerson-admirer was an egregious case of what you would term an Antislavery Racist. –Which is to say, he was a Southern white man, from North Carolina, who owned no slaves, whose fixation was that he and other white men like him were victims of society. It wasn’t the blacks who were being harmed by slavery, it was real decent folks like him who were being harmed by slavery. All these slaves, who belonged to other people, were impacting his life! He hated the nigger who was doing him wrong, he hated the slavemaster who was doing him wrong, what he needed most urgently was a lily-white, pure America of which he could be proud, an America where he could stand tall. Slavery was a tainted and archaic social system that was standing in the way of white people’s cultural and material progress. Blacks were a tainted and inferior group who had no business being here in our New World in the first place. His new book was pretty much of a piece with the masterpiece he had issued as of 1857, THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT. This author needed to ensure in his preface that his readers were going to understand, that it was no part of his abolitionist stance to display any special friendliness or sympathy for the blacks.

(OK, Hinton, fellow, I guess we’ve all grasped that now.)

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“History, among its many ironies, often places enemies in life into various positions of posthumous conjunction.” — Stephen Jay Gould Meanwhile, The National Democratic Quarterly Review in Washington DC was attempting to neutralize Helper’s racist abolitionism by issuing Louis Shade’s A BOOK FOR THE “IMPENDING CRISIS!” APPEAL TO THE COMMON SENSE AND PATRIOTISM OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. “HELPERISM” ANNIHILATED! THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Meanwhile, the South was attempting to neutralize Helperism by publication of Samuel M. Wolfe’s HINTON ROWAN HELPER’S IMPENDING CRISIS DISSECTED.

Meanwhile, an economist’s argument for holding the sections of the nation together was being offered by Thomas Prentice Kettell’s SOUTHERN WEALTH AND NORTHERN PROFITS AS EXHIBITED IN STATISTICAL FACTS AND OFFICIAL FIGURES: SHOWING THE NECESSITY OF UNION TO THE FUTURE PROSPERITY AND WELFARE OF THE REPUBLIC.

Adam Gurowski’s SLAVERY IN HISTORY (New York: Published by A.B. Burdick. 145 Nassau Street). SLAVERY IN HISTORY

“Blind Tom” played the White House.

The American Anti-Slavery Society of New-York put out a collection of anti-slavery tracts by Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Charles Calistus Burleigh, entitled NO SLAVE HUNTING IN THE OLD BAY STATE: AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE AND LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

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An 80-page pamphlet by Louis Schade (1829-1903), entitled A BOOK FOR THE “IMPENDING CRISIS!” / APPEAL TO THE COMMON SENSE AND PATRIOTISM OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES / “HELPERISM” ANNIHILATED! / THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES was published in the District of Columbia by the firm of Little, Morris. SLAVERY

Lysander Spooner’s THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY, originally issued in 1845-1846 in two parts, was republished in Boston as one volume.

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Thomas F. Cary died. Mary Ann Shadd Cary continued to work in Chatham in Canada West as a teacher, supporting her daughter Sarah. After her husband’s death she gave birth to a son, Linton. Her gazette The Provincial Freeman had to be closed due to lack of funds.

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In the largest expatriate movement in American history subsequent to the expulsion of Loyalists which had occurred at the end of the Revolutionary War, by this year it is likely that as many as 11,000 enslaved Americans had escaped to the relative safety of the soil of Canada.

At about this point Henry Thoreau made some entries in his 2d Commonplace Book out of the Canadian Geological Survey’s REPORT OF PROGRESS FOR 1853, 54, 55, AND 56 (Montreal, Toronto). PERUSE THIS REPORT

Henry Youle Hind’s NARRATIVE OF THE CANADIAN RED RIVER EXPLORING EXPEDITION OF 1857: AND OF THE ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPLORING EXPEDITION OF 1858 / BY HENRY YOULE HIND, M.A. F.R.G.S., PROFESSOR CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TRINITY COLLEGE, Toronto, IN CHARGE OF THE ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and

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Roberts; reprinted as 2volumes in 1, Edmonton, 1971) is a popular reworking of his two official accounts:

REPORT ON A TOPOGRAPHICAL & GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF THE CANOE ROUTE BETWEEN FORT WILLIAM, LAKE SUPERIOR, AND FORT GARRY, RED RIVER ... DURING THE SUMMER OF 1857 (Toronto, 1858) and NORTH- WEST TERRITORY: REPORTS OF PROGRESS; TOGETHER WITH A PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL REPORT ON THE

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ASSINIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPLORING EXPEDITION ... (Toronto, 1859). NARRATIVE OF EXPEDITIONS NARRATIVE OF EXPEDITIONS NARRATIVE OF EXPEDITIONS

Henry Youle Hind’s PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN AT LORD SELKIRK'S SETTLEMENT ON THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH, TO ILLUSTRATE A NARRATIVE OF THE CANADIAN EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS IN RUPERTS LAND. (London: J. Hogarth). The photographs were taken by Humphrey Lloyd Hime (1833-1903).

At this point there were 40 black slaves in the United States of America for every 15 as of 1808 when the further importation of slaves had been proscribed. Of 2,225,086 black women, 1,971,135 were being held in slavery (in San Francisco about 85% of Chinese women were prostitutes and, essentially, enslaved). In CALCULATING THE VALUE OF THE UNION: SLAVERY, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL WAR (U of North Carolina P, 2003), James L. Huston has calculated the value of all US slaves in 1860 to be $3,000,000,000, which would be between 15% and 20% of the “store of national wealth.” He has calculated the value of all American farm real estate and capital improvements in 1860 at $6,600,000,000.

As of 1790 the center of the human population of the USA had been a little town just about a day’s travel inland from Baltimore. By 1820 the center of population had relocated some 127 miles, as the result of a general westward expansion almost exactly along the 39th parallel, to an unimpressive glen the woods some 16 miles south of Woodstock VA: more than four miles per year. As of this period the center of population lay in a field 20 miles to the south of Chillicothe OH: about seven miles per year.

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(Nowadays, of course, we’ve all been coming from one or another center in Missouri.)

According to Paul A. David’s “The Growth of Real Product in the United States before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures” in the Journal of Economic History for June 1987, there have been three distinguishable episodes of economic growth between 1790 and 1860:

Likely Growth of US Real Product between 1800 and 1860 Per Capita Annual Per Output Capita Index Growth 1800 64.4 —% 1810 61.9 -0.4% 1820 67.6 0.9% 1830 84.0 2.2% 1840 100.0 1.8% 1850 110.4 1.0% 1860 137.0 2.2%

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The third of these growth spurts had begun in 1845, and the economy would continue to rise at a rate of 2.1% per annum right up until we would all get so preoccupied with other people being wrong that nobody would be “tending store” anymore. Then, of course, everything would go to hell and you might as well go off and kill, or go off and be killed.

We know, of course, who produces such wealth. Per Stanley Lebergott’s MANPOWER IN ECONOMIC GROWTH (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964):

Our US Labor Force During Thoreau’s Lifetime Free Slave Total Laborers Laborers Laborers Older Than Older Than Older Than 10 10 10 1800 1,370,000 530,000 1,900,000 1810 1,590,000 740,000 2,330,000 1820 2,185,000 950,000 3,135,000 1830 3,020,000 1,180,000 4,200,000 1840 4,180,000 1,480,000 5,660,000 1850 6,280,000 1,970,000 8,250,000 1860 8,770,000 2,340,000 11,110,000

It has been said that “[a]n outstanding characteristic of small arms manufacture is its high annual wages.” As of 1850 the average annual wage of the adult male US wage worker (excluding, of course, not only the indicated women and children but also the unmentioned enslaved and indentured persons) had been only around $250 while the average annual wage of the US arms worker had been at about $325, very substantially more. In the previous decade the disparity had become even more extreme, as the average wage had been rising from this $250 to $300, up about 20%, but meanwhile the average wage of the arms worker had been leaping from this $325 to $415, up like 27%. (We’d better go to war pretty quick or this isn’t going to be worthwhile.)

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The 8th national census. The slave states that would remain within the federal union had come to enslave only 13.5% of their population, while the slave states that would form the new confederacy were at this point enslaving 38.7% of their population. The %age of slaves in the border slave states had been gradually declining, while this had been meanwhile very slowly rising farther south:

% of Americans Enslaved

1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860

Union Slave States 27.5 24.5 22.9 22.5 21.9 19.3 16.5 13.5

States of Confederacy 35.3 35.3 37.1 37.7 38.1 38.4 38.6 38.7

Another difference, and one that has been given insufficient attention, is that free blacks were a much more significant percentage of the population in Union slave states in 1860 (4.0%) than in the Confederacy (1.5%). In some states the free black percentages were substantial enough that serious resistance by free blacks could have made a difference. Delaware, for example, in 1860 while it was still a slave state, had 17.7% of its black population as free.243

The US census showed 174, 620 people in Rhode Island. A few years earlier, in 1845, the French Canadian population of the state had been about 400. Between 1860 and 1910 at least 32, 000 French Canadians would enter the state. Central Falls would boast 18,000 French Canadians in 1895. By 1930, of Woonsocket’s 50,000 people at least 35,000 would be of French Canadian descent.

243. Cramer, Clayton E. BLACK DEMOGRAPHIC DATA, 1790-1860: A SOURCEBOOK, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. 2220 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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By 1910 the population of Germans in the state would grow to around 13,000.

When the Rhode Island Republican Party nominated an abolitionist, Seth Padelford, for governor, the party split. Supporters of other Republican aspirants and Republican moderates of the Lincoln variety joined with soft-on-slavery Democrats to elect a fusion “Conservative” candidate. They chose the heir to a vast cotton textile empire and a colonel in the Providence, Rhode Island, Marine Corps of Artillery, 29-year-old William Sprague of Cranston. When Sprague outpolled Padelford 12,278 to 10,740, the city of Savannah, Georgia fired off a one-hundred-gun salute in celebration of this grand victory for human enslavement.

Young Governor Sprague, when going from his office on Benefit Street to his home on the top of College Hill, rather than dismount at the steps on Meeting Street below Congdon Street, would urge his white horse up these steps full tilt.

As of 1790 the center of the human population of the USA had been a little town just about a day’s travel inland

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from Baltimore. By this period the center of population had relocated.

(Nowadays, of course, we’ve all been coming from one or another center in Missouri.)

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February 2: A South Carolina spokesperson for slavery and for secession explained the situation on the ground in the South, when he declared “I mistrust our own people more than I fear all the efforts of the Abolitionists.” He was referring to the threat represented by the attitude of Southern whites too poor to own slaves. If these people had been able to seize an occasion offered by a successful army of black fugitives armed with rifles and pikes after the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in order to act, in pogrom, against the institution of slavery that was harming them as well as the slave by interfering with their livelihoods, a genocide against all the unprotected black Americans of the South would most likely have ensued. As Peter Wallenstein has succinctly explained the political situation in the South: Even if a successful attack by nonslaveholding whites against slavery appeared improbable at the voting booths or in the legislatures, other kinds of threats could not be so readily dismissed. Some whites disliked slavery out of a sense of companionship, or for religious or other reasons. Some disliked it because it drove down their own pay and limited rather than fostered their prospects; some who might have supported slavery turned against it when their chances of becoming slaveholders themselves seemed to fade. For some whites in the South, in short, slavery was a threat or an abomination, whether because of what it did to whites or because of what it did to blacks. Proslavery forces would do what they could to cow or cajole fellow whites into following their lead.

(Actually, I offer that Wallenstein has not here adequately represented the position of the white people for whom it was distressing that any of these inferior people of color were present on the soil of the New World, who were abolitionists because they desired that all members of the black race be either elsewhere, or dead, and who considered that whichever one of those two options was implemented didn’t much matter to them. This was certainly a prevalent attitude in the North —as indicated by Waldo Emerson’s reference on May 1, 1859 to Americans of color as “putrid Black Vomit,” which is to say, as a disease –“black vomit” was one of the names used in this period for the dreaded deadly “yellow fever”– and I would have supposed it would have been at least as prevalent in the South.)244 RACE POLITICS

March 6: Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln spoke on slavery in New Haven, Connecticut. In the course of this speech, always eager to display his humble roots to the American voters, the tall candidate posed a rhetorical question “What is the true condition of the laborer?” which enabled him to indulge in this penchant: “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.” Maybe he was merely someone else’s hired laborer “this year” but he could look forward to being his own boss “the next” and, eventually, due to our remarkable system of initiative, obtain persons of lesser initiative “to work for him.” This pyramid scheme the goal of which is alienating oneself from labor he presented as “the true system” for the generation of wealth. For, whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us - and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere - all of us wish this question settled - wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet 244. Upon the secession of South Carolina from the federal union, William Elliott, who up to that point had been a political opponent of nullification, would opt to side with the Confederacy. He had been an opponent of secession only because he was fearful that the economy of the South would be inadequate to sustain independence — his had never been a principled opposition to secession, for he had never had the slightest qualm about race slavery, believing that the South’s peculiar institution was “sanctioned by religion, conducive to good morals, and useful, nay indispensable.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2223 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority, are able to accomplish the common object.... If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought Slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

March 6. 3 P. M. 44°. Fair and springlike, i. e. rather still for March, with some raw wind. Pleasant in sun. Going by Messer’s, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. They are more fearless than the song sparrow. These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner. The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter. Mr. Stacy tells me that the flies buzzed about him as he was splitting wood in his yard to-day. I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window. Jonas Melvin says he saw hundreds of “speckled” turtles out on the banks to-day in a voyage to Billerica for musquash. Also saw gulls. Sheldrakes and black ducks are the only ones he has seen this year. They are fishing on Flint’s Pond to-day, but find it hard to get on and off. C. hears the nuthatch. Jonas Melvin says that he shot a sheldrake in the river late last December. A still and mild moonlight night and people walking about the streets.

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March 8: Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln delivered, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, the standard stump speech

about American slavery being contrary to the spirit of our Declaration of Independence that he had already delivered on March 6th in New Haven and on March 7th in Meriden, Connecticut and would go on to deliver without significant changes on March 9th in Norwich and on March 10th in Bridgeport CT. According to the New Haven Daily Palladium for March 7th, this was the gist of it: MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF [INSERT TOWN HERE]: If the Republican party of this nation shall ever have the national house entrusted to its keeping, it will be the duty of that party to attend to all the affairs of national house-keeping. Whatever matters of importance may come up, whatever difficulties may arise in the way of its administration of the government, that party will then have to attend to. It will then be compelled to attend to other questions, besides this question which now assumes an overwhelming importance — the question of Slavery. It is true that in the organization of the Republican party this question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present. The old question of tariff — a matter that will remain one of the chief affairs of national housekeeping to all time — the question of the management of financial affairs; the question of the disposition of the public domain — how shall it be managed for the purpose of getting it well settled, and of making there the homes of a free and happy people — these will remain open and require attention for a great while yet, and these questions will have to be attended to by whatever party has the control of the government. Yet, just now, they cannot even obtain a hearing, and I do not purpose to detain you upon these topics, or what sort of hearing they should have when opportunity shall come. For, whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us — and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere — all of us wish this question settled — wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority, are able to accomplish the common object. In the beginning of the year 1854 a new policy was inaugurated with the avowed object

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and confident promise that it would entirely and forever put an end to the Slavery agitation. It was again and again declared that under this policy, when once successfully established, the country would be forever rid of this whole question. Yet under the operation of that policy this agitation has not only not ceased, but it has been constantly augmented. And this too, although, from the day of its introduction, its friends, who promised that it would wholly end all agitation, constantly insisted, down to the time that the Lecompton bill was introduced, that it was working admirably, and that its inevitable tendency was to remove the question forever from the politics of the country. Can you call to mind any Democratic speech, made after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, down to the time of the Lecompton bill, in which it was not predicted that the Slavery agitation was just at an end; that “the abolition excitement was played out,” “the Kansas question was dead,” “they have made the most they can out of this question and it is now forever settled.” But since the Lecompton bill no Democrat, within my experience, has ever pretended that he could see the end. That cry has been dropped. They themselves do not pretend, now, that the agitation of this subject has come to an end yet. [Applause.] The truth is, that this question is one of national importance, and we cannot help dealing with it: we must do something about it, whether we will or not. We cannot avoid it; the subject is one we cannot avoid considering; we can no more avoid it than a man can live without eating. It is upon us; it attaches to the body politic as much and as closely as the natural wants attach to our natural bodies. Now I think it important that this matter should be taken up in earnest, and really settled. And one way to bring about a true settlement of the question is to understand its true magnitude. There have been many efforts to settle it. Again and again it has been fondly hoped that it was settled, but every time it breaks out afresh, and more violently than ever. It was settled, our fathers hoped, by the Missouri Compromise, but it did not stay settled. Then the compromises of 1850 were declared to be a full and final settlement of the question. The two great parties, each in National Convention, adopted resolutions declaring that the settlement made by the Compromise of 1850 was a finality — that it would last forever. Yet how long before it was unsettled again! It broke out again in 1854, and blazed higher and raged more furiously than ever before, and the agitation has not rested since. These repeated settlements must have some fault about them. There must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose for which they were designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault — that inadequacy, is, but we may perhaps profit by past experience. I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question. They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores — plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary — so evanescent. [Applause.] Look at the magnitude of this subject! One sixth of our population, in round numbers — not quite one sixth, and yet more than a seventh, — about one sixth of the whole population of the United States are slaves! The owners of these slaves consider them property. The effect upon the minds of the owners is that of property, and nothing else — it induces them to insist upon all that will favorably affect its value as property, to demand laws and institutions and a public policy that shall increase and secure its value, and make it durable, lasting and universal. The effect on the minds of the owners is to persuade them that there is no wrong in it. The slaveholder does not like to be considered a mean fellow, for holding that species of property, and hence he has to struggle within himself and sets about arguing himself into the belief that Slavery is right. The property influences his mind. The dissenting minister, who argued some theological point with one of the established church, was always met by the reply, “I can’t see it so.” He opened the Bible, and pointed him to a passage, but the orthodox minister replied, “I can’t see it so.” Then he showed him a single word — “Can you see 2226 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that?” “Yes, I see it,” was the reply. The dissenter laid a guinea over the word and asked, “Do you see it now?” [Great laughter.] So here. Whether the owners of this species of property do really see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they do, they see it as it is through 2,000,000,000 of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating. [Laughter.] Certain it is, that they do not see it as we see it. Certain it is, that this two thousand million of dollars, invested in this species of property, all so concentrated that the mind can grasp it at once — this immense pecuniary interest, has its influence upon their minds. But here in Connecticut and at the North Slavery does not exist, and we see it through no such medium. To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. [Applause.] I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. [Continued applause.] We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong. Now these two ideas, the property idea that Slavery is right, and the idea that it is wrong, come into collision, and do actually produce that irrepressible conflict which Mr. Seward has been so roundly abused for mentioning. The two ideas conflict, and must conflict. Again, in its political aspect, does anything in any way endanger the perpetuity of this Union but that single thing, Slavery? Many of our adversaries are anxious to claim that they are specially devoted to the Union, and take pains to charge upon us hostility to the Union. Now we claim that we are the only true Union men, and we put to them this one proposition: What ever endangered this Union, save and except Slavery? Did any other thing ever cause a moment’s fear? All men must agree that this thing alone has ever endangered the perpetuity of the Union. But if it was threatened by any other influence, would not all men say that the best thing that could be done, if we could not or ought not to destroy it, would be at least to keep it from growing any larger? Can any man believe that the way to save the Union is to extend and increase the only thing that threatens the Union, and to suffer it to grow bigger and bigger? [Great applause.] Whenever this question shall be settled, it must be settled on some philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained. And hence, there are but two policies in regard to Slavery that can be at all maintained. The first, based on the property view that Slavery is right, conforms to that idea throughout, and demands that we shall do everything for it that we ought to do if it were right. We must sweep away all opposition, for opposition to the right is wrong; we must agree that Slavery is right, and we must adopt the idea that property has persuaded the owner to believe — that Slavery is morally right and socially elevating. This gives a philosophical basis for a permanent policy of encouragement. The other policy is one that squares with the idea that Slavery is wrong, and it consists in doing everything that we ought to do if it is wrong. Now, I don’t wish to be misunderstood, nor to leave a gap down to be misrepresented, even. I don’t mean that we ought to attack it where it exists. To me it seems that if we were to form a government anew, in view of the actual presence of Slavery we should find it necessary to frame just such a government as our fathers did; giving to the slaveholder the entire control where the system was established, while we possessed the power to “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2227 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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restrain it from going outside those limits. [Applause.] From the necessities of the case we should be compelled to form just such a government as our blessed fathers gave us; and, surely, if they have so made it, that adds another reason why we should let Slavery alone where it exists. If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. [Laughter.] I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. [Applause.] Much more, if I found it in bed with my neighbor’s children, and I had bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. [Great laughter.] But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide! [Prolonged applause and cheers.] That is just the case! The new Territories are the newly made bed to which our children are to go, and it lies with the nation to say whether they shall have snakes mixed up with them or not. It does not seem as if there could be much hesitation what our policy should be! [Applause.] Now I have spoken of a policy based on the idea that Slavery is wrong, and a policy based upon the idea that it is right. But an effort has been made for a policy that shall treat it as neither right or wrong. It is based upon utter indifference. Its leading advocate has said “I don’t care whether it be voted up or down.” [Laughter.] “It is merely a matter of dollars and cents.” “The Almighty has drawn a line across this continent, on one side of which all soil must forever be cultivated by slave labor, and on the other by free;” “when the struggle is between the white man and the negro, I am for the white man; when it is between the negro and the crocodile, I am for the negro.” Its central idea is indifference. It holds that it makes no more difference to us whether the Territories become free or slave States, than whether my neighbor stocks his farm with horned cattle or puts it into tobacco. All recognize this policy, the plausible sugar-coated name of which is “popular sovereignty.” [Laughter.] This policy chiefly stands in the way of a permanent settlement of the question. I believe there is no danger of its becoming the permanent policy of the country, for it is based on a public indifference. There is nobody that “don’t care.” ALL THE PEOPLE DO CARE! one way or the other. [Great applause.] I do not charge that its author, when he says he “don’t care,” states his individual opinion; he only expresses his policy for the government. I understand that he has never said, as an individual, whether he thought Slavery right or wrong — and he is the only man in the nation that has not! Now such a policy may have a temporary run; it may spring up as necessary to the political prospects of some gentleman; but it is utterly baseless; the people are not indifferent; and it can therefore have no durability or permanence. But suppose it could! Then it could be maintained only by a public opinion that shall say “we don’t care.” There must be a change in public opinion, the public mind must be so far debauched as to square with this policy of caring not at all. The people must come to consider this as “merely a question of dollars and cents,” and to believe that in some places the Almighty has made Slavery necessarily eternal. This policy can be brought to prevail if the people can be brought round to say honestly “we don’t care;” if not, it can never be maintained. It is for you to say whether that can be done. [Applause.] You are ready to say it cannot, but be not too fast! Remember what a long stride has been taken since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Do you know of any Democrat, of either branch of the party — do you know one who declares that he believes that the Declaration of Independence has any application to the negro? Judge Taney declares that it has not, and Judge Douglas even vilifies me personally and scolds me roundly for saying that the Declaration applies to all men, and that negroes are men. [Cheers.] Is there a Democrat here who does not deny that the Declaration applies to a negro? Do any of you know of one? Well, I have tried before 2228 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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perhaps fifty audiences, some larger and some smaller than this, to find one such Democrat, and never yet have I found one who said I did not place him right in that. I must assume that Democrats hold that, and now, not one of these Democrats can show that he said that five years ago! [Applause.] I venture to defy the whole party to produce one man that ever uttered the belief that the Declaration did not apply to negroes, before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise! Four or five years ago we all thought negroes were men, and that when “all men” were named, negroes were included. But the whole Democratic party has deliberately taken negroes from the class of men and put them in the class of brutes. [Applause.] Turn it as you will, it is simply the truth! Don’t be too hasty then in saying that the people cannot be brought to this new doctrine, but note that long stride. One more as long completes the journey, from where negroes are estimated as men to where they are estimated as mere brutes — as rightful property! That saying, “in the struggle between the white man and the negro,” &c., which I know came from the same source as this policy — that saying marks another step. There is a falsehood wrapped up in that statement. “In the struggle between the white man and the negro” assumes that there is a struggle, in which either the white man must enslave the negro or the negro must enslave the white. There is no such struggle! It is merely an ingenious falsehood, to degrade and brutalize the negro. Let each let the other alone, and there is no struggle about it. If it was like two wrecked seamen on a narrow plank, when each must push the other off or drown himself, I would push the negro off or a white man either, but it is not; the plank is large enough for both. [Applause.] This good earth is plenty broad enough for white man and negro both, and there is no need of either pushing the other off. [Continued applause.] So that saying, “in the struggle between the negro and the crocodile,” &c., is made up from the idea that down where the crocodile inhabits a white man can’t labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile inhabits a white man can’t labor; it must be nothing else but crocodile or negro; if the negro does not the crocodile must possess the earth; [laughter;] in that case he declares for the negro. The meaning of the whole is just this: As a white man is to a negro, so is a negro to a crocodile; and as the negro may rightfully treat the crocodile, so may the white man rightfully treat the negro. This very dear phrase coined by its author, and so dear that he deliberately repeats it in many speeches, has a tendency to still further brutalize the negro, and to bring public opinion to the point of utter indifference whether men so brutalized are enslaved or not. When that time shall come, if ever, I think that policy to which I refer may prevail. But I hope the good freemen of this country will never allow it to come, and until then the policy can never be maintained. Now consider the effect of this policy. We in the States are not to care whether Freedom or Slavery gets the better, but the people in the Territories may care. They are to decide, and they may think what they please; it is a matter of dollars and cents! But are not the people of the Territories detailed from the States? If this feeling of indifference — this absence of moral sense about the question — prevails in the States, will it not be carried into the Territories? Will not every man say, “I don’t care, it is nothing to me?” If any one comes that wants Slavery, must they not say, “I don’t care whether Freedom or Slavery be voted up or voted down?” It results at last in naturalizing [the word Lincoln spoke was more likely to have been “nationalizing”] the institution of Slavery. Even if fairly carried out, that policy is just as certain to naturalize [again, “nationalize”] Slavery as the doctrine of Jeff Davis himself. These are only two roads to the same goal, and “popular sovereignty” is just as sure and almost as short as the other. [Applause.] What we want, and all we want, is to have with us the men who think slavery wrong. But those who say they hate slavery, and are opposed to it, but yet act with the Democratic party — where are they? Let us apply a few tests. You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2229 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? [Laughter.] You will not let us do a single thing as if it was wrong; where is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States, because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion; we must not bring it into the Tract Society or the other societies, because those are such unsuitable places, and there is no single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong! [Continued laughter and applause.] Perhaps you will plead that if the people of Slave States should themselves set on foot an effort for emancipation, you would wish them success, and bid them God-speed. Let us test that! In 1858, the emancipation party of Missouri, with Frank Blair at their head, tried to get up a movement for that purpose, and having started a party contested the State. Blair was beaten, apparently if not truly, and when the news came to Connecticut, you, who knew that Frank Blair was taking hold of this thing by the right end, and doing the only thing that you say can properly be done to remove this wrong — did you bow your heads in sorrow because of that defeat? Do you, any of you, know one single Democrat that showed sorrow over that result? Not one! On the contrary every man threw up his hat, and hallooed at the top of his lungs, “hooray for Democracy!” [Great laughter and applause.] Now, gentlemen, the Republicans desire to place this great question of slavery on the very basis on which our fathers placed it, and no other. [Applause.] It is easy to demonstrate that “our Fathers, who framed this government under which we live,” looked on Slavery as wrong, and so framed it and everything about it as to square with the idea that it was wrong, so far as the necessities arising from its existence permitted. In forming the Constitution they found the slave trade existing; capital invested in it; fields depending upon it for labor, and the whole system resting upon the importation of slave-labor. They therefore did not prohibit the slave trade at once, but they gave the power to prohibit it after twenty years. Why was this? What other foreign trade did they treat in that way? Would they have done this if they had not thought slavery wrong? Another thing was done by some of the same men who framed the Constitution, and afterwards adopted as their own act by the first Congress held under that Constitution, of which many of the framers were members; they prohibited the spread of Slavery into Territories. Thus the same men, the framers of the Constitution, cut off the supply and prohibited the spread of Slavery, and both acts show conclusively that they considered that the thing was wrong. If additional proof is wanting it can be found in the phraseology of the Constitution. When men are framing a supreme law and chart of government, to secure blessings and prosperity to untold generations yet to come, they use language as short and direct and plain as can be found, to express their meaning. In all matters but this of Slavery the framers of the Constitution used the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language. But the Constitution alludes to Slavery three times without mentioning it once! The language used becomes ambiguous, roundabout, and mystical. They speak of the “immigration of persons,” and mean the importation of slaves, but do not say so. In establishing a basis of representation they say “all other persons,” when they mean to say slaves — why did they not use the shortest phrase? In providing for the return of fugitives they say “persons held to service or labor.” If they had said slaves it would have been plainer, and less liable to misconstruction. Why didn’t they do it? We cannot doubt that it was done on purpose. Only one reason is possible, and that is supplied us by one of the framers of the Constitution — and it is not possible for man to conceive of any other — they expected and desired that the system would come to an end, and meant that when it did, the Constitution should not show that there ever had been a slave in this good free country of ours! [Great applause.] I will dwell on that no longer. I see the signs of the approaching triumph of the 2230 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Republicans in the bearing of their political adversaries. A great deal of their war with us now-a-days is mere bushwhacking. [Laughter.] At the battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon’s cavalry had charged again and again upon the unbroken squares of British infantry, at last they were giving up the attempt, and going off in disorder, when some of the officers in mere vexation and complete despair fired their pistols at those solid squares. The Democrats are in that sort of extreme desperation; it is nothing else. [Laughter.] I will take up a few of these arguments. There is “THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT.” [Applause.] How they rail at Seward for that saying! They repeat it constantly; and although the proof has been thrust under their noses again and again, that almost every good man since the formation of our government has uttered that same sentiment, from Gen. Washington, who “trusted that we should yet have a confederacy of Free States,” with Jefferson, Jay, Monroe, down to the latest days, yet they refuse to notice that at all, and persist in railing at Seward for saying it. Even Roger A. Pryor, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, uttered the same sentiment in almost the same language, and yet so little offence did it give the Democrats that he was sent for to Washington to edit the States — the Douglas organ there, while Douglas goes into hydrophobia and spasms of rage because Seward dared to repeat it. [Great applause.] This is what I call bushwhacking, a sort of argument that they must know any child can see through. Another is JOHN BROWN! [Great laughter.] You stir up insurrections, you invade the South! John Brown! Harper’s Ferry! Why, John Brown was not a Republican! You have never implicated a single Republican in that Harper’s Ferry enterprise. We tell you that if any member of the Republican party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable not to designate man and prove the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable to assert it, and especially to persist in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair; but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrines, and make no declarations, which were not held to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live, and we cannot see how declarations that were patriotic when they made them are villainous when we make them. You never dealt fairly by us in relation to that affair — and I will say frankly that I know of nothing in your character that should lead us to suppose that you would. You had just been soundly thrashed in elections in several States, and others were soon to come. You rejoiced at the occasion, and only were troubled that there were not three times as many killed in the affair. You were in evident glee — there was no sorrow for the killed nor for the peace of Virginia disturbed — you were rejoicing that by charging Republicans with this thing you might get an advantage of us in New York, and the other States. You pulled that string as tightly as you could, but your very generous and worthy expectations were not quite fulfilled. [Laughter.] Each Republican knew that the charge was a slander as to himself at least, and was not inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. It was mere bushwhacking, because you had nothing else to do. You are still on that track, and I say, go on! If you think you can slander a woman into loving you or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied! [Tremendous applause.] Another specimen of this bushwhacking, that “shoe strike.” [Laughter.] Now be it understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter. I am merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases. And at the outset, I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers CAN strike when they want to [Cheers,] where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! [Cheers.] I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere. [Tremendous applause.] One of the reasons why I am opposed to Slavery is just here. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2231 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. [Applause.] When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat — just what might happen to any poor man’s son! [Applause.] I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition — when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system. Up here in New England, you have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, and yet where will you find wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity? There is not another such place on earth! [Cheers.] I desire that if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may not be degraded, nor have your family corrupted by forced rivalry with negro slaves. I want you to have a clean bed, and no snakes in it! [Cheers.] Then you can better your condition, and so it may go on and on in one ceaseless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth! [Prolonged applause.] Now, to come back to this shoe strike, — if, as the Senator from Illinois asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes, consider briefly how you will meet the difficulty. You have done nothing, and have protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South. And yet, to get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something that you are now doing. What is it? You must stop thinking slavery wrong! Let your institutions be wholly changed; let your State Constitutions be subverted, glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade — for what? You have brought owned labor with it to compete with your own labor, to under work you, and to degrade you! Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms? But the statement is not correct. You have not lost that trade; orders were never better than now! Senator Mason, a Democrat, comes into the Senate in homespun, a proof that the dissolution of the Union has actually begun! but orders are the same. Your factories have not struck work, neither those where they make anything for coats, nor for pants, nor for shirts, nor for ladies’ dresses. Mr. Mason has not reached the manufacturers who ought to have made him a coat and pants! To make his proof good for anything he should have come into the Senate barefoot! (Great laughter.) Another bushwhacking contrivance; simply that, nothing else! I find a good many people who are very much concerned about the loss of Southern trade. Now either these people are sincere or they are not. (Laughter.) I will speculate a little about that. If they are sincere, and are moved by any real danger of the loss of Southern trade, they will simply get their names on the white list,245 and then, instead of persuading Republicans to do likewise, they will be glad to keep you away! Don’t you see they thus shut off competition? They would not be whispering around to Republicans to come in and share the profits with them. But if they are not sincere, and are merely trying to fool Republicans out of their votes, they will grow very anxious about your pecuniary prospects; they are afraid you are going to get broken up and ruined; they did not care about Democratic votes — Oh no, no, no! You must judge which class those belong to whom you meet; I leave it to you to determine from the facts. Let us notice some more of the stale charges against Republicans. You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You 245. Abraham Lincoln was referring to a movement on the part of certain business interests to help along the Southern boycott of antislavery New England manufactures by preparing a list of “white” (which is to say, proslavery Democrats, whom it would be politically correct to patronize) rather than “black” (which is to say, opposed to human slavery, firms which would be politically incorrect to patronize) New England manufacturing concerns. 2232 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section — gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. [Applause.] The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started — to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe that the principle which our fathers who framed the Government under which we live thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s consideration. Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of Slavery in the northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of Government upon that subject, up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should some time have a confederacy of Free States. Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it. [Applause.] But you say you are conservative — eminently conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You have considerable variety of new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the Judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rin-ciple” that “if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically called “Popular Sovereignty;” [great laughter,] but never a man among you in favor of Federal prohibition of Slavery in Federal Territories, according to the practice of our fathers who framed the Government under which we live. Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. And yet you draw yourselves up and say “We are eminently conservative!” [Great laughter.] It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2233 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them? Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation. The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. [Applause.] This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them, from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only; cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas’s new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that Slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State Constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of all taint of opposition to Slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. So long as we call Slavery wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that he ran because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off. Whenever a master cuts his slaves with the lash, and they cry out under it, he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist. [Great laughter.] I am quite aware that they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about Slavery.” But we do let them alone — have never disturbed them — so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of Slavery, with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding as they do, that Slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlargement. All they ask, we could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as 2234 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think Slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man — such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care — such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance — such as invocations of Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.

March 8. 2.30 P. M.—50°. To Cliffs and Walden. See a small flock of grackles on the willow-row above railroad bridge. How they sit and make a business of chattering! for it cannot be called singing, and no improvement from age to age perhaps. Yet, as nature is a becoming, their notes may become melodious at last. At length, on my very near approach, they flit suspiciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as they hurry off. This is the first flock of blackbirds I have chanced to see, though Channing saw one the 6th. I suspect that I have seen only grackles as yet. I saw, in Monroe’s well by the edge of the river, the other day, a dozen frogs, chiefly shad frogs, which had been dead a good while. It may be that they get into that sort of spring-hole in the fall to hibernate, but for some reason die; or perhaps they are always jumping into it in the summer, but at that season are devoured by some animal before they infest the water. Now and for some days I see farmers walking about their fields, knocking to pieces and distributing the cow- dung left there in the fall, that so, with the aid of the spring rains, they fertilize a larger surface and more equally. To say nothing of fungi, lichens, mosses, and other cryptogamous plants, you cannot say that vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in this latitude; for there is grass in some warm exposures and in springy places, always growing more or less, and willow catkins expanding and peeping out a little further every warm day from the very beginning of winter, and the skunk-cabbage buds being developed and actually flowering sometimes in the winter, and the sap flowing [IN] the maples in midwinter in some days, perhaps some cress growing a little (?), certainly some pads, and various naturalized garden weeds steadily growing if not blooming, and apple buds sometimes expanding. Thus much of vegetable life or motion or growth is to be detected every winter. There is something of spring in all seasons. There is a large class which is evergreen in its radical leaves, which make such a show as soon as the snow goes off that many take them to be new growth of the spring. At the pool on the south side of Hubbard’s Grove, I notice that the crowfoot, i. e. buttercup, leaves which are at the bottom of the water stand up and are much more advanced than those two feet off in the air, for there they receive warmth from the sun, while they are sheltered from cold winds. Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun from the cold of the wind and observe that the cold does not pervade all places, but being due to strong northwest winds, if we get into some sunny and sheltered nook where they do not penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is elsewhere. In some respects our spring, in its beginning, fluctuates a whole month, so far as it respects ice and snow, walking, sleighing, etc., etc.; for some years winter may be said to end about the first of March, and other years it may extend into April. That willow-clump by railroad at Walden looks really silvery. I see there that moles have worked for several days. There are several piles on the grass, some quite fresh and some made before the last rain. One is as wide as a bushel-basket and six inches high; contains a peck at least. When I carefully remove this dirt, I cannot see, and can scarcely detect by feeling, any looseness in the sod beneath where the mole came to the surface and discharged all this dirt. I do feel it, to be sure, but it is scarcely

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perceptible to my fingers. The mole must have filled up this doorway very densely with earth, perhaps for its protection. Those small green balls in the Pout’s-Nest—and in the river, etc.—are evidently the buds by which the Utricularia vulgaris are propagated. I find them attached to the root as well as adrift. I noticed a very curious phenomenon in this pond. It is melted for two or three rods around the open side, and in many places partly filled with a very slender thread-like spike-rush (apparently Eleocharis tenuis?) which is matted more or less horizontally and floating, and is much bleached, being killed. In this fine matting I noticed perfectly straight or even cuts a rod or more in length, just as if one had severed this mass of fine rush as it lay [?] with some exceeding sharp instrument. However, you could not do it with a scythe, though you might with scissors, if it were ruled. It is as if you were to cover a floor with very fine flaccid grass and tread it to one inch in thickness, and then cut this web straight across. The fact is, this floating matting (it also rests partly on soft mud) was not cut at all, but pulled apart on a straight line, producing the exact appearance of a cut, as if you were to pull a piece of felt apart by a force on each side and yet leave the edge as straight as if it had been cut. It had been frozen in, and when the ice cracked it was in an instant thus pulled apart, without further disturbing the relative position of the fibres. I first conjectured this, and then saw the evidence of it, for, glancing my eye along such a cut, which ran at right angles with the shore, I saw that it exactly corresponded at its termination to an old crack in the ice which was still unmelted and which continued its course exactly. This in the ice had been filled and cemented so as to look like a white seam. Would this account for such a crack being continued into the meadow itself, as I have noticed? I meet some Indians just camped on Brister’s Hill. As usual, they are chiefly concerned to find where black ash grows, for their baskets. This is what they set about to ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange neighborhood.

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April: The 500-ton Erie, a negrero unquestionably registered in the United States of America, cleared Havana harbor unquestionably under the command of Captain Nathaniel Gordon, who was unquestionably a US citizen as he had been born and bred in the state of Maine.246 THE MIDDLE PASSAGE RACE SLAVERY

246. Well, there is this one nagging historical question: was this Captain Nathaniel Gordon the son of another Captain Nathaniel Gordon, who had previously been convicted of engaging in the international slave trade — and who had not been required to pay the death penalty? “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2237 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here is a picture of Captain Gordon’s pretty home in Maine, which although it was paid for of course in blood, does not seem to have been painted red:

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Early in December 1856, the subject reached Congress; and although the agitation was then new, fifty-seven Southern Congressmen refused to declare a re-opening of the slave-trade “shocking to the moral sentiment of the enlightened portion of mankind,” and eight refused to call the reopening even “unwise” and “inexpedient.”247 Three years later, January 31, 1859, it was impossible, in a House of one hundred and ninety-nine members, to get a two-thirds vote in order even to consider Kilgore’s resolutions, which declared “that no legislation can be too thorough in its measures, nor can any penalty known to the catalogue of modern punishment for crime be too severe against a traffic so inhuman and unchristian.”248 Congressmen and other prominent men hastened with the rising tide.249 Dowdell of Alabama declared the repressive acts “highly offensive;” J.B. Clay of Kentucky was “opposed to all these laws;”250 Seward of Georgia declared them “wrong, and a violation of the Constitution;”251 Barksdale of Mississippi agreed with this sentiment; Crawford of Georgia threatened a reopening of the trade; Miles of South Carolina was for “sweeping away” all restrictions;252 Keitt of South Carolina wished to withdraw the African squadron, and to cease to brand slave-trading as piracy;253 Brown of Mississippi “would repeal the law 247. HOUSE JOURNAL, 34th Congress, 3d session, pages 105-10; CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 34th Congress, 3d session, pages 123-6; Cluskey, POLITICAL TEXT-BOOK (14th edition), page 589. 248. HOUSE JOURNAL, 35th Congress, 2d session, pages 298-9. Cf. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 45. 249. Cf. REPORTS OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, especially the 26th, pages 43-4. 250. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 43. He referred especially to the Treaty of 1842. 251. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 43; CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 35th Congress, 2d session, Appendix, pages 248-50. 252. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 44. 2238 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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instantly;”254 Alexander Stephens, in his farewell address to his constituents, said: “Slave states cannot be made without Africans.... [My object is] to bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of African slaves from abroad, you may not expect or look for many more slave States.”255 Jefferson Davis strongly denied “any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinfulness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi,” said he, “not of the African, dictates my conclusion.” He opposed the immediate reopening of the trade in Mississippi for fear of a paralyzing influx of Negroes, but carefully added: “This conclusion, in relation to Mississippi, is based upon my view of her present condition, not upon any general theory. It is not supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any future acquisitions to be made south of the Rio Grande.”256 John Forsyth, who for seven years conducted the slave-trade diplomacy of the nation, declared, about 1860: “But one stronghold of its [i.e., slavery’s] enemies remains to be carried, to complete its triumph and assure its welfare, — that is the existing 257 prohibition of the African Slave-trade.” Pollard, in his BLACK DIAMONDS, urged the importation of Africans as “laborers.” “This I grant you,” said he, “would be practically the re-opening of the African slave trade; but ... you will find that it very often becomes necessary to evade the letter of the law, in some of the greatest measures of social happiness and patriotism.”258

July or August: Harriet Ann Jacobs, who had escaped from slavery in 1842, approached Lydia Maria Child to discuss the possibilities of publication of her manuscript INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL. Lydia agreed to edit the work and was instrumental in securing a publication contract from Thayer & Eldridge. Jacobs and Child began a friendship that would endure for the rest of their lives. (This publisher, however, folded.)

253. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 44; 27TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, pages 13-4. 254. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 44. 255. Quoted in Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733; Cairnes, THE SLAVE POWER (New York, 1862), page 123, note; 27TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 15. 256. Quoted in Cairnes, THE SLAVE POWER, page 123, note; 27TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 19. 257. 27TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 16; quoted from the Mobile Register. 258. Edition of 1859, pages 63-4. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2239 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 7, Tuesday: At the River Congo, a cargo of 900 enslaved Africans was taken on board the Erie, the entire operation requiring but 45 minutes. As the people came over the side, if they were wearing anything Captain Nathaniel Gordon would cut it off and toss it overboard. Several of the crew would testify at the trial that it was Gordon who had engaged them, under false pretenses, and that when they found they were on a negrero he had promised them each $1 for every person delivered alive.259

Mr. Don’t Get Caught

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August 8, Wednesday, morning: Captain Nathaniel Gordon’s Erie, a 500-ton negrero flying the American flag about 50 miles off the coast of West Africa, had a shot fired across her bow by the crew of the Mohican, an American steam warship, and was boarded and found to contain a cargo of 897 enslaved black males and females ranging from the age of six months to forty years. About half were children, and about half were female. During the following 15 days at sea, 29 more would die and be thrown overboard before the survivors could be offloaded by the US Navy and discarded at Monrovia. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

Upon the return of the USS Mohican to the United States of America, there being no good reason to do otherwise, the vessel would come to port in a northern port, the port of New-York. (This mundane fact would be the cause of Captain Gordon’s death by hanging, would be the final nail in his coffin — it is the only such

259. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New-York during August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2241 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sad incident in US history.)

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August 10: In the Mozambique Channel, the Sunny South, a negrero (right), was captured by the war steamer HMS Brisk (left). On board was discovered a cargo of 702 enslaved Africans:

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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October: A Rhode Island “Copperhead” sympathizer with the Southern slavemasters, critical of the abolitionists, wrote: “I consider that from the first, we are the aggressors — We are everlastingly assaulting them from the time Hoar was first sent to S Carolina.”

Captain Nathaniel Gordon, who had been caught redhanded engaging in the international slave trade, was arraigned before a New-York circuit court on this capital charge equivalent to piracy on the high seas. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

DEAD MAN WALKING

This pompous ass of a sea captain could easily have escaped, since he was paying his jailor $50 per day to let him roam the streets of New-York during the day — but instead he would choose to sit out his trial procedures, since he had complete confidence that nobody would really ever want to burn a white man’s ass merely for harming the lives of black people. After all, although what he had done had been a capital crime for two full generations of human life, in fact since January 1, 1812, nobody had ever ever ever so much as had their fingers slapped!

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October 1, Monday: Bedrich Smetana reopened his music institute in Göteborg.

Giuseppe Garibaldi’s forces defeated the royal army of Naples at the Volturno.

In Syracuse, New York, the 9th annual “Jerry Celebration” sponsored by the Unitarian congregation of the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals who had been seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Henry Thoreau sketched, for Mr. Rhodes representing the Town of Concord, the boundaries of the eight towns in Concord area (Concord, Carlisle, Lincoln, Boxborough, Acton, Littleton MA, Stow, and Bedford, totaling 127.49 square miles).

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/23.htm

October 1: Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white at 7 A. M. I hear it was 21 this morning early. I do not remember such cold at this season. This is about the full of the moon (it fulled at 9 P.M. the 29th) in clear, bright moonlight nights. We have fine and bright but cold days after it. One man tells me that he regretted that he had not taken his mittens with him when he went to his morning’s work,–mowing in a meadow,– and when he went to a spring at 11 A. M., found the dipper with two inches of ice in it frozen solid. P.M.–Rain again. Button-bush balls were fairly reddened yesterday, and the Andropogon scoparius looked silvery in sun. Gossamer was pretty thick on the meadows, and noticed the round green leafy buds of the utricularia in the clear, cold, smooth v water. Water was prepared for ice, and C. saw the first Vanessa Antiopa since spring.

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December 7, Friday: The nation read of the capture of the bark Cora on the ocean off the Congo River, with 705 slaves aboard.260

260. Clearly, there’s a terminology problem here. In an effort to resolve this terminology issue, at the Republican National Convention in New-York during August 2004 –at which the Republican Party would for four days make an effort to strip from its face its mask of hostility to the plight of the downtrodden and reveal its true countenance of benevolent conservatism and concern– these people would be sensitively referred to by a Hoosier Republican running for the US Senate as “involuntary immigrants.”

So, perhaps, this is a good point at which to insert a story about involuntary immigrants that has been passed on to us by Ram Varmha, a retired IBM engineer whose father had briefly served as Maharaja after the independence of Cochin. He relates the story as narrated to him by his paternal grandmother who lived in Thripoonithura, Cochin: “When my grandmother (born 1882) was a young girl she would go with the elder ladies of the family to the Pazhayannur Devi Temple in Fort Cochin, next to the Cochin Lantha Palace built by the Dutch (Landers = Lantha), which was an early establishment of the Cochin royal family before the administration moved to Thripoonithura. My grandmother often told us that in the basement of the Lantha Palace, in a confined area, a family of Africans had been kept locked up, as in a zoo! By my Grandmother’s time all the Africans had died. But, some of the elder ladies had narrated the story to her of ‘Kappiries’ (Africans) kept in captivity there. It seems visitors would give them fruits and bananas. They were well cared for but always kept in confinement. My grandmother did not know all the details but according to her, ‘many’ years earlier, a ship having broken its mast drifted into the old Cochin harbor. When the locals climbed aboard, they found a crewless ship, but in the hold there were some chained ‘Kappiries’ still alive; others having perished. The locals did not know what to do with them. Not understanding their language and finding the Africans in chains, the locals thought that these were dangerous to set free. So they herded the poor Africans into the basement of the Cochin Fort, and held them in captivity, for many, many years! I have no idea when the initial incident happened, but I presume it took place in the late 1700s or early 1800s. This points to the possibility that it was, in fact, a slave ship carrying human cargo from East Africa to either the USA or the West Indies. An amazing and rather bizarre story. Incidentally, this is not an ‘old woman's tale’! Its quite reliable. My grandmother would identify some of the older ladies who had actually seen the surviving Kappiries.” 2246 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This negrero, this ship engaged in the international slave trade, the Cora, was, it seems, a New-York vessel, and its 28-person crew presumably also were New-Yorkers!

This had been, since 1812, a capital offense. Were New-Yorkers going to be hanged by the neck until they were dead?

December 20: South Carolina adopts an Ordinance of Secession to take effect on December 24.

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1861

At this point Underground Railroad activity should have been at its peak. If the reality of this had been anything even remotely resembling the story that white people would be telling each other after the civil war, it ought to have been a thing of magnificence. The Reverend Adin Ballou guestimated, however, in this year, that but one out of every four slaves escaping from the southern states was receiving any assistance whatever, on their journey toward the North Star, from any Underground Railroad operative.

Czar Aleksandr completed the emancipation of Russian serfs that had begun in 1858.

New Jersey had a total of 18 persons still legally classified as slaves, apprentices for life. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

During this year the slaves of the Dutch West Indies would be freed.

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The poor whites of the American South were in a peculiar psychic position carefully calculated to render it impossible for them ever to make common cause with their fellows being likewise exploited: Unlike the Protestant tenant in Ulster, or the homesteader in the West, or the skilled craftsman in industry, the intermediate status of the poor whites hung by a single thread: the enslavement of the Negro and the concomitant fact of their own non-slave status. That did, of course, carry the privileges of keeping weapons, marrying, moving about freely in the public domain, becoming literate if they could, voting at elections, and the male white privilege of assuming familiarity with Negro females; but that all meant nothing in the way of property status or economic security. As one eastern Virginia plantation owner, “Civis,” wrote of most of the poor whites in his area of the country, they had “little but their complexion to console them for being born into a higher caste.” Yet that one tie bound them to the plantation owners like hoops of steel, and made them “always ready to respond to any call of race prejudice, [so that they] voted with the planter, though the economic interests of the two parties of white men were as separate as the poles.” Because of this about one million Southern poor whites marched off to a war from which more than one out of four would not return. Those who did return found that the very foundation of their social status had been blasted away: the Negro was free, too.

According to Noel Ignatiev’s HOW THE IRISH BECAME WHITE, “To be acknowledged as white, it was not enough for the Irish to have a competitive advantage over Afro- Americans in the labor market; in order for them to avoid the taint of blackness it was necessary that no Negro be allowed to work in occupations where Irish were to be found.”

According to the jokes that were going the rounds in those days among non-Irish white racists (the bulk of the population, actually), the Irish were “Negroes turned inside out” while the American free blacks were “smoked Irish.”

It has been well said, that inside the charmed Caucasian chalk circle it is the sum of what you are not –not Indian, not Negro, not a Jew, not Irish, etc.– that make you what you are. And, that’s as true now as it was then.

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Just as our nation was opting upon the staging of a civil war rather than of a race war, our census returns from 1860 were beginning to tell us of a disheartening trend of great interest and significance. Although the rise in manumissions in the post-Revolutionary period had increased the proportion of free black Americans from about 8% to about 13.5%, where it had held steady for some time, as white attitudes had been hardening during the polarization of the late antebellum period there had been a decline in manumissions, which, combined with the lesser fecundity of free black Americans, had been moving the free-to-enslaved proportion back down to around 11%:

Year % in Population

1790 8

1810 13.5

1840 13.5

1861 11

Another interesting statistic of the times is that up to 1849, and the introduction of the rifled barrel, a wound to the head by means of a musket ball was generally deadly. Whack, you’re dead. Such a lead lump would shatter one’s skull and the resultant shock waves would do massive damage to the soft tissue behind it. It was like getting hit over the head with a brick. However, the accurate, revolving pellet innovated by C. Minié that would be used extensively during this civil war would be changing all that. Getting hit by one of these pellets in the head was more like getting stabbed by a knife than getting hit over the head with a brick. Minié’s conical projectile not only flew true, but also, it tended to make a less messy penetration wound, what the surgeons refer to as a “focal lesion.” Dr. Pierre Paul Broca would be able to assemble a cohort of surviving veterans with head wounds, whose brain lesions, to a restricted area in the left half of the brain, would have produced an aphasia. These patients might be able to function more or less normally, but they had lost their ability to speak. (Then, in a few more years, Dr. Karl Wernicke would discover that another form of aphasia could be produced by injury to another region, likewise on the left side of the brain. Dr. Wernicke’s cohort of survivors of head wounds would be able to speak, but would have great difficulty responding to the speech of others. As a result of experiments of this nature, we would begin to acquire a better understanding of the dependency of mentation upon brain structures. And you supposed there was no such thing as progress! :-)

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January 7: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

Constitution of Alabama. READ THE FULL TEXT

The Mayor of New-York, Fernando Wood, a Democrat who well knew of the “common sympathy” between the Irish-Americans he represented and the slaveholders of America, proposed in effect that the island of Manhattan secede from the continent, no longer consider itself to be a part of the United States of America.

Representative Etheridge offered a resolution to the US House of Representatives. § 5. The migration or importation of persons held to service or labor for life, or a term of years, into any of the States, or the Territories belonging to the United States, is perpetually prohibited; and Congress shall pass all laws necessary to make said prohibition effective (CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 36th Congress, 2d session, page 279). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE Henry Thoreau was being written to by L.L. & C.H. Smith in New-York. New York Jany 7 1861 Mr H.D. Thoreau Dear Sir, We Enclose herein our note for $100 @ 3 months, for last 100 lbs Please be Respy [L.L.H.] Smith

January 23: Representative Morris of Pennsylvania offered to the federal House of Representatives that the United States Constitution needed to be amended. He asked (the legislative body would comply) that his proposed amendment be printed so that he might at the proper time offer it before the select committee of thirty-three. Neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature shall make any law respecting slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime; but Congress may pass laws for the suppression of the African slave trade, and the rendition of fugitives from service or labor in the States. (CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 36th Congress, 2d session, page 527). SLAVERY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR JANUARY 23]

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March 3, Sunday, evening On the night before his inauguration in Washington DC, president-elect Abraham Lincoln slept at Willard’s Hotel, guarded by Allan Pinkerton.

In Russia, the serfs were emancipated.Edward Payson Weston had hoofed it for 10 days to get from Boston EMANCIPATION

MA to Washington DC to attend the inauguration, and in so doing had won a take-a-hike campaign bet. The new chief executive would appoint the author of his campaign biography, William Dean Howells, as United States Consul to Venice — Howells had also, you see, –despite his not having taken a hike– won something of a campaign bet.

Henry Thoreau commented in his journal on the events of the day:

March 3. Sunday. Hear that there was a flock of geese in the river last night. See and hear song sparrows to-day; probably here for several days. It is an exceedingly warm and pleasant day. The snow is suddenly all gone except heels, and—what is more remarkable—the frost is generally out of the ground, e. g. in our garden, for the reason that it has not been in it. The snow came December 4th, before the ground was frozen to any depth, has been unusually deep, and the ground has not been again exposed till now. Hence, though we have had a little very cold weather and a good deal of steady cold, the ground generally has not been frozen.

May 18: The Catholic Archbishop of New-York, John Hughes, declared that if the federal government moved to abolish human enslavement, it would be setting aside its Constitution. If such was President Lincoln’s intent, he suggested, the man ought to resign his office forthwith.

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June 27: Giuseppe Garibaldi responded to the overture of the federal government of the USA that he place his military genius at the disposal of the Army of the North, in accordance with his anti-slavery, pro-race-mingling ideas, inquiring “whether this agitation is the emancipation of the negroes”?

EMANCIPATION The Italian dude in the red shirt didn’t just want to come over and kill a whole bunch of Americans — unless there were some good reason to do so. Where was that guy’s head at? In his old age he would read a book about Spartacus, who hadn’t wanted to be a slave, but had instead wanted freedom, in order to be a slavemaster. But he would find that he had not been at all like Spartacus — while he was wearing his famous red shirt he had been more like the Spartacus-figure that would be created out of whole cloth by Kirk Douglas in the Hollywood movie “Spartacus,” who ahistorically would demand freedom not just for himself but for everyone. Since Garibaldi was a real freedom-fighter, not a mere scrapper like the historical Spartacus, he

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would want no part in our civil war (which would amount to mere pretend freedom-fighting).

The Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien Railroad’s fare to Milwaukee was $9.75. About this trip on the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, Henry Thoreau might have — but did not — quote his own journal: “It is pleasant to have been to a place by the way a river went.”

By cars to Milwaukee. 1st 60 miles up the valley of the Wisconsin which looked broad & shallow. Bluffs 2 or 3 miles apart.

“Dear Mother … We left Red-wing yesterday at about 2 P.M. on the Steamer War Eagle and arrived in Prarie du Chien at 8 A.M. to-day. The train for Milwaukee … passed through Madison at 1:30 P.M. and shall arrive in Milwaukee at 6 o’clock this evening If we can find a boat going to Mackinaw we shall take it immediately.… There has been a riot in Milwaukee of which I suppose you have read long before this, but the Milwaukee paper says to-day that the city is quiet.”

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September 9, Monday: In his tent in Ireland, the Prince of Wales had a 2d sexual encounter with Nellie Clifden.

Dr. Robert Montgomery Smith Jackson reported for duty as a surgeon with the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry Volunteers.

According to a preserved fragment of a letter from Jason P. Rathbone, a Northern civil war soldier somewhere in the American South, to his friend Benjamin W. Pendleton of Hopkinton, Rhode Island, “the slaves out here what I have seen I think they are better off than [illegible] the white folks they appear to take comfort and there masters talk with them more freer than they do with the white people I don’t know as I can say that I think they would be any better off if they was free that I think the most of the soldiers would say.” (Clearly, this Union soldier would have been eager to leave off the killing and being killed, and just let the Southern whites and the Southern blacks take care of their little problem entirely on their own.) READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

At the Metropolitan Grounds at Hackney Wick, just outside London, a racetrack owned and sponsored by the White Lion Pub and but 260 yards in circumference, the race was on between “the Indian” and an English pedestrian named Edward Mills, 5 feet 4 inches and 112 pounds. The runners exchanged positions at several points during the 6 miles because Louis “Deerfoot” or “Red Jacket” Bennett was running in his characteristic spurts, but Mills was ahead of the Indian, attired in his brief red skirt, by 20 yards at the finish line in 32 minutes 31 1/2 seconds.

The first wood-burning steam locomotive came to St. Paul, Minnesota. Due to the absence of railroad tracks, it had to come the same way Henry Thoreau had come, by wood-burning steamboat up the Mississippi River. The William Crooks had four drive wheels, and four pilot wheels to hold it on rough Western tracks. The diamond smokestack was to reduce sparks.261

October: This month’s issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. CONSULT THIS ISSUE

The Catholic Archbishop of New-York, John Hughes, wrote to Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War, pointing out that if the purpose of this civil war was to abolish human enslavement, this had best be maintained as a deep dark secret, because very clearly “among a certain class, it would make the business of recruiting slack indeed.” He was pointing up, of course, the fact that to defeat the South the Secretary of War would need to be creating very large northern armies made up very predominately of recent Irish-American immigrants, and that these impoverished Irish-American immigrants were, almost to a man, just apeshit in their contempt for the American black. They simply were not going to fight for freedom, for someone else.

December 2, Monday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 37 Cong. 2 sess. Vol. III. pt. 1, No. 1, pt. 3, pp. 11, 21.

As indicated on the following screens, subject to President Abraham Lincoln’s approval, which he would give on December 12th, the US Congress purchased, for an agreed price, from their owners, and manumitted, all slaves present in the District of Columbia: [see following screens] 261. It still has this — but now “William Crooks” is in retirement, at the Lake Superior Museum of Transportation in Duluth. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2255 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2256 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith Offloading the William Crooks from the Alhambra at the levee in St. Paul MN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 12, Thursday: President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill pardoning and compensating the slaveholders of the District of Columbia for their crimes (of course, the bill was not so described):

MANUMISSION EMANCIPATION

1862

During this year and the following one Peru would be attempting to enter the lucrative international slave trade. Peruvian ships would kidnap some 6,000 Polynesians before this effort would be intercepted. Afterward, there would be attempts to return the surviving slaves to their Pacific island homes — but infectious disease would transform such attempts at restitution into yet another wave of misfortune and death.

From 1858 until this year, whether a slave ship was of US registry or of some other registry it would very often have been flying the Stars and Stripes and would very often have been found to have been carrying papers which seemed to be American registry papers. This was because, until this point in time, the British Navy was the only force which, for various reasons humanitarian or less than humanitarian, had been seriously interested in putting down the Atlantic slave trade, and because the British government had bowed to pressure from the US federal government in 1858 and had not been allowing their warships to intercept any vessel that was displaying the Stars and Stripes. In this year, however, our federal government being no longer very eager to accept the demands of the southern states, we signed a treaty with Britain by which their warships would again be able to board these vessels flying our flag as before 1858, so that if a vessel was determined to be a negrero, an international prize court would be able to determine the issue. –Finally, the British navy could again effectively crack down on the international slave trade! Date Right of Search Arrangements Treaty with for Joint Great Britain, Cruising with made by Great Britain, made by 1817 Portugal; Spain 1818 Netherlands 1824 Sweden 1831-33 France

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1833-39 Denmark, Hanse Towns, etc. 1841 Quintuple Treaty (Austria, Russia, Prussia) 1842 United States 1844 Texas 1845 Belgium France 1862 United States

The negrero Ocilla, out of Mystic, Connecticut, was able to insert some fresh slaves into Cuba (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 38th Congress, 1st session Number 56, pages 8-13). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Slaves were manumitted by Congress, in the District of Columbia. The slaveholders, among them of course the congressmen and senators who were voting this payoff, would of course be fully compensated by the federal government out of the public coffers for their loss of goods and services.262 “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

January 18: Waldo Emerson delivered “American Civilization” at New Bedford, Massachusetts.

In New-York, the Metropolitan Record, the mouthpiece of American Catholicism, spoke on behalf of American “mechanics and labourers,” meaning of course white mechanics and laborers: the abolition of human enslavement would be “the worst evil that could befall them.” Why? Because “the influx of negro labor on the Northern market would reduce them to a condition worse than that of the pauperized operatives of Europe.”

262. Legally, there was a distinction between a slaveowner and a slaveholder. The owner of a slave might rent the custody and use of that slave out for a year, in which case the distinction would arise and be a meaningful one in law, since the other party to such a transaction would be the holder but not the owner. However, in this Kouroo database, I will ordinarily be deploying the term “slaveholder” as the normative term, as we are no longer all that concerned with the making of such fine economic distinctions but are, rather, concerned almost exclusively with the human issues involved in the enslavement of other human beings. I use the term “slaveholder” in preference to “slaveowner” not only because no human being can really own another human being but also because it is important that slavery never be defined as the legal ownership of one person by another — in fact not only had human slavery existed before the first such legislation but also it has continued long since we abolished all legal deployment of the term “slave.” 2260 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 4: President Abraham Lincoln denied the request of Captain Nathaniel Gordon that he be spared the penalty of death for his participation in the international slave trade: “It becomes my painful duty to admonish the prisoner that, relinquishing all expectation of pardon by Human Authority, he refer himself alone to the mercy of the Common God and Father of all men.”

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February 21, Friday: Early in the year the Confederate forces in Texas under General Henry Hopkins Sibley had invaded the territory of New Mexico. Their goal was to conquer the rich Colorado gold fields and redirect that resource from the North to the South. Advancing up the Rio Grande to Valverde, on this day General Sibley’s command clashed with Colonel Canby’s Union force. A day-long battle ended when the Confederates captured a battery of six guns and forced Canby’s troops across the river with Union losses of 68 killed and 160 wounded. Colonel of Volunteers Kit Carson’s battalions had spent the morning on the west side of the river out of the action, but at 1 P.M. Canby ordered them to cross. They fought until ordered to retreat, with losses of one volunteer killed, one wounded. Colonel Canby had little or no confidence in these hastily recruited, untrained New Mexico volunteers “who would not obey orders or obeyed them too late to be of any service.” In his battle report, however, he would commend Carson, among the other volunteer officers, for “zeal and energy.” After this battle Colonel Canby would be promoted to General and with most of his regular troops would receive orders to march toward the eastern front of the civil war, while Colonel of Volunteers Carson and his New Mexico Volunteers would continue to be fully occupied with their local “Indian affairs.”

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Captain Nathaniel Gordon had asked President Abraham Lincoln to commute his death sentence for having been caught slavetrading off the coast of Africa, but the president, although he had allowed the convicted slaver about two weeks to put his affairs in order, had refused on February 4th to commute the sentence. On this date, the seacaptain actually was escorted up the steps to the gallows in the courtyard of the Tombs prison.263 Marines surrounded the courtyard as depicted, ready for any rescue attempt. After US Marshal Robert Murray, representing the federal government, had read the sentence, the condemned man was asked if he had any final statements, and Gordon insisted “I have done nothing wrong” before the hood was drawn over his head and the noose placed around his neck. Gordon became the one and only American to have been executed for engaging in the international slave trade — which had ostensibly been since 1820 a capital crime:

The body would be retrieved by a friend and buried in an unmarked grave in Brooklyn. THE EXECUTION OF GORDON, THE SLAVE-TRADER Not the least important among the changes which are taking place in the current of national policy and public opinion is evidenced by the fact that on Friday, 21st February, in this city, Nathaniel Gordon was hung for being engaged in the slave- trade. For forty years the slave-trade has been pronounced piracy by law, and to engage in it has been a capital offense. But the sympathy of the Government and its officials has been so often on the side of the criminal, and it seemed so absurd to hang a man for doing at sea that which, in half the Union, is done daily without censure on land, that no one has ever been 263. This prison was a curious location for such an event, as slavetrading was legally defined as a type of piracy and pirates had always been hanged in the locale where the Maritime Code had jurisdiction, that is to say, on mud flats between the low-water and the high-water mark. However, bear in mind that it was not by chance that the city of New-York was selected as the city of execution for such a crime, for that port had been for some years the principal port of the world for the fitting out of negrero vessels, doing even more such business than the ports of Portland and Boston, so that, during eighteen months in the 1859-1860 timeframe, a total of 85 such slavers had been fitted out in New York harbor. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2263 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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punished under the Act. The Administration of Mr. Lincoln has turned over a new leaf in this respect. Henceforth the slave- trade will be abandoned to the British and their friends. The hanging of Gordon is an event in the history of our country. He was probably the most successful and one of the worst of the individuals engaged in the trade. A native of Maine, he had engaged in the business many years since, and had always eluded justice. The particular voyage which proved fatal to him was undertaken in 1860. The following summary of the case we take from the Times: It was in evidence (given by Lieutenant Henry D. Todd, U.S.N.) that the ship Erie was first discovered by the United States steamer Mohican, on the morning of the 8th day of August, 1860; that she was then about fifty miles outside of the River Congo, on the West Coast of Africa, standing to the northward, with all sail set; that she was flying the American flag, and that a gun from the Mohican brought her to. It was shown by Lieutenant Todd that he went on board himself about noon, and took command of the prize. He found on board of the Erie, which our readers will remember was but 500 tons burden, eight hundred and ninety-seven (897) negroes, men, women, and children, ranging from the age of six months to forty years. They were half children, one-fourth men, and one-fourth women, and so crowded when on the main deck that one could scarcely put his foot down without stepping on them. The stench from the hold was fearful, and the filth and dirt upon their persons indescribably offensive. At first he of course knew nothing about them, and until Gordon showed him, he was unable to stow them or feed them -- finally he learned how, but they were stowed so closely that during the entire voyage they appeared to be in great agony. The details are sickening, but as fair exponents of the result of this close stowing, we will but mention that running sores and cutaneous diseases of the most painful as well as contagious character infected the entire load. Decency was unthought of; privacy was simply impossible — nastiness and wretchedness reigned supreme. From such a state of affairs we are not surprised to learn that, during the passage of fifteen days, twenty-nine of the sufferers died, and were thrown overboard. It was proved by one of the seamen that he, with others, shipped on the Erie, believing her to be bound upon a legitimate voyage, and that, when at sea they suspected, from the nature of the cargo, that all was not right, which suspicion they mentioned to the Captain (Gordon), who satisfied them by saying that he was on a lawful voyage, that they had shipped as sailors, and would do better to return to their duties than to talk to him. Subsequently they were told that they had shipped on a slaver, and that for every negro safely landed they should receive a dollar. The negroes were taken on board the ship on the 7th day of August, 1860, and the entire operation of launching and unloading nearly nine hundred negroes, occupied but three quarters of an hour, or less time than a sensible man would require for his dinner. As the poor creatures came over the side Gordon would take them by the arm, and shove them here or there, 2264 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as the case might be, and if by chance their persons were covered from entire exposure by a strip of rag, he would, with his knife, cut it off, fling it overboard, and send the wretch naked with his fellows. Several of the crew testified, all agreeing that Gordon acted as Captain; that he engaged them; that he ordered them; that he promised them the $1 per capita; that he superintended the bringing on board the negroes; and that he was, in fact, the master-spirit of the entire enterprise. For this crime Gordon was arrested, tried, and, mainly through the energy of District-Attorney Smith, convicted, and sentenced to death. Immense exertions were made by his friends and the slave-trading interest to procure a pardon, or at least a commutation of his sentence, from President Lincoln, but without avail. He was sentenced to die on 21st. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The long and open agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, together with the fact that the South had been more or less familiar with violations of the laws since 1808, led to such a remarkable increase of illicit traffic and actual importations in the decade 1850-1860, that the movement may almost be termed a reopening of the slave-trade. In the foreign slave-trade our own officers continue to report “how shamefully our flag has been used;”264 and British officers write “that at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade is carried on under the American flag,” and this because “the number of American cruisers on the station is so small, in proportion to the immense extent of the slave-dealing coast.”265 The fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States, and centred at New York City. “Few of our readers,” writes a periodical of the day, “are aware of the extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years.”266 Another periodical says: “The number of persons engaged in the slave- trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.”267 During eighteen months of the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been fitted out in New York harbor,268 and these alone 264. Gregory to the Secretary of the Navy, June 8, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 2. Cf. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 2d session, II. No. 6. 265. Cumming to Commodore Fanshawe, Feb. 22, 1850: SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Congress, 1st session, XIV. No. 66, page 8. 266. New York Journal of Commerce, 1857; quoted in 24TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 56. 267. “The Slave-Trade in New York,” in the Continental Monthly, January 1862, page 87. 268. New York Evening Post; quoted in Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2265 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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transported from 30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually.269 The United States deputy marshal of that district declared in 1856 that the business of fitting out slavers “was never prosecuted with greater energy than at present. The occasional interposition of the legal authorities exercises no apparent influence for its suppression. It is seldom that one or more vessels cannot be designated at the wharves, respecting which there is evidence that she is either in or has been concerned in the Traffic.”270 On the coast of Africa “it is a well-known fact that most of the Slave ships which visit the river are sent from New York and New Orleans.”271 The absence of United States war-ships at the Brazilian station enabled American smugglers to run in cargoes, in spite of the prohibitory law. One cargo of five hundred slaves was landed in 1852, and the Correio Mercantil regrets “that it was the flag of the United States which covered this act of piracy, sustained by citizens of that great nation.”272 When the Brazil trade declined, the illicit Cuban trade greatly increased, and the British consul reported: “Almost all the slave expeditions for some time past have been fitted out in the United States, chiefly at New York.”273

269. Lalor, CYCLOPÆDIA, III. 733; quoted from a New York paper. 270. FRIENDS’ APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE COLOURED RACES (1858), Appendix, page 41; quoted from the Journal of Commerce. 271. 26TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, pages 53-4; quoted from the African correspondent of the Boston Journal. From April, 1857, to May, 1858, twenty-one of twenty-two slavers which were seized by British cruisers proved to be American, from New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Cf. 25TH REPORT OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, page 122. De Bow estimated in 1856 that forty slavers cleared annually from Eastern harbors, clearing yearly $17,000,000: De Bow’s Review, XXII. 430-1. 272. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 33d Congress, 1st session, VIII. No. 47, page 13. 273. HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session, XII. No. 105, page 38. 2266 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 16: President Abraham Lincoln signed the law that provided for compensation to the slaveholders of the District of Columbia (the City of Washington, Washington County, and Georgetown). They would receive, not imprisonment for the harm they had caused, but compensation for the loss they were incurring: $1,000,000 was appropriated to compensate owners of manumitted slaves — and $100,000 was set aside to fund the transportation of those who wished to emigrate to Haiti, Liberia, or any other country outside the United States of America who would have them. The Emancipation Claims Commission would retain the services of a Baltimore slavetrader to provide a professional assessment of the value of each freed slave, women and children being worth less than men etc., and suitable compensation would be awarded for a total of 2,989

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manumitted persons.

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Curiously, the District had been operating off of longhand copies of the DC slave code for lo these many years, and the very first printed version of this code would come off the presses on March 17, 1862 — just one month before slavery in the District was to come to an end. The final printed version of this legal code would be of interest only as a historical curiosity. —Well, the slaveowning representatives voting to pay themselves for their slaves out of the government coffers was a boondoggle, so I suppose we can regard this superfluous printing of an obsolete code to have been just another boondoggle!

The Confederates began conscription.

There was fighting at Fort Jackson / Fort St. Philip, that would continue until the 28th.

June 20: According to a report that would appear in the New-York Tribune on the following day, a delegation of Progressive Friends called upon President Abraham Lincoln to present a memorial praying him to decree the emancipation (general manumission) of the slaves, which had been adopted at their annual meeting in the Religious Society of Friends. Members of the delegation were: Friend Thomas Garrett, Friend Alice Eliza Hambleton, Friend Oliver Johnson, Friend Dinah Mendenhall, Friend William Barnard, and Friend Eliza Agnew: The President was reported to have said that, as he had not been furnished with a copy of the memorial in advance, he could not be expected to make any extended remarks. It was a relief to be assured that the deputation were not applicants for office, for his chief trouble was from that class of persons. The next most troublesome subject was Slavery. He agreed with the memorialists, that Slavery was wrong, but in regard to the ways and means of its removal, his views probably differed from theirs.274 The quotation in the memorial,

274. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward the prospect of an Emancipation Proclamation was that this would be, if it would be anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never would a man be more reluctant to come to the aid of his fellow. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2269 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from his Springfield speech, was incomplete. It should have embraced another sentence, in which he indicated his views as to the effect upon Slavery itself of the resistance to its extension. The sentiments contained in that passage were deliberately uttered, and he held them now. If a decree of emancipation could abolish Slavery, John Brown would have done the work effectually. Such a decree surely could not be more binding upon the South than the Constitution, and that cannot be enforced in that part of the country now. Would a proclamation of freedom be any more effective? Friend Oliver Johnson was reported to have replied as follows: “True, Mr. President, the Constitution cannot now be enforced at the South, but you do not on that account intermit the effort to enforce it, and the memorialists are solemnly convinced that the abolition of Slavery is indispensable to your success.” The President was reported to have further said that he felt the magnitude of the task before him, and hoped to be rightly directed in the very trying circumstances by which he was surrounded. Wm. Barnard was reported to have addressed the President in a few words, expressing sympathy for him in all his embarrassments, and an earnest desire that he might, under divine guidance, be led to free the slaves and thus save the nation from destruction. In that case, nations yet unborn would rise up to call him blessed and, better still, he would secure the blessing of God. The President was reported to have responded very impressively, saying that he was deeply sensible of his need of Divine assistance. He had sometime thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God’s hands of accomplishing a great work and he certainly was not unwilling to be. Perhaps, however, God’s way of accomplishing the end which the memorialists have in view may be different from theirs. It would be his earnest endeavor, with a firm reliance upon the Divine arm, and seeking light from above, to do his duty in the place to which he had been called. Frederick Palmer wrote from New Orleans to his sister in Connecticut: Good Morning Sister, ... A little boy about Franks age came in last night with a pair of handcuffs around his leg where his [owner] fastened him to keep from running away. They suffer very much. Do you pity them poor creatures? Do you ever think of them? How beautiful Montville must look ... I will imagine you preparing to sit down to write me a letter which I do not believe you are doing. Do not be afraid to write me all the news. Do you miss me at home? Do the neighbors ever inquire for me?

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Summer: The slaves of Washington DC were freed by Act of Congress (not by the President’s Emancipation Proclamation, which declared in its fine print that it had nothing whatever to do with them) with full “compensation” being awarded to their owners.275

When, during the Civil War, the federal government voted in this manner to purchase all the slaves of all the approximately 900 slavemasters residing in the nation’s capital, and issue emancipation papers to these former slaves — do you suppose that to have been merely benevolence mingled with fear? Or do you suppose that it was not only benevolence mingled with fear, but also pork-barrel politics as usual? Is there a remote possibility that such compensations issued during the Civil War to the slavemasters of the Washington DC area, “purchasing” from them their slaves and “manumitting” those slaves without following mandated procedures for providing such freed individuals with any mode of independent subsistence, amounted in actuality to some sort of payola scheme for the white federal executives and white federal legislators and white federal judiciary? It has occurred to me that such white officials of the federal government would have been among the primary beneficiaries of this government funding arrangement, and that among the beneficiaries, they were the ones who held all the political influence, influence over such decisionmaking. Is this thought, that payment represented a way for them to dip into the war-tax coffers and take themselves out a handful or two, a Vulgar Marxist thought? Or, was this money intended to neutralize these officials, to get them to stand aside while the martial law pronunciation known as the Emancipation Proclamation was later implemented? Do you suppose that these folks could have moved all their slaves from their homes in other states into the DC area, in order to dispose of them for compensation and thus ensure that they themselves would not be financially impacted by any later freedom scheme that might be imposed by the federal government?

President Lincoln attempted to make a covenant with God and asked for a sign. If God would allow him to win

275. In “It’s a Family Affair” in Larry Hudson, ed., WORKING TOWARD FREEDOM (1994), Mary Beth Corrigan has pointed out that generally, when free black Americans in border states owned slaves, it was as a step toward freeing a relative of theirs. For instance, during the 1850s, approximately 10% of the slaves who had been freed by manumissions in deeds (by way of contrast with manumission in wills) had been freed by a member of their own family who had specifically purchased them in order to free them. Of approximately 900 former slavemasters who in 1862 petitioned the US Congress for compensation upon the manumission of their Washington DC slaves, about a dozen were free black Americans. All but one of these had merely “owned” members of their own families — for instance a man “owning” his wife or his children. Such cases may have been created by the fact that getting a certificate of manumission was expensive: the government was charging $50 for each such pieces of paper. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2271 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the battle at Antietam, he pledged, he would understand this to be an instruction to free the slaves of America.

When the news of the success of this battle arrived in Washington DC, the president initiated the process which would lead to the Emancipation Proclamation, a proclamation that all the slaves whom he lacked the power to free, became free, while all the slaves whom he possessed the power to free, remained slaves. (Isn’t that nice? He wasn’t just setting out to fool all the people all the time — as part of this he was going to play a sleight-of- hand trick on God! “Oh Jeez,” God is going to say, “I just didn’t notice that the Prez only freed the ones he couldn’t free! Hey, they got me again!”)

With black Americans being enlisted in the US Army, most black physicians who enlisted were assigned to

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work in hospitals in Washington DC. This included Dr. James McCune Smith of New-York.

F.A.P. Barnard went to Washington DC and was given direction of the map and chart department of the coast Survey under Alexander Dallas Bache. This included the preparation and publication of war maps. While thus engaged he would publish a “Letter to the President of the United States by a Refugee” in which he would denounce slavery, the “giant conspiracy” of southern leaders to leave the Union, and the northern Copperheads who favored the South.

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Our national birthday, the 4th of July: It was the 4th of July in the Year of Our Lord 1862, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 58th birthday and our national birthday. The author had a piece currently appearing in The Atlantic Monthly. A pyrotechnic depiction of the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac was taking place in New-York harbor. The wounded Colonel Daniel Butterfield lay on his cot and composed bugle calls on the backs of envelopes. One of the calls he developed was a new one to replace the old final call of the day, which had variously been known as “taps,” as “tattoo,” and as “lights out.” He was trying to make Taps be something that would bring comfort to soldiers who were physically exhausted, and peacefulness to those of troubled mind: The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard beyond the limits of the Butterfield Brigade as it echoed through the valleys. The next morning, buglers from other Brigades came to visit and to inquire about the new Taps and how to sound it.

Nelson J. Waterbury, the head at this point of the Tammany Hall political organization and thus an enormously powerful American politician, declared at this point that the President of the United States of America would need to “set his foot firmly on abolitionism and crush it to pieces.” This would be essential to maintaining the fighting spirit of the Union armies. If there was one thing this civil war could not be about, it could not be about the freeing of America’s slaves. Don’t even think of going there.

In England, a famous river excursion was taking place. Charles Ludwidge Dodgson, a dean of Christ Church college in Oxford University, had taken the Liddell sisters, prepubescents, for a row on the river and was inventing a charming story which soon he would write down. Dodgson subscribed to the Victorian notion that prepubescent humans were purity incarnate and found their purity to be utterly compelling. He liked to take photographs of little girls with their clothes off, as such naked innocence was emblematic of this compelling purity. For unspecified reasons this dean soon would become a former dean and be more or less banned from the company of little girls.

July 26, day: In New-York, the Caucasian warned its readership of white workers that free black Americans were taking “their” jobs. A published letter on the subject demanded awakening and action in such an extreme manner as clearly to suborn race riot: “White Men! mechanics and workingmen of New York! how long is this state of things to exist? If you are asleep, awake! If awake, arouse! When aroused from your slumbers, act!” Of course, nothing would be done to suppress this protected freedom of speech –this white scream of “Fire” in a crowded theater– as the opinions being expressed were overwhelmingly powerful. SLAVERY

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August: Stephen Elliott led a successful expedition against a Federal force on Pinckney island. He was also involved in the devising of floating torpedoes, with which they blew up a tender in St. Helena bay. He would be promoted to chief of artillery of the Third military district, including Beaufort.276

During this month and the following one, in his deliberations leading up to his decision to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, a resistant Abraham Lincoln was bringing himself to “suppose” that if his staff of White House lawyers could compose such a proclamation bringing about a general manumission so that it could be considered merely a “a practical war measure,” that then, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America in the midst of this sectional conflict, he would possess adequate authority to issue such a piece of paper — but only, bear in mind, as “a practical war measure,” an interim solution, which after the cessation of hostilities inevitably would need to be superseded by one or another colonization scheme, as a final solution, that would create the necessary all-white America, freeing our nation

276. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2275 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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forever from all these troublesome people of color.277

(Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. :-)

There was a race riot in South Brooklyn that is significant in that it provided a “dress rehearsal” of sorts, for the enormous and sustained race riot/draft riot in New-York that would be occurring during the summer of 1863. In many Northern cities, the idea of turning this sectional war into a war to free the enslaved Negroes down South was being regarded as a definite step in the wrong direction — what the white workingmen desperately needed to do was to enslave the ones who were already free in the North!

277. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward an Emancipation Proclamation was that it was, if it was anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never was a man more reluctant to do the right. Lerone Bennett, in FORCED INTO GLORY: ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S WHITE DREAM, has simply dismissed the traditional story that with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, done out of the goodness of his heart, President Lincoln had freed America’s black slaves. “No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false.” The real Lincoln, he pointed out, was a white supremacist very much on the order of this century’s David Duke. Lincoln’s dream for America, “like Thomas Jefferson’s dream, was a dream of a lily-white America without Native Americans, African Americans or Martin Luther Kings.” Let us take the man at his word, Bennett suggested, and consider this to have been an act of desperation: “What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.” (Of course, Bennett, a black historian, has been dismissed by white historians as a revisionist.) 2276 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 22: As part of fighting the war, as part of demoralizing and dividing and inconveniencing the enemy, the President pre-announced a martial law matter amounting to a threat against those states still in rebellion, that he would declare a Presidential Proclamation effective January 1, 1863, retaining in enslavement all the slaves whom he might be able to free, in areas under his control in states not in rebellion, but declaring to be free all slaves that he did not have the power to liberate, in areas not under his control in states still rebellious. All these Southern slaves would need to do would be to somehow free themselves, and, he pledged, if they would somehow free themselves — why, he would free them! While such a propaganda tool could be expected to free almost no-one black and inconvenience almost no-one white, it would be sufficient to throw ideologues everywhere into a tizzy of anticipation. Although Wendell Phillips immediately detected this to be a mere “sham,” on this suspect basis the Commonwealth would proclaim 1863 to be “the year of Jubilee.” People are so easily impressed when it is convenient for them to be impressed! (This is known as seizing the moral high ground.)

Here is a preliminary draft of this con, in Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting:

MANUMISSION

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October 5, day: There was fighting at Hatchie’s Bridge / Davis Bridge / Matamora.

In New-York, Archbishop Hughes placed a long editorial in his religious organ, the Metropolitan Record, condemning President Lincoln’s anticipated Emancipation Proclamation as little more than an attempt at highway robbery. Specifically, the Catholic argument was that to attempt to make a case that this civil war which was convulsing America was being caused by our institution of human enslavement would be like attempting to make a case that highway robbery was caused by travellers with cash in their pockets. Owning other people was one of the good thing of civilized life, equivalent to having coins to jingle in your pocket.

October 9, day: In New-York, Richard O’Gorman, a prominent lawyer of Irish-American extraction, addressed the Democratic Union Association. Constitutionally, he opinioned, the federal government of the United States of America had no more authority to “alter the relation” between the slaveholder and his possessions, than it had to alter the familial relationship between parents and their children, or than it had to step between the husband and the wife.

October 12, day: In New-York, the headline “Archbishop Hughes’s Thunderbolt Against the Abolitionists” appeared in the Caucasian. This racist newspaper was republishing a long editorial written by the Archbishop for his religious organ, the Metropolitan Record, condemning President Lincoln’s anticipated Emancipation Proclamation. SLAVERY

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December 29: The Murfreesboro / Stones River Campaign.

According to the Robert Edward Lee Papers at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, the following collective deed of manumission was prepared on this day in Arlington, New Kent, King William Counties, Virginia: Know all men by these presents, that I, Robert E. Lee, executor of the last will and testament of George W. P. Custis deceased, acting by and under the authority and direction of the provisions of the said will, do hereby manumit, emancipate and forever set free from slavery the following named slaves belonging to the Arlington estate, viz: Eleanor Harris, Ephraina Dimicks[?], George Clarke, Charles Syphax; Selina and Thornton Grey and their six children Emma, Sarah, Harry, Anise, Ada, Thornton; Margaret Taylor and her four children Dandridge, [John], Billy. Quincy; Lawrence Parks and his nine children - Perry, George, Amanda, Martha, Lawrence, James, Magdalena, Leno, William; Julia Ann Check and her three children Catharine, Louis, Henry and an infant of the said Catharine; Sally Norris [and?] Len Norris and their three children Mary, Sally, and Wesley; Old Shaack Check; Austin Bingham and Louisa Bingham and their twelve children Harrison, Parks, Reuben, Henry, Edward, Austin, Lucius, Leanthe, Louisa, Caroline, Jem, and an infant; Obadiah Grey; Austin Banham, Michael Merriday, Catharine Burk and her child; Marianne Burke and Agnes Burke: Also the following slaves belonging to the White House estate, viz: Robert Crider and Desiah his wife, Locky, Zack Young and two other children[,] Fleming Randolph and child; Maria Meredith and Henry her husband and their three children Nelson, Henry, and Austin; Lorenzo Webb, Old Daniel, Clavert Dandridge, Claiborne Johnson, Mary and John Stewart, Harrison, Jeff, Pat and Gadsby, Dick, Joe, Robert, Anthony, Davy, Bill Crump, Peyton, Dandridge, Old Davy and Eloy his wife, Milly and her two children[,] Leanthe and her five children; Jasper, Elisha and Rachael his wife, Lavinia and her two children, Major, Phill, Miles, Mike and Scilla his wife and their five children Lavinia, Israel, Isaiah, Loksey [?] and Delphy; Old Fanny and her husband, Patsy, [L]ittle Daniel, and Cloe, James Henry, Milly, Ailsey and her two children, Susan Pollard[,] Armistead and Molly his wife, Airy, Jane Piler[?], Bob, Polly, Betsy and her child, Molly, Charity, John Reuben, George Crump, Minny, Grace, Martha and Matilda: Also the following belonging to the Romancoke estate, viz: Louis, Jem, Edward, Kitty and her children[,] Mary Dandridge and an infant; Nancy; Dolly, Esther, Serica[?], Macon and Louisa his wife, Walker, Peggy, Ebbee, Fanny, Chloe Custis and her child Julia Ann, Elvey Young and her child Charles, Airy Johnson, Anne Johnson, William and Sarah Johnston and their children Ailey, Crump, Molly, and George, James Henry and Anderson Crump, Major Custis and Lucy Custis, Nelson Meredith and Phoebe his wife, and their children Robert, Elisha, Nat, Rose and Sally, Ebbee Macon, Martha Jones & her children Davy & Austin; Patsey Braxton, Susan Smith and Mildred her child, Anne Brown, Jack Johnson, Marwell Bingham and Henry Baker.

And I do hereby release the aforesaid slaves from all and every “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2279 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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claim which I may have upon their services as executor aforesaid.

Witness my hand and seal this 29th day of December in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred sixty-two

[signed] R. E. Lee [seal] Ex. of G. W. P. Custis

State of Virginia, County of Spotsylvania to wit: I, Benj[amin] S. Cason, Justice of the Peace in and for the said County, do hereby certify that Robert E. Lee, executor of the last will and testament of George W. P. Custis, a party to the foregoing deed of manumission, this day appeared before me, and acknowledge the same to be his act and deed. Given under my hand this 29 day of Dec 1862.

[signed] Benj[amin] S. Cason J. P.

City of Richmond, to wit: In the Office of the Court of Hustings for the said City, the 2d day of January 1863

This deed was presented and with the Certificate annexed, admitted to record at twelve o’clock N.

Teste Ro[bert] Howard, Clerk

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December 31: There was fighting at Parker’s Cross Roads. From this day into January 2, 1863, there would be fighting at Stones River / Murfreesboro.

President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill admitting West Virginia to the Union.

That evening a crowd of some 3,000 assembled at the Tremont Temple to count down the clock from 8PM until, at the last stroke of midnight, President Lincoln’s martial law declaration, written by Washington lawyers, attempting to weaken the enemy by offering a government program by which the slaves of the enemy might perhaps eventually, if they cooperated effectively with the Union armies, secure manumission papers, the so-called “Emancipation Proclamation,” would become effective.278 Speakers included not only Frederick Douglass but also the Reverend John Sella Martin and William Wells Brown, who were former slaves, and Anna M. Dickinson. At midnight they all marched to the 12th Baptist Church, which was popularly known at the time as the fugitive slave’s church, to be led in a prayer of thanksgiving by the black minister there, the Reverend Leonard Grimes.

Not many people present at this celebration on this evening would be making reference to the sort of words that the white man Abraham Lincoln had been using to reassure the white man Horace Greeley: If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. No, for purposes of the celebration on this evening, they were all agreeing to pretend to presume the presumption that we nowadays still prefer to presume — that this Honest Abe from Illinois had the best interests of Americans of color in his heart.

278. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward an Emancipation Proclamation had been that it was, if it was anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never had a man been more reluctant to do the right. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2281 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1863

January: The indigenous people of the Pacific island of Rapa were alerted to the fact that a Peruvian ship, the Cora, was approaching, and would attempt to capture local people to transport to South America for sale as slaves. When the Cora arrived, therefore, its crew was quickly overwhelmed and most of the crew members were taken to Tahiti for trial. These Rapa islanders, however, for some reason retained three Chileans and a Mexican from the crew with them on their island.

A report from Walt Whitman, who was, basically, a white man interested primarily in what happens to white people: “Specimen Days”

BACK TO WASHINGTON Left camp at Falmouth, with some wounded, a few days since, and came here by Aquia creek railroad, and so on government steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on the cars and boat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with rumpled hair and half-awake look. Those on duty were walking their posts, some on banks over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw large cavalry camps off the road. At Aquia creek landing were numbers of wounded going north. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, wives, &c., which I did for them, (by mail the next day from Washington.) On the boat I had my hands full. One poor fellow died going up. [Page 714]

I am now remaining in and around Washington, daily visiting the hospitals. Am much in Patent-office, Eighth street, H street, Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good, having money, (as almoner of others home,) and getting experience. To-day, Sunday afternoon and till nine in the evening, visited Campbell hospital; attended specially to one case in ward 1, very sick with pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer’s son, D. F. Russell, company E, 60th New York, downhearted and feeble; a long time before he would take any interest; wrote a letter home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin county, N. Y., at his request; gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts; envelop’d and directed his letter, &c. Then went thoroughly through ward 6, observ’d every case in the ward, without, I think, missing one; gave perhaps from twenty to thirty persons, each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet crackers, figs, &c.

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January 1: The Reverend William Rounseville Alger delivered the annual election sermon before the Massachusetts Legislature.

Major General John B. Magruder, who had become the Confederate commander of military forces in Texas on November 29, 1862, gave the recapture of Galveston top priority. At 3AM four Confederate gunboats appeared, coming down the bay toward Galveston. Soon afterward, the Rebels commenced a land attack. The Union forces in Galveston were three companies of the 42d Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Isaac S. Burrell. The Confederates captured or killed all of them except for the regiment’s adjutant. They also took the Harriet Lane, by boarding her, and two barks and a schooner. Commander W.B. Renshaw’s flagship, the USS Westfield, ran aground when trying to help the Harriet Lane and, at 10AM, she was blown up to prevent her capture. Galveston was in Confederate hands again although the Union blockade would limit commerce in and out of the harbor. Soon afterward, the Rebels would be commencing a land attack upon the port city.

Congress had enacted in 1861 that all slaves employed against the Union were to be considered free, and in 1862 that all slaves of men who supported the Confederacy were to be considered free. At this point President Abraham Lincoln, who had been dragging his feet, more or less got on board this onrushing train. Having made a preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862 that emancipation from slavery would become effective, at the turn of the year, in those states which had not renounced their rebelliousness, at this point he made good on his threat by issuing a proclamation of emancipation that had been drafted by a bunch of Washington lawyers. READ THE FULL TEXT

A devout man, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase read the BIBLE daily and sought comfort in God for the loss of so many of his wives and so many of his children. When Chase had called to the President’s attention that there was no mention of the Deity in the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had allowed as a new last line “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.” At the clock tick which began this year he, as a martial law measure, offered to “emancipate” all those slaves he did not have the power physically to touch, without offering anything at all to any slave whom he did have the power physically to touch. It was a neat trick, especially since we have no reason to suspect that he would have been willing to touch any black person whom he did have the power physically to touch. Although to all appearances he grandly was declaring to be free all slaves residing in territories in rebellion against the federal government, his “Emancipation Proclamation,” so called, would turn out to be actually only a temporary martial-law proclamation, which in accordance with the deliberate intention of its careful drafters would free precious few. (I don’t know that a head count has ever been conducted, and here suggest that such a count would prove to be alarming if not nauseating.) The proclamation explicitly stated that it did not apply at all to any of the slaves in border states fighting on the Union side; nor would it be of any applicability to slaves in southern areas already under Union control; nor would it be of any use to any other slaves, since, naturally, the states in rebellion would take no action on Lincoln’s order.279 To avail themselves of this opportunity, slaves would have to vote with their feet. At great risk they would need to make their way across the battle lines into

279. The hypocrisy of this was being well commented on in French newspapers at that time. For a review of this French commentary on the American white hypocrisy, refer to Blackburn, George M. FRENCH NEWSPAPER OPINION ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Contributions in American History No. 171. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 2284 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the Northern-controlled territories, where they would need to volunteer for war labor and get their names registered in the emancipation program. Pacifists and noneffectives need not apply.

Abraham Lincoln had been quite reluctant to see affairs come even to such a straited pass as this. A believer in white supremacy, he never viewed the war in any other manner than in terms of preserving the Union and his own control as President over the entirety of it. The simple fact was that, as pressure for abolition mounted in Congress and the country, as a practical politician similar to President Richard Milhouse Nixon (who would espouse and finance the Head Start program because of its political popularity although he believed the money was being wasted on children who, because they were black, would be incapable of profiting from the attention and the expenditure), Lincoln was willing to cave in and make himself more responsive. Thus it had come about that:

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y A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual arm rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measu for supressing [sic??] said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with m purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectivel are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton [sic??], Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons he as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

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The federal government’s temporary instrument of war allowed that, while human slavery would continue to be tolerated everywhere within its sphere of influence, it would no longer tolerate this practice in any area not within said sphere of influence.

Nevertheless, before a black audience in Tremont Temple in Boston, this governmental declaration was read aloud and Frederick Douglass led in the singing of the hymn “Blow ye the trumpet, blow!” William Cooper Nell, President of the sponsoring Union Progressive Association, addressed the group. For this occasion Waldo Emerson composed “Boston Hymn,” a poem in which he neatly cut the Gordian Knot of compensation:

Pay ransom to the owner And fill the bag to the brim. Who is the owner? The slave is the owner, And ever was. Pay him.

We may imagine that on this occasion hands were shaken all around, with no distinction of color. Imagine then, if you will, the author of this Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln, during one of his many electoral campaigns, reaching down from the stump and grasping the hand of a black man. Do you fancy that this ever happened?

The word “emancipation,” after all, comes to us from the Latin manus, meaning “hand,” and capio, meaning “take.” When a Roman purchased something, it was considered that the act of purchasing was not complete, either conventionally or legally, until he had grasped it with his hand. If he was purchasing land, he picked up a handful of soil and thereby took title. If he was purchasing a slave, he took hold of the slave and thereby took title.

The power of this paterfamilias over his son was, in fact, the same as the power of this man over his slave –

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he could execute either one– but there was a legal ceremony by which, when his son became of age, his son could be set free to form his own familias. In that ceremony the father took the son by the hand, as if he were taking possession of a slave, but then dropped his son’s hand. After he had done this three times in succession, his son was emancipio. Emancipation, therefore, had a lot to do with shaking hands. Except during the US Civil War.

I am leading up to saying that Abraham Lincoln “emancipated” all those slaves he did not have the power physically to touch, but did not emancipate any slave he did have the power physically to touch. It was a neat trick. Here, in this painting, we can see how it was done:

The Emancipation Proclamation was an offer to place names on a list, which persons, should they fulfil the preconditions, would, at the end of the period of hostilities, be granted papers of manumission by the Federal Government. This was a very formal matter. It required prior registration. Whose names were actually so registered? Who actually received such papers of manumission? There should be such a list somewhere, if anyone did initiate or complete this process and if anyone did actually get freedom through this vehicle. Where is that list? How long is it? Does it exist? No, my friend, you’ve been conned. After a long and bloody civil war which was fought over whether we were going to be one nation state or two rather than over racial issues, we got ourselves out of this holiday from the Commandments in part by a carefully worded temporary martial law measure denominated the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been created by a team of white Washington DC lawyers. Under the terms of that martial law measure, which lapsed as soon as martial law lapsed, if a Southern slave could make it across the battle lines intact, and then perform labor for the Northern armies, and if that Southern slave could arrange to have his or her name recorded as part of the indicated program, as one of its beneficiaries, then, and only then, could he or she hope that at the successful conclusion of the war he or she would receive freebie manumission papers from the federal government. Read the fine print, and weep. I don’t know how few people managed to avail themselves of this very restricted opportunity, 2288 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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but I do know it must have been very few, and I suspect in fact that it was zero. Perhaps one reason why we don’t have a list of the names of people who obtained freedom in this way is embarrassment, at how short or null such a list would prove to be. We don’t want to know about such things. I have come across one such actual named military emancipation from this period. This emancipation did not, however, relate in any way to the Emancipation Proclamation. It related, instead, to a military Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves which was instituted under General Order No. 329 of the War Department during 1863. Here is the original certification of manumission document, from this Office of the Board of Claims, and it seems to be based on military service that had been rendered by the slave Isaac Gorden as a member of H Company, 30th Regiment. of the U.S. Colored Troops. It includes an order to reimburse the owner of this soldier Isaac Gordon, a man named N. Hammond Esgless. The document reads as follows: “OFFICE OF

BOARD OF CLAIMS for slaves enlisted in U.S. Service, No. 19 South Street, Baltimore, Maryland. I HEREBY CERTIFY, That Philip Pettibone of [blank] county, State of Maryland, has filed with the Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves, instituted under General Order No. 329, War Department, 1863, - a valid Deed of Manumission and Release of service of Isaac Gorden a man of African decent, of Anne Arundel county, Md., enlisted on the 10th day of March, 1864, in the 30th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops, Co. H, as per Muster-rolls and descriptive list of said Regiment, filed at this office, appears. Witness my hand and seal this 21st. day of November, eighteen hundred and sixty four [signed] John S. Sears, Clerk to Board of Claims.” There is an impress seal that says: Board of Claims for Enlisted Slaves No. 19 South St. Baltimore, Md. At the bottom of the document the following appears: “$100.00 Annapolis Md. Nov. 29, 1864. The Treasurer of the State of Maryland, Pay to N. Hammond Esgless, or Order, the sum of One Hundred Dollars, being the sum appropriated for my slave Isaac Gorden, of Anne arundel County, Md. enlisted as described in the above Certificate, under Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, chapter 15, 246 and 373, of 1864. [signed] Philip Pettibone Test, [signature illegible]” There are two Revenue stamps, a 5-cent and 2-cent, attached to the document and they are dated “Nov 29.” The document has two folds. There is writing on the back of the

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document which appears to be for filing purposes.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, however, Headman Seattle (See-Ahth of the Susquamish) of the Susquamish, the same “Chief Seattle” who is famous for an environmentalist speech in the manner in which we all should be famous for our environmental speeches, that is, famous for an environmental speech which in fact wasn’t made (his actual speech seems to have been about the deep spiritual differences between peoples of widely differing cultures), did free his eight Native American slaves.

In this year, the Union army would begin to enlist black soldiers, to serve of course under white officers, of course at a lower rate of pay than white soldiers. Notice this unit’s drummer, who was paid at a lower rate still,

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paid less for being not only black but also, indeed, only a little boy. A quite emancipated little boy.

The lithograph which pictured this little drummer was based on a daguerreotype made indoors, next door to

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“Roadside”, the country home of Friends James and Lucretia Mott near Philadelphia.

This was a military training camp, on which people were preparing for the task of killing other people, and it was named “Camp William Penn,” after a Quaker pacifist who was being alleged to have given up the wearing

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of the sword of nobility, whose favorite punch line went:

It is not our ends that justify our means.

The image is a fraud. In the original, there is no flag waving bravely in the background. There is no tent. There is no greenery. There is no little drummer boy flanking to the right. Looking carefully at the fraud, we can see that the countenances of the black men have been sketched on, exaggerating their negroid features in such manner as to emphasize, that the important thing which we are to grasp about these Union soldiers, is their ethnicity.

Here is a real photograph of Camp William Penn. As you can clearly see, a waving flag looks quite a bit

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different in a real photograph of the period!

The irony of this seems rather heavy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, as his contribution to the recruitment campaign for the war (what if they gave a war and nobody came?), the immortal patriotic doggerel

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“one if by day, and two if by night.”280

Frederick Douglass traveled through the cities of the North, recruiting black men to serve the Union Army. His son Lewis, age 22, and his son Charles Remond, age 19, were among the first to enlist. But the Union armies were routinely returning runaways to their owners. General McClellan ordered that slave rebellions were to be put down “with an iron hand.” But there were so many runaways. Finally, in Virginia, a Union general who believed in slavery, Benjamin Butler, began to declare them “contraband of war” and put them to work. Although Abraham Lincoln had twice disciplined Union generals who had freed slaves, putting slaves to work was something the President could accept, and the result was the Confiscation Act.

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson described a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation at Camp Saxton on one of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, that had been occupied by Northern black

280. Well, at least that was the way Gerald Ford’s teleprompter had it, when he gave the keynote address at the Concord Bicentennial Celebration of April 19, 1975 at the Old North Bridge. And perhaps no poet has been parodied more: it’s all because, while he was at Bowdoin College in 1822 with author-to-be Nathaniel Hawthorne (still Hathorne) and president-to-be Franklin Pierce, he was accustomed to play whist without a helmet.

[Acting on a news story about ex-Presidents selling their autographs, I have sent a copy of this page to ex-President Gerald Rudolph Ford, along with a $1.00 bill and a reminder that in the era in question a dollar bill was worth almost precisely what a C-note is worth today, and asked if he could in good humor initial below:

X ______]

Longfellow’s thing about “one if by land, and two if by sea” was of course inaccurate in that the Atlantic Ocean didn’t ever get involved. The militia’s concern was whether the regular troops stabled in Boston were going to march down the Neck and through Roxbury, or first row themselves across the Charles River so they could march through Cambridge. In quoting Longfellow before the Concordians on April 19, 1975 as having said “one if by day, and two if by night,” Former President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., seems to me to have been saying something very Thoreauvian to these people, he was almost saying:

Look, this history stuff you have been passing off is drivel, and besides, you aren’t at all like your ancestors. For one thing your ancestors didn’t worship themselves, the way you worship yourselves through your ancestors. For another thing, it’s way past time you people got busy and did something for others, rather than wanting other people to come around and make your bacon for you. Would you look at this dump, you’re turning Concord into a damned tourist trap! By creatively “misquoting” this poem, I’m going to show you how little it, and you, are worth in the great scheme of things.

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troops and were being protected by the ships of the US Navy.

The services began at half past eleven o’clock, with a prayer.... Then the President’s Proclamation was read.... Then the colors were presented.... Then followed an incident so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling, though it gave the keynote to the whole day. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose, close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked and elderly), into which two women’s voices instantly blended, singing as if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow. —

My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing!

After the ceremony the white officers visited a nearby plantation and viewed the instruments of torture still lying in the local slave-jail.

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In Beaufort, South Carolina, the Reverend William Henry Brisbane, the Union officer in charge of auctioning off the lands and structures of the former slave plantations of the district, read the Emancipation Proclamation aloud to thousands of freedmen.

General John Pope sent General Henry Hastings Sibley and General Alfred Sully onto the Dakota reservation in Minnesota, to hunt down the remaining tribespeople and get them off their land so it could be divided into

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farm acreage for white people.

(Early in this year, Stephen Grover Cleveland, a future president, was 26 years of age and it was time to serve his country — so he hired a man. He was just as much a draft dodger, in his era, as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, in our own era!)

May 28: William Cooper Nell stood on State Street in Boston and watched as the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment begin its march toward South Carolina. He was part of the largest crowd in Boston’s history. Many of these onlookers would purchase a souvenir of the day containing a quote from George Gordon, Lord Byron’s CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE, Canto ii. Stanza 76: Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not, Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?

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This black regiment would be used for dirty labor details until in frustration their white commander would volunteer their bodies to soak up some of the Secesh ammunition in the initial stages of a useless frontal assault on a heavily fortified position, Fort Wagner.

An anti-slavery convention adjourned for an hour to permit the delegates to witness this interesting sight. Frederick Douglass waited to view and wave at his two sons in the ranks (after the publicity and the propaganda, he would of course use his political influence to get them released from service and out of uniform and out of harm’s way). The 1st American regiment of black soldiers, the Massachusetts 54th, was retracing the route through downtown Boston that had been traced nine years before by the white soldiers escorting Anthony Burns back into his enslavement.

Instead of one of our boys going south in a donated suit of clothing and in shackles to suffer violence, this time a thousand of our boys were going south in uniform and in lockstep to perpetrate violence — and yet some dare allege there to be no such thing as progress! The 54th marched through Boston to the Common, where there was a ceremony marking our boys’ departure for service –that is, for their burial service, presuming any of them received one– in South Carolina.281

1864

General Rufus Saxton established a Military Savings Bank at Beaufort, South Carolina, eventually known as the South Carolina Freedmen’s Savings Bank, to secure the deposits of black soldiers and civilians, while General Benjamin Butler established a similar bank at Norfolk, Virginia. In Louisiana, General Nathaniel Banks established a “Free Labor Bank” which maintained deposits from thousands of black soldiers and former slaves who were laboring on plantations under the control of the federal government. (These institutions eventually would be rolled into the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, which eventually would collapse — with Frederick Douglass at its head.)

1865

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January 31: The proposed XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, enabling the federal congress to enact legislation that would criminalize the enslavement of human beings in the United States of America, had during April 1864 received the required support in the Senate but in June 1864 it had failed of passage in the House of Representatives. On this day, however, it was again being considered by the 2 House of Representatives. To pass, it needed at least a /3ds majority. A sufficient number of the northern Democrats broke with their party that the amendment carried, 119 over 56, with two votes to spare, 8 representatives not voting. Black Americans, who had for the past year been being admitted to the gallery above the chamber, were gullible enough, ignorant enough of the actual workings of the government, to be impressed by this cynical Civil War Reconstruction ploy, and to began to weep and embrace one another. There was cheering on the floor and from the gallery. In the midst of this misplaced emotion, the cynical assembly was able to adjourn without taking any action in actual implementation of the authority which had just been granted to it.282 SLAVERY 281. When a people’s worthiness is questioned on racial grounds, one of the things that happen is that their young men attempt to hurl their worthiness into the teeth of their accusers, by the taking of great risks in battle. This happened in the Civil War and resulted in high casualties in Black regiments, and would happen again in World War II when many hyphenated and sequestered Japanese- American youths volunteered out of their concentration camps in the American desert for segregated service in the “Rainbow Battalion” in the European theater of operations, thus causing this battalion to have by far the highest casualty rate of any Allied troops of the war. Of course, we might in both cases well have anticipated this phenomenon and taken steps to prevent it — but we found it worthwhile to allow/coerce the boys in this manner to immolate themselves for our benefit.

During the Civil War, the fact is that the primary use of black Union soldiers was for manual labor details. The secondary use, the combat use, was to encourage the Southron side to expend its ammunition. To cause them to expose themselves so that the Southrons could expend ammunition, the black Americans were asked over and over again to “prove their bravery.” 2300 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” — Lily Tomlin

February 1: Amendment XIII to the US Constitution had been proposed by Congress on January 31, 1865. The amendment, when first proposed by a resolution in Congress, had been passed by the Senate, 38 to 6, on April 8, 1864, but had been defeated in the House, 95 to 66 on June 15, 1864. On reconsideration by the House, on January 31, 1865, the resolution had passed, 119 to 56. It had been ratified by a sufficient number of the states on December 6, 1865. President Lincoln added his own signature on this day — even though the Supreme Court had decided in 1798 that no President has anything at all to do either with the proposing of amendments to the US Constitution, or with their adoption: 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. We notice that the amendment is merely permissive. Giving Congress the power to enforce the article by appropriate legislation would be a mandate by which it might enact such legislation, but it did not create any obligation that such legislation be enacted. We note however that when considered in conjunction with the “separation of powers” doctrine –that a power granted to one of the three branches of the federal government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, is thereby denied to the other two of those three branches– this amendment forever removes any constitutional possibility that the judicial branch would itself attempt to regulate or forbid human enslavement in the United States of America, and also, this amendment forever removes any constitutional possibility that the executive branch would issue another martial law order such as the Emancipation Proclamation, and renders the Emancipation Proclamation which had been issued during the civil war by President Lincoln into a document that retroactively is void ex post facto, as unconstitutional.

We notice also that the language used, “slavery” and “involuntary servitude,” is language which had never received either a federal juridical or a federal legislative definition. The language “persons held to labor or 282. The cheering and weeping and embracing were of course sadly premature. Authorizing Congress to do something is not at all the same as inducing Congress to do something — in the business of government there is many a slip ’twixt cup and lip! Even the sovereign State of Mississippi has by now been able to embrace this XIIIth Amendment, since in effect it has been entirely null and void, disregarded, functioning only as a cover story. In all the years since the enactment of this enabling amendment, Congress has never seen fit to enact any such legislation, and the enslavement of US citizens is actually still as legal at our federal level of government, in 2001, as it had been in the year 1801. Nobody has ever been punished by the federal authorities for having enslaved a US citizen. Nobody. Ever. This just couldn’t happen, as anyone who has been cunning enough to figure out how to enslave a citizen through fraud, without violating some other law such as the federal law against violent taking (kidnap), has been smart enough to figure out how to enslave a citizen without violating any law at all. Enslavement, in and of itself, is not now and never has been an offense against our federal criminal code, simply because the concept “enslavement” has never been granted any statutory or case-law definition. And, I may hasten to add, this is no oversight. No single thing would alter the reality of life in the United States of America more, than if we had on our books a defined and enforceable federal crime of enslavement with an appropriate penalty.

(Cornell University Library’s manuscript memorial of the Thirteenth Amendment is signed by President Lincoln and the members of Congress who voted for the joint resolution. It is in the Nicholas H. Noyes Collection of Historical Americana, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, of the Cornell University Library.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2301 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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service,” which had been used in the various fugitive slave laws and which had been included in the proposed 13th Amendment which had been delivered to the state legislatures for approval on March 2, 1861, had been effective, defined language. This, quite the opposite, was undefined language, which could only be activated when (and if) the federal congress chose to provide it with an effective definition. In other words, the amendment placed the federal congress in sole and total control over the issue of whether slavery would ever be effectively abolished.

(No such legislative definition of a federal crime of enslavement would ever be forthcoming. No American, therefore, could ever be arrested, arraigned, prosecuted, convicted, and punished, for a crime of enslaving another human being — because no federal judge would ever be able to infer, in what such enslavement might consist.) “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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The signatures of Abraham Lincoln, Hannibal Hamlin, Schuyler Colfax, and members of the US Senate and House of Representatives appear upon this ceremonial copy:

So much changed as a result of this amendment! After this sort of amendment to the Constitution, the parents of “Blind Tom” needed to be persuaded to sign papers of indenture amounting to an extension of their black son’s slavery, so that his “former” owner could continue to profit enormously from the proceeds of his piano

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performances!

THOMAS GREENE WIGGINS You do agree, don’t you, that Blind Tom was a whole lot better off after he became a free indentured man, than he had been when he was a mere slave before the passage of the XIIIth Amendment. Don’t you? Come on, admit it, it does sound a whole lot better to be indentured, than to be enslaved! Doesn’t it?

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December 18: As the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 had not even ostensibly ended slavery in America, having been a mere temporary Civil War martial law measure applying only to a restricted group with a restricted geographical area, at this point a XIIIth Amendment to the federal Constitution was ratified, granting to the US Congress whatever authority it required to eventually enact legislation as part of Reconstruction to outlaw and proscribe the practices of human enslavement in the United States of America, thus effectively denying under our separation-of-powers doctrine as well as under our expressio-unius-est- exclusio-alterius283 legal principle such authority to the executive and judicial branches of the government.284 This amendment rendered the Emancipation Proclamation, therefore, unconstitutional.285 If it had not ceased its effectiveness prior to this date, it ceased it as of this date. There could never again be such an executive pronouncement. Actual enslavements would continue, of course, for there would be no penalty for failing to inform one’s slave (as happened for instance in regions of East Texas), and as persons would still be being for many decades bought and sold openly in such venues as the Los Angeles market. Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,286 shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.287 Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.288

283. One of the bedrock understandings of American law has ever been the legal principle that anytime one and only one thing is expressly mentioned in an enactment, implicitly all other things are being excluded: “expressio unius est exclusio alterius.” 284. This was not legislation outlawing slavery, but permission to enact such legislation. Actually, the federal congress would never get around to this. As far as our federal government is concerned, human enslavement is just as legal in 1997 as it had been in 1797. The only function possessed by the words of the amendment as above is to intercept and prevent our thought. 285. The Emancipation Proclamation had set up an elaborate procedure by which slaves who performed work for the federal army would receive a manumission document, but the Executive branch of the federal government had never in fact implemented any such freedom program, and therefore no such documents had ever been granted. Had the administrative procedure actually been implemented, and had such administrative freedom documents actually been granted, they would have been granted by the Executive branch of the federal government and would therefore at this point have been rendered null and void by this XIIIth Amendment, since it assigned such power exclusively to the Legislative branch of the federal government. 286. We may note that even had this amendment been implemented by a positive federal criminal statute (which it to date has not since the constructs deployed, “slavery” and “involuntary servitude,” have never been defined either by statutory definition or as a result of the piling up of case law and precedent), there can never be any federal prohibition of enslavement that is accomplished by duly constituted authority after due process of law when said enslavement is ostensibly a punishment for crime. 287. We may note that the federal government is specifically not empowered here to punish the crimes of US citizens, if these crimes are committed in, say, Guatemala. Thus if a US citizen commits child molestation in Guatemala and Guatemala law permits child molestation, the US citizen cannot be prosecuted in a US court, and likewise, if a US citizen enslaves another US citizen while present not in the United States of America or Guam or Puerto Rico, but instead in, say, the Shah’s Iran, since Iran is allegedly not a place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, that enslavement of one US citizen by another would be perfectly OK according to our constitution. 288. The states of the south were allowed back into the federal union before any such law was enacted, and allowing them back into the federal union so altered the voting parameters of the federal congress that subsequent enactment of any such federal criminal statute against human enslavement became quite impossible. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2305 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I need for you to notice how different the wording of this first clause was, from what would be the wording of the first clause of the XIXth Amendment in 1920 when it would extend the voting privilege to American adult female citizens not guilty of crime: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” One would have supposed that this XIIIth amendment extending the rights of citizenship to Americans of color would have been similarly worded, one would have supposed that such an amendment would have been declaring something as emphatic and noteworthy as “The rights of citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But no, words that positive and emphatic were not employed. Instead, a carefully entirely negative wording was employed. Was this the fault of some Washington clerk unfamiliar with the English language? No. Weasel words were deliberately being chosen, to pull the wool over your eyes.

Thus even to this date in the 21st Century, despite everything that has been said about our having “outlawed slavery,” there is no federal criminality attached to the enslavement of humans, nor has there ever come to be any formal legal definition of what it is that enslavement or involuntary servitude might consist in.289

Nowhere, for instance specifically, nowhere in the series of federal enactments that are known to the general public as “Fugitive Slave Laws” (that is only a popular name, and does not appear in the actual legislation as written) will you find any mention of slavery. It’s not there. Such federal legislation speaks only of “persons bound to service,” a pot category which primarily includes apprentices and other contract laborers, with –wink wink, nudge nudge– runaway slaves merely “understood” to be implicitly included.

Please make careful note of the fact that the proscription of a thing we term “slavery” in the XIIIth Amendment to the US Constitution as of 1865 happens actually to be the very first reference to any such construct as “slave” or “slavery” or “enslavement” in the entire corpus of federal legislation and jurisprudence — at no prior point had such a construct been formally and officially “written down on paper” as part of our structure 289. There is a specific disqualification in regard to a topic near and dear to many a heart, to wit, the military draft. Since the military draft was in existence prior to this XIIIth Amendment, and since the amendment does not specifically outlaw the military draft, it has always been presumed in our courts that the military draft cannot be construed to amount to either enslavement or involuntary servitude. —It is a well established, standard, even non-controversial judicial parameter, that an existing practice that is well known to legislators is simply not prohibited by their legislation, unless in their legislation they specifically mention it as prohibited. 2306 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of laws at the federal level. One might have supposed that, having written such a term into our foundational document, the Constitution of the United States of America, by way of a formal amendment, and, having stipulated in Clause 2 of that Amendment XIII that the federal legislature was empowered to enact such laws as to make this proscription effective, then the very first thing which we would have accomplished was, we would have arrived at a formal definition of this construct “slavery” and of this construct “involuntary servitude.” We would have enacted legislation stating precisely what constituted this construct “slavery” and precisely what constituted this construct “involuntary servitude” which had just been proscribed. –But, we didn’t do that. It’s precisely what we did not do. Instead what we did was, we extended the previous “gag rule,” which had quite prevented debate on the subject in the US House of Representatives for a number of decades, making this “gag rule” apply to our entire national life. Whatever we did at the federal level, whatever we did at the state level, whatever we did at the local level, there was one thing we might never do: no one could in the future legitimately deploy such a construct as “slavery” to describe any official doing. This gag rule effectively made it impossible for any of us in the United States of America to know whether or not slavery had effectively been ended. Very frequently I hear citizens claiming that we have “outlawed slavery.” To understand what they mean, it would seem necessary to parse this interesting term “outlawed” which arises so frequently in such a context. What does such a term mean to such a speaker, when in point of fact no US citizen has ever been punished, or sentenced, or found guilty, or prosecuted, or arraigned, or even so much as taken under arrest, charged with a crime of enslavement? One very well known usage came while President Ronald Reagan was preparing for one of his neato Saturday radio broadcasts from his ranch in California, while the technicians were doing what they call a “voice check” to make sure that all the mikes were turned on and all the wire connections snug. Reagan said into an open mike, that is, one which turned out to be on the air nationwide: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” I gather that at a minimum, what must be meant by this construct “outlawed slavery” in the common belief “We must have outlawed slavery” is that we must have criminalized such a thing as one citizen of the US enslaving another citizen of the US while on US soil. To criminalize some conduct, it is necessary to define an offense of enslavement and make that offense be prohibited behavior under the US criminal code. It seems most interesting to me that the US Congress, despite the permissions given to it in 1865 in the 2d clause of the XIIIth Amendment to the federal constitution, the implementation clause, has never done anything even remotely approaching that. Our legal system literally has no awareness of slavery. No federal judge has ever taken any situation whatever, and interpreted that situation as being a proscribed situation of enslavement. No federal judge could ever take any such situation whatever, and interpret it as a proscribed enslavement. The groundwork for this simply is not present, simply has not been put into place. There’s no there there. I would think that it would be one prime objective of our public educational system, to make certain that all Americans are well aware of such a fact as this one, that although there are federal laws against kidnapping which proscribe and punish a violent taking from one place to another, and that although there are federal laws against murder which proscribe and punish an unjustified taking of human life, there are no federal laws against an enslavement even when it takes place on US soil, so long as said enslavement 1.) does not deprive its victim of life itself, thus constituting in addition murder, and so long as 2.) this is not initiated by a violent removal of the person from one place to another, thus constituting in addition kidnapping. –Would you disagree?

Why do you suppose it would be that the XIIIth Amendment contained the interesting limiting clause “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” making it inapplicable in locations outside the United States which are not subject to our jurisdiction? The reason is, the only limitations on the power of the federal government of the USA that are contained in the Constitution as its foundational document are those limiting its power in internal affairs, that is to say, in relation to the pre-existent state governments, and in relation to the specified individual rights of citizens. Thus, when this amendment was added to the Constitution, granting to the federal congress a new authority to enact legislation against human enslavement within the territories of the respective states of the federal union, but not granting the federal congress power to enact such legislation against the enslavement of American

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citizens abroad, this was because any such granting of power would have added to the authorities of the legislative arm by subtracting from those of the executive. The amendment did not need to reassign a power already inhering perfectly in the legislative branch of the federal government. Not only did the federal government already possess complete authority to take action in regard to any discovered cases of enslavement of American citizens abroad, it had already in at least one circumstance exercised that authority.290

Before the civil war and this amendment to the US Constitution, the American whites had arranged that although there would be slavery in the USA, it would not apply to them, merely to somebody other than them. They arranged for their own safety by implementing a color convention, in accordance with which any degree of blackness of skin was going to equate to slavery. This led initially to Americans with only the lightest tinge of color being defined as vulnerable to enslavement, and culminated, in the Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court, with the declaration that no person of color had ever had (historically, of course, this was a factual falsehood), had, or would ever have any citizenship rights which any white American citizen would be obliged to respect. The XIIIth Amendment did not change this “even one drop” concept. Just as before the amendment, slavery and negritude were equated. However, after the amendment, this worked to the disadvantage of the whites, rather than to their advantage, for the federal government now insists that what laws exist against enslavement can be considered to protect only persons of color: since slavery is something which only happens to persons of color, therefore, whatever happens to a white person in life, whatever victimizations they suffer, it cannot be considered that they are enslaved. SLAVERY PEONAGE

Well, but Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was very, very impressed by the bells pealing on this day, and wrote the following poem of praise to God: Laus Deo

It is done! Clang of bell and roar of gun Send the tidings up and down. How the belfries rock and reel! How the great guns, peal on peal, Fling the joy from town to town! Ring, O bells! Every stroke exulting tells Of the burial hour of crime. Loud and long, that all may hear, Ring for every listening ear Of Eternity and Time! Let us kneel: God’s own voice is in that peal, And this spot is holy ground. Lord, forgive us! What are we That our eyes this glory see, That our ears have heard this sound! For the Lord On the whirlwind is abroad; In the earthquake He has spoken; 290. We were so eager to get hostile that we actually dispatched a punitive naval expedition from New-York harbor on May 20, 1815 to retrieve or take vengeance for a supposed American supposedly enslaved by the “Barbary pirates” of the north coast of Africa, without first having made sure what the man’s name really was, or that he actually was an American citizen, or even that indeed he had been enslaved. Even today our historians aren’t sure of the man in question’s name or nationality, or of whether he was anything other than a manipulative homosexual lover of a local bey. As in the case of our recent attack on Iraq, we perceived no need to allow any facts to get in our way. 2308 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He has smitten with His thunder The iron walls asunder, And the gates of brass are broken! Loud and long Lift the old exulting song; Sing with Miriam by the sea, He has cast the mighty down; Horse and rider sink and drown; ‘He hath triumphed gloriously!’ Did we dare, In our agony of prayer, Ask for more than He has done? When was ever His right hand Over any time or land Stretched as now beneath the sun? How they pale, Ancient myth and song and tale, In this wonder of our days When the cruel rod of war Blossoms white with righteous law, And the wrath of man is praise! Blotted out! All within and all about Shall a fresher life begin; Freer breathe the universe As it rolls its heavy curse On the dead and buried sin! It is done! In the circuit of the sun Shall the sound thereof go forth. It shall bid the sad rejoice, It shall give the dumb a voice, It shall belt with joy the earth! Ring and swing, Bells of joy! On morning’s wing Sound the song of praise abroad! With a sound of broken chains Tell the nations that He reigns, Who alone is Lord and God!

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1866

In issuing his book NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS, George H. Moore made himself the “tormentor of Massachusetts” by pointing up the fact that much of that state’s patriotic history had been

founded upon straightforward lies.291 READ CHAPTER ONE READ CHAPTER TWO READ CHAPTER THREE READ CHAPTER FOUR READ CHAPTER FIVE READ CHAPTER SIX READ CHAPTER SEVEN READ CHAPTER EIGHT READ CHAPTER NINE READ CHAPTER TEN READ APPENDIX A READ APPENDIX B READ APPENDIX C

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The state that was considering itself to have been the cradle of abolitionism had in fact been one of the very most complicit with the evil of human slavery. SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS “There is only one way to accept America and that is in hate; one must be close to one’s land, passionately close in some way or other, and the only way to be close to America is to hate it; it is the only way to love America.” — Lionel Trilling

At the end of this book, at the end of its Chapter Ten, this tormenter wrapped up his analysis of the question, at what early point was slavery abolished in Massachusetts, by declaring that “flavery, having never been formally prohibited by legiflation in Maffachufetts, continued to ‘fubfift in point of law’ until the year 1866 when the grand Conftitutional Amendment terminated it forever throughout the limits of the United States. It would be not the leaft remarkable of the circumftances connected with this ftrange and eventful hiftory, that, although virtually abolifhed before, the actual prohibition of flavery in Maffachufetts as well as Kentucky, fhould be accomplifhed by the votes of South Carolina and Georgia.” We are left with the question, how is it possible that in these states where slavery used to be practiced, such a fine contempt for the Southern slave states has been developed, combined with such a total erasure of their own history as slave states? The answer, I believe, is that these two ingredients,1.) this fine contempt for the other states as unrighteous, and 2.) this total erasure of their own sad history, serve as masks for an essential third ingredient, to wit 3.) their ongoing unanalyzed and uncorrected white-racist disdain for any and all Americans of the black race: “In those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery ... and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

291. Note that pages 10 and 11 are missing from this electronic text. Note also the puzzling circumstance, that in the stereotyping of this volume in 1866 by the company of John H. Trow at 50 Greene Street in New York, all the body text with the exception of the title page and the text of the table of contents were set “old style,” so that a “slave” would often be rendered as a “flave.” I do not understand what was intended by the setting of type in such an archaic manner, in New York in 1866 — almost as if the year of publication were instead 1686. Can anyone explain this for my benefit?

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“A too confident sense of justice always leads to injustice.” — Reinhold Niebuhr, THE IRONY OF AMERICAN HISTORY Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952, Chapter 7 READ THE FULL TEXT

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1867

2d edition, posthumous, of James Robert Ballantyne’s THE LAGHU KAUMUDI, A SANSKRIT GRAMMAR, BY VARADARÁJA.

2,000 Chinese railroad workers staged a week-long strike protesting inhumane and racist conditions.292 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

On the dedication page to his NOJOQUE, A QUESTION FOR A CONTINENT, Hinton Rowan Helper supposed that the American nation could be rendered all-white by 1876, our centennial year: “No Slave nor Would-be Slave, No Negro nor Mulatto, No Chinaman nor unnative Indian, No Black nor Bi-colored Individual of whatever Name or Nationality [should ever again be allowed to] find Domicile anywhere within the Boundaries of the United States.” HINTON ROWAN HELPER

Reading between the lines of this, we may infer that Helper’s phrase “unnative Indian” was intended to allow that since native Americans had not been brought from anywhere else, it made precious little sense to ask them to go back where they came from. SLAVERY

1868

Ratification of XIVth amendment defining citizenship. Despite the plain unequivocal language, the U.S. Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom would rule in Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, 1884 that, despite the universal grant of citizenship, the term “all persons” somehow had not encompassed native Americans.

July 21: The readmission of the Southern states to the federal Union had been delayed due to the fact that, with black citizens now being counted as whole persons rather than being counted, as they had before the civil war, as three-fifths of a person (by the infamous original Constitutional compromise), the Southern states would of necessity come to have a larger number of Representatives in the US House of Representatives than they had had before the civil war. The impact of this, if the Southern states succeeded in denying the voting franchise to newly freed black citizens on the basis of being black or on the basis of not being property owners, would be to reward them for seceding by granting to their propertied white men an even more disproportionate political influence than they had before they had seceded. Also, the XIVth Amendment to the federal Constitution had been considerably delayed due to a conflict over the probably behavior of the Southern states. Its Section 2 was therefore negotiated to provide that if any state were to restrict the voting franchise (as it was 292. Please understand that the nonviolent civil disobedience in this incident was entirely on the side of the Chinese. There was no nonviolence on the part of white Americans. They burned a number of the Chinese laborers alive, and scalped, mutilated, branded, decapitated, dismembered, and hanged others from gutterspouts. One Chinese man’s penis and testicles were severed and toasts were drunk to them at a nearby saloon, as a “trophy of the hunt.” The event would come to be known as the “Rock Springs Massacre.” (It goes to show you, that civil disobedience is not the sort of tactic that will function well, when the opposing group is incapable of shame.) 2314 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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anticipated that these Southern states were likely to attempt to do), its representation in the US Congress would punitively be slashed. The effect of this provision would be twofold: 1st, it would effectively prevent the congressmen representing the coalition of Southern states from again dominating the Congress, and 2d, it would effectively encourage the enfranchisement of the black freedmen. Finally on this day the Amendment was ratified granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States and granting an enumerated and restricted set of civil rights to such citizens. This amendment would travel informally under the name “the civil rights amendment.”

It is commonly said that this XIVth Amendment of the Reconstruction Era in re the “civil rights” of US citizens is what has implemented the prohibition of enslavement found in the XIIIth Amendment of 1865. By this view we would have a constitutional right not to be “enslaved” — whatever it is we decide that being enslaved amounts to. That attitude is of course absurd on its face, for a nation does not implement one constitutional amendment by enacting yet another constitutional amendment. (In the same line, would we implement a law against, say, prostitution, by enacting a 2d law that declared once again that prostitution was illegal? –No, we would not, for our legal system does not operate by the Red Queen’s dictum “What I tell you twice is true.” We tell people once and then, if they ignored us, we put them in prison to allow their organ of

hearing to gradually become more sensitive against a background of silence.) In fact there is no civil right not to be enslaved, as such a civil right is not on this enumerated list and as it is a principle in law that an enumerated list is an exhaustive one. Had the XIVth amendment used the legally coded word “includes,” of course, the matter would be entirely different, because if the amendment had allowed that we had civil rights, and that among them were the following, x, y, and z, then it would have allowed that there might well be some civil right a, which we had, which was in supplement to the declared x, y, and z. By default, however, since the amendment does not employ the legally coded word “includes,” the legally coded word “exclude” applies. Nothing not on this short, declarative list can be added to it for anything and everything else is excluded by it. Subsequently to having fought and died in a Civil War that was said to have been about ending slavery, stuff like that, we have been forbidden any civil right not listed, such as, say, a civil right not to be enslaved.

But you’re such a fool that you didn’t even know about this, right? Pulled the wool right over your eyes, didn’t they? –Yeah you can go right ahead and get enraged at this messenger. Amendment XIV Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,

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and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. SLAVERY PEONAGE

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It had been in civil war times that the fatal steps had begun to be taken, that for the first time constructively accorded to soulless corporations all the constitutional rights that previously had been reserved to the individual citizen human being, such as freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from self-incrimination, whatever. It was, therefore, due to our preoccupation with civil war, that we must now all dance with elephants as we do — and be very very careful where we place our feet. The simple lesson to be drawn is that our civil war was the first occurrence of what is now an unavoidable rule of war: through war corporations can make themselves rich and powerful. This is true not only because of war profiteering but also because of huge orders for the production of capital goods (ships, locomotives, cannons) rather than of consumer goods. Since civil war times the elephants of commerce and the ants of commerce (us individual human beings) have acquired “equal rights,” to tread upon one another’s toes. What happened was that during civil war times, in the background, while everyone was preoccupied with fighting and nobody was paying much attention to business, there had been truly immense land grants to railroads. Mostly, these grants had resulted from the Transcontinental Railroad Act of 1862 and from an even more lucrative Act of 1864 — both of which President Lincoln had signed without a whole lot of fanfare. Private railroad corporations had been unwilling to build a transcontinental railroad unless they owned the rights-of-ways their tracks would cross. And during the war and Reconstruction, the federal government had not been in any position to span the continent with a government owned and built railroad. Consequently, the federal government had given away 128,000,000 acres of land, to the railroad megacorporations, between 1862 and 1871. To give you an idea of how much the railroads came away with, for much of the century after 1862 the Central Pacific Railroad Company was the largest private landowner in the State of California. The Central Pacific Railroad owned 11,600,000 acres, more than 10 percent of the total area of the state. Today, California’s largest private landowner (the 2d largest private landowner in the USA) is Sierra Pacific Industries, a timber corporation. Sierra Pacific Industries owns 1,500,000 acres, or about 1 percent of California. Imagine: a single railroad once owned ten times that much! We might smell conspiracy and/or corruption here, in that before his presidency, Lincoln had been a very successful corporate lawyer whose major clients had included the Illinois Central Railroad (and its Vice President had been George B. McClellan, soon to become Lincoln’s troublesome general). Fishier still, Lincoln also had signed the National Banking Act of 1863, which had created the first coherent, national monetary system, something Lincoln had deemed necessary to the war effort. But basically, the most one could charge Lincoln with in these matters was benign neglect and/or tunnel vision. Lincoln had been preoccupied with winning a war and had simply never gotten around to formulating a set of economic policies.

This sets us up for what is going to happen next, in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1888 — the US Supreme Court is going to award corporate “personhood” to such invented mega-entities. This coming case was going to construe or misconstrue the “equal protection” clause of the new 14th Amendment that had been enacted in June 1866 and ratified by the states in July 1868 by turning it in the direction of fake individuals and thus turing it away from real individuals.

We can’t blame the whole thing on President Lincoln. He would have lots of help. Only two of Lincoln’s high court appointees (Samuel F. Miller and Stephen J. Field) would still be serving in 1886. The 1886 “Santa Clara” opinion’s author would be Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan (not to be confused with his grandson of the same name, who would serve on the Earl Warren court from the mid-1950s to 1971). Lincoln’s appointee for Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, would die in 1873 and Justice Harlan would get appointed in 1877 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Food for thought, however, is that we are still coping with the results of the railroads’ land-grab that began with the help of President Lincoln. Today’s controversies between environmentalists and ranchers over “grazing rights,” for instance, are centered on precisely this same land: millions of acres owned by railroad companies that still exist on paper, but have not operated trains for decades. Because the old track rights of way are now unneeded, the railroads have been leasing grazing rights to private ranchers. In this way, federal giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations continue unabated.

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1870

The Spanish legislature enacted the Moret Law manumitting slaves in Cuba as they reached 60 years of age. Children not yet born were to be free at birth but were to be kept at the expense of their parent’s masters until 18 years of age and were to be employed until 18 as apprentices in work suitable to their age.

June 3, day: A U.S.-British convention for the suppression of the African slave trade was concluded.

1871

Quakers formed the New-York Colored Mission, to aid freed slaves.

Brazil freed the children of slaves. The Rio Banco Law.

December 11, day: In the US House of Representatives, on the call of States, Mr. Banks introduced “a bill (House, No. 490) to carry into effect Article XIII of the Constitution of the United States, and to prohibit the owning or dealing in slaves by American citizens in foreign countries” (HOUSE JOURNAL, 42nd Congress, 2d session, page 48). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

1873

Robert Michael Ballantyne’s LIFE IN THE RED BRIGADE, FORT DESOLATION, and BLACK IVORY. In writing this book, my aim has been to give a true picture in outline of the Slave-Trade as it exists at the present time on the east coast of Africa. In order to do this, I have selected from the most trust-worthy sources what I believe to be the most telling points of “the trade,” and have woven these together into a tale, the warp of which is composed of thick cords of fact; the woof of slight lines of fiction, just sufficient to hold the fabric together. Exaggeration has been easily avoided, because –as Dr. Livingstone says in regard to the slave-trade– “exaggeration is impossible” ... I began my tale in the hope that I might produce something to interest the young (perchance, also, the old) in a most momentous case — the total abolition of the African slave-trade. I close it with the prayer that God may make it a tooth in the file which shall eventually cut the chain of slavery, and set the black man free. — BLACK IVORY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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In his essay on “Hereditary Improvement,” Sir Francis Galton, the data-faking founder of the pseudoscience of human Eugenics –the discipline which would eventually “cash out” during the eugenicist years of Virginia, California, Indiana, Vermont, and 27 other states as a legitimator of the sterilization of the institutionalized and then during the Nazi regime in Germany as a legitimation of genocide– demonstrated that one result of the Irish Potato Famine was that the “Irish type of face” had become noticeably “more like the Negro type of face.” That is, the surviving Irish, because they had been selected by starvation for “a low or coarse organization,” had developed the type of protruding (prognathous) lower jaw that was typical of our primitive ancestors and is still typical of the present-day inferior races. “These people lead with their chin — which is why we have to strike them.”

SLAVERY PEONAGE

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April 13, Easter Sunday,: The 1st Enforcement Act had been passed in 1870 –only 62 days after the XVth Amendment to the US Constitution had established that citizens were entitled to vote regardless of the color of their skins– prohibiting either private individuals or state officials from taking any of a series of specific actions that might discourage anyone qualified to vote in a state or local election from voting or from completing any prerequisite to voting. After all, what would have been the point of erasing the word “white” from state suffrage laws if state governments had been allowed to disfranchise their African-American citizens by other means or had provided no protection to those who sought to vote, or to those who sought to assume offices to which they had been legally elected? –Such a law having been enacted, the job had been done, and the bleeding heart liberals could go safely to sleep! Nothing to worry about! Therefore, in Colfax, Louisiana on this holy Sunday, the largest peacetime massacre of African-Americans in 19th-Century America was enabled to take place, without any punishment whatever of the white genocidal murderers — and I bet you’ve never heard tell of any such thing!

What happened was, there was a disputed election which resulted in an armed mob of some 300 white Democrats. They killed at least 105 of their Black Republican neighbors. The mob was led by Columbus Nash, the white man who had been the Democratic candidate for sheriff, who apparently had been defeated at the polls. Some 50 of these 105 black men were massacred after having disarmed themselves and surrendered and been taken prisoner. The US Supreme Court would see to it that none of the white men involved would ever receive a slap on the wrist for this.

H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected]

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(January 2003) Robert Goldman. RECONSTRUCTION AND BLACK SUFFRAGE: LOSING THE VOTE IN REESE AND CRUIKSHANK. Landmark Law Cases and American Society Series. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2001 Reviewed for H-Pol by J. Morgan Kousser , Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: [email protected]. The Easter Massacre and Legal Abstraction When the largest peacetime massacre of African-Americans in 19th-Century America took place on Easter Sunday, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the US government possessed the tools to prosecute the murderers. The 1st Enforcement Act, passed 62 days after the ratification of the XVth Amendment, prohibited private individuals, as well as state officials, from taking any of a series of specific actions aimed at prohibiting or discouraging anyone qualified to vote in a state or local election from voting or from performing any prerequisites to voting. After all, what was the use of removing the word “white” from state suffrage laws if the states disfranchised blacks by other means or offered no protection to African-Americans who sought to vote or to assume offices to which they were legally elected? And the law clearly applied to the “Colfax Massacre” of at least 105 black men, about 50 of whom where executed after surrendering to the well- organized group of about 300 armed whites, because the massacre was the direct result of a disputed election. After an election in which they had almost surely won a majority of the votes, local black Republican candidates had attempted a peaceful occupation of the Grant Parish courthouse. Their slaughter was not a conventional assault that a local or state government could be expected to handle, but the climactic event in a struggle for control of local government — Columbus Nash, the Democratic candidate for sheriff, led the white mob. The events in Colfax evoked national outrage. In response, federal District Attorney James R. Beckwith indicted and eventually convinced a southern jury to convict three of the murderers. Although hardly equal and exact justice, the punishment of at least a few of the white terrorists signaled that the Grant Administration would continue to try to protect its loyal followers’ voting rights. That signal sent a bolt of fear through the southern Democratic establishment, whose efforts to mount coups d’etat against the Republican Reconstruction state governments depended on having a free hand to murder and intimidate its white and especially its black opponents and to stuff ballot boxes to overcome the votes of those who were not cowed. The trio’s upper class lawyers, the flower of the state and national Democratic bar, contested the case in the US Circuit Court. When the two circuit court judges, including Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, disagreed with each other, the case was certified to the US Supreme Court as US v Cruikshank. Just as clearly covered by the provisions of the Enforcement Act was the refusal of Lexington, Kentucky tax collector James F. Robinson, Jr. to accept the poll tax payment of the African-American William Garner, who proffered his $1.50 in an attempt to qualify to vote. Faced with a probable black majority within its city limits, white Democratic officials, one month after the ratification of the XVth Amendment, had gotten the state legislature to amend the city charter to increase its residency requirement and mandate the payment of a poll tax before any person could vote in municipal elections. In the January 1873 election, the poll tax reportedly disfranchised 2/3rds of black voters and preserved white Democratic supremacy. Even those like Garner, who could raise the money to pay their taxes, could be denied the suffrage if officials pleased. For when Garner appeared at the polls, election supervisors Hiram Reese and Matthew Foushee refused to accept his vote unless

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he presented a receipt showing that he had paid his poll tax, which Collector Robinson, another Democrat, had refused to allow Garner to do. Although Robinson’s action apparently seemed so indirectly connected with voting that he was not charged under the Enforcement Act, the denial of Garner’s right to vote by Reese and Foushee clearly qualified as related to voting, for the prescient framers of the Enforcement Act had foreseen that official as well as unofficial, bureaucratic as well as violent, subtle as well as blatant means would be employed to deny African-Americans an equal political voice. Even before Reese could be tried, his lawyers demurred (objected) to his indictment, and as in US v Cruikshank, two circuit court judges divided.293 The US Supreme Court would now have two cases with which to consider the interpretation and constitutionality of the 1st Enforcement Act. Although historians have long prominently mentioned these cases and there are lengthy and detailed discussions of them in larger monographs,294 this is the 1st book-length treatment easily accessible to students. Goldman’s book illustrates the proposition that squinting at legal cases by narrowing one’s view to the strictly legal materials of one or a few cases inevitably produces serious distortions. Despite the existence of congressional hearings, an army report, a long trial that featured 300 witnesses in US v Cruikshank, and a plethora of recent work on Reconstruction in both Louisiana and Kentucky, Robert Goldman only briefly sketches the backgrounds of each case and tells us almost nothing about the plaintiffs or defendants and not much more about the lawyers who represented them or the federal judges who decided the cases at each level. Nor does he examine the consequences of the cases for the parties involved. Were Cruikshank, Reese, and their compatriots rewarded for their labors for the party of white supremacy with higher office? Were the blacks who survived Colfax driven from politics? How comparatively effective were violence and legal maneuvers in stemming the Republican threat? Although Goldman does not note it, the Republican ticket in Grant Parish polled nearly as high a percentage in the 1876 presidential election as the percentage of African-American males of voting age in the parish, an indication that the epic violence was less of a final solution than the Democrats hoped it would be. Such stirring events, such a chance to recover the memory of so many sufferers and villains, such an opportunity to breathe life into the abstract formalism of the law — squandered! It is not that the formal legal issues in Reese and US v Cruikshank are uninteresting. Indeed, they are as weighty as they are complex. The bevy of legal talent representing the Democrats, which included a former senator, two former US Attorney Generals, and even ex-US Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell, launched a similar barrage of criticisms of the indictments in both cases. The most extreme declared that the only effects of the three Reconstruction constitutional amendments were to ban slavery and to force states to remove the word “white” from their suffrage laws. In this view, the national government had no more power to protect any rights, including those related to the right to vote, such as the right not to be killed when going to the polls, than it did before the Civil War. States could not be required to protect their citizens, and the national government could not intervene to protect individuals if the states failed to do so. It is interesting to note, though Goldman does not, that former Justice Campbell had argued an equally extreme nationalist position, that the Reconstruction Amendments brought nearly all rights under national protection (“conscience, speech, publication, security, freedom, and whatever else is essential to ... liberty” is the way he put it), as attorney for the Butchers’ Benevolent Association in the 1873 Slaughter House Cases. Next in ideological radicalism came the view, espoused in oral argument by David Dudley Field, the brother of sitting Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field (who did not recuse himself in the case), that the Enforcement Act and all other acts that Congress had so far passed pursuant to the Reconstruction Amendments were unconstitutional, because the Amendments granted Congress power only to prescribe judicial remedies for any state laws that violated the Amendments, not to criminalize specific actions by individuals or state officials. Goldman, who offers few explicit comments or critiques of the arguments for the defendants, inexplicably characterizes Fields’s 293. As Charles Fairman, RECONSTRUCTION AND REUNION, 1864-1888 (NY: Macmillan, 1987), II, 251-53, points out, it has been known since 1892 that the Supreme Court erred in considering the whole cases of Reese and US v Cruikshank, instead of just those points of law on which the circuit court judges disagreed. Technically, therefore, the Supreme Court’s opinions were invalid. Goldman, who cites Fairman’s book in his bibliography, leaves out this curious fact. 294. In addition to Fairman’s very detailed chapter, II, 225-89, there is a lengthy treatment in Robert J. Kaczorowski, THE POLITICS OF JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION: THE FEDERAL COURTS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND CIVIL RIGHTS, 1866-1876 (NY: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1985), 173-227. 2322 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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argument as “moderate” (page 86). Third was the contention that the constitutional amendments applied only to explicit state legislation, not to the actions of state officials. A 4th position was that the Amendments constrained only the actions of a state, not those of private parties. This might have invalidated the provisions of the Enforcement Acts banning private persons or officials who could claim not to be acting in their official capacities from interfering with voting, but it could hardly have saved Reese, whose refusal to accept Garner’s vote would have been meaningless if he had lacked the authority to do so. The 5th argument was that the only constitutional justification of the Enforcement Act was the XVth Amendment’s ban on discrimination in voting “on account of race,” and that the sections of the Enforcement Act that defined crimes lacked justification under the XVth Amendment because they did not explicitly mention race, as other sections of the Act did. A contradictory 6th stance attacked the words of the indictments because they failed to mention race as the cause of the discrimination, words that the law, on this reading, required. It was this last argument, that although the Enforcement Acts were constitutional, the indictments were deficient, because they did not allege a racial purpose for the murders in US v Cruikshank, that Justice Bradley, sitting on circuit, as Supreme Court justices had to before 1891, latched onto. Disagreeing with the other judge in the trial, US Circuit (and later Supreme Court) Judge William B. Woods, Bradley ruled that the defendants should go free. The split vote automatically brought the issue before the US Supreme Court on a division of opinion. It was very curious for Bradley to take that position in his June 27, 1874 opinion in US v Cruikshank, because he had espoused a much more nationalistic view in his forceful dissent to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Slaughter House cases. A Louisiana case, Slaughter House was the 1st by the US Supreme Court to construe the XIVth Amendment, and it was decided, coincidentally, the day after the Colfax Massacre, on April 14, 1873. In Slaughter House, the majority ruled that the XIVth Amendment did not nationalize rights such as the right to practice an occupation, unrestrained by state laws aimed at protecting people’s health and safety. In his dissent from that ruling, Bradley took the position that the XIVth Amendment did nationalize such “privileges or immunities,” a stance that was entirely consistent with the theory under which federal attorneys throughout the South had been interpreting the Enforcement Act — that the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Amendments gave Congress the power to protect all peoples’ positive rights to assemble freely, to bear arms, and not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, rather than merely providing that the states could not deny to blacks whatever rights they granted to whites. The purpose of the XIVth Amendment, Bradley said in Slaughter House, was to make American citizenship “a sure guaranty of safety ... [so that] every citizen of the United States might stand erect in every portion of its soil, in the full enjoyment of every right and privilege belonging to a freeman, without fear of violence or molestation.” The black bodies rotting in the swamp in Colfax could not hear and would not have appreciated the delicate irony of Bradley’s transformed words only 14 months later in US v Cruikshank. The nationalistic position, based principally on the XIVth Amendment, which does not mention race, allowed Congress and the courts considerably more power, power that they clearly needed in order to protect African-Americans from a different sort of white butchers than those involved in Slaughter House. By contrast, under the theory that Bradley adopted in US v Cruikshank, Congress’s powers to pass the Enforcement Acts derived only from the XVth Amendment, which does mention race, and prosecutors had to allege and prove a racial intent behind every discrimination. Goldman (pages 58-59) suggests that Bradley adopted the narrow construction of congressional powers not to follow the previous year’s Supreme Court majority or to agree with the Democratic lawyers’ constricted views of congressional power, which left them free to overthrow Reconstruction by violence and chicanery, subject only to the laws of the states once they controlled them, but simply to bring the issue before the Supreme Court, perhaps without a strong view on how it should be decided. There are three difficulties with Goldman’s interpretation: First, since widespread violence and electoral discrimination offered the Grant Administration so many chances to indict well-connected perpetrators, it was inevitable that the issues would eventually come to the Supreme Court. There was no need for Bradley to disagree with Woods to raise the issue to the highest judicial level.295 Indeed, the Reese case had been on the 295. As Fairman, II, 269, but not Goldman, points out, there was no general right to appeal to the Supreme Court in a criminal case until 1889. But a disagreement between two circuit court judges did result in an automatic appeal. The Supreme Court received its current extensive discretionary power to choose cases in 1925. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2323 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Supreme Court’s docket for five months when Bradley issued his opinion. Second, if the New Jersey Republican justice had been at all ambivalent about the legality of Enforcement Act prosecutions, and if he had wished to preserve the lives of at least a few black political activists, he could have agreed with Woods’s decision and allowed the Enforcement Acts to retain their vigor in the extremely important circuit in which the case took place, perhaps inhibiting some of the later terrible violence there. Third, if Bradley had been even the slightest bit unsure of his newfound position, he would not have personally sent his opinion to federal district judges throughout the South, members of the US House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and the editors of three legal periodicals.296 Bradley’s liberal ideals were for white businessmen alone, and more than any other figure, he shaped the US v Cruikshank case. It is unfortunate that Goldman spends so little time trying to explain Bradley’s motives and account for his role. The government was represented by distinguished counsel in the cases, including future Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan in the circuit court trial in Kentucky, and one of the longest serving Solicitor Generals in American history, North Carolina Republican Samuel F. Phillips, in the Supreme Court. Phillips, assisted by Attorney General George Williams, argued that the Kentucky officials’ actions, taken in their official capacities, were those of the state, and that because the XVth Amendment did not specifically mention a particular protected race, the sections of the Enforcement Act were clearly within the purview of the Amendment, even though they did not make racial considerations an explicit part of the crimes they announced. Phillips contended, as well, that the right to vote was either one of the undefined privileges and immunities of citizenship according to the original constitution (a position, though Goldman does not note it, similar to that taken on fundamental rights by the principal framer of the XIVth Amendment, John A. Bingham) or that it had become such a privilege since the passage of the XIVth Amendment. Although insisting on the power of the national government to protect the political rights of citizens of any race, for this case, Phillips relied purely on the XVth Amendment’s authorization of protection of the right against discrimination on account of race. The evidence produced at the trials, Phillips believed, had demonstrated the requisite racially discriminatory intent. In US v Cruikshank, Phillips further asserted that under common law, inherited by the American legal system, the English government had enjoyed extensive power to punish conspiracies, a power invoked by Section 6 of the Enforcement Acts, under which US v Cruikshank and his confederates were convicted. The defense’s counter-argument, that conspiracy law had often been used in the past to trample civil liberties, was not only outrageous in this case, coming as it did not from the slaughtered, but from the poor, persecuted mass murderers, but it also contradicted the defendants’ other arguments that the national government had no business concerning itself with individual rights, such as, in this instance, the right to form a violent conspiracy. The Supreme Court docketed Reese in February 1874 and US v Cruikshank in October 1874, and heard oral arguments in the cases in January and March 1875, but did not issue opinions in them until March 27, 1876. Goldman neither explains why it took so long nor compares the decision time in this with that in other cases of the era to see how extraordinary this length of time was then. After all, the Court was nearly unanimous in both cases, and Justice Bradley had already written an opinion that tracked the final outcome on most issues. The timing of the decisions remains an interesting puzzle. More important, Goldman does not recount the events of the period between the Circuit and Supreme Court decisions, events that provided a stark background to the issues and almost certainly affected the decisions. All over the South, Democrats, gleefully, and Republicans, fearfully, interpreted Bradley’s opinion as a signal for the escalation of racial violence of whites against blacks and political violence of Democrats against Republicans.297 In the guise of the “White League,” “Red Shirts,” or Ku Klux Klan, Democrats then brought terror to a crescendo. In Louisiana itself, a “riot” in New Orleans, one of whose leaders, Robert H. Marr, represented US v Cruikshank in both the Circuit and Supreme Courts, prepared the way for the complete overthrow of the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana. In the fall of 1874, Democrats won a shocking and decisive national victory in the congressional elections, taking control of the House for the 1st time since secession and threatening to overturn every facet of Reconstruction except perhaps the antislavery XIIIth Amendment. Outraged by the violence and frightened

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by the prospect that Democrats would win the 1876 elections, the Republican caucus in the House in February 1875, before the newly elected Congress could take office, agreed on a new, far-reaching Enforcement Act. Among other provisions, the bill gave federal election supervisors the right to arrest people for intimidating voters, increased the penalties for election irregularities, mandated federal registration of voters, prohibited excessive poll taxes, forbade carrying guns on election day, and greatly enhanced the powers of election supervisors in rural areas. After overcoming Democratic delaying tactics and blustery, racist, partisan rhetoric that briefly transfixed the nation, Republicans passed a slightly weakened bill in the House on February 28th. The bill failed in the Senate in the last days of the lame duck session in early March, after Reese had been argued and a few weeks before the oral argument in US v Cruikshank. To rule the 1st Enforcement Act unconstitutional in Reese or US v Cruikshank was to sweep away the strongest existing protection of African- American suffrage and to abort more comprehensive protection, such as the 1875 bill, whenever the Republicans regained a majority in both houses of Congress, not just to invite Congress to amend the Act to cure slight flaws. A decision like Justice Bradley’s, which merely threw out the indictments, was unjust, but probably remediable. But finding the law even a little bit unconstitutional was fatal. It would be 82 years before Congress managed to pass other legislation to protect minority voting rights. From 1789 to 1875, the Supreme Court had overturned only three laws of Congress — in Marbury v. Madison, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and The Legal Tender Cases. This record implies that the Court followed two more recent conventions: if it can avoid a constitutional issue by deciding on the basis of a statute, it does so; and if it can equally well construe a law in ways that make it constitutional and unconstitutional, it chooses the constitutional construction. Adhering to these conventions minimizes conflicts with the legislature. Ignoring them prompts charges that the judges are seeking uncontrollable power. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, President Grant’s seventh choice to replace the deceased abolitionist Salmon P. Chase, presented his strike for judicial –and white– supremacy as an instance, instead, of judicial deference. Although Sections 1 and 2 of the brief 1st Enforcement Act mentioned race and claimed XVth Amendment justification, Sections 3 and 4 did not repeat such formulas, referring only to the “wrongful act or omission as aforesaid” or using similar locutions. Writing for an 8-1 majority in Reese, Waite contended that to interpret Sections 3 and 4 as in the context of Sections 1 and 2, instead of separately, as if no other part of the law existed, would have effected the judicial, not the legislative, will, requiring the Court “to make a new law.” Ruling that the XVth Amendment was the only possible justification of the law, and finding that Sections 3 and 4 did not mention race, Waite threw out these sections as beyond the constitutional power of Congress and dismissed the indictments based on them. The Chief Justice never examined the congressional debates or any other materials besides the text of the law in reaching the conclusion that the two sections of the law had nothing to do with the provisions that immediately preceded them. Neither does Goldman. That Waite forced the constitutional issue, instead of avoiding it and allowing later prosecutions for interfering with political rights, is underlined by the reactionary Justice Nathan Clifford’s concurring opinion, which had originally been scheduled to be the opinion of the Court.298 Clifford doubted that William Garner was properly qualified to vote, either because of Clifford’s racist view that the black Garner could not have raised $1.50 to pay his poll tax (as Goldman believes), or because poll tax payment and depositing a ballot were separate acts under the control of different officials. It followed for Clifford that Reese and Foushee had not illegally disfranchised Garner, and the justice therefore did not need to reach the question of constitutionality. His opinion could have been circumvented by drafting indictments and presenting evidence more carefully to include tax collectors and show their connection to voting. Waite’s view was thus more racially retrogressive than that of the last antebellum appointee still sitting on the Supreme Bench in 1875. Waite’s opinion in US v Cruikshank expanded on that in Reese, dispatching the constitutional bases for national protections with as little concern as the Louisiana thugs had shown in finishing off their black prisoners. In what might be viewed as the essential part of his opinion, Waite echoed Justice Bradley’s opinion on circuit, holding that the indictments were deficient because they did not allege that the victims had been targeted because of their race. But the Chief Justice did not stop there. Instead, he adopted virtually the whole

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states’ rights program of the most extreme defendants and commented not just on the XVth Amendment issues, to which Phillips and Williams had primarily confined their brief, but to explicating the whole Reconstruction constitutional settlement. According to the Chief Justice, the XIVth and XVth Amendments created no national rights except the right not to be discriminated against because of race, which had to be shown explicitly. For the protection of virtually all other rights, such as the rights to assemble peacefully and to bear arms, or to take any action related to voting in a state or local election, citizens had to look to the states alone. This position, so contradictory not only to the view of the four dissenters in Slaughter House, three of whom remained on the Court in 1875, but also inconsistent with the expansive tone with which Justice Samuel Miller’s majority opinion in that case had promised protection of black rights, severely constrained all future national legislation. Violence, intimidation, ballot box stuffing, restrictive election laws, suppression of all means of exercising or enjoying political rights — none of these, at least in connection with state and local elections, could be counteracted by national legislation unless it could be proven in court that those who perpetrated them did so on account of race. The debate over the 1875 Enforcement Act, which only a year earlier had convulsed the Congress for a month, was futile, for it would all have been unconstitutional. Thus, Waite’s opinions disarmed federal protectors of voting rights just as political violence reached a climax, enabling white Democratic supremacists to overthrow Reconstruction governments without fear of effective prosecution. The opinions were not simply part of the Compromise of 1877; without them, Hayes would have won easily and there would have been no crisis and no need for a compromise at all. In a lone, persuasive dissent, Justice Ward Hunt strongly criticized Waite’s interpretative severing of parts of the Enforcement Act from each other in Reese as violative of the intent of Congress in passing the law, as well as of the XVth Amendment. Concerning himself with legal exegesis on the narrowest part of Waite’s opinions, he effectively treated the other parts as dicta, that is, as inessential to the Court’s holding. Characteristically, Goldman praises Hunt’s narrowness and condemns the Solicitor General’s expansive brief for not following the Justice’s strategy (page 100). Goldman’s revisionist claims, the major themes of his book, that the Waite opinions were “narrow” and “moderate,” and that they did not adopt the defendants’ extreme states’ rights positions, abort future national protection of voting rights, or even declare certain sections of the 1st Enforcement Act unconstitutional (pp. 100-06), are insupportable.299 They are the product not only of what I have indicated above that I believe to be misreadings of the opinions themselves, but more basically, of abstract, static, internalist legal history itself. Although abstractions are important, segregating legal history into a doctrinal ghetto, apart from elections, legislative policy making, and the currents of popular opinion, distorts both the explanations for legal decisions and the evaluation of the consequences of those decisions. The argument, which Fairman had previously developed, that Waite’s opinions in Reese and US v Cruikshank were moderate because they did not expressly foreclose national protection of voting, is unconvincing for four reasons. First, it is based on hindsight. In Ex Parte Yarbrough (1884), a unanimous Supreme Court upheld an Enforcement Act prosecution not under the XVth Amendment, but under the Article I, Section 4 power of Congress to control the “times, places, and manner” of congressional elections, and Justice Miller implied in his opinion that congressional power under this provision was quite extensive. If such a novel reading of this section of the Constitution had been imagined either at the time of consideration of the Enforcement Acts or during the litigation of Reese and US v Cruikshank, however, some lawyer would surely have included it in a speech or brief. Since no one did, it is anachronistic to impute it to Chief Justice Waite or to those who interpreted his opinions when they were issued. Waite’s statements were sweeping, seeming to preclude any national protection of the rights of voters, and it was impossible to know at the time which of his sentiments would be considered as dicta. Indeed, dicta in general become visible only by hindsight; at the time an opinion is written, all of it seems essential, for otherwise, it would have been omitted. Second, the argument for moderation ignores the fact that state and local elections and office-holding could be and often were separated from national elections and office-holding. Both the Colfax Massacre and the Lexington poll tax issue concerned local government, and it is difficult to see how they would have been

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affected by a law growing out of Yarbrough, such as the Lodge Elections Bill of 1890, which passed the House and was shelved in the Senate by one vote. Third, the argument disregards the timing of Reese and US v Cruikshank. The circuit court opinion preceded and the Supreme Court opinion followed the heated battle over the last really strong voting rights legislation considered in Congress until 1965. Bradley’s opinion in US v Cruikshank gave congressional Democrats constitutional ammunition for the debate and hope that the Court would disallow any resulting law. By requiring a proof of a racially discriminatory purpose and eliminating the states’ failure to protect rights equally as a justification for national intervention, Waite’s opinions made framing any law to safeguard voters exceedingly difficult and severely constrained what any such law could accomplish. Coming when they did, the decisions also, as I have said before, greatly facilitated the overthrow of the remaining Republican governments in the South. Fourth, the 1st Enforcement Act was almost by definition within the original intent of the framers of the XVth Amendment, for it was passed in the same session of Congress that wrote the Amendment and got it ratified in virtually record time. Cobbled together from several shorter bills, the Act was broad and complex, and a few Republicans raised objections to the wording of some of its sections. But they voted 181-1 for it in both houses of Congress, as they had voted 183-5 in favor of the XVth Amendment earlier in the session, which is as strong an endorsement of a law’s alignment with original intent as one could imagine. How can opinions that disregarded such evidence and nullified the law only six years later be regarded as “moderate”? We cannot understand the significance of Reese and US v Cruikshank unless we set them in their whole racial, partisan, and policymaking context, place them in the actual time when they were decided, and consider both their human causes and their human consequences. Since, like most legal historians, Goldman does not complete this task, his book leaves much to correct and much to be done.

July 5: Zanzibar’s public slave markets were closed under pressure from the British, to prohibit the export of slaves.

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1875

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s final publication, HISTOIRE DE FRANCE RACONTÉE À MES PETITS ENFANTS, which he had been able to complete only through the year 1789, was at this point brought up to the year 1870 in a 5th and final volume by his daughter Madame Guizot de Witt, on the basis of her father’s notes.

Construction began on a gift which the nation of France was intending to present to the United States of America, “Liberty Enlightening the World.” The sculptor on this project was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and the architect was Gustave Eiffel.

Meanwhile, in this year, a book was published about the state of affairs in the American south, that included

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the following illustration:

One immediately notices that this illustration of “The Guardian Angel,” done by J. Wells Champney in Edward King’s THE GREAT SOUTH; A RECORD OF JOURNEYS IN LOUISIANA, TEXAS, THE INDIAN TERRITORY, MISSOURI, ARKANSAS, MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, FLORIDA, SOUTH CAROLINA, NORTH CAROLINA, KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE, VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, AND MARYLAND (Hartford CT; American Publishing Co., 1875), is not an illustration of a southern black slave tending his southern white mistress before the civil war. This illustration was intended to depict faithfully the real-life situation in the American South under Reconstruction, a decade after the victory of the Union armies had transformed the black Americans of the southern slave-states into free citizens.

The initial design for this gift “Statue of Liberty” had had her holding slave manacles that she had just broken. The final design, relying less heavily on this offensive reference to the outcome of the US Civil War, was placing these slave manacles under her toes.

1876

Zanzibar signed a treaty denying slaves access to the coast port.

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Benjamin Wade wrote with an understandable old-man’s-ressentiment to Uriah Painter of the New-York Times: You know with what untiring zeal I labored for the emancipation of the slaves of the South and to procure justice for them before and during the time I was in Congress, and I supposed Governor Hayes was in full accord with me on this subject. But I have been deceived, betrayed, and even humiliated by the course he has taken to a degree that I have not language to express. I feel that to have emancipated those people and then to leave them unprotected would be a crime as infamous as to have reduced them to slavery when they were free.

1877

Slavery with a new face: instead of individual people belonging to individual people, a new system came into being in the American South, according to which an entire segment of the population, those persons of color, were subordinated to another entire segment of the population, those persons not of color. Whatever it is called, however, slavery is slavery — what a waste of human life the American civil war had been! All those people meeting violent deaths, and this the outcome: The Northern bourgeoisie, its hegemony in national affairs ... undergirded, signified its acceptance of post-Emancipation racial oppression by abandoning Reconstruction. The subsequent white- supremacist system in the South was established not by civil means, but by nightrider terror and one-sided “riots” in order to deprive African-Americans of their constitutional rights, reducing them again, by debt peonage and prisoner-leasing, to a status that was slavery in all but name. In the United States in the period after the Civil War, employers of agricultural labor in the South were able to institute what was a tenancy-at-will system, called “contract labor,” later transmuted to a system of sharecropper peonage, under which the African-American laborers saw no more of cash wages than they and their forebears had seen before under chattel bondage. “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

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1881

The Pygmy tribesman Ota Benga was born in what would later be called the Belgian Congo. He would reach a height of 4 feet 11 inches and a weight of 103 pounds. His incisors would of course be filed.

He would marry twice. According to Phillips Verner Bradford’s and Harvey Blume’s OTA BENGA: THE PYGMY IN THE ZOO (1992), the Force Publique in service to the King of Belgium, Leopold II, the ruler of what was then the Congo Free State, engaged in a pygmy genocide or hunt which resulted in the death of his wife and two children. Another wife would die by snakebite. He was sold by the Force Publique into slavery to the Baschilele tribe, and purchased by Samuel Phillips Verner of South Carolina along with eight other pygmies. Verner would take them to St. Louis and exhibit them in the 1904 World’s Fair.

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1884

The Supreme Court of the United States of America, in Elk v. Wilkins, citing much precedent authority including their fateful decision in the case of Dred Scott, ruled that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, although it had freed persons of black African racial origin, had determined nothing whatever in regard to persons of red native American racial origin. They still could have neither citizenship, nor any constitutional rights. Native Americans were not real Americans, but, instead, were mere immigrants here — unless and until they could individually satisfy federal requirements and obtain naturalization papers and other similar recognitions of standing: If from the beginning of the 18th Century in Anglo-America the term “negro” meant slave, except when explicitly modified by the word “free,” so under English law the term “hibernicus,” Latin for “Irishman,” was the legal term for “unfree.” If African-Americans were obliged to guard closely any document they might have attesting their freedom, so in Ireland, at the beginning of the 14th Century, letters patent, attesting to a person’s Englishness, were cherished by those who might fall under suspicion of trying to “pass.” If under Anglo-American slavery “the rape of a female slave was not a crime, but a mere trespass on the master’s property,” so in 1278 two Anglo- Normans brought into court and charged with raping Margaret O’Rorke were found not guilty because “the said Margaret is an Irishwoman.” If a law enacted in Virginia in 1723 provided that “manslaughter of a slave is not punishable,” so under Anglo-Norman law it sufficed for acquittal to show that the victim in a killing was Irish. Anglo-Norman priests granted absolution on the grounds that it was “no more sin to kill an Irishman than a dog or any other brute.” If the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in 1851 that “the killing of a negro” was not a felony, but upheld an award of damages to the owner of an African- American bond-laborer murdered by another “white” man, so an English court freed Robert Walsh, an Anglo-Norman charged with killing John Mac Gilmore, because the victim was “a mere Irishman and not of free blood,” it being stipulated that “when the master of the said John shall ask damages for the slaying, he [Walsh] will be ready to answer him as the law may require.” If in 1884 the United States Supreme Court, citing much precedent authority, including the Dred Scott decision, declared that Indians were legally like immigrants, and therefore not citizens except by process of individual naturalization, so for more than four centuries, until 1613, the Irish were regarded by English law as foreigners in their own land. If the testimony of even free African-Americans was inadmissible, so in Anglo-Norman Ireland native Irish of the free classes were deprived of legal defense against English abuse because they were not “admitted to English law,” and hence had no rights that an Englishman was bound to respect.”

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In this year Frederick Douglass saw publication of his “The Future of the Negro” in The North American Review:

1884

November 15: Representatives of 14 non-African nations, including the United States of America, met in Berlin to discuss African Affairs. They would agree to suppress slavery and promote Western civilization (the Berlin Act would be signed during February 1885). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

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1885

Brazil freed all slaves over the age of 60.

In the period after the US Civil War there was much reappraisal of that notion which had been so persuasive prior to the upheaval, that some heroic figures among humankind were animated by a “divine light” which released them from the constraints which ordinary mortals of limited vision were wise to operate in accordance with. Although citizens continued to think of rebellion as justified under the most oppressive regimes, the attempts to compare John Brown to Spartacus300 or Frederick Douglass to Toussaint Louverture had come to be regarded as the most abjectly erroneous of readings.301 In THE DIAL for this period we find assertions that

the “great man” theory of history as found in the Secret “Six” conspiracy before the US Civil War was

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incompatible with the American belief in general progress: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn wrote within Thomas Carlyle’s theory of Great men namely that the world runs down ... through the deficiencies of merely common men, and would go to the bad entirely only it is so arranged that just in the nick of time the Lord sends down a Hero ... so ... that we can then get along for ... a generation or two.

The story of Brown’s last stand as a martyr was under heavy attack. A certification written by Brown’s jailor, Captain John Avis, appeared as eyewitness testimony to counter the story that Brown had kissed a black child, to refute the story had grown up to the effect that Brown had exhibited cheerfulness as he walked toward his 300. To attempt to compare Brown with Spartacus would be to attempt to compare a person who desired to eliminate the evil of slavery with a person whose desire it was to become himself the slavemaster — which would be, wouldn’t you say, the mother of all Hollywoodish-inane category mistakes?

“...the slave, dreaming of the death of slavery...” — Kirk Douglas, preparing himself to play the title role in the 1961 Hollywood movie “Spartacus”

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place of execution, and to refute the account that had him giving thanks to God for the opportunity to die in such a cause.

The family of the Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway returned to the United States, settling in New-York.

February 18: ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, which some take to be the great American indictment against slavery, was first published in the USA during this year in which the practice of human enslavement was being defended in America by no one at all. The Irish were, however, still in considerable general disrepute — for instance, during this year the Irish were being characterized by John Beddoe, in THE RACES OF BRITAIN, as “Africanoid.”302 Samuel Langhorn Clemens therefore told his illustrator to be careful not to make Huck “Irishy.” He did not want his book to be confrontational or socially helpful; to the contrary, he needed for it to sell. The author needed to and he desired to pander rather than attempt any sort of social corrective.

301. Refer to Brown, David, “Sanborn’s Life of John Brown,” Dial 6 (1885-1886):139-40, to an editorial entitled “John Brown,” New England and Yale Review 45 (1886):289-302, and to Jenks, Leland H. “The John Brown Myth,” American Mercury (1924):268. 302. THE RACES OF BRITAIN: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF WESTERN EUROPE. Bristol, England: Arrowsmith, 1885, page 11. Bear in mind that the description “Nigger Jim” does not appear in this book — it was not Mark Twain but his first biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, who initiated all our references to the Jim character of this novel as “Nigger Jim.” 2336 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Concord Free Public Library nevertheless immediately banned this new fiction from its shelves as “the veriest trash.” Louisa May Alcott, in particular (if we can believe a popular writer, Thomas Beer, who claimed to have found this in an unprinted letter from Miss Alcott to Frances Hedges Butler –whoever she was– but who has been caught red-handed at inventing other stuff of that nature in his earlier biography of Stephen Crane), possibly was outraged by the temerity of this author:

If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.

— From Nat Hentoff’s FREE SPEECH FOR ME – BUT NOT FOR THEE: HOW THE AMERICAN LEFT AND RIGHT RELENTLESSLY CENSOR EACH OTHER (HarperCollins/Harry Asher Books)

RACISM MARK TWAIN

(There is no indication, however, that the Concord Free Public Library ever removed from its shelves another famous boy’s story which has buried in it a the-black-man-and-the-pig story worthy to be told at a Ku Klux Klan rally. The censorious do tend to be unconscious!)

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1886

The War of 1812 had been said at the time to be about the impressment of American sailors into the British Navy, by kidnapping on the high seas. We now can know that to have been a fraud, because in the peace settlement at the close of that war, which the USA had allegedly more or less won, the issue of impressed American sailors was not any part of the negotiations. In fact American sailors, many of them, significantly, black, languished in a British prison for a considerable length of time after hostilities were over, simply because their American government did not in fact care whether they lived or died, free or imprisoned.

In fact the long-term practice has been for American shipmasters to man their vessels by paying ship provisioners known as “crimps” to drug seamen in bars or kidnap them from boardinghouses, and drag them down to the harbor under cover of darkness. Aboard ship at sea, these workers would be kept to involuntary servitude by threat of flogging. As of 1886, for instance, four American seamen attempted to resign from their employment in a US port because they did not want to be conveyed to foreign climes and the captain was able to have them arrested by the local authorities and brought aboard under duress as his vessel sailed. At that time attorney Andrew Furuseth,303 representing the National Seamen’s Union of which these seamen were members, attempted to have recourse to the post-Civil War XIIIth Amendment to make it more difficult for this sort of thing to occur, but, in a case which would become familiar under the rubric the “2d Dred Scott decision,” although Justice John M. Harlan concurred with the petition of the union that the widespread practice of forcing “freemen who happen to be seamen” to “go aboard private vessels and render personal service against their will” amounted to placing these American citizens “in a condition of involuntary servitude,” this turned out to be merely the minority opinion of the justices of the United States Supreme Court. CRIMPING

The majority in fact, in this single case which has ever reached the US Supreme Court subsequent to our enactment of our cover story, held that that XIIIth Amendment to the US Constitution, freeing America’s slaves, could not apply to such involuntary servitude. Oh, why not? Duh. Get this, Reconstruction was over over over. Everything that needed to be done to free the black people, had already been accomplished. So, idiots, get the hell back to work! The San Francisco Examiner explained at the time that “According to the highest tribunal which can pass on the matter, the difference between a deep-water sailor and a slave is $15 per month.” “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

303. Weintraub, Hyman. ANDREW FURUSETH, EMANCIPATOR OF SEAMEN. Berkeley CA: U of California P, 1959, page 35. 2338 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1888

May 5: Pope Leo XIII, in a letter to the bishops of Brazil, “In Plurimis,” with a kind of historical rewriting and self- congratulation that John T. Noonan, Jr., in A CHURCH THAT CAN AND CANNOT CHANGE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING (U of Notre Dame P, 2005), considers to have been palpably dishonest, after every Christian nation had abolished human enslavement, finally got around to condemning, rather than utilizing, human enslavement: We, indeed, to all men are the Vicar of Christ, the Son of God, who so loved the human race that not only did He not refuse, taking our nature to Himself, to live among men, but delighted in bearing the name of the Son of Man, openly proclaiming that He had come upon earth “to preach deliverance to the captives” in order that, rescuing mankind from the worst slavery, which is the slavery of sin, “he might re-establish all things that are in heaven and on earth,” and so bring back all the children of Adam from the depths of the ruin of the common fall to their original dignity. The words of St. Gregory the Great are very applicable here: “Since our Redeemer, the Author of all life, deigned to take human flesh, that by the power of His Godhood the chains by which we were held in bondage being broken, He might restore us to our first state of liberty, it is most fitting that men by the concession of manumission should restore to the freedom in which they were born those whom nature sent free into the world, but who have been condemned to the yoke of slavery by the law of nations.” It is right, therefore, and obviously in keeping with Our apostolic office, that We should favor and advance by every means in Our power whatever helps to secure for men, whether as individuals or as communities, safeguards against the many miseries, which, like the fruits of an evil tree, have sprung from the sin of our first parents; and such safeguards, of whatever kind they may be, help not only to promote civilization and the amenities of life, but lead on to that universal restitution of all things which our Redeemer Jesus Christ contemplated and desired. In the presence of so much suffering, the condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the great human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one which is wholly opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that men should exercise a like dominion over their fellow men. As St. Augustine puts it: “Having created man a reasonable being, and after His own likeness, God wished that he should rule only over the brute creation; that he should be the master, not of men, but of beasts.” From this it follows that “the state of slavery is rightly regarded as a penalty upon the sinner; thus, the word slave does not occur in the BIBLE until the just man Noe branded with it the sin of his son. It was sin, therefore, which deserved this name; it was not natural.” From the first sin came all evils, and specially this perversity that “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2339 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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there were men who, forgetful of the original brotherhood of the race, instead of seeking, as they should naturally have done, to promote mutual kindness and mutual respect, following their evil desires began to think of other men as their inferiors, and to hold them as cattle born for the yoke. In this way, through an absolute forgetfulness of our common nature, and of human dignity, and the likeness of God stamped upon us all, it came to pass that in the contentions and wars which then broke out, those who were the stronger reduced the conquered into slavery; so that mankind, though of the same race, became divided into two sections, the conquered slaves and their victorious masters. The history of the ancient world presents us with this miserable spectacle down to the time of the coming of our Lord, when the calamity of slavery had fallen heavily upon all the peoples, and the number of freemen had become so reduced that the poet was able to put this atrocious phrase into the mouth of Caesar: “The human race exists for the sake of a few.” The system flourished even among the most civilized peoples, among the Greeks and among the Romans, with whom the few imposed their will upon the many; and this power was exercised so unjustly and with such haughtiness that a crowd of slaves was regarded merely as so many chattels — not as persons, but as things. They were held to be outside the sphere of law, and without even the claim to retain and enjoy life. “Slaves are in the power of their masters, and this power is derived from the law of nations; for we find that among all nations masters have the power of life and death over their slaves, and whatever a slave earns belongs to his master.” Owing to this state of moral confusion it became lawful for men to sell their slaves, to give them in exchange, to dispose of them by will, to beat them, to kill them, to abuse them by forcing them to serve for the gratification of evil passions and cruel superstitions; these things could be done, legally, with impunity, and in the light of heaven. Even those who were wisest in the pagan world, illustrious philosophers and learned juris-consults, outraging the common feeling of mankind, succeeded in persuading themselves and others that slavery was simply a necessary condition of nature. Nor did they hesitate to assert that the slave class was very inferior to the freemen both in intelligence and perfection of bodily development, and therefore that slaves, as things wanting in reason and sense, ought in all things to be the instruments of the will, however rash and unworthy, of their masters. Such inhuman and wicked doctrines are to be specially detested; for, when once they are accepted, there is no form of oppression so wicked but that it will defend itself beneath some color of legality and justice. History is full of examples showing what a seedbed of crime, what a pest and calamity, this system has been for states. Hatreds are excited in the breasts of the slaves, and the masters are kept in a state of suspicion and perpetual dread; the slaves prepare to avenge themselves with the torches of the incendiary, and the masters continue the task of oppression with greater cruelty. States are disturbed alternately by the number of the slaves and by the violence of the masters, and so are easily overthrown; hence, in a word, come riots and seditions, pillage and fire. The greater part of humanity were toiling in this abyss 2340 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of misery, and were the more to be pitied because they were sunk in the darkness of superstition, when in the fullness of time and by the designs of God, light shone down upon the world, and the merits of Christ the Redeemer were poured out upon mankind. By that means they were lifted out of the slough and the distress of slavery, and recalled and brought back from the terrible bondage of sin to their high dignity as the sons of God. Thus, the Apostles, in the early days of the Church, among other precepts for a devout life taught and laid down the doctrine which more than once occurs in the Epistles of St. Paul addressed to those newly baptized: “For you are all the children of God by faith, in Jesus Christ. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew, nor Greek; there is neither bond, nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” “Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all.” “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink.” Golden words, indeed, noble and wholesome lessons, whereby its old dignity is given back and with increase to the human race, and men of whatever land or tongue of class are bound together and joined in the strong bonds of brotherly kinship. Those things St. Paul, with that Christian charity with which he was filled, learned from the very heart of Him who, with much surpassing goodness, gave Himself to be the brother of us all, and in His own person, without omitting or excepting any one, so ennobled men that they might become participators in the divine nature. Through this Christian charity the various races of men were drawn together under the divine guidance in such a wonderful way that they blossomed into a new state of hope and public happiness; as with the progress of time and events and the constant labor of the Church the various nations were able to gather together, Christian and free, organized anew after the manner of a family. From the beginning the Church spared no pains to make the Christian people, in a matter of such high importance, accept and firmly hold the true teachings of Christ and the Apostles. And now through the new Adam, who is Christ, there is established a brotherly union between man and man, and people and people; just as in the order of nature they all have a common origin, so in the order which is above nature they all have one and the same origin in salvation and faith; all alike are called to be the adopted sons of God and the Father, who has paid the self-same ransom for us all; we are all members of the same body, all are allowed to partake of the same divine banquet, and offered to us all are the blessings of divine grace and of eternal life. Having established these principles as beginnings and foundations, the Church, like a tender mother, went on to try to find some alleviation for the sorrows and the disgrace of the life of the slave; with this end in view she clearly defined and strongly enforced the rights and mutual duties of masters and slaves as they are laid down in the letters of the Apostles. It was in these words that the Princes of the Apostles admonished the slaves they had admitted to the fold of Christ. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2341 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.” “Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords according to the flesh, with fear and trembling in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ. Not serving to the eye, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With a good will serving as to the Lord, and not to men. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” St. Paul says the same to Timothy: “Whosoever are servants under the yoke, let them count their masters worthy of all honor; lest the name of the Lord and his doctrine be blasphemed. But they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but serve them the rather, because they are faithful and beloved, who are partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.” In like manner he commanded Titus to teach servants “to be obedient to their masters, in all things pleasing, not gainsaying. Not defrauding, but in all things showing good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. Those first disciples of the Christian faith very well understood that this brotherly equality of all men in Christ ought in no way to diminish or detract from the respect, honor, faithfulness, and other duties due to those placed above them. From this many good results followed, so that duties became at once more certain of being performed, and lighter and pleasanter to do, and at the same time more fruitful in obtaining the glory of heaven. Thus, they treated their masters with reverence and honor as men clothed in the authority of Him from whom comes all power. Among these disciples the motive of action was not the fear of punishment or any enlightened prudence or the promptings of utility, but a consciousness of duty and the force of charity. On the other hand, masters were wisely counseled by the Apostle to treat their slaves with consideration in return for their services: “And you, masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatenings; knowing that the Lord both of them and you is in heaven, and there is not respect of persons with Him.” They were also told to remember that the slave had no reason to regret his lot, seeing that he is “the freeman of the Lord,” nor the freeman, seeing that he is “the bondman of Christ,” to feel proud, and to give his commands with haughtiness. It was impressed upon masters that they ought to recognize in their slaves their fellow men, and respect them accordingly, recognizing that by nature they were not different from themselves, that by religion and in relation to the majesty of their common Lord all were equal. These precepts, so well calculated to introduce harmony among the various parts of domestic society, were practiced by the Apostles themselves. Specially remarkable is the case of St. Paul when he exerted himself in behalf of Onesimus, the fugitive of Philemon, with whom, when he returned him to his master, he sent this loving recommendation: “And do thou receive him as my own bowels, not now as a servant, but instead of a servant a most dear brother... And if he have wronged thee in anything, or is in thy debt, put that to my account.” Whoever compare the pagan and the Christian attitude toward slavery will easily come to the conclusion that 2342 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the one was marked by great cruelty and wickedness, and the other by great gentleness and humanity, nor will it be possible to deprive the Church of the credit due to her as the instrument of this happy change. And this becomes still more apparent when we consider carefully how tenderly and with what prudence the Church has cut out and destroyed this dreadful curse of slavery. She has deprecated any precipitate action in securing the manumission and liberation of the slaves, because that would have entailed tumults and wrought injury, as well to the slaves themselves as to the commonwealth, but with singular wisdom she has seen that the minds of the slaves should be instructed through her discipline in the Christian faith, and with baptism should acquire habits suitable to the Christian life. Therefore, when, amid the slave multitude whom she has numbered among her children, some, led astray by some hope of liberty, have had recourse to violence and sedition, the Church has always condemned these unlawful efforts and opposed them, and through her ministers has applied the remedy of patience. She taught the slaves to feel that, by virtue of the light of holy faith, and the character they received from Christ, they enjoyed a dignity which placed them above their heathen lords, but that they were bound the more strictly by the Author and Founder of their faith Himself never to set themselves against these, or even to be wanting in the reverence and obedience due to them. Knowing themselves as the chosen ones of the Kingdom of God, and endowed with the freedom of His children, and called to the good things that are not of this life, they were able to work on without being cast down by the sorrows and troubles of this passing world, but with eyes and hearts turned to heaven were consoled and strengthened in their holy resolutions. St. Peter was addressing himself specially to slaves when he wrote: “For this is thanks-worthy, if for conscience towards God a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. For unto this you are called; because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps.” The credit for this solicitude joined with moderation, which in such a wonderful way adorns the divine powers of the Church, is increased by the marvelous and unconquerable courage with which she was able to inspire and sustain so many poor slaves. It was a wonderful sight to behold those who, in their obedience and the patience with which they submitted to every task, were such an example to their masters, refusing to let themselves be persuaded to prefer the wicked commands of those above them to the holy law of God, and even giving up their lives in the most cruel tortures with unconquered hearts and unclouded brows. The pages of Eusebius keep alive for us the memory of the unshaken constancy of the virgin Potamiana, who, rather than consent to gratify the lusts of her master, fearlessly accepted death, and sealed her faithfulness to Jesus Christ with her blood. Many other admirable examples abound of slaves, who, for their souls’ sake and to keep their faith with God, have resisted their masters to the death. History has no case to show of Christian slaves for any other cause setting themselves in opposition to their masters of joining in conspiracies against the State. Thence, peace and quiet times having been restored to the Church, the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2343 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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holy Fathers made a wise and admirable exposition of the apostolic precepts concerning the fraternal unanimity which should exist between Christians, and with a like charity extended it to the advantage of slaves, striving to point out that the rights of masters extended lawfully indeed over the works of their slaves, but that their power did not extend to using horrible cruelties against their persons. St. Chrysostom stands pre-eminent among the Greeks, who often treats of this subject, and affirms with exulting mind and tongue that slavery, in the old meaning of the word, had at that time disappeared through the beneficence of the Christian faith, so that it both seemed, and was, a word without any meaning among the disciples of the Lord. For Christ indeed (so he sums up his argument), when in His great mercy to us He wiped away the sin contracted by our birth, at the same time healed the manifold corruptions of human society; so that, as death itself by His means has laid aside its terrors and become a peaceful passing away to a happy life, so also has slavery been banished. Do not, then, call any Christian man a slave, unless, indeed, he is in bondage again to sin; they are altogether brethren who are born again and received in Christ Jesus. Our advantages flow from the new birth and adoption into the household of God, not from the eminence of our race; our dignity arises from the praise of our truth, not of our blood. But in order that that kind of evangelical brotherhood may have more fruit, it is necessary that in the actions of our ordinary life there should appear a willing interchange of kindnesses and good offices, so that slaves should be esteemed of nearly equal account with the rest of our household and friends, and that the master of the house should supply them, not only with what is necessary for their life and food, but also all necessary safeguards of religious training. Finally, from the marked address of Paul to Philemon, bidding grace and peace “to the church which is in thy house,” the precept should be held in respect equally by Christian masters and servants, that they who have an intercommunion of faith should also have an intercommunion of charity. Of the Latin authors, we worthily and justly call to mind St. Ambrose, who so earnestly inquired into all that was necessary in this cause, and so clearly ascribes what is due to each kind of man according to the laws of Christianity, that no one has ever achieved it better, whose sentiments, it is unnecessary to say, fully and perfectly coincide with those of St. Chrysostom. These things were, as is evident, most justly and usefully laid down; but more, the chief point is that they have been observed wholly and religiously from the earliest times wherever the profession of the Christian faith has flourished. Unless this had been the case, that excellent defender of religion, Lactantius, could not have maintained it so confidently, as though a witness of it. “Should any one say: Are there not among you some poor, some rich, some slaves, some who are masters; is there no difference between different persons? I answer: There is none, nor is there any other cause why we call each other by the name of brother than that we consider ourselves to be equals; first, when we measure all human things, not by the body but by the spirit, although their corporal condition may be different from ours, 2344 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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yet in spirit they are not slaves to us, but we esteem and call them brethren, fellow workers in religion.” The care of the Church extended to the protection of slaves, and without interruption tended carefully to one object, that they should finally be restored to freedom, which would greatly conduce to their eternal welfare. That the event happily responded to these efforts, the annals of sacred antiquity afford abundant proof. Noble matrons, rendered illustrious by the praises of St. Jerome, themselves afforded great aid in carrying this matter into effect; so that as Salvian relates, in Christian families, even though not very rich, it often happened that the slaves were freed by a generous manumission. But, also, St. Clement long before praised that excellent work of charity by which some Christians became slaves, by an exchange of persons, because they could in no other way liberate those who were in bondage. Wherefore, in addition to the fact that the act of manumission began to take place in churches as an act of piety, the Church ordered it to be proposed to the faithful when about to make their wills, as a work very pleasing to God and of great merit and value with Him. Therefore, those precepts of manumission to the heir were introduced with the words, “for the love of God, for the welfare or benefit of my soul.” Neither was anything grudged as the price of the captives, gifts dedicated to God were sold, consecrated gold and silver melted down, the ornaments and gifts of the basilicas alienated, as, indeed, was done more than once by Ambrose, Augustine, Hilary, Eligius, Patrick, and many other holy men. Moreover, the Roman Pontiffs, who have always acted, as history truly relates, as the protectors of the weak and helpers of the oppressed, have done their best for slaves. St. Gregory himself set at liberty as many as possible, and in the Roman Council of 597 desired those to receive their freedom who were anxious to enter the monastic state. Hadrian I maintained that slaves could freely enter into matrimony even without their masters’ consent. It was clearly ordered by Alexander III in the year 1167 to the Moorish King of Valencia that he should not make a slave of any Christian, because no one was a slave by the law of nature, all men having been made free by God. Innocent III, in the year 1190, at the prayer of its founders, John de Matha and Felix of Valois, approved and established the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for Redeeming Christians who had fallen into the power of the Turks. At a later date, Honorius III, and, afterwards, Gregory IX, duly approved the Order of St. Mary of Help, founded for a similar purpose, which Peter Nolasco had established, and which included the severe rule that its religious should give themselves up as slaves in the place of Christians taken captive by tyrants, if it should be necessary in order to redeem them. The same St. Gregory passed a decree, which was a far greater support of liberty, that it was unlawful to sell slaves to the Church, and he further added an exhortation to the faithful that, as a punishment for their faults, they should give their slaves to God and His saints as an act of expiation. There are also many other good deeds of the Church in the same behalf. For she, indeed, was accustomed by severe penalties to defend slaves from the savage anger and cruel injuries of their masters. To those “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2345 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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upon whom the hand of violence had rested, she was accustomed to open her sacred temples as places of refuge to receive the free men into her good faith, and to restrain those by censure who dared by evil inducements to lead a man back again into slavery. In the same way she was still more favorable to the freedom of the slaves whom, by any means she held as her own, according to times and places; when she laid down either that those should be released by the bishops from every bond of slavery who had shown themselves during a certain time of trial of praiseworthy honesty of life, or when she easily permitted the bishops of their own will to declare those belonging to them free. It must also be ascribed to the compassion and virtue of the Church that somewhat of the pressure of civil law upon slaves was remitted, and, as far as it was brought about, that the milder alleviations of Gregory the Great, having been incorporated in the written law of nations, became of force. That, however, was done principally by the agency of Charlemagne, who included them in his “Capitularia,” as Gratian afterwards did in his “Decretum.” Finally, monuments, laws, institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church toward slaves, whose miserable condition she never left destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power alleviated. Therefore, sufficient praise or thanks can never be returned to the Catholic Church, the banisher of slavery and causer of true liberty, fraternity, and equality among men, since she has merited it by the prosperity of nations, through the very great beneficence of Christ our Redeemer. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, at which time the base stain of slavery having been nearly blotted out from among Christian nations, States were anxious to stand firmly in evangelical liberty, and also to increase their empire, this apostolic see took the greatest care that the evil germs of such depravity should nowhere revive. She therefore directed her provident vigilance to the newly discovered regions of Africa, Asia, and America; for a report had reached her that the leaders of those expeditions, Christians though they were, were wickedly making use of their arms and ingenuity for establishing and imposing slavery on these innocent nations. Indeed, since the crude nature of the soil which they had to overcome, nor less the wealth of metals which had to be extracted by digging, required very hard work, unjust and inhuman plans were entered into. For a certain traffic was begun, slaves being transported for that purpose from Ethiopia, which, at that time, under the name of “La tratta dei Negri,” too much occupied those colonies. An oppression of the indigenous inhabitants (who are collectively called Indians), much the same as slavery, followed with a like maltreatment. When Pius II had become assured of these matters without delay, on October 7, 1462, he gave a letter to the bishop of the place in which he reproved and condemned such wickedness. Some time afterwards, Leo X lent, as far as he could, his good offices and authority to the kings of both Portugal and Spain, who took care to radically extirpate that abuse, opposed alike to religion, humanity, and justice. Nevertheless, that evil having grown strong, remained there, its impure cause, the 2346 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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unquenchable desire of gain, remaining. Then Paul III, anxious with a fatherly love as to the condition of the Indians and of the Moorish slaves, came to this last determination, that in open day, and, as it were, in the sight of all nations, he declared that they all had a just and natural right of a threefold character, namely, that each one of them was master of his own person, that they could live together under their own laws, and that they could acquire and hold property for themselves. More than this, having sent letters to the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, he pronounced an interdict and deprival of sacraments against those who acted contrary to the aforesaid decree, reserving to the Roman Pontiff the power of absolving them. With the same forethought and constancy, other Pontiffs at a later period, as Urban VIII, Benedict XIV, and Pius VII, showed themselves strong asserters of liberty for the Indians and Moors and those who were even as yet not instructed in the Christian faith. The last, moreover, at the Council of the confederated Princes of Europe, held at Vienna, called their attention in common to this point, that that traffic in Negroes, of which We have spoken before, and which had now ceased in many places, should be thoroughly rooted out. Gregory XVI also severely censured those neglecting the duties of humanity and the laws, and restored the decrees and statutory penalties of the apostolic see, and left no means untried that foreign nations, also, following the kindliness of the Europeans, should cease from and abhor the disgrace and brutality of slavery. But it has turned out most fortunately for Us that We have received the congratulations of the chief princes and rulers of public affairs for having obtained, thanks to Our constant pleadings, some satisfaction for the long-continued and most just complaints of nature and religion. We have, however, in Our mind, in a matter of the same kind, another care which gives Us no light anxiety and presses upon Our solicitude. This shameful trading in men has, indeed, ceased to take place by sea, but on land is carried on to too great an extent and too barbarously, and that especially in some parts of Africa. For, it having been perversely laid down by the Mohammedans that Ethiopians and men of similar nations are very little superior to brute beasts, it is easy to see and shudder at the perfidy and cruelty of man. Suddenly, like plunderers making an attack, they invade the tribes of Ethiopians, fearing no such thing; they rush into their villages, houses, and huts; they lay waste, destroy, and seize everything; they lead away from thence the men, women, and children, easily captured and bound, so that they may drag them away by force for their shameful traffic. These hateful expeditions are made into Egypt, Zanzibar, and partly also into the Sudan, as though so many stations. Men, bound with chains are forced to take long journeys, ill supplied with food, under the frequent use of the lash; those who are too weak to undergo this are killed; those who are strong enough go like a flock with a crowd of others to be sold and to be passed over to a brutal and shameless purchaser. But whoever is thus sold and given up is exposed to what is a miserable rending asunder of wives, children, and parents, and is driven by him into whose power he falls into a hard and indescribable slavery; nor can “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2347 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he refuse to conform to the religious rites of Mahomet. These things We have received not long since with the greatest bitterness of feeling from some who have been eyewitnesses, though tearful ones, of that kind of infamy and misery; with these, moreover, what has been related lately by the explorers in equatorial Africa entirely coincides. It is indeed manifest, by their testimony and word, that each year 400,000 Africans are usually thus sold like cattle, about half of whom, wearied out by the roughness of the tracks, fall down and perish there, so that, sad to relate, those traveling through such places see the pathway strewn with the remains of bones. Who would not be moved by the thought of such miseries. We, indeed, who are holding the place of Christ, the loving Liberator and Redeemer of all mankind, and who so rejoice in the many and glorious good deeds of the Church to all who are afflicted, can scarcely express how great is Our commiseration for those unhappy nations, with what fullness of charity We open Our arms to them, how ardently We desire to be able to afford them every alleviation and support, with the hope, that, having cast off the slavery of superstition as well as the slavery of man, they may at length serve the one true God under the gentle yoke of Christ, partakers with Us of the divine inheritance. Would that all who hold high positions in authority and power, or who desire the rights of nations and of humanity to be held sacred, or who earnestly devote themselves to the interests of the Catholic religion, would all, everywhere acting on Our exhortations and wishes, strive together to repress, forbid, and put an end to that kind of traffic, than which nothing is more base and wicked. In the meantime, while by a more strenuous application of ingenuity and labor new roads are being made, and new commercial enterprises undertaken in the lands of Africa, let apostolic men endeavor to find out how they can best secure the safety and liberty of slaves. They will obtain success in this matter in no other way than if, strengthened by divine grace, they give themselves up to spreading our most holy faith and daily caring for it, whose distinguishing fruit is that it wonderfully flavors and develops the liberty “with which Christ made us free.” We therefore advise them to look, as if into a mirror of apostolic virtue, at the life and works of St. Peter Claver, to whom We have lately added a crown of glory. Let them look at him who for fully forty years gave himself up to minister with the greatest constancy in his labors, to a most miserable assembly of Moorish slaves; truly he ought to be called the apostle of those whose constant servant he professed himself and gave himself up to be. If they endeavor to take to themselves and reflect the charity and patience of such a man, they will shine indeed as worthy ministers of salvation, authors of consolation, messengers of peace, who, by God’s help, may turn solicitude, desolation, and fierceness into the most joyful fertility of religion and civilization. And now, venerable brethren, Our thoughts and letters desire to turn to you that We may again announce to you and again share with you the exceeding joy which We feel on account of the determinations which have been publicly entered into in that empire with regard to slavery. If, indeed, it seemed to Us a good, happy, and propitious event, that it was provided 2348 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and insisted upon by law that whoever were still in the condition of slaves ought to be admitted to the status and rights of free men, so also it conforms and increases Our hope of future acts which will be the cause of joy, both in civil and religious matters. Thus the name of the Empire of Brazil will be justly held in honor and praise among the most civilized nations, and the name of its august emperor will likewise be esteemed, whose excellent speech is on record, that he desired nothing more ardently than that every vestige of slavery should be speedily obliterated from his territories. But, truly, until those precepts of the laws are carried into effect, earnestly endeavor, We beseech you, by all means, and press on as much as possible the accomplishment of this affair, which no light difficulties hinder. Through your means let it be brought to pass that masters and slaves may mutually agree with the highest goodwill and best good faith, nor let there be any transgression of clemency or justice, but, whatever things have to be carried out, let all be done lawfully, temperately, and in a Christian manner. It is, however, chiefly to be wished that this may be prosperously accomplished, which all desire, that slavery may be banished and blotted out without any injury to divine or human rights, with no political agitation, and so with the solid benefit of the slaves themselves, for whose sake it is undertaken. To each one of these, whether they have already been made free or are about to become so, We address with a pastoral intention and fatherly mind a few salutary cautions culled from the words of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Let them, then, endeavor piously and constantly to retain grateful memory and feeling towards those by whose council and exertion they were set at liberty. Let them never show themselves unworthy of so great a gift nor ever confound liberty with license; but let them use it as becomes well ordered citizens for the industry of an active life, for the benefit and advantage both of their family and of the State. To respect and increase the dignity of their princes, to obey the magistrates, to be obedient to the laws, these and similar duties let them diligently fulfill, under the influence, not so much of fear as of religion; let them also restrain and keep in subjection envy of another’s wealth or position, which unfortunately daily distresses so many of those in inferior positions, and present so many incitements of rebellion against security of order and peace. Content with their state and lot, let them think nothing dearer, let them desire nothing more ardently than the good things of the heavenly kingdom by whose grace they have been brought to the light and redeemed by Christ; let them feel piously towards God who is their Lord and Liberator; let them love Him, with all their power; let them keep His commandments with all their might; let them rejoice in being sons of His spouse, the Holy Church; let them labor to be as good as possible, and as much as they can let them carefully return His love. Do you also, Venerable Brethren, be constant in showing and urging on the freedmen these same doctrines; that, that which is Our chief prayer, and at the same time ought to be yours and that of all good people, religion, amongst the first, may ever feel that she has gained the most ample fruits of that liberty which has been “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2349 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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obtained wherever that empire extends. But that that may happily take place, We beg and implore the full grace of God and motherly aid of the Immaculate Virgin. As a foretaste of heavenly gifts and witness of Our fatherly good will towards you, Venerable Brethren, your clergy, and all your people, We lovingly impart the apostolic blessing. Given at Saint Peter’s, in Rome, the fifth day of May, 1888, the eleventh of Our pontificate.

May 13, day: Slavery was abolished in Brazil by order of Emperor Pedro II. If you check the document, you find that the act actually bears the signature of his daughter the Princess Elizabeth — evidently because this wasn’t important enough for the Emperor to himself stick around. Approximately 700,000 Brazilians became free.

1889

The signatories of the Berlin Act met in Brussels at the instance of Queen Victoria with the declared objective of putting an end to the crimes and devastation engendered by the traffic in African slaves. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Charred remnants of the Pequot stockade, two and a half centuries old, could still be seen at the site at which, in 1637, “no less than five or six hundred Pequot souls were brought down to Hell,” the remainder then being rounded up and sold into slavery. A massive bronze statue honoring Major John Mason, white leader of the 1637 exterminators and enslavers, was in this year positioned. In regard to this the appropriate question which has been raised is “If some guy had slaughtered your parents, how will you feel when his kids come around and want to install a memorial to him on the site of your parents’ unmarked graves?” People keep dismissing anything they didn’t know when they were twelve as revisionist. — Roger Kennedy, Director of the National Park Service

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Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy and Adin Ballou corresponded.304

Tolstòy was pleased with a chance to correspond with the forgotten American, Adin Ballou. He translated several of Ballou’s works into Russian, and in 1889 and 1890 the two men exchanged letters on points where their opinions differed. But Ballou was extremely bitter and argumentative, and the correspondence became rather unfriendly. Ballou died shortly afterward. Tolstòy was never able to satisfy his own curiosity concerning the rise and fall of nonresistant anarchism in America. Nevertheless, the discovery of Garrison and Ballou plainly held great significance for him, and he referred to the antebellum Americans frequently. They were associated in his mind with the excitement of his own conversion, “the spring of my awakening to true life.” In addition, they testified to the existence of a radical tradition of Christian believers whose convictions differed from those of the institutional churches and states. Nonresistance was a universal expression of Christianity with a history going back at least as far as the Reformation and, ultimately, to the life and teachings of Christ. This tradition had received some of its most enthusiastic statements in America before the Civil War. Tolstòy urged American to rediscover the writings of Garrison, Ballou, and Henry David Thoreau. Although Tolstòy could not learn much about the disappearance of nonresistant anarchism in America, he surmised that radical pacifist doctrines must have been discarded in the belief that they encumbered the cause of the slave. Because the country evaded these doctrines, it marched into a fratricidal war which ended the particular form of coercion known as slavery but left a hideous pattern of interracial violence and injustice. This pattern could be effaced, in Tolstoi’s view, only by returning to the principles which Garrison and Ballou had tried to teach.

304. Count Leo Tolstoy and Rev. Adin Ballou, “The Christian Doctrine of Non-Resistance ... Unpublished Correspondence Compiled by Rev. Lewis G. Wilson,” Arena, III (December 1890):1-12 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2351 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Though the American reverend would disapprove of the passivity of the Russian count’s pacifism and would consider his theology to be “untrue, visionary, chaotic, and pitiably puerile,” the Russian would nevertheless be much impressed with this American. In THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU, in 1894, he would write “one would have thought Ballou’s work would have been well known, and the ideas expressed by him would have been either accepted or refuted; but such has not been the case.” He hypothesized that there must be in existence in America “a kind of tacit but steadfast conspiracy of silence about all such efforts.”

One thing Tolstòy understood perfectly from his own anarchistic perspective: Garrison’s followers had been inclined toward anarchism not in addition to hating slavery but became they hated slavery. He made the connection succinctly:

Garrison, a man enlightened by the Christian teaching, having begun with the practical aim of striving against slavery, soon understood that the cause of slavery was not the casual temporary seizure by the Southerners of a few millions of negroes, but the ancient and universal recognition, contrary to Christian teaching, of the right of coercion by some men in regard to others.... Garrison understood ... that the only irrefutable argument against slavery is a denial of any man’s right over the liberty of another under any conditions whatsoever.

One of Tolstoi’s most anarchistic works was entitled THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES. An enlarged definition of slavery came to him as naturally as the open-ended definition of brigandage he had used in conversation with William Jennings Bryan. He was not interested in the reform of a few narrowly defined institutions; he was a perfectionist to whom social justice meant nothing less than the eradication of sin from human society. All men, he preached, must renounce violence and coercion and in that way give their support to the kingdom of God. From this viewpoint he made the exciting discovery of the kinship of his beliefs with those of American abolitionists; it seemed obvious that an anti-slavery movement should have been pacifistic and anarchistic.

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November 18: William Allingham died. The widowed Helen Allingham would need to support herself by means of relentless kitsch paintings of picturesque rural poverty.

Representatives of 17 nations met in Brussels to create international standards for eliminating the slave trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

Cello Sonata no.2 op.39 was performed for the initial time, in London’s St. James’s Hall, with the composer Charles Villiers Stanford himself at the piano.

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1890

July 2, day: The General Act of the Brussels Conference was signed by representatives of 17 nations. Its goal was to end the slave trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was approved by the US government. It was an attempt to curb the massive power of monopolist conspiracies.

1892

May: Arab slavemasters in the Belgian Congo rebelled.

November 22, day: Forces of the Congo Free State (largely mercenaries) defeated Arab slavetraders in the Upper Congo.

In Vienna, Symphony no.8 by Anton Bruckner was performed for the initial time, in a four-hand piano arrangement.

December 5, day: Forced labor by Congo natives was disguised as taxes to be paid in labor.

December 30, day: Forces of the Congo Free State won a 2d battle against Arab slavetraders in the Upper Congo.

1893

April 22, day: Emil Stang replaced Johannes Wilhelm Christian Steen as Prime Minister of Norway.

Forces of the Congo Free State captured the stronghold of the Arab slavetraders at Kassongo.

The gold reserves of the US Treasury fell below the required minimum of $100,000,000.

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1896

Venture Smith’s A / NARRATIVE / OF THE / LIFE AND ADVENTURES / OF / VENTURE, / A NATIVE OF AFRICA, / BUT REFIDENT ABOVE FIXTY YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / RELATED BY HIMSELF. was revised and republished, with “Traditions,” by H.M. Selden of Haddam Neck, at the printing and bookbinding business of J.S. Stewart in Middletown, Connecticut.

SLAVERY

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1897

This is the year in which “Transportation” of British convicts to New Calcedonia finally came to an end.305

April 6: After an elaborate funeral in the Protestant church of Vienna, including many musical figures from throughout Europe and thousands of mourners, the earthly remains of Johannes Brahms were deposited in the Zentral Friedhof of Vienna near those of Beethoven and Schubert. In Hamburg, the composer’s birthplace, ships lowered their flags to half-mast.

Austrian Chancellor Kazimierz Felix, Count Badeni ruled that the Czech language was granted equality with German in Bohemia.

Thaddeus Cahill received a US patent for the “art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electrically” (this was the first version of what would become known as the Telharmonium).

The Sultan of Zanzibar abolished human enslavement.

WALDEN: It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, CAT and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.

SYMMES HOLE

305. The alternative which had originally been suggested by the developers of Botany Bay had been the importation of quantities of Chinese slave laborers. 2356 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1901

A Japanese chemist living in Chicago, Satori Kato, invented water soluble instant coffee (he would obtain a US patent for this on August 11, 1903).

When Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates visited the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean he was alerted to the fact that the cocoa workers on Sao Thome and Principe Islands were still for all practical purposes enslaved.

William G. Mortimer’s PERU HISTORY OF COCA: THE DIVINE PLANT OF THE INCAS presented the favorable medical opinion of the day in regard to cocaine. PLANTS

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1902

The Quaker Yearly Meeting School in Providence, Rhode Island went into debt in order to erect Hawes Gymnasium at a cost of more than $30,000 (the debt would be eliminated later when a bequest would be received from Sarah J. Hall).

Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates was offered a cocoa plantation on San Thome (a West African island) but saw an advertisement on which its workers had been listed as assets, at so much a head, so Cadbury instead looked to the Gold Coast (Ghana) where the quality of cocoa was at the time perceived as poor.

At the Cadbury facility in England, Men’s and Women’s Suggestions Committees were set up, formalizing a process that had already begun (in 1893 women had voted in favour of starting work later than 6AM and working later each day).

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1903

The Reverend Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s THE ONE WOMAN. Racial conflict is an epic struggle with the future of civilization at stake. Maybe we can’t have human slavery anymore but American blacks cannot be allowed to be politically equal with American whites as that would lead to social equality, and social equality would lead to miscegenation, and miscegenation would lead to the destruction of the family, and the destruction of the family would lead to the destruction of civilized society. Everything we admire and respect would fall like a row of damn dominoes, you fool.

The US Supreme Court upheld a clause in the Alabama Constitution denying to black citizens the privilege of voting.

Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates visited Lisbon to investigate alleged slavery on the Portuguese African cocoa islands of Sao Thome and Principe. The Portuguese authorities went oh-you-are-so- uninformed and invited him to go see for himself.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was presented in film. Movies about the Civil War era, shown from the first year feature films were screened, make up the largest group of films (more than seven hundred — approximately five hundred silents and two hundred sound) concerning any war or historical event in [U.S.] history (nearly three times the number of films about World War Two).... There were thirteen Civil War movies made in 1908, twenty-three such features in 1909, and then nearly a hundred a year through 1916. — Bruce Chadwick, THE REEL CIVIL WAR: MYTHMAKING IN AMERICAN FILM Most of the 500 silent movies about the US Civil War, that Bruce Chadwick instances above in THE REEL CIVIL WAR: MYTHMAKING IN AMERICAN FILM (NY: Random House, 2001), were one-reelers or two-reelers, and with only a few exceptions they portrayed a “moonlight and magnolia” South in which white people were heroic underdogs being victimized by Northern perpetrators, and in which the darkies were content until agitated by vicious propaganda: [T]he concept of a happy land full of gentlemen rudely attacked by Union troops could work only if slaves ... were content.... Most of the silents depicted slaves as not only satisfied in slavery, but willing to give their lives to preserve it.... It seemed that to realize reunification, the Civil War’s political and cultural history had almost to be rewritten so that Southerners would never again be seen as harsh slave owners or as people who started –and lost– the war.... Novelists, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2359 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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playwrights (Dixon was both) and magazine writers reinvented Southern slaveholders as noble cavaliers, fighting not for slavery but for states’ rights and the honor of their Southern women and families.... [They] won on the screen what they lost on the battlefield.

The Rhodesian “Immorality and Indecency Suppression Act” created by Cecil Rhodes’s British South African Company made illicit and punishable any sexual liaison between a white woman and a black man but tolerated such sexual liaisons when they were between a white man and a black woman. The British colonies in what would become South Africa enacted miscegenation laws similar to but going beyond that of the Cape Colony. • Natal #31-1903 “Criminal Law Amendment Act” prohibited indecent relations between white women and colored persons (Section 16); colored were defined in the “Vagrancy Law” #15-1869 as “Hottentots, coolies, bushmen, Lascars, and members of the so-called kaffer population.” • Orange Free State #11-1903 “Suppression of Brothels and Immorality Act” Section 14 16. • Transvaal #46-1903 “Immorality Ordinance” similar to Natal, but with harsher punishment and with a very broad definition of “native” as including natives of the indigenous or colored races of Africa, Asia, or St. Helena; in addition Transvaal had no provisions for (though also no direct ban of) intermarriages since 1897.

1904

The enslaved pygmy Ota Benga was purchased in the Belgian Congo by Samuel Phillips Verner of South Carolina, along with eight other pygmies, for exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. He would be known to Americans as “Bi,” meaning in his language “friend.” When the exhibit closed, Verner took these pygmies back to Africa.

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1905

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, an improved milk chocolate product, was introduced.

Employees elected members for a Men’s Committee, and then for Women’s Committee. The committees would meet weekly and their work would influence government actions.

Friend Joseph Burtt spent 6 months on Sao Thome and Principe at the suggestion of Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates and observed that at one of the cocoa plantations nearly half of the workers died within one year of their arrival.

The Gothenburg system was made obligatory in Swedish cities, but soon there would arise criticism of the system’s loopholes and of its failure to create temperance. Many local authorities would become financially dependent on the system’s profits and therefore begin to encourage sales of alcohol. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

1909

When the English chocolate firm of Cadbury had been offered an estate on the West African island of San Thome, they had discovered to their horror that the local plantations were using slave labor. William Cadbury published LABOR IN PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA and persuaded two other Quaker cocoa and chocolate firms, those of Fry and Rowntree, to boycott Portuguese cocoa. Cadbury began looking instead along the Gold Coast of Africa, in particular at Ghana. There, however, the quality of the cocoa had been considered to be poor. At this point he visited Odumassi and was encouraged to learn that the chief there was personally supervising the cocoa production.

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March 8: Reduced to poverty after many years of wheeling and dealing as a lobbyist and political hanger-on in Washington DC, unable to raise funding for his grand scheme to place himself in charge of the building of a railroad from Hudson Bay to the Straits of Magellan, Hinton Rowan Helper finally chose to do the next best thing to getting to be rich and famous and a benefactor of humankind without doing any work or being of any benefit to anyone and, placing letters to a friend and to the Treasurer of the United States urging the construction of a north/south railway connecting Canada with Patagonia on the table of his room, barricaded the door, stopped up the keyhole, placed a towel around his neck and turned on the gas. (Well, better late than never they say.) He would be buried in an unmarked grave and now he is forgotten by an America determined to forget that its abolitionism had been as much oriented toward destroying the slaves among us as toward destroying slaves among us.

1910

March 10, day: Slavery was abolished in China.

June 25: The first major expansion in the jurisdiction of the new Bureau of Investigation came with passage of the Mann Act, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman over state lines for immoral purposes (this would be referred to as the “White Slave Traffic Act,” despite the fact that technically it would be precisely as illegal to transport some woman of color across a state line “for immoral purposes” as to transport some white woman over a state line with such an intent). It also provided a means by which the federal government could pretend it to be legitimate for it to investigate the activities of the sort of economic criminals who seemed able to evade state laws even though they might not be suspected of any particular federal offense.

1919

In Finland, the smuggling of liquor was rising to the level that the nation’s prohibition effort was being entirely defeated.

Idaho law (this would be amended in 1921) declared marriage between whites and Mongolians, Negroes, or Mulattoes to be illegal and void; the penalty for cohabitation was established as imprisonment for up to six months with a maximum fine of $300. A rise in heroin use was reported among urban male youths, that would promote in 1924 a ban of its manufacture and import. By the end of this period, the fear of the “dope fiend” would be firmly established.

The Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye.

The Reverend Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s THE WAY OF A MAN. Racial conflict is an epic struggle with the future of civilization at stake. Maybe we can’t have human slavery anymore but American blacks cannot be allowed to be politically equal with American whites as that would lead to social equality, and social equality would lead to miscegenation, and miscegenation would lead to the destruction of the family, and the destruction of the family would lead to the destruction of civilized society. Everything we admire and respect would fall like a row of damn dominoes, you fool.

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1925

September 26: Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery. READ THE FULL TEXT

1926

The Slavery Convention.

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1928

First publication of the American folksong “Foller de Drinkin’ Gou’d” (“Follow the Drinking Gourd”). This song was proclaimed to have been a “map song” that had been used in antebellum years in conjunction with the Underground Railroad. It supposedly was made up of encoded instructions that had enabled fleeing black slaves to make their way north from Mobile, Alabama to the Ohio River, and cross over into Illinois and freedom. “Drinking gourd” was alleged to be the code name for the Big Dipper constellation which points to the pole star Polaris and shows the way to freedom in the north.

There is in fact no historical provenance whatever, for any of this, that can be traced back any earlier than a mention of the year 1912 in which supposedly something had happened. Even if that allegation of a 1912 event were to turn out to correspond to something that had actually occurred, rather than having been merely a number being pulled out of the air, it indicates something like half a century, two human generations, had already elapsed since whatever actual “Underground Railroad” activity there had been had entirely evaporated!

The instigator of all this was one Harris Braley Parks (1879-1958), whose unsubstantiated would-I-lie-to-you allegation it was that the song consisted of coded escape instructions for a route that began in Mobile, Alabama

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and went up the Tombigbee River, over a range of hills, and then up the Tennessee River to the point at which it joins with the Ohio River, at Paducah, Kentucky. However, we have no corroboration whatever that this Paducahville was ever either a waystation or an end point on the Underground Railroad. Also, folks who had made the crossing there into southern Illinois would have found themselves not exactly in the lap of safety, but merely at the tender mercies of a new crop of slavery-loving white people.

My own point of view is that while we may debate whether someone had perhaps deluded this Parks person, or whether perhaps this was Parks’s own attention-getting fabrication — there really isn’t much else about this sorry tale that is worthy of discussion. Would you like to see a quilt my grandmother made, that contains coded instructions for winning World War II?

1930

The Forced Labor Convention.

Edward Dahlberg’s first novel, BOTTOM DOGS, was founded upon a kaleidoscopic succession of vagabond experiences. Dahlberg had been working as a Western Union messenger boy in Cleveland, as a trucker for American Express, as the driver of a laundry wagon, as a cattle drover at the Kansas City Stockyards, as a dishwasher in Portland, Oregon, as a potato peeler in Sacramento, as a bus-boy in San Francisco, as a longshoreman in San Pedro, as a clerk in a clinic, etc. The book was published with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence, poet and author of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” who was in this year dying of tuberculosis at the age of 45. Receiving his advance money from Simon & Schuster, Dahlberg became a denizen of New York’s Greenwich Village. There he got some of his pieces into the journal Pagany.

1932

The League of Nations Second Slavery Committee.

1935

The Permanent Advisory Committee of Seven Experts on Slavery.

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1936

Edward Dahlberg resigned from the Communist Party of the United States, and renounced the writings he had produced as a Communist, characterizing the Communism he had experienced as “necrophilic.” He became friends with the poet Charles Olson.

Ibn Sa’ud, King of Saudi Arabia, got concerned that things needed to be done right, and issued a decree regulation the condition of slaves and providing for manumission under specified conditions. Importation of slaves by sea was forbidden and provisions were made for the licensing of slave traders. (Let’s get it right, guys!) INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

W.E.B. Du Bois’s BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: How extraordinary, and what a tribute to ignorance and religious hypocrisy, is the fact that in the minds of most people, even those of liberals, only murder makes men. The slave pleaded; he was humble; he protected the women of the South, and the world ignored him. The slave killed white men; and behold, he was a man.

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Karl Marx would express, in his THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE, 1848-1850, the sentiment that “The origin of states gets lost in a myth, in which one may believe, but which one may not discuss.” On the 1st page of Theodore W. Allen’s introduction to his 1st volume,306 this independent scholar asks our “indulgence for only one assumption, namely, that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves.” I find that remark remarkable indeed! When in our Declaration of Independence we said to ourselves “All men are created equal,” we were of course writing as lawyers and in a lawyerly manner.

We were purposing to level others, such as those overweening overbred British aristocrats, down to our own lay level, but meanwhile it was no part of our purpose to level others, such as our wives and slaves, up to our own exalted situation —we were doing this to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and not doing this for the benefit of others. What we meant back there in Philadelphia several centuries ago, by such a trope as “All men are created equal,” was “We want, 1st, to sound almost as if we were saying that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves, and we want, 2dly, to sound as if we were struggling to express something like that without actually declaring anything like that — because it is essential that in this new nation of ours (based as it is upon human enslavement) we avoid any such issue. Our equality here is to be founded upon the inequality of others, and this grand-sounding trope ‘All men are created equal’ is being provided so that it can function as our cover story, enabling such viciousness to proceed unhindered.” As Edmund Burke expressed on February 16, 1788 during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for maladministration of the British rule in India, “There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the

306. Allen, Theodore W. THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE, VOLUME ONE: RACIAL OPPRESSION AND SOCIAL CONTROL. London: Verso, 1994

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beginnings of all government.”

The African Association was founded in England to explore the interior of Africa.

In the usage of the trope “peculiar institution” that is today ordinary or usual, this trope is deployed of course in oblique reference to the unmentionable crime of human chattel bondage. It is nowadays used in implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not to attack it but proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. What Allen, however, refers to by use of this trope “peculiar institution” is, instead, the invention of the so-called “white race” which has here been used to legitimate our local version of thus unmentionable crime, our local version of a solution to the problem of social control. It is for him this biologistic cover story, itself, which constitutes the quintessential “Peculiar Institution” we have been forced to construct. “Only by understanding what was peculiar about the Peculiar Institution can one know what is exceptionable about American Exceptionalism” (Volume I, page 1). In this he acknowledges that he is following a seed that had been planted by W.E.B. Du Bois in his BLACK RECONSTRUCTION. Allen’s 1st volume is made up of an elaborate parallelization of the Irish and Scottish experience under English colonialism, and the American antebellum experience: Every aspect of the Ulster Plantation policy aimed at destroying the tribal leadership and dispersing the tribe is matched by typical examples from Anglo-American colonial and United States policy toward the indigenous population, the “American Indians” — a policy we clearly recognize as racial oppression of “the red man.” I have been looking into an Irish mirror for insights into the nature of racial oppression and its implication for ruling-class social control in the United States. IRELAND SCOTLAND

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March 8, day: Slavery was reported in Liberia by a US/League of Nations commission.

(Uh, once upon a time didn’t “Liberia” mean “The Place Where People Are Free?”)

1939

Ernest Hamlin Baker’s mural about the slavery-intensive economic activities of the white “Narragansett Planters” of the southwestern region of the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations:

(The mural reminds us that there were more black slaves in Rhode Island at one time, than in the remainder of the states of New England put together. — I mean, how dare this artist remind us of something like that!)

1940

Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, New York was in receivership and was purchased by John D. Rockefeller. He would open it to the public in 1943. (The public would not be informed that this had been a slave plantation.)

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November 11: The United States cruiser Omaha and the destroyer Somers seized the German blockade runner Odenwald and brought it into San Juan, Puerto Rico on the pretext that maybe the vessel was a negrero engaged in the international slave trade. SLAVERY

(Hey, you idiots, where were you when we needed you?)

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1941

SLAVERY

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1942

Ethiopia abolished slavery. Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” in the film “Holiday Inn.”

May 21, Thursday: Fiancailles pour rire, a cycle for voice and piano by Francis Poulenc, to words of Vilmorin, was performed for the initial time, the composer himself at the piano.

Le journal tombe à cinq heures, a film with music by Arthur Honegger, was shown for the initial time, in Paris.

North Pacific Force (Rear Admiral R.A. Theobald) was established for operations in the Alaskan sector.

I.G. Farben set up a factory near Auschwitz to make synthetic oil and rubber using slave labor from the camp.

4,300 Jews were deported from Chelm to Sobibor. All were gassed on arrival.

2,000 Jews in Korzec were taken to fields near town and murdered.

A decree in the Netherlands authorized the complete expropriation of Jewish property. ANTISEMITISM WORLD WAR II

1943

Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, New York was opened to the public (in the year 2002 this National Historical Landmark would begin to acknowledge to the general public that, during its period of activity as a farm, it had been a slave plantation).

1944

Eric Williams proposed in this year that “Slavery was not born of racism; rather racism was the consequence of slavery.” One of the ready responses to this chicken/egg conundrum has of course been that supplied by W.D. Jordan in WHITE OVER BLACK: “Rather than slavery causing ‘prejudice’ or vice versa, they seem rather to have generated each other. Both were... twin aspects of a general debasement of the Negro. Slavery and ‘prejudice’ may have been equally cause and effect, continuously reacting upon each other...: a mutually interactive growth of slavery and unfavorable assessment, with no cause for either which did not cause the other.” But is this true? Have cause and effect indeed been here become indecipherably intertwined? Is there no technique by which the principle of chronological sequence, essential to historical enquiry, can puzzle out the threads of this trend? SLAVERY RACISM

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1946

At the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, significant contributions were being made to the American Friends Service Committee.

Under “La Loi Mile. Marthe Richard,” the brothels of Paris were shut down and regulated medical examination of sex workers abandoned — such establishments had come to be regarded as venues of slavery, although prostitution itself was quite OK and the demimondaines remained free to work the streets (the eponymous Mile. Richard was a member of the French Assembly).

In Newport, dedication of the structure that had housed the 1st synagogue in what is now the United States of America, Touro Synagogue of Congregation Jeshuat Israel, as a national historical site.307

Affixed to the south side of the exterior wall is a plaque with the following inscription: NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE TOURO SYNAGOGUE JESHUAT ISRAEL CONGREGATION FOUNDED 1658 THIS OLDEST SYNAGOGUE BUILDING IN THE UNITED STATES WAS DESIGNED BY PETER HARRISON. GROUND WAS BROKEN AUGUST 1, 1759. IT WAS DEDICATED ON DECEMBER 2, 1763. HERE 1781-84 THE RHODE ISLAND GENERAL ASSEMBLY MET, AND DURING WASHINGTON’S VISIT TO NEWPORT IN 1781 A TOWN MEETING WAS HELD HERE. THE STATE SUPREME COURT HELD SESSIONS HERE AT THAT PERIOD. THE BUILDING WAS

307. Some of the Jews of this synagogue, like some of their Christian neighbors, such as the Quakers next door up the hill, had engaged in the international slave trade. After their synagogue building, in what had become the bad part of town, had been deconsecrated, the empty structure, under a caretaker who was a Quaker, would find use occasionally, surreptitiously, for the harboring of escaping slaves as a station on the Underground Railroad, or so ’tis persistently said although I have never seen a scintilla of evidence to back up such claims (we all know that the way to make something true is to repeat it any number of times). —When you visit, and are proudly shown the must-see “secret hidey hole” beneath the lectern, for Heaven’s sake be polite and do not complicate matters by inquiring about participation in the international slave trade. Remember that the international slave trade wasn’t just for Jews. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2373 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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REOPENED FOR RELIGIOUS SERVICES ON AUGUST 2, 1850. IN 1790 GEORGE WASHINGTON WROTE TO THIS CONGREGATION THAT ... “HAPPILY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES... GIVES TO BIGOTRY NO SANCTION, TO PERSECUTION NO ASSISTANCE.”

1949

Bob Pepperman Taylor has remarked, in his AMERICA’S BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN POLITY (Lawrence KA: UP of Kansas, 1996, page 7), that “Thoreau is, on the whole, the political thinker scholars of American political thought love to either ignore or hate.” One of the instances which he has offered of this is C. Carroll Hollis, opinioning in this year that “[W]hen Thoreau considers the obligation of the citizen to obey the law, he not only rejects that obligation in the light of his extreme individualism but ultimately denies authority itself.”

When the assembly of the United Nations voted to request that the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations conduct a study of slavery, the council appointed an ad hoc committee of four “experts.”

1960

The slave coffle (which had come to be termed a “chain gang” of “convicts,” since the story was that human slavery had been abolished) at this point began to disappear from the sides of Southern roads.

During the 1960s Malcolm X would peruse the reports of Frederick Law Olmsted, published as THE COTTON KINGDOM, and would comment that this had helped him understand the nature of the evil that was slavery.

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1961

June: Kenneth L. Carroll’s “Religious Influences on the Manumission of Slaves in Caroline, Dorchester, and Talbot Counties” (Maryland Historical Magazine 56, pages 176-197). RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

1962

Robert F. Williams’s NEGROES WITH GUNS (New York: Marzani & Munsell; reprinted Wayne State UP, 1998) denigrated the black-on-white civil disobedience of the American civil rights movement by contrasting this with the reality of white-on-black violence which he had been experiencing in his own life trajectory. The Afro-American cannot forget that his enslavement in this country did not pass because of pacifist moral force or noble appeals to the Christian conscience of the slave-holders. Henry David Thoreau is idealized as an apostle of non-violence, the writer who influenced Gandhi, and through Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. But Thoreau was not dogmatic; his eyes were open and he saw clearly. I keep with me a copy of Thoreau’s “A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN”. There are truths that are just as evident in 1962 as they were in 1859 when he wrote: ... It was his [John Brown’s] peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say, that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.... I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman’s billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail!... We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our henroosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharpe’s rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot

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fugitive slaves with them or the like. I think that for once the Sharpe’ s rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them. The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his fellowman so well, and treated him so tenderly. He [John Brown] lived for him. He took up his life and he laid it down for him. What sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the Gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women? This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death; the possibility of a man’s dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in America before; for in order to die you must first have lived. It is in the nature of the American Negro, the same as all other men, to fight and try to destroy those things that block his path to a greater happiness in life. READ SEVERAL CHAPTERS

Fall: Carl Bode, in “The Half-hidden Thoreau” in Massachusetts Review, pages 66-78, explained everything that remained to be explained about Henry Thoreau’s life and writings. Freudian psychoanalytic jargon is all we need. It seems that our guy was one of those persons who are all their life at the mercy of an unresolved oedipal complex — this explicates Thoreau’s relationship to Waldo and Lidian as mere re-enactment. Did older women attract Thoreau? –it’s obvious that he was going after his mommy. –Well, he may have been strange but at least he wasn’t queer! None of this had anything to do with human slavery as such, but amounted to mere personal issues such as an Oedipal hatred for his father together with an occasional dislike for his mother who could be overbearing — that was what had induced Henry to so detest our government.

November: Saudi Arabia abolished human slavery (well, that was good of them).

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1964

November 3: In a landslide victory, the most overwhelming of US political history, with 61% of the popular vote, the Democratic candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, defeated Republican Senator Barry Goldwater by 16,000,000 votes. The Democrats also achieved substantial majorities in both the House and the Senate. There’s nothing like a war to make the juices flow! (Since this was the first time that President Johnson had been elected as President, since previously he had merely been completing the term of the assassinated President Kennedy, he would be entitled to run again in four years for another four-year term as President.)What had happened was

Hey, hey, LBJ! that there had been an important change in the strategy of the Republican Party, in that it had determined that it would “go hunting where the ducks are.” This wink wink nude nudge stuff, which also has traveled under the rubric “The Southern Strategy,” meant that the Republicans had abandoned their heritage as the party of the abolition of human slavery in order to seek out and enlist white Southern Democrats who had been dissatisfied with the national Democratic Party as no longer racist enough and no longer segregationist enough. –But, this Republican strategy had been offset by the Democrats running as their candidate a Southern good ol’ white boy whom everyone knew, wink wink nudge nudge, that they could trust to tend the store for them.

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1966

The USA entered into the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This compact included a pacta sunt servanta clause by which we agreed that when a nation becomes party to a treaty, it does so in good faith. Henceforward, whenever we entered into a treaty, we would be obligated to do so in good faith, and abide by all the terms and conditions to which we had become a signatory.308

Something interesting happened: a white citizen of the post-Civil War South was indicted for the 1st-degree murder of a black citizen of the post-Civil War South. How unusual was that? –This was the first instance of such an indictment since the end of Reconstruction in 1877 (with the exception of an egregious incident in 1921 in which, after having serially murdered and disposed of the bodies of 11 of his black laborers, a white plantation owner suspected of peonage had been sent off to a state pen to serve time for a few years as a rifle-packing white guard).

Racially integrated kindergarten classes continued at the temporary building of the Carolina Friends School of the Durham, North Carolina Friends monthly meeting, but its 1st-grade classes relocated to its current address on Orange County land provided by Martha Klopfer and Peter Klopfer, and Susan Smith and David Smith (a class was being added each year as the initial crop of students matured).

At this point 19 of our states (2 of them in the North) had laws proscribing racial intermarriage.

1969

According to an article by William Cohen entitled “Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery,” In November 1776, Thomas Jefferson was chosen as a member of a committee whose task was to revise, modernize, and codify the statutes of Virginia. Among his assignments was the job of drawing up the legislation dealing with slaves. He later described this bill, which he completed in 1778, as a “mere digest” of the existing legislation on the subject, and to a certain extent this was true.... Nevertheless, the bill was more than a digest of earlier codes and it contained some significant additions which were designed to prevent the increase of the state’s free Negro population. It was to be illegal for free Negroes to come into Virginia of their own accord or to remain there for more than one year after they were emancipated. A white woman having a child by a Negro would be required to leave the state within a year. The individual who violated these regulations would be placed “out of the protection of the laws.” This would have left them subject to re-enslavement or even to 308. Did you suppose that this went without saying? —Then most assuredly you were mistaken. Do you suppose that even yet, as a nation we honor this obligation? Think again. What we hold is that although our international treaties may govern our conduct internationally, they have no force or effect within our own nation, in regard to our own treatment of our own people. Thus, for instance, when we enter into an international treaty against slavery, our involvement amounts to a pledge that we will not attempt to enslave the citizens of other nations, but does not rise to the level of any commitment that we will not attempt to enslave US citizens. As the saying goes, “That’s nobody’s business but our own.” 2378 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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murder at the whim of their neighbors and was, therefore, a most severe punishment. RACISM

1970

Eric Foner’s FREE SOIL, FREE LABOR, FREE MEN: THE IDEOLOGY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR described how historical scholarship during the 1960s had brought a decline in the reputation of the early Republican party, as a number of scholars had begun to notice that it had been straightforward race prejudice –a desire to prevent blacks, either free or slave, from entering the new western territories– that had been at the root of their antislavery crusade, rather than any great desire to bring race justice to America. (The book has been republished with a new introductory essay as of 1995.)

The Great Meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends in Newport, Rhode Island was restored under the guidance of Orin M. Bullock, architect, and then presented by its owner, Mrs. Sydney L. Wright, to the Newport Historical Society.

This structure had been at first a Quaker meetinghouse, and then, beginning in about 1905, a black dancehall. The main industries of Newport used to be piracy and the international slave trade, and then the occupations of pirate and of international slave trader fell into some disrepute and the town fell into despair and disrepair. Now Newport has an industry again, that of catering to families on vacation. Tourism is king, Newport is no longer in disrepair, and despair has become a stranger there. Therefore, when this huge structure was restored, its history as an interesting swinging black dancehall has been carefully erased. (In Newport you can be confronted with black people as slaves and victims, but not as dancers and party-goers — it is, of course, not so much that there is no place in the catering industry for black people as that there is no place in the catering industry for such a thing as cognitive dissonance.)

On the East Side of Providence, at the Moses Brown School of the Religious Society of Friends, an unprogrammed meeting for worship was re-introduced, for such students as would voluntarily attend such sessions.

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Kenneth L. Carroll’s “Quaker Opposition to the Establishment of a State Church in Maryland” (Maryland Historical Magazine 65, pages 149-170). Also, his QUAKERISM ON THE EASTERN SHORE (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society).

Racially integrated primary education continued at the Carolina Friends School of the Durham, North Carolina Friends monthly meeting, but in this year Susan Gower Smith and David Tillerson Smith provided funds and it became possible to add a preschool in a wooden addition to the temporary building.309

309. This wooden addition would later be replaced by a brick building. The Early School complex would serve Carolina Friends School for more than 35 years before being removed to make way for the new meetinghouse. 2380 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Clerks of Meeting 1943-1947 Edward K. Kraybill 1947-1948 William Van Hoy, Jr. 1949-1949 John de J. Pemberton, Jr. 1950-1951 Harry R. Stevens 1951-1952 John A. Barlow 1952-1957 Susan Gower Smith 1957-1960 Frances C. Jeffers 1960-1961 Cyrus M. Johnson 1961-1965 Peter H. Klopfer 1965-1967 Rebecca W. Fillmore 1967-1968 David Tillerson Smith 1968-1970 Ernest Albert Hartley 1970-1971 John Hunter 1971-1972 John Gamble 1972-1974 Lyle B. Snider (2 terms) 1974-1975 Helen Gardella 1976-1978 Cheryl F. Junk 1978-1980 Alice S. Keighton 1980-1982 John B. Hunter

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1982-1984 Edward M. Arnett 1984-1986 Calhoun D. Geiger 1986-1988 John P. Stratton 1988-1990 J. Robert Passmore 1990-1992 Karen Cole Stewart 1992-1995 Kathleen Davidson March 1995-1998 Nikki Vangsnes 1998-2000 Co-clerks J. Robert Passmore & Karen Cole Stewart 2000-2002 Amy Brannock 2002-2002 Jamie Hysjulien (Acting) 2002-2005 William Thomas O’Connor 2005-2007 Terry Graedon 2007-2009 Anne Akwari 2009-2012 Joe Graedon 2012-xxxx Marguerite Dingman

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1971

Venture Smith’s life story A / NARRATIVE / OF THE / LIFE AND ADVENTURES / OF / VENTURE, / A NATIVE OF AFRICA, / BUT REFIDENT ABOVE FIXTY YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / RELATED BY HIMSELF. as it had been reissued in 1896 with “Traditions” by H.M. Selden, was reprinted in FIVE BLACK LIVES - DOCUMENTS OF BLACK Connecticut: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF VENTURE SMITH, JAMES MARS, WILLIAM GRIMES, THE REV. G.W. OFFLEY, AND JAMES L. SMITH by the Wesleyan University Press with an

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introduction by Arna Wendell Bontemps.

SLAVERY

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1975

YANKEE TOWNSHIP, by the East Hampton Bicentennial Committee, contained a recounting of the life story A / NARRATIVE / OF THE / LIFE AND ADVENTURES / OF / VENTURE, / A NATIVE OF AFRICA, / BUT REFIDENT ABOVE FIXTY YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / RELATED BY HIMSELF. of Venture Smith. Then POSTSCRIPTS TO YANKEE TOWNSHIP, also published by the East Hampton Bicentennial Committee, expanded on that story and added a brief history of slavery in Connecticut. SLAVERY

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1980

The Berber-dominated government of Mauritania declared slavery to be illegal, and ordered the emancipation of hundreds of thousands of black African slaves. That emancipation turned out to be more symbolic than real because the freed slaves would be obligated to compensate their former owners for the financial loss!

Eric Foner’s POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF THE CIVIL WAR (NY: Oxford UP).

1983

A monument was dedicated to the hundreds of anonymous slaves of George Washington and Martha Washington whose bodies had been consigned to unmarked graves at Mount Vernon.

1984

Kenneth L. Carroll’s “Nicholites and Slavery in Eighteenth Century Maryland” (Maryland Historical Magazine 79, pages 126-133). Also, his THREE HUNDRED YEARS AND MORE OF THIRD HAVEN QUAKERISM (Easton, Maryland: Queen Anne Press).

The Overseers Committee of Princeton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends began to consider the establishment of a Friends School under care of the local monthly meeting. There would be some three years of feasibility studies, and some local Quakers expressed concerns “about the financial responsibility of a school and the appropriateness of the building. Some feared that the project would unduly sap the energies and resources of the Meeting, that the project would undermine public education in Princeton, and that the school would assume more importance than the Meeting.” The outcome of this would be that the school in question, when it would be founded, would be incorporated separately and placed under the care not of the local monthly meeting but of the Burlington Quarterly Meeting comprised of several monthly meetings in that New Jersey region.

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At the Moses Brown School of the Religious Society of Friends on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island, the Jenks Student Center was dedicated.

After abducting and beating up his former wife’s boyfriend, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr., a graduate of this religious school, needed to plead no contest to an assault charge and step down as Mayor of Providence. That is to say, it was not as a result of 30 of his city employees being indicted on federal charges of corruption, or as a result of 22 of them being convicted, that this local figure needed temporarily to step aside from political office.

“Regular” required meeting for worship in the Upper School was reinstituted (although we were not told what “regular” meant in this context, we were reassured also to be told that “Lower School and Middle School had regular daily and weekly worship for many years”; subsequent events have revealed to the Quakers watching this from off campus that by deployment of the claim “regular” in this context the school had not claimed “daily” –and had not claimed “weekly” –and had not claimed “monthly”).

The Permanent Board recommended transfer of endowment funds for the Quaker school into a separate entity to be known as the Moses Brown Foundation.

1985

Kenneth L. Carroll’s “An Eighteenth-Century Episcopalian Attack on Quaker and Methodist Manumission of Slaves” (Maryland Historical Magazine 80, pages 139-150). Also, his “Quakers and Muggletonians in Seventeenth-Century Ireland” (in A QUAKER MISCELLANY FOR EDWARD H. MILLIGAN, edited by David Blamires [et al.] (Manchester, England: David Blamires of London; Friends Book Centre, pages 49-57). At about this point in time, at the request of the Third Haven monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Kenneth L. Carroll wrote up that meeting’s history: 300 YEARS AND MORE ...

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1995

Eric Foner’s and Olivia Mahoney’s AMERICA’S RECONSTRUCTION: PEOPLE AND POLITICS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR (NY: HarperPerennial).

What had begun as the slave coffle, the chain gang which had gradually been abandoned in the 1960s, began to appear again along the sides of Southern roads. When asked if they didn’t consider that the sight of such gangs along the sides of the roads might “hurt tourism,” local officials generally shrugged off the question. Without chaining the “convicts” together, it was explained, they would need to assign a guard with a shotgun for each 20 to 22 laborers, but with the men all chained together that way, one guard with a shotgun could ride herd on some 40. Alabama Prison Commissioner Ron Jones commented “It’s cost-effective.”

If the South can get away with shit the North can get away with shit. In a related piece of news from this year, with funding from the William Penn Foundation, permanent museum exhibits were constructed and a marketing campaign began at the city of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary. An on-site art exhibit, “Prison Sentences,” received international attention. A cultural performance series began, that lay the blame for crazy-making solitary confinement at the feet of those sincere but doofus Quakers. The site was featured in The New York Times, Art in America, and on BBC and PBS. Attendance nearly doubled. “See what’ll happen to you if you don’t behave?”

1996

Paul Finkelman’s SLAVERY AND THE FOUNDERS: RACE AND LIBERTY IN THE AGE OF JEFFERSON (Armonk NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1996).310

Virtually every American loves the Constitution, but more often than not their love for it is inversely proportional to their knowledge of it — and all too many love it dearly. In his volume, SLAVERY AND THE FOUNDERS: RACE AND LIBERTY IN THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, Paul Finkelman provides a fine antidote for a portion of that ignorance. His is a well-reasoned, extensively researched, and eminently readable account of slavery in the 1787 Constitution and its legal status in the new nation’s early years. According to Finkelman, the writing and ratifying of the Constitution were conditioned on slavery’s protection. Agreeing with the Garrisonians, he contends that the Constitution was a “slaveholder’s compact” (page ix). He also argues that the 1787 Northwest Ordinance and the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act reflected the intellectual and moral environment that produced the proslavery Constitution. Finally, he contends that the proslavery constitutional and legal system faithfully registered Thomas Jefferson’s notions about slavery. Finkelman analyzes the Constitution’s direct and indirect protection of slavery in supporting his argument that the Philadelphia conclave accorded it an exalted status. Proslavery delegates won slavery’s protection, in good part, by linking it with representation, through the three-fifths clause of Article I, Section 2. From the nation’s beginning slavery enjoyed enhanced power in the House of Representatives, which translated into a comparably enlarged power in the Electoral College, without which Jefferson would have lost the election of 1800. Additional direct protections include the prohibition against ending the international slave trade before

310. Reviewed for [email protected] (July 1996) by Lester Lindley, Nova Southeastern University Copyright (c) 1996 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [email protected]. 2388 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1808, the fugitive slave clause, the “direct tax” clause, which assured that slaves could be taxed at only three- fifths the rate of whites, and the Article V provision that prohibited slave importation and tax clause amendments before 1808. Ironically, the new frame of government, designed to replace the virtually unamendable Articles of Confederation, had but one unamendable feature, which went to slavery’s protection. In addition to the Constitution’s direct protections, Finkelman also found thirteen indirect protections, such as requiring three-fourths of the states to amend the Constitution, a provision that gave slave states a “perpetual veto over any constitutional changes” (page 5), and the “full faith and credit” clause, which required free states to recognize and honor slave-state law. He contends that slaveholders won without giving major concessions to anti-slavery delegates, except for the “dirty compromise” (page 22), by which southerners agreed to allow commercial acts by a simple majority instead of a two-thirds vote in exchange for clauses protecting the slave trade and prohibiting an export tax. Other than this compromise and sporadic, disjointed verbal attacks on the institution, slavery’s defenders won its protection with relative ease from the Framers. In the same year that the Framers wrote the Constitution, Congress, which continued meeting under the Articles of Confederation, passed the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. On first blush the Ordinance was antislavery, but Finkelman argues that it had little negative impact on slavery until the 1830s and 1840s. The Ordinance passed with broad support from southerners, who believed that it “actually fortified slavery” (page 36). The same clause that prohibited slavery included a fugitive slave clause, the first recognition by the national government that masters had a right to recover slaves who absconded to northern free states. In addition, the absence of an enforcement clause in the antislavery provision and Congress’s lack of will to implement the Ordinance made it ineffectual. In careful case studies of the measure’s impact in Indiana and Illinois, Finkelman shows that quasi-slavery persisted in the Northwest into the 1830s and 1840s. Congressional indifference to black servitude, demands for labor to promote economic development, arguments that diffusion of slavery foretold slavery’s eventual demise, and the migration of slaveowners into the Northwest conspired to assure that the Ordinance had no immediate impact. The territorial assemblies of Indiana and Illinois adopted laws, based in part on southern slave codes, that assured slavery’s persistence. Legislation in both territories protected and nurtured “bondage and de facto slavery” (page 71). Eventually, both ended slavery, but well after statehood: Indiana effectively by the 1830s, forty years after the Ordinance; Illinois in 1848 in the state’s second constitution. Evasion of the Ordinance protected slavery’s interests; the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act supplemented that protection. In the only detailed consideration of the act in book form, Finkelman argues that the measure was “one of the first fruits of the proslavery Constitution” (page 80). He notes that the act issued from an attempt to protect free blacks from kidnapping. Ironically, however, it probably improved the chances of such kidnappings. The Bill of Rights, with its limitations on federal power and procedural protections, had become part of the Constitution in 1791, yet the act did not honor the amendments’ requirements for fair trials and due process. Equally ironic, the measure expanded federal power, probably beyond what the Constitution actually sanctioned. The fugitive slave clause did not delegate power to Congress; it was in the only section of Article IV that did not grant power to the national government. States’ rights southerners, who might oppose the Federalists’ use of national power on economic issues, effectively used that power to protect and preserve slavery. Most slave owners and slave traders were Jeffersonians, but whatever their constitutional scruples on other matters, they wanted broad national powers to protect slavery. The Constitution was conditioned on protecting slavery; perhaps it was only logical that the same condition be imposed on its interpretation. Such an interpretation, Finkelman concludes, “made the Constitution even more proslavery than it perhaps was” (page 81). In addition to arguing that slavery was central to the nation’s founding, he also asserts that it created a “tension between the professed ideals of America, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of early national America” (page ix). No one reflected that tension better than Jefferson. In spite of the ideals that he expressed in the Declaration, Jefferson was a slaveholder—simply a slaveholder—with general slaveholder values. Rhetorically, Finkelman notes, Jefferson hated slavery, but that hatred was based on several factors which demonstrated Jefferson’s inability to transcend class and race or to honor the principles of his Declaration. He hated slavery because he despised blacks; they were, Jefferson believed, of a different order

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from whites. “Race, more than their status as slaves, doomed blacks to permanent inequality” (page 108). He hated slavery because it brought Africans to the nation and made them permanent residents. He hated slavery because of its impact on whites, not because of what it did to blacks. Above all, for one who affirmed independence to be the ultimate political and social value and one who celebrated the yeoman farmer for his independence, Jefferson hated slavery because it made him dependent on his slaves; dedicating his life to independence, he lived a life of dependency. Finkelman argues that Jefferson could not continue his “extravagant life-style” without slaves (page 107). The natural rights of slaves had to be subordinated to his grand style of living, his unrestrained spending habits and his compulsively acquisitive character. He contends that historians have misconstrued one of Jefferson’s more famous quotes about slavery: “[W]e have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” The quote, Finkelman argues, did not reflect fears of a slave revolt. The self-preservation to which Jefferson alluded went to his way of life, premised as it was on slavery. The “wolf” he was holding was probably “the wolf of gluttony and greed” (page 150). The Declaration of Independence and Constitution had powerful antislavery potential and, given his status in the new nation’s history, Jefferson could have energized that potential. Finkelman contends that the test for Jefferson’s views on slavery should not be whether he was better “than the worst of his generation but whether he was the leader of the best,” not whether he embodied the values of southern planters, but whether he transcended his economic and sectional interests. In both cases, Finkelman concludes that “Jefferson fails the test” (page 105). Indeed, he argues, Jefferson was behind his time. He sold slaves and broke up families to preserve his high-living style and to pay his debts; after a shopping spree in France, he sold eighty-five slaves (page 150). Morally, Finkelman implies, he was also a laggard. For all the debate about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, his half-sister-in-law, scholars have missed a more critical issue than whether Hemings bore him children: “for most of his adult life, Jefferson enslaved a generation of people—Sally Hemings and her siblings—who were his in-laws.” This causes Finkelman to wonder whether it mattered “[f]or the sake of character...whether Jefferson enslaved his own children or merely his blood relatives and his wife’s blood relatives” (page 142). Rhetorically, Jefferson insisted that future generations must end slavery and vindicate the hopes of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for liberty. Unfortunately, however, instead of nurturing their potential for liberating slaves, Jefferson committed treason to the very cause that he ardently advocated for whites. Slavery must end, he thought, but only on the condition of “expatriation” of the slaves (page 128). It was not simply slavery that Jefferson found so repugnant, but race. The one, a temporary status created by law, could be ended; the other, a reflection of a sub-human or nearly sub-human species, could not be. The “all” men in the Declaration meant “only white men;” in his scale of values blacks had no legitimate place in the nation’s future. If slavery trumped the Constitution, race trumped the future that Jefferson envisioned. Instead of being a prophetic voice for extending benefits of the Revolution to slaves, by word and deed he became “the intellectual godfather of the racist pseudoscience of the American school of anthropology” (page 110). Finkelman’s work has a compelling ring of plausibility, even truth, when placed in its larger historical context. Edmund S. Morgan demonstrated that before colonial America moved “toward the republic,” it had already moved from slavery “toward racism.” He noted that race-based slavery made it safer to preach equality, because slaves could not become part of a leveling mob. He continued, “This is not to say that a belief in republican equality had to rest on slavery, but only that in Virginia (and probably in other southern colonies) it did.”311 And in its move “toward the republic,” to use Morgan’s phrase, Gordon S. Wood observed that “No political conception was more important to Americans in the entire Revolutionary era than representation.”312 Strategically, slaveowners probably could not have done better than using the three-fifths clause to link their race-based institution with the key political ideal of the Revolution. Central to the Revolutionary movement against England as early as the 1765 Stamp Act controversy, representation was yoked by slaveowners to 311.Edmund S. Morgan, AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN FREEDOM: THE ORDEAL OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA (NY: W.W. Norton, 1974), pages 363, 316, 381. 312.Gordon S. Wood, THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1969), page 164. 2390 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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protecting and preserving slavery in the Constitution. In the 1760s Americans linked representation to liberty; twenty years later, they joined it to slavery, an unholy alliance that continued into the Civil War era. And just as slavery trumped the Constitution in 1787, it threatened to trump the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” in 1860-61. Referring to the concentration of slaves “in the southern part” of the Union in his second inaugural, Abraham Lincoln noted that “these slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.” “Peculiar” implies something unique, distinctive, out of the ordinary or particular. However peculiar slavery became in the last few decades before the Civil War, it had long been a “powerful interest,” to use Lincoln’s phrase, but was far from being peculiar. Echoing the notion of its peculiarity, Kenneth M. Stampp described slavery as THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION in his classic 1956 work. But in spite of the “peculiarity” that developed in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, slavery’s power threatened the Union like nothing before or since. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to explain how a sectional, peculiar institution could have so seriously imperiled the Union without having had a determining, if tragic role, in shaping that Union from its beginning. Finkelman’s book focuses on slavery’s shaping power —but lack of peculiarity— at the Constitutional Convention. Race-based slavery was a fatal flaw in the 1787 document; that flaw was so inextricably ingrained in the Constitution that it took the terrible scourge of war and major constitutional amendments to remove it. “[A]ll knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war,” Lincoln affirmed in his second inaugural. Likewise, all who wanted to remove the war’s cause and the Constitution’s corruption knew that amendments to correct the flaws of 1787 had to become part of the Constitution. If slavery began about 1660 and ended, at least officially, in the 1860s, Finkelman provides a powerful and poignant perspective on slavery’s terrible career at its midpoint in the nation’s experience. In addition, he provides a sharp focus from which to examine slavery’s larger impact in American history and to consider the role of the nation’s most famous revolutionary leader, Jefferson. In his 1963 volume, JEFFERSON AND CIVIL LIBERTIES: THE DARKER SIDE, Leonard Levy challenged the then- prevailing notion about Jefferson’s legacy to freedom and liberty. Finkelman challenges that legacy at an even deeper level than did Levy. He notes that Jefferson’s admirers “would like him to be one of us—an opponent of slavery,” but he was not (page 138). Most of Jefferson’s biographers have tried to shape Jefferson into an antislavery liberal, ignoring or fudging evidence to the contrary. He observes that critics of Levy’s JEFFERSON AND CIVIL LIBERTIES: THE DARKER SIDE work rejected his conclusions because such verdicts did not “bolster their modern political agendas” (page 143). Very likely Finkelman’s assessment of Jefferson will also be challenged on grounds of being presentist revisionism. Finkelman, however, rightly rejects that notion in his concluding chapter, a brilliant essay on Jefferson, historians, and myths. He examines Jefferson’s ideas about race and slavery, not by modern notions, but “on his terms” (page 145, emphasis in the original). By raising the issue of presentism, Finkelman puts in sharp relief history’s fundamental question: does history matter? Perhaps understandably, he insists that it does. However, he is cautious about how history might be used. He notes that James Parton, Jefferson’s first professional biographer, wrote that “If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right,” and observes that “The historian who questions Jefferson, it would seem, implicitly questions America” (page 143). Acceptance of this logic presents the nation with a daunting challenge that probably could never be satisfactorily met. At the conclusion of his analysis of the way that revolutionary Virginians linked racism with republican ideology, Edmund Morgan raised a haunting question: “Is America still colonial Virginia writ large? More than a century after Appomattox the question lingers.”313 If Parton’s logic controls, it forces one of several conclusions. First, accepting Parton’s presumption that Jefferson was right, it reinforces the inclination of most of Jefferson’s modern biographers to shape Jefferson into a late-twentieth-century, antislavery liberal. However, with the evidence that Finkelman presents, such an image can at best be a gross distortion of the historical record. It would transform Jefferson into a reverse modern doughface. A “doughface” in pre-Civil War America was a northern man whose contours had been shaped by proslavery principles, so a reverse doughface would be a southern man with antislavery sentiments.

313.Edmund S. Morgan, AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN FREEDOM: THE ORDEAL OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA (NY: W.W. Norton, 1974), page 387. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2391 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bingo! Jefferson fits the picture and gives a usable past. On another occasion, using the same tactic, he becomes the Revolutionary precursor to the National Association of Manufacturers. But if such is the case, history is little more than using the past, indeed, inventing the past, for present needs. Second, Parton’s logic and presumption that Jefferson was right, if applied to Finkelman’s analysis of Jefferson’s principles, force a troubling, haunting answer to Morgan’s question: there would be no escaping the assertion that America is still colonial Virginia writ large. They carry an even more haunting implication: not only is the nation colonial Virginia writ large, but there is not much anyone can do about it. If Jefferson was right, and if Finkelman’s analysis of his attitudes about race and slavery are correct, then Jefferson was not only the intellectual vanguard of the pseudoscientific proslavery argument of the pre-Civil War era, but he was also the prophet for late-twentieth-century racism in the United States. If such is the case, either history must be the new “dismal science” or both Jefferson and America are wrong. But Finkelman insists that a third option exists. Scholars have created “a mythical man—someone who in [Merrill] Peterson’s words went up to Mount Olympus.” After creating the Jeffersonian myth, they “further burdened him with an image that carries with it our conception of the United States” (page 167). But as Levy did in 1963, Finkelman does in 1996: he argues that it is time to look at Jefferson as an important Revolutionary leader, a person with virtues and faults. From this perspective, Jefferson’s views on race “are embarrassing, not just by the standards of our age but by the standards of his own age” (page 165). However, though Jefferson failed to join the best of his generation to end slavery and challenge racism, it is possible to see his virtues and the power of his ideas “because we will see them in the context of his own humanity” (page 167). Put differently, if history is important, at least one element of that importance has to be the insights that it offers. But if those insights, or perspectives, are to be valid, it is important that scholars give heed to the full weight of historical evidence. Precisely because history seems to offer insights and perspectives on the present, it becomes a battleground—often a heated one—on what we remember and what we forget. History creates a common memory that holds individuals and institutions together and binds them in a common enterprise. “Selective” forgetting can distort the past as much as creative invention. To question Jefferson’s ideas about slavery and racism is not to question America. To question Jefferson is to follow the best of the Jeffersonian tradition of examining institutions, with the hope of preserving the best ones, reforming others, and rebelling against the rest. Perhaps no better instruction exists for that daunting task than using “Experience,” a notion that figures prominently in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. However, if that experience is derived—another good Jeffersonian term from the Declaration—from a contrived past, it would convey misguided perspectives, perhaps as pernicious in their impact as those derived from abstract reasoning. If Jefferson has relevance to modern America on race and slavery, it is not because he stood outside of history by ascending Mt. Olympus, but because he was a major historical figure who continues to inform the present. Our image of Jefferson matters but, in insisting on his humanity, “we can better understand something about ourselves and our country’s past” (page 167). Rhetorically, Jefferson looked to slavery’s end at some undefined future. Tragically, it was left to Lincoln’s generation to begin ending slavery and to start “bind[ing] up the nation’s wounds” that slavery and racism caused. The scourge of the “terrible war” that Lincoln memorialized at Gettysburg has passed, but the quest for that “new birth of freedom” and the realization of the Jeffersonian “proposition that all men are created equal,” remain “unfinished work,” to use Lincoln’s memorable phrases. Perhaps that unfinished work is at the heart of any shared memory and common enterprise for late-twentieth-century Americans. If it is, then it seems imperative that a precise definition of that work be carefully limned. History is important to Finkelman— vitally important—so in writing this volume he assumed that it was an imperative to be careful and precise. By some standards, Finkelman’s is a slim volume. The text is only 167 pages, supported by extensive notes and bibliography. More important, his is a compelling account of the history of slavery and racism at the

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nation’s founding and of Jefferson’s place in that history. It is written by a discerning scholar who has devoted his professional career to examining the constitutional and legal dimensions of slavery, but presented in clear, readable form. Happily, this volume could be used in survey courses, in period courses on the Revolutionary or the Early National eras, and in courses on constitutional history. With its many references to the works of other scholars, it would fit nicely into courses on historiography and historical method. Graduate students would profit from its use in their courses, as would law students; indeed, graduate and law school seminars could be organized around it. It deserves a wide readership. Anyone who wants to talk intelligently about the history of slavery and ideas about race in the nation’s history should feel compelled to come to terms with his book. And the publisher, M.E. Sharpe, is to be congratulated for simultaneously offering the volume in paper and hardcover formats.

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Venture Smith’s A / NARRATIVE / OF THE / LIFE AND ADVENTURES / OF / VENTURE, / A NATIVE OF AFRICA, / BUT REFIDENT ABOVE FIXTY YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / RELATED BY HIMSELF. was reprinted in UNCHAINED VOICES - AN ANTHOLOGY OF BLACK AUTHORS IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD OF THE 18TH CENTURY: A REPRINTING OF WORKS BY BRITON HAMMON, JUPITER HAMMON, JAMES ALBERT UKAWSAW GRONNIOSAW, PHILLIS WHEATLEY, FRANCIS WILLIAMS, IGNATIUS SANCHO, JOHN MARRANT, JOHNSON GREEN, BELINDA, QUOBNA OTTOBAH CUGOANO, OLAUDAH EQUIANO, BENJAMIN BANNEKER, GEORGE LIELE, DAVID GEORGE, BOSTON KING, VENTURE SMITH, a volume of which Vincent Carretta was the editor, by the University Press of Kentucky. SLAVERY

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1998

February 15: An extraordinarily different article appeared in the local Providence, Rhode Island newspaper, the “ProJo”: History of slavery in R.I. not a story in black and white, but shades of gray

By JODY McPHILLIPS, Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

Steven Spielberg shot his slave-revolt film La Amistad in Rhode Island because the state has great Colonial architecture. It made sense for other reasons. Rhode Island played a bigger role than any other state in the Atlantic slave trade and had the only slave plantations in New England. At the same time, it was an early leader in the efforts to abolish slavery. “Throughout the 18th century, Rhode Island merchants controlled between 60 and 90 percent of the American trade in African slaves,” writes historian Jay Coughtry in THE NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE: RHODE ISLAND AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, 1700-1807. To be fair, the American slave trade amounted to just a small fraction of the European trade, which brought more than 11 million Africans to the New World over nearly 400 years. Only half a million of them went directly to North American colonies; the rest went to the plantations and slave markets of Central and South America, from which some would be resold later to the southern colonies. By comparison Rhode Island, which came the closest of any colony to having a slave trade of its own, made more than 900 slaving voyages during the 18th century, transporting about 106,000 slaves. Few actually settled in Rhode Island, which was poorly suited for large-scale agriculture with its small rocky farms and icy winters. But they were bought from the slave fortresses of Africa’s Gold Coast with Rhode Island-made rum; transported on Rhode Island-built ships to the slave markets of the Caribbean; and later dressed in Rhode Island-made slave cloth. Why did Rhode Island get so involved? Money, mostly. The state had good ports and skilled seamen but not much good farmland. Once the fertile areas of South County were settled, the only place to make real money was at sea. And no trade was as profitable as slaving. Slave traders like the Browns of Providence amassed great fortunes, enough to build those mansions along Benefit Street and to found Brown University. Later, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2395 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Rhode Island textile manufacturers produced the coarse cotton cloth slaves wore throughout the New World, much like prison garb today. There were also coincidental connections. Two groups who eventually settled here –the Portuguese and the Cape Verdeans– played huge roles in the early slave trade. In the 1400s, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to buy or steal humans from the west coast of Africa; they turned the empty, volcanic Cape Verde islands into a major depot for the worldwide slave trade and created a mixed-race population that flourishes today throughout southeastern New England. And yet, from the earliest days, some Rhode Islanders were repelled by this human commerce. The conflict tore families apart. John Brown, of Providence, was an avid slaver, his brother Moses Brown an abolitionist who fought him at every turn. Bristol slaver James DeWolf’s son Levi made one slaving voyage and abandoned the trade in disgust; Levi’s brother Charles once defended his extensive slaving activities by telling a preacher, “Parson, I’ve always wanted to roll in gold.” In 1774, the General Assembly outlawed importing slaves into Rhode Island; a decade later, it was one of the first states to free children born of slave mothers. It’s a complicated story, with many moral shadings. Or, as Keith Stokes of Newport says, “It’s not black and white so much as gray.” ***

Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves. — Aristotle, POLITICS.

How could it happen? How could supposedly civilized people enslave other human beings? Historian Hugh Thomas, in THE SLAVE TRADE, says slavery is as old as recorded history, known in virtually all cultures. Typically, slaves were people who lost wars, owed debts, broke laws or were sold into servitude by impoverished parents. Throughout the Middle Ages, enslavement was increasingly linked to religious conflict. Moslems would enslave Christians, or vice versa: the dominant culture felt they were doing the “less enlightened” people a favor, by liberating them from error and exposing them to the true faith. By the 1400s, the seafaring Portuguese had begun trading with the small fiefdoms of northwest Africa. They went looking for gold, but didn’t find enough; increasingly, they brought home slaves, with the blessing of the Pope. Better a slave in an advanced Christian nation than a free subject of a “cannibal” king, the reasoning went. African slaves quickly became highly prized as strong, hardy workers able to withstand punishing tropical 2396 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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heat. As European colonists flooded into the New World, demand for workers grew exponentially, especially in the Caribbean islands and the plantations of Central and South America. At first, the Europeans tried to enslave the native Indians too. The first slaves transported across the Atlantic, in fact, went west to east: Taino Indians brought to Spain from the Caribbean by Christopher Columbus. But the New World Indians proved too susceptible to European diseases, and not strong enough to cultivate the new cash crops of sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton and indigo in the tropics. It was the Africans’ bad luck that they were physically well suited to hard work in hot climates — and that African kings and chieftains were so willing to sell their enemies and rivals into slavery. Over the next centuries, the combined lure of gold and slaves drew successive waves of Europeans to Africa: the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, and finally the English, in the mid-1600s. They made no bones about why. “A ship full of blacks brings more to the Treasury than galleons and fleets put together,” wrote Pedro Zapata de Mendoza, governor of Cartegena de Indias (in present- day Colombia), in 1648. The British entered the trade two centuries after the Portuguese, but quickly made up for lost time. One maritime city after another sent huge ships to Africa, capable of carrying as many as 450 slaves at once. They made money hand over fist. “Liverpool was in no way shy about the benefits brought her by the slave trade,” Thomas writes about the city. “The facade of the Exchange carried reliefs of Africans’ heads, with elephants, in a frieze, and one street was commonly known as ‘Negro Row.’” By the end of the 17th century, British traders had exported nearly 100,000 slaves from Africa; by 1725, 75,000 had been sold to British North America. It was about that time that slaving voyages start showing up in Rhode Island records. ***

The early eighteenth century marked the end of North America’s novitiate in the traffic of slaves. In the seventeenth century, too poor or too concerned with primitive agriculture, colonists there had been slow to participate in any substantial way. A few slaves acting as servants had always been seen in all the colonies; but it was not until the owners of plantations in the Carolinas ... realized they could make considerable profits from rice and indigo that anything like a regular trade in slaves began. — Hugh Thomas

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The only land in Rhode Island good enough for plantation-style farming was the Narragansett Country (South County today), where a handful of white landowners did get rich off the labor of black slaves in the years before the Revolution. But the rest of the settlers had to come up with other ways to make money. The colony’s most successful industry was distilling rum, which at first was sold mainly to other colonies. The strong, good-quality rum soon found a market with slave-trading Africans of the Gold Coast who preferred it to Caribbean rums, which could be weak, salty or packed in leaky barrels. Rhode Island distillers in Newport (and later Bristol and Providence) were soon making double- and triple- distilled rums for the African trade, taking care to pack it in sturdy hogsheads. Rhode Island rum became so popular in Africa that, like gold, it served as money. The rum-for-slaves trade began slowly, with occasional voyages as far back as 1709. The triangle trade that evolved was simple: take rum to Africa, and trade it for slaves; take the slaves to the Caribbean, and trade them for molasses; take the molasses back to Rhode Island, and make more rum. Everybody made out — except the slaves. At first, the trade was concentrated in Newport. By 1725, one or two voyages a year were being recorded; by 1735, it was up to a dozen a year, a pace maintained until 1740, when fighting between England, Spain and then France disrupted all colonial commerce. A pattern developed: when hostilities broke out, trade faltered; when peace resumed, slaving boomed. In 1750, 15 Rhode Island trips were recorded; by 1772, that number had doubled. ***

Rhode Island and, particularly, Newport, was, in the 1750s and 1760s, still the North American colonies’ most important slaving zone. Newport, which always welcomed enterprising people without asking whence they came, also used more slaves in small businesses, farms, or homes than any other Northern colony. — Hugh Thomas

One Rhode Islander in nine was black, the highest percentage north of the Mason-Dixon line. Most were slaves on the Narragansett Country plantations, but others clustered in Newport, where an artisan class of skilled workers developed. Slavery in New England –and particularly liberal Newport– was probably never absolute. From the early days, a small percentage of Newport blacks were free men, having bought or otherwise obtained their freedom. Keith Stokes, in an essay on the slave trade, writes, “An early 1770s census lists nearly one-third of (Newport’s) 9,000 inhabitants as being Negro, both 2398 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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slave and free.” Ship captains were always looking for able mariners; by 1800, “black seamen made up 21 percent of all Newport crews engaged in the West Indian, European and African trades,” writes Coughtry. Yet at the same time, slavers were working out of Providence, Bristol and Warren as well as Newport. (Bristol, in fact, surpassed Newport as the state’s primary slaving port as the century closed). Merchants in Greenwich, Tiverton, Little Compton and North Kingstown played a lesser role. The slavers were some of the colony’s leading citizens, their names still familiar today: Newport’s John Bannister (Bannister’s Wharf) and Abraham Redwood (Redwood Library); John Brown of Providence (Brown University); the DeWolfs of Bristol, who built Linden Place. One of the most active was Aaron Lopez of Newport, a founder of Touro Synagogue, who entered the slave trade in 1762 and by 1775 was the largest taxpayer in Newport, with more than 30 ships. Some were more reprehensible than others. In 1764, Simeon Potter of Bristol wrote to his captain on the slaver King George: “Water your rum as much as possible and sell as much by the short measure as you can.” Or the captain of James DeWolf’s slaver Polly, who lashed a slave infected with smallpox to a chair, threw her overboard, and “lamented only the lost chair.” Merchants not rich enough to build their own ships pooled resources and invested in voyages. Later on, the ships were more often owned by individuals or family groups. Rhode Islanders made a go of slaving for a number of reasons. Their small, sturdy ships held from 75 to 150 slaves, far fewer than the massive British or French slavers, but their survival rates were better. Shorter loading times in Africa exposed the crews to fewer new diseases, and less crowding of slaves meant fewer died on the voyage, which took from five to 12 weeks. La Amistad-style rebellions did occur –17 revolts were recorded on Rhode Island slavers between 1730 and 1807– but were about half as common as on British and French slavers, perhaps because conditions were somewhat better on the smaller boats. The British destruction of Newport during the Revolution brought a temporary halt to the trade. When it resumed after the war, much of the action shifted up the bay to Bristol, home of the DeWolf clan. ***

Without a doubt, then, the DeWolfs had the largest interest in the African slave trade of any American family before or after the Revolution; theirs was one of the few fortunes that truly rested on rum and slaves. — Jay Coughtry “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2399 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It was a family operation, all right — along the lines of la cosa nostra. The first DeWolf slaver was Mark Anthony DeWolf, who began as captain for his brother-in-law, Simeon Potter. By 1774, Mark Anthony and Charles, one of his five sons, had completed seven voyages and may have been financing their own ships, Coughtry writes. Between 1784 and 1807, seven DeWolfs completed 88 slaving voyages, or one-quarter of all Rhode Island trips made in those years; they were involved in 60 percent of the slaving voyages from Bristol. They didn’t just sail the ships — they branched out into all aspects of the operation. James DeWolf, another of Mark Anthony’s sons, married the daughter of William Bradford, who owned Bristol’s rum distillery; he went on to make another fortune in cotton manufacturing, and served in the U.S. Senate. Other sons sold slaves at slave markets in Charleston and Havana; the family also bought a Cuban sugar plantation, so they had a piece of the action at all stages of the cycle. They were resourceful. As the public grew more repulsed by slavery and anti-slavery laws began to be passed, the DeWolfs dug in, and used their clout and connections to keep the money flowing. By the turn of the century, William Ellery, the customs collector in Newport, was cracking down on illegal slaving. The DeWolfs got the General Assembly to create a separate customs office in Bristol, and in 1804 snared the collector’s job for Charles Collins, a DeWolf in- law and a slaver himself. It was clear sailing out of Bristol after that. Although slavery was outlawed nationally as of 1808, James DeWolf continued slaving until 1820, “the period of the [Rhode Island] trade’s greatest profits,” writes Arline Ruth Kiven, in a history of the state’s abolitionist movement called THEN WHY THE NEGROES? “This was also the time of his greatest affluence,” although, she notes, there are no records for the Bristol port during this period because Collins burned them all when he was finally ousted in 1820. Slavers were pretty crafty about staying ahead of the anti-slaving laws. A 1794 law banning U.S. citizens from carrying slaves to other nations, for example, had only one real enforcement provision: much like modern-day drug laws, the government could confiscate slaving vessels and sell them at auction. Slavers promptly rigged the auctions so they (or straw buyers) could buy back the ships for pocket change. The government countered by getting the ships assessed, and then sending an agent to the auction to enter that price as an opening bid. Samuel Bosworth, the surveyor for Bristol, was the unfortunate soul sent to bid on the Lucy, a slaver 2400 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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confiscated from Charles DeWolf. He undertook the job “with considerable fear and trembling,” writes Coughtry. The night before the sale, Bosworth got a visit from DeWolf, his brother James, and John Brown, who advised him to refuse the assignment. He stood his ground. The next morning the DeWolfs dropped by again, telling Bosworth that while they certainly wouldn’t harm a hair of his head, if he showed up at the sale he would probably be “insulted if not thrown off the wharf” by sailors. Bosworth never made it to the auction. “His would-be baptizers, in nominal Indian dress and with faces blackened, seized him as he approached the wharf, and hustled him aboard a small sailboat” which took him for a pleasant two-mile ride down the bay, Coughtry writes. By the time he made it back to Bristol, the Lucy had been bought by a captain who worked for the DeWolfs. The DeWolfs - or their agents - at times went in for outright thuggery. In 1800 the Treasury Department sent Capt. John Leonard to Rhode Island as a kind of special prosecutor targeting slave traders. He promptly sued James DeWolf for $20,000 over violations by DeWolf’s slave ship Fanny. The jury found for DeWolf. But some months after the trial, “apparently fearful that Leonard’s strategy against DeWolf would become a dangerous and costly precedent, a group of civic-minded Bristolians traveled to Washington to make their own appeal at the Federal Courthouse,” Coughtry writes. When they spotted Leonard coming down the courthouse steps, “several unidentified assailants assaulted him.” ***

Whereas, there is a common course practiced by Englishmen to buy negers so that they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered that no blacke mankind or white, being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than 10 years or until they come to bee 24 years of age.... — Rhode Island’s first anti-slavery law, 1652

The 1652 law was supposed to ban slavery of any kind from Providence and Warwick, or indentured servitude for more than 10 years. It was enforced for whites but largely ignored for blacks; like so many cultures before them, the British colonies were deeply conflicted over slavery. In 1636, Roger Williams, who founded the colony in Providence, questioned the justice of enslaving the Pequots. Yet in 1676, the same man denounced one of the early calls for freeing black slaves as “nothing but a bundle of ignorance and boisterousness.” Kiven writes that the northern part of the state was “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2401 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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always less enamored of slavery than the seafaring and farming south. Slaving was not confined to a particular religion or sect. Christians and Jews made fortunes in the trade, though by the early 18th century Quakers began to question the ethics of what they were doing. Abolitionist sentiment got a boost in 1738, when an article in the English Weekly Miscellany “declared that, if Africans were to seize people from the coast of England, one could easily imagine the screams of ‘unjust’ which would be heard,” writes Thomas. In Newport in 1770, the Rev. Samuel Hopkins of the First Congregational Church preached his first sermon against slavery, and was surprised when his congregation –many of whom owned slaves– did not walk out en masse. Three years later, Hopkins got the idea of sending two educated blacks to Africa as missionaries. To that end, John Quamine and Bristol Yamma were sent to Princeton College to prepare. The Revolution intervened, however, and Quamine died aboard a privateer, while Yamma apparently dropped out of school to go to work and disappeared into history. According to Kiven, the Quakers were the biggest and best-organized religious group in Rhode Island, and once they began to oppose slavery, its days were numbered. One by one, slave owners changed their minds. “College Tom” Hazard, heir to Narragansett Country landowner Robert Hazard, refused his father’s offer of slaves on his marriage (Robert was said to own 1,000 slaves in 1730). In 1773, the younger Hazard convinced the Quaker Yearly Meeting to ban Quaker participation in slavery. That same year Moses Brown of Providence quit the family slaving business, and began a decades-long assault on his brother, John Brown, for continuing to buy and sell humans; the next year he became a Quaker. The approach of the Revolution brought a temporary end to slaving, but also disrupted abolitionist momentum. In 1774, the General Assembly passed a law banning residents from importing slaves to Rhode Island, though it said nothing about visitors, or slaveowners who might want to move here. (That was partly because Newport had a prosperous relationship with rich Southern plantation owners, who summered in Rhode Island before the Civil War, to escape the ferocious southern heat). Brown, working with Hopkins, set about lobbying the state legislature as well as the Continental Congress; Hopkins wrote a persuasive tract, DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE SLAVERY OF THE AFRICANS, which was used well into the 19th century as an argument for abolition. The war also gave blacks a chance to earn their own freedom. In 1778, a law was passed freeing any slave who would enlist in the Continental Army; several hundred 2402 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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formed the First Rhode Island Regiment, which performed well in battle, although the soldiers later had trouble getting paid. “Their courage in battle and the subsequent gratitude of the people of the state to them is credited for the law, passed in 1784, providing for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state,” writes Kiven. The new law, which freed children born of slaves, passed only after a provision banning the trade entirely was removed. According to Moses Brown, the act was eviscerated by the Speaker of the House, William Bradford of Bristol. Yes, the same Bradford who ran the big Bristol rum distillery, and whose daughter was married to slave- trader James DeWolf. State House insiders were apparently getting pretty sick of lectures from the reform-minded Quakers. Wrote Brown, “We were much flung at by several.” ***

Is it not extraordinary that [Rhode Island], which has exceeded the rest of the states in carrying on this trade, should be the first Legislature on this globe which has prohibited that trade? — Rev. Samuel Hopkins, Nov. 27, 1787

Other states were wrestling with the slavery issue. It proved so contentious that in 1787, when the Continental Congress adopted a constitution, it deferred any national action on slavery until 1808. New England, however, wasn’t waiting around. Rhode Island banned the trade entirely in 1787; Connecticut and Massachusetts followed suit the following year. True, the slave trade would continue for 70 years, by one means or another. Some slavers shifted operations to ports like New York, which had not yet passed any slaving laws; others simply broke the law. But in 1789, Hopkins and Moses Brown helped found the Providence Abolition Society, which worked for anti- slaving laws and sued those who broke them. One such was John Brown, Moses’ brother. The society sued him in 1796 on charges of illegal slave-trading; though he offered to abandon the trade and pay all court costs, they seemed to want to make an example of him. They should have taken the deal. He was acquitted. “The verdict was a definite defeat for the Society, many of whose members became convinced that a Rhode Island jury would not give judgment against the prominent type of men engaged in the slave-trade,” writes Kiven. Over the next few decades a pattern evolved. Abolitionists would pressure the government to pass anti-slavery legislation, and the slaving interests would do what they could to water it down. Once a law was passed, business would temporarily falter while the slavers watched to see how strictly the law “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2403 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would be enforced; usually, enforcement was sporadic, and business actually increased. The American and British governments finally banned slaving as of 1808. But the trade hardly stopped. Some American ships flew Spanish flags; Gen. George DeWolf of Bristol simply shifted his operations to Cuba. The American law only banned the international slave trade. American slavers could still trade slaves internally, or move them up and down the coast. And they did, because demand was huge. With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the demand for agricultural workers exploded in the south, Thomas writes. In 1792, the United States exported 138,328 pounds of cotton; by 1800, it was 17,790,000 pounds and by 1820, 35,000,000 pounds. The planters weren’t going to pick it themselves. ***

Rhode Island participation in the slave trade after Jan. 1, 1808, is a maddening puzzle, for most of the pieces are missing. — Jay Coughtry

It looks like Rhode Island slavers began to pull out of the business after the federal ban, although it’s hard to be sure since it was easy to cheat, particularly at first. Some, like the DeWolfs, continued to slave illegally. But Coughtry concludes that “it does not appear that Rhode Island ports or individual Rhode Island merchants participated in the illegal heyday of the modern American slave trade” between 1820 and 1860. They abandoned the business sporadically, much as they had started. John Brown died in 1803. James DeWolf quit the trade in 1808, though his brother George continued until 1820, when the sympathetic Collins was fired in Bristol; after a series of business failures, George fled the state in 1825 for his Cuban plantation. Rhode Island merchants gradually turned away from the maritime trade and invested their money in cotton mills — by 1830, the state had 130 of them. They managed to squeeze yet more profit from slavery: many specialized in coarse slave or negro cloth, worn by slaves throughout the New World. Abolitionists kept up the pressure. The Providence Abolition Society was joined by other groups; three buildings still standing today served as stations on the Underground Railroad — the Isaac Rice homestead in Newport, the Elizabeth Buffum Chace house in Central Falls, and the Charles Perry home in Westerly. Some decided not to wait. In 1826, a group of free Newport blacks, led by former slave Newport Gardiner, sailed for Liberia with the help of the American Colonization Society. Gardiner, who worked for years to buy freedom for 2404 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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himself and his family, was freed in 1791. He helped found the nation’s first black civic organizations, the African Union Society, and the African Benevolent Society. His decision to leave came 14 months after white rioters destroyed Hard Scrabble, the black community in Providence (University Heights today). He was 75 years old.

“I go to set an example for the youth of my race,” he said. “I go to encourage the young. They can never be elevated here. I have tried it for 60 years.... It is in vain.”

Produced by www.projo.com

1999

Kitson, Peter, et al, eds. SLAVERY, ABOLITION AND EMANCIPATION: WRITINGS IN THE BRITISH ROMANTIC PERIOD (London: Pickering and Chatto), 8 volumes. RACE SLAVERY ABOLITIONISM EMANCIPATION

2001

March 11, Sunday: In the Washington Post, Professor Ira Berlin of the University of Maryland, the author of MANY THOUSANDS GONE: THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA, reviewed Don E. Fehrenbacher’s THE SLAVEHOLDING REPUBLIC: AN ACCOUNT OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT’S RELATIONS TO SLAVERY, as revised by Ward M. McAfee and published by Oxford University Press: ...Fehrenbacher states his case directly. The Founding Fathers had not intended to make slavery a national institution supported by the nation’s fundamental charter. However, they believed that any attempt to grapple with the issue of slavery would frustrate what they understood to be their great achievement –the creation of a republic in a world of monarchies– so they left the issue to be resolved by future generations. The Constitution, for Fehrenbacher, in its language and its various stipulations was neutral with respect to slavery. None of its key provisions –the three-fifths clause, 2406 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the slave importation clause and the fugitive slave clause– was intended to defend slavery. At the birth of the Republic, slavery was a “municipal,” not a national, institution. Fehrenbacher’s view of the Constitution is controversial, and, despite his close reading of the debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it will doubtless remain so. What is certain is that during the 19th Century the federal government became increasingly subservient to slaveholding interests. The great strength of THE SLAVEHOLDING REPUBLIC is its tracing of the “multiple little decisions and unconscious drift” by which the slaveholders’ views slowly –sometimes absentmindedly– became federal policy on one issue after another: the question of slavery in the national capital, the role of slavery in foreign affairs, the matter of the international slave trade, the various fugitive slave laws and the question of slavery in the territories. When federal authorities failed to do the slave masters’ bidding, Southern representatives asserted that they had entered into the national compact only upon condition that their peculiar interests would be respected. To this assertion –which, from Fehrenbacher’s perspective, was constructed out of whole cloth– slaveholders appended a threat to leave the Union if that original agreement was violated.... It was precisely over the matter of original intent that the more moderate opponents of slavery –the so-called free-soilers– challenged the received consensus. Denying that the founders had created a slaveholding republic, they wanted to return the United States to its original commitment to universal freedom. As Abraham Lincoln and other antislavery politicians well understood, such a view, with its implicit contention that slaveholders had perverted the founders’ great work, had enormous appeal to conservative Northerners eager to embrace antislavery as a restoration of the founders’ vision that “all men are created equal.” But what Northerners viewed as a conservative restoration, slaveholding Southerners understood as a radical revolution, directed against the slaveholding republic that they had created. Fehrenbacher also reveals how each side used the question of states’ rights and federal power. Far from clinging to the power of the locality, Southern representatives gladly draped themselves in the mantle of national authority as long as it protected slavery. Indeed, well into the 1850s, it was Northerners who employed states’ rights –especially in their efforts to protect fugitive slaves– as a means of advancing the cause of freedom. Only as the opponents of slavery gained strength with the emergence of the Liberty, the Free Soil, and the Republican parties did slaveholders consistently seek the cover of states’ rights. Even then, they were pleased to call upon national power when it served their interest. In short, Fehrenbacher demonstrates that neither South nor North allowed a principled commitment to local governance or states rights to trump its larger interest. THE SLAVEHOLDING REPUBLIC not only advances our knowledge of the critical relationship of slavery to the American government, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2407 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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placing it in perspective and explaining its meaning, but it also helps frame contemporary debates over the perennial question about the relative power of the nation and the locality. One could hardly ask for more. © 2001 The Washington Post Company

2003

June 10: Here’s an article from the Chicago Tribune, that is based upon the false supposition 1.) that human enslavement only has to do with black people, plus upon the false supposition 2.) that these lawyers are actually seeking a court judgment that will create a legal precedent when they are in fact seeking only to apply leverage in order to obtain a satisfactorily large out-of-court settlement agreement that will not involve the setting of any precedent, plus upon the false supposition 3.) that civil tort cases seeking compensation for damages and criminal prosecutions seeking punishment for crimes are the same when they are utterly different in ever respect, plus upon the false supposition 4.) that human enslavement has been rendered a defined federal criminal offense in the United States of America as of 1865 — when in fact we have never created any federal legislative or juridical definition of human enslavement by which its perpetrators might be punished as such. (Whenever we do punish it, or something which resembles it, we punish it not as human enslavement per se but as a mere failure to pay minimum wage in accordance with the rules and regulations of this federal administrative agency, or as failure to provide adequately safe worksites in accordance with the rules and regulations of that federal administrative agency, or as illegally “assisting” illegal aliens in defiance of the administrative rules and regulations of the Immigration and Naturalization service, or as “kidnapping,” or as “peonage” or as “false imprisonment,” or as something else — something, anything, other than enslavement, enslavement not being a defined federal crime. Meanwhile, we do our best to look the other way.) Man was slave in 1960s, lawyers say Assertion made in reparations suit By Matt O’Connor, Chicago Tribune staff reporter June 10, 2003 Lawyers seeking reparations for African-American descendants of slaves say they have located a 104-year-old man in rural Louisiana who says that he and his children were enslaved throughout much of the 20th Century and even during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The lawyers say the discovery could give their lawsuit critical, firsthand evidence of slavery in America, but a federal judge in Chicago rebuffed their request on Monday for immediate approval to take a deposition from the man to ensure his account doesn’t die with him. With the lawyers refusing to identify the man and providing sketchy details of his life, many questions remained about how he and his family were held in servitude a century after slavery had been abolished. But one lawyer, Diane Sammons of New Jersey, suggested the family was afraid to break away from the slave masters because of repeated rapes and other physical abuses. Lionel Jean-Baptiste, an Evanston attorney who is playing a key

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role in the lawsuit, said the man is concerned that his testimony in the case could endanger his and his family’s safety. Saying the man has the “normal infirmities” of someone more than a century old, the lawyers sought approval to immediately take his deposition to preserve his testimony in case he died. But U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle Sr. refused, putting off a decision until after the plaintiffs file a consolidated complaint. The judge gave them another week to file the complaint, not until August as the lawyers sought. In sometimes testy exchanges with the judge, Edward Fagan, another lawyer for the slave descendants, repeatedly asked the judge to decide the deposition issue, even if it was an adverse ruling, so they could appeal to a higher court if necessary. Proposed class-action lawsuits seeking reparations for millions of African-American slave descendants were filed last year in federal courts in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Texas and California, alleging business and industry illicitly profited from slavery. The cases were consolidated here in front of Norgle. Lawyers for the slave descendants have also taken issue with Norgle for not yet ordering the defendant businesses to preserve historical records that they say might document the firms’ connections to the slave trade. Lawyers said an independent historian, described as a genealogist, had discovered the 104-year-old former slave. After multiple visits with him over one to two weeks, lawyers in the lawsuit were able to put together a statement on the man’s behalf. They asked Norgle to keep it sealed indefinitely. “We believe he’s credible,” Fagan said. The lawyers said the man was uneducated and worked as a slave primarily in cotton fields in rural Mississippi before he was forced to move to Louisiana with his master in the late 1930s. The man wasn’t paid for his labor and lived in squalid conditions, and his children were also forced to work at cotton and sugar cane farms from young ages, the lawyers said. According to court papers, the man and his family suffered “rape, torture, kidnapping and horrific abuses at the hands of the slave masters,” and he still fears retribution if he goes public with his story. The lawyers contend he and his children were enslaved into the 1960s--fully a century after the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves. Even the Chicago lawsuit noted in its opening line that slavery ended in 1865. Yet on Monday the lawyers said they didn’t think the family’s story was unique for certain rural areas of the South. According to court papers, the NAACP received letters in the 1920s and 1930s from African-Americans claiming to be held in servitude on plantations. And as late as 1954, the Justice Department prosecuted Alabama brothers for forcing blacks to work as slaves, the suit said. Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune

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(We note, of course, that while this newspaper reporter has reported that “as late as 1954, the Justice Department prosecuted Alabama brothers for forcing blacks to work as slaves,” he has neglected to mention that the prosecution was not about enslavement, which is not a defined crime, but about peonage, which is — and has neglected to mention that said prosecution was entirely unsuccessful.)

October 28: There was an article in the New York Times on the repeated antebellum medical experiments on female slaves in the deep South, without anesthesia, by Dr. J. Marion Sims, who would become renown as the “father of gynecology”: Scholars Argue Over Legacy of Surgeon Who Was Lionized, Then Vilified By BARRON H. LERNER One would be hard pressed to find a more controversial figure in the history of medicine than J. Marion Sims. Originally lionized as the “father of gynecology,” Sims was later reviled by a generation of critics as racist and sexist. Today, as an operation introduced by Sims is bringing relief to thousands of women in the developing world, a few scholars are quietly hoping to rehabilitate his name. But it is not going to be easy. Sims, who was born in South Carolina in 1813, was not destined for greatness. He was a lackluster student who showed little ambition after receiving his medical degree. But he changed after a chance event in 1845. While evaluating a woman with a slipped, or prolapsed, uterus, Sims, then living in Alabama, had her kneel and place her chest close to her knees. This position not only moved the woman’s uterus back into place, but it afforded him an excellent view of how childbirth had damaged her anatomy. Sims used this insight to tackle a most dreaded complication of childbirth, usually caused by prolonged labor. With this disorder, known as the vesico-vaginal fistula, connections develop between a woman’s bladder and vagina. Afflicted women continually drip urine from their vaginas, producing, in the words of one 19th-century physician, “a most intolerable stench.” Even worse, fistulas sometimes develop between the bowels and the vagina. By placing women in his new position, Sims reasoned, he could better visualize the damaged tissues and could surgically repair the fistulas. The logical women to test his theory, he believed, were slaves. By all accounts, Sims, like a vast majority of his antebellum Southern white counterparts, was a strong proponent of slavery. Thus, when Sims wanted fistula patients, he simply bought or rented the slaves from their owners. Sims operated on at least 10 slave women from 1846 to 1849, perfecting his technique. It took dozens of operations before he finally reported success, having used special silver sutures to close the fistulas. Three of the slaves –Lucy, Anarcha and Betsy– all underwent multiple procedures without anesthesia, which had recently become available. Sims’s records show that he operated on Anarcha 30 times. 2410 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sims’s persistence aroused some alarm, and several physicians urged him to stop experimenting. In response, he later reported that the slave women had been “clamorous” for the operation and had even assisted him with surgery. Sims’s contemporaries and early biographers heralded his feat. His skillful experiments, according to his obituary in The New York Times in 1883, “were of great advantage to members of his profession in the treatment of female diseases.” An inscription near Sims’s birthplace termed him “a blessing and a benefactor to women.” Statues of Sims were erected in South Carolina, Alabama and New York City, where in 1855 he opened the first hospital exclusively for women. The New York statue stands in Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. One of Sims’s modern legacies is the almost total absence of vesico-vaginal fistulas in the developed world, because of advances in childbirth and the operation he pioneered. From this lofty perch, Sims had a long way to fall. And fall he did, beginning in the mid-1970’s, as Americans dealt with the volatile issues of racial and sexual equality. Historians, many of them sympathetic to the civil rights and women’s movements, saw an urgent need to revise Sims’s history. One of the first scholars to weigh in was Dr. Graham J. Barker- Benfield, then a historian at Trinity College in England, who argued that Sims had used slave women as guinea pigs to advance his career. The women, Dr. Barker-Benfield wrote in 1974, had “endured years of almost unimaginable agonies” undergoing repeated surgery. Rather than being willing participants, the women had been powerless to refuse. Writing in 1985, Diana E. Axelsen, a philosopher at Spelman College, described Sims’s patients as “victims of medical experimentation.” Wendy Brinker, a South Carolina filmmaker, nicknamed Sims “Father Butcher” and asked why the state’s monument to him still stood. Underlying these pronouncements was the belief that Sims’s early biographers had been guilty of “presentism,” evaluating past events based on their own values at the time. Living in an era that uncritically celebrated white male doctors, the historians contended, these writers had viewed Sims far too favorably. More recently, a few scholars have been trying to revise this revisionist history. “To deify or vilify Sims is not the answer,” said Dr. Deborah Kuhn McGregor, a historian at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Dr. McGregor uses Sims’s story in her book SEXUAL SURGERY AND THE ORIGINS OF GYNECOLOGY to discuss the complex ways that race and sex influence medical practice. One of Sims’s strongest defenders these days would have to be Dr. L. Lewis Wall, a Washington University surgeon who believes that the scholars who pilloried Sims were guilty of the same presentism they had identified in others’ work. Dr. Wall has a special reason for coming to Sims’s defense. He routinely travels to Africa to repair vesico-vaginal fistulas. Contending that the rest of the world has lost interest in the victims of this disorder, who may still number in the millions, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2411 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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he has founded the Worldwide Fund for Mothers Injured in Childbirth (www.wfmic.org). “These kinds of pathologies no longer exist here,” Dr. Wall noted. But women with fistulas are “absolutely miserable and absolutely outcasts, reeking of urine 24 hours a day,” he said, noting that he can restore both the health and dignity of such women. But does this justify what Sims did? Many do not think so. When Dr. Wall made a presentation on Sims at a recent meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, members of the audience challenged the idea that his admirable efforts as a surgeon gave him valid historical insights. Ms. Brinker is not even sure that Sims’s procedure worked, pointing out that his logs do not have follow-up data of his “cured” patients. “It was all about his glory,” she argues. Probably the only way to definitively resolve the debates over Sims would be to hear the voices of the slave women who were his subjects. But aside from Sims’s statements, their words have not been preserved. At the very least, Dr. Wall suggests on his Web site, someone should build a statue to Lucy, Anarcha and Betsy. The story of J. Marion Sims is a reminder of how history gets rewritten over time. The hope, of course, is that each new

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account gets closer to the truth.

2004

February 15: Attorney General John Ashcroft admitted to being a fervent admirer of the Confederate States of America: We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.

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Our nation’s chief law enforcement officer is and has always been a hard-line opponent of civil rights, affirmative action, school desegregation, women’s rights, abortion, gay rights, and protection of civil liberties. –How did we get to the point at which the laws of our country are being enforced and interpreted by an attorney general who supposes human enslavement to have been something other than a “perverted agenda”? –How did we get to the point at which the Attorney General of the United States is being described by some citizens as “pure and unadulterated evil”?

On this day Attorney General Ashcroft wrote to the New York Times Magazine, objecting to an article that this magazine had published condemning the ongoing human trafficking in young females for purposes of prostitution. While acknowledging that many young women do in fact become trapped in an abusive sexual trade, and that any number of these are young women who have been brought here from abroad, he insisted that we give him a break. He’s trying very hard: Stamping out this vile trade has ranked among the Bush administration’s top priorities since its earliest days. In 2001, the Justice Department announced a new initiative to battle human trafficking, built on the pillars of prosecution, enhanced outreach and law-enforcement cooperation. Three years later, our prosecution standards are the highest ever. From the fiscal years 2001 to 2003, the department charged 111 traffickers, a nearly threefold increase over 1998-2000. Of those, 79 were charged with sex trafficking. During that same period, we convicted 77 defendants –59 of them on sex- trafficking charges– a 50 percent increase over the previous three-year period. Overall, since fiscal year 2001, we have opened a total of 229 investigations, double the number opened in the preceding three years. Our work continues: at present, the department has open 142 investigations, double the number open in January 2001. On January 29, a federal court in Texas handed down lengthy prison sentences to the leaders of a sex-trafficking ring. These criminals smuggled young girls from Central American nations into America, holding them in forced servitude and repeatedly raping them. In another case — the largest human-trafficking prosecution ever, the operators of a forced-labor factory in American Samoa, who had imprisoned over 200 Vietnamese and Chinese, face American justice in Hawaii. These traffickers employed bondage, starvation and beatings so brutal that they left one female worker without an eye. These are just two of our many prosecutions. While prosecution efforts are central to defeating human trafficking, we are also reaching out to local and faith-based organizations who work with the non-English speaking communities most frequently victimized. By building close ties to those groups, we hope to root out the problem and help the victims. Effective interagency and intergovernmental cooperation is also a key part of our strategy to combat human trafficking, and we are training federal and local law enforcement. Last month, we held the largest, most comprehensive anti-trafficking training session ever for federal prosecutors and investigative agents. We are developing interagency crisis teams for deployment to major trafficking hubs and are also working with other agencies to obtain visas and humanitarian assistance for trafficking victims. Since 2000, we have assisted more than 450 victims in

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accessing immigration and refugee benefits. In order to address trafficking at its root, Justice Department officials have traveled to foreign “source” nations, including Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. Finally, the government is devoting substantial effort to a public awareness campaign, launching the Trafficking in Persons and Worker Exploitation Task Force Complaint Line, 888-428-7581. At its core, human trafficking is pure and adulterated evil. It is medieval in conception and brutal in execution, and unfortunately still touches far too many lives. The trafficking and compelled abject servitude of one human being by another is a practice that should long ago have been consigned to the ash heap of discarded inhumanity. It is a practice that this administration will not countenance, and one that we work daily to defeat.”

It is interesting to note what Attorney General Ashcroft does not say in this boastful letter to the Times. He is the Attorney General of the nation which after its Civil War enacted a XIIIth Amendment to its Constitution, supposedly outlawing human enslavement, and therefore he might be expected to write something like the following: “Long ago this nation defined human enslavement as a federal criminal offense, and created a rigorous and evaluable definition of precisely what constituted enslavement, and began to investigate, arrest, prosecute, convict, and punish offenders. Now we have a sex traffic that is in clear violation of this federal criminal code, and those who enslave young women and force them into prostitution are being investigated, arrested for human enslavement, prosecuted for human enslavement, convicted of human enslavement, and punished for human enslavement.”

He cannot say that, of course, simply because it is not an accurate description of our legal situation. The XIIIth Amendment did not outlaw human enslavement, but merely specified that if human enslavement were ever to be outlawed, this could only be done by the federal Congress — it could not be done by any of the state governments and it could not be done by either the federal executive branch or the federal judicial branch. Then, during Reconstruction, we allowed Southern politicians (Southern politicians like Ashcroft!) to come back and take their seats in the United States Congress prior to our enacting any such federal law criminalizing human enslavement — and of course then we did not ever enact any such law defining and criminalizing human enslavement. Because we could not. Because the Southern representatives and senators wouldn’t let us. As Attorney General, Ashcroft is well aware of this sad history — and cannot mis-state what is and is not in our criminal code without getting caught in inaccuracy by his own deputy attorneys.

Even if there were a federal crime of human enslavement, the US Supreme Court has pointed out, this would because of the manner in which it originated in the XIIIth Amendment be legislation that would only protect black Americans, and would provide white Americans with no protection whatever (refer to the 1889 case that is termed the “2d Dred Scott decision,” in Hyman Weintraub’s ANDREW FURUSETH, EMANCIPATOR OF SEAMEN. Berkeley CA: U of California P, 1959, page 35). But what sort of situation would we be creating, if we were to come upon a group of forced-labor prostitutes, and were able to rescue only the black ones, and were unable to rescue the white ones? No, a law that would provide protection for black Americans that it would deny to white Americans would be a law –even if we had it, which we don’t– which would be a dead letter because completely unenforceable. No official would cooperate with such a law. Enforcing such a law protecting blacks while leaving whites at risk would amount to career suicide.

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What Ashcroft means by “stamping out this vile trade,” therefore, is that without –shudder– enacting any law criminalizing human enslavement, he is going to willingly prosecute those who are engaged in this vile trade for something or other they are doing wrong, something or other other than human enslavement. Because, as he pointed out before he became Attorney General, he supposes human enslavement in the Confederate States of America to have been something other than a “perverted agenda.” He’s now telling us “I’m going to tie one hand behind my back as is right and proper, and then I’m going to address this problem.”

March 18: There was a symposium on slavery involvement at Brown University, featuring professors Joanne Pope Melish, J. Stanley Lemons, and Rhett Jones.

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2006

January 30: In establishing a day to honor the elimination of human enslavement, including that enslavement which had once upon a time been practiced by France, President Jacques Chirac orated that “The grandeur of a country is to assume all its history. With its glorious pages but also its more shady parts.”

March 5, Sunday: Were Southern black slaves really so loyal to their masters, that they would have been willing to go to war under arms and risk their lives and fortunes to defend the Confederacy? Here is a new book, reviewed for the Washington Post by Professor David W. Blight of Yale University: Bruce Levine’s CONFEDERATE EMANCIPATION: SOUTHERN PLANS TO FREE AND ARM SLAVES DURING THE CIVIL WAR (Oxford UP, 2006)

The Washington Post

The idea of faithful slaves in the Old South has been one of the most tenacious myths in American history. Slaves’ fidelity to their masters’ cause –a falsehood constructed to support claims that the war was not about slavery– has long formed one of the staple arguments in Lost Cause ideology. In dealing with such myths, historians often analyze their tenacity instead of their veracity. Not so Bruce Levine, a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His Confederate Emancipation is brilliantly researched and persuasively argued. In the past decade, the neo-Confederate fringe of Civil War enthusiasm (with tentative support from some academic historians) has contended that thousands of African Americans, slave and free, willingly joined the Confederate war effort as soldiers and fought for their “homeland.” A quasi-debate over the existence of “black Confederates” has seeped into academic conferences, historical journals and many Web sites. The issue of competing popular memories is driven largely by the desire of current white supremacists to re-legitimize the Confederacy while tacitly rejecting the victories of the modern civil rights movement. What could better buttress the claims of “color-blind conservatism” in our own time than the notion that the slaveholding leaders of the Confederacy were themselves the true emancipators and that many slaves were devoted to the Southern rebellion? George Orwell warned us: Who needs real history when you can control public language and political debate? This book is a scholarly, well-written demolition of the invented tradition of “black Confederates.” Levine’s intrepid research overwhelms the myth, although it will never kill it as long as such stories reinforce current social needs and political agendas. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2417 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In December 1863, after numerous Confederate military defeats, Gen. Patrick Cleburne, an Irish-born Arkansan, presented a stunning memorandum to his fellow officers in the Army of Tennessee. Cleburne judged the Confederacy to be in dire straits, “hemmed in” by “superior forces” on virtually all fronts. The South faced a “fatal apathy” in its own ranks, he warned, and would in time be “subjugated” by the federal armies unless Confederates took the radical step of arming slaves. Cleburne assumed widespread slave loyalty to the Confederacy, yet he admitted that black battlefield service could be purchased only by promising freedom to soldiers and their families. The Confederacy faced a desperate choice, according to Cleburne: “the loss of independence” or the “loss of slavery.” The true Southern patriot, he contended, must “give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself.” Although largely suppressed, this memo made it to President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, which rejected it almost unanimously. But in 1864, after further military setbacks, the idea of arming slaves developed an influential following among a small group of white Southerners, especially Judah P. Benjamin (Davis’s closest cabinet adviser), Gen. Robert E. Lee and Davis himself. Public calls to enlist slaves emanated from Union-occupied sections of Mississippi and Alabama, and in the wake of the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, five Southern governors supported some kind of black-soldier policy. When Davis finally embraced the idea two months later, he did so gingerly, first suggesting the outright purchase of slaves from their owners. Levine illuminates a “wide-ranging public dispute [over arming slaves] that dominated political life during the Confederacy’s final six months.” Once unleashed, especially in newspapers, the idea of slave soldiers and Confederate emancipation met fierce opposition. Critics repeatedly labeled any form of the plan an “insult” to white soldiers and “embarrassing” before the world. Some raised the specters of slave revolt and miscegenation; other critics rehearsed familiar proslavery arguments about the inherent inferiority of black people and the benign, natural character of racial slavery. Levine demonstrates, in one crisp, convincing quotation after another, that to Confederates the war was all about preserving their “property” in slaves. For example, plantation mistress Catherine Edmondston condemned any attempt to arm slaves because it would “destroy at one blow the highest jewel in the Crown.” “Our independence,” chimed in North Carolina Gov. Zebulon Vance, “is chiefly desirable for the preservation of our political institutions, the principal of which is slavery.” And Brig. Gen. Clement H. Stevens spoke for most Confederate officers when he announced, “If slavery is to be abolished then I take no more interest in our fight.” While many other historians have gamely mustered the same argument in this struggle between scholarship and public memory, Levine delivers what ought to be a death blow to the still-popular refrain in Lost Cause rhetoric that the war had never been fought for slavery. In the increasingly embittered debate of 1864-65 over black enlistment, the proposal’s advocates charged that their fellow Southerners would, in the words of a Georgia congressman, “give up their 2418 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sons, husbands, brothers & friends, and often without murmuring, to the army; but let one of their negroes be taken, and what a howl you will hear.” Deftly, and with archival authority, Levine hoists the Confederates on their own petards. Levine’s analysis of their motives is most revealing. Davis and Lee, he contends, were never the enlightened advocates of emancipation that their Lost Cause defenders, as well as some distinguished biographers, have fashioned. Rather, they were staunch Confederate nationalists, determined to do whatever it took to win a war of Southern independence and, in so doing, preserve ultimate control over blacks in the postwar South. Among some Confederate leaders, two growing realizations drove them to support emancipation through soldiering: first, that by 1864, the demise of slavery in this war could not be stopped; second (and most difficult of all to square with their values), that slaves dearly wanted their freedom. But as Levine makes clear, those Confederates who supported black enlistment coupled with emancipation did so in the hope of controlling the lives, prospects and especially the labor of the people they would “free.” Their best intentions were thwarted by their own caution and by African Americans themselves, who chose by the hundreds of thousands to flee to and join the armies in blue rather than gray. Comparing Confederate plans for emancipation to similar developments in the West Indies, Japan and Russia, as well as to other transformations of labor in European history, Levine exposes the would-be emancipators as “revolutionaries from above.” The rhetoric of Lee or Cleburne is similar, Levine shows, to Otto von Bismarck’s assertion: “If there is to be a revolution, we want to make it rather than suffer it.” Advocates of Confederate emancipation sought to use hundreds of thousands of black men not only as cannon fodder to win the white slaveholders’ war, but also as a new lease on life for slavery, in the form of serfdom or apprenticeship, and most definitely to retain white supremacy. As the Richmond Sentinel put it, “partial emancipation” was the “very means” to keep Southern blacks enslaved. In late February and early March 1865, after intensive debate and facing huge desertion rates in the Southern forces, the Confederate Congress adopted a halfhearted bill authorizing black enlistment. The House voted 40-37 and the Senate 9-8 to allow Davis to implement a voluntary plan in which no slaves were to be conscripted. Owners had to come forward and give their slaves to the cause. The law itself did not free a single slave and operated, as one of its proponents admitted, as a “free-will offering.” Gen. Lee demanded urgent action to usher black men into his army, which was about to collapse in front of Petersburg. The war ended before anything could come of this last-ditch Confederate effort to find manpower — which now looked, as a Mississippian gravely confessed, “like a drowning man catching at straws.” Only in Virginia were any blacks actually mustered into companies, totaling at most perhaps 200 men. None saw meaningful combat, and, as Levine found, some of those who did wear Confederate gray did so as a means of running away to Union lines. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2419 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sometimes Levine lets his research dominate when one would wish for more of his own narrative voice. But his conclusions are judiciously tethered to the evidence. And how can he avoid letting despairing Confederates speak for themselves, as does a South Carolina planter with remarkable candor right after Appomattox? “Born and raised amid” slavery, said Augustin Taveau, he had believed “that these people were content, happy, and attached to their masters.” But “the conduct of the Negro in the late crisis of our affairs convinced me that we have all been labouring under a delusion.” That delusion both made and unmade the Confederate quest to save their slaveholders’ republic by arming blacks. In the end, Levine successfully counters the “spirit of reactionary nostalgia” that has fueled the “black Confederate” mythology. For more than a century, the pernicious story of the faithful slave took deep root in the American imagination, where it still provides an active, if declining, currency in race relations. Levine breathes some welcome truths into this dispute over public memory. “The Confederacy had come into the world to protect slavery,” he writes, and those leaders who urged arming slaves by freeing them did so “not despite their antebellum values but because of them. In pushing to enact this measure, they were trying to preserve as much of the Old South as they could.” Confederates almost achieved the goals of Confederate emancipation, despite losing on the battlefield. This book reminds us, however, of the profound importance of Union victory.

March 12, Sunday: Paul Davis’s column about the days of slavery and the international slave trade in Providence, Rhode Island’s “ProJo,” the Providence Journal: Buying and Selling the Human Species: Newport and the Slave Trade For more than 75 years, Rhode Island ruled the American slave trade. On sloops and ships called Endeavor, Success and Wheel of Fortune, slave captains made more than 1,000 voyages to Africa from 1725 to 1807. They chained their human cargo and forced more than 100,000 men, women and children into slavery in the West Indies, Havana and the American colonies. The traffic was so lucrative that nearly half the ships that sailed to Africa did so after 1787 — the year Rhode Island outlawed the trade. Rum fueled the business. The colony had nearly 30 distilleries where molasses was boiled into rum. Rhode Island ships carried barrels of it to buy African slaves, who were then traded for more molasses in the West Indies which was returned to Rhode Island. By the mid-18th century, 114 years after Roger Williams founded the tiny Colony of Rhode Island, slaves lived in every port and village. In 1755, 11.5 percent of all Rhode Islanders, or about 4,700 people, were black, nearly all of them slaves. In Newport, Bristol and Providence, the slave economy provided thousands of jobs for captains, seamen, coopers, sail makers, dock workers, and shop owners, and helped merchants build banks, wharves and mansions. But it was only a small part of a much larger international trade, which historians call the

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first global economy. Pollipus Hammond was dying. As a young man in Newport he had sailed wooden sloops and brigs across the roiling Atlantic. Now, at 72, he was curled up in agony. The Rev. Ezra Stiles was surprised. He had heard that dying men often stretched out. Shortly before midnight in the winter of 1773, Hammond died. Stiles, a pastor for nearly 20 years at the Second Congregational Church on Clarke Street, closed the dead man’s eyes. Physically, Hammond was short and thin. But spiritually, he had been a pillar in the congregation, a sober churchgoer for nearly 34 years. A boat builder, mechanic and father of five, Hammond could have turned “his hand to any Thing,” Stiles wrote in his daily journal. For a quarter of century, Hammond had turned his hand to the slave trade. Sailing from Newport’s crowded harbor, he purchased hundreds of slaves from the west coast of Africa and chained them aboard ships owned by some of the town’s wealthiest merchants. Hammond belonged to a group of captains who depended on the slave trade for a living. He quit the business in the 1750s, when he was in his mid-50s. He became a devout Congregationalist; he even offered his home for monthly meetings. But he never stopped telling stories about danger, even exaggerating what he had seen and heard on his African voyages along what slavers called the Guinea Coast. It was, Stiles wrote, the only “blemish in his character.” “He was many years a Guinea Captain; he had then no doubt of the Slave Trade,” Stiles wrote. “But I have reason to think that if he had his Life to live over again, he would not choose to spend it in buying and selling the human species.” If Hammond regretted his life as a slave captain, he left no record of it. When Hammond died on Feb. 5, 1773, Newport’s slave trade was booming. Nearly 30 captains had sailed to Africa the year before, ferrying away nearly 3,500 Africans to slave ports in the Americas and the Caribbean. “Our orders to you are, that you Embrace the first fair wind and make the best of your way to the coast of Africa,” wrote merchant Aaron Lopez to Capt. William English. “When please God you arrive there ... Convert your cargo into good Slaves” and sell them “on the best terms you can,” ordered Lopez, who outfitted four slave ships that year. The first recorded departure of a Newport slave ship was in 1709, and regular voyages from Newport to Africa were recorded beginning in 1725. “There’s no Newport without slavery,” says James Garman, a professor of historic preservation at Salve Regina University in Newport. “The sheer accumulation of wealth is astonishing and it has everything to do with the African trade....” It’s unclear when Pollipus Hammond, born in 1701, boarded his first slave ship, but Hammond and the trade matured together. By the time Hammond turned 21, more than 600 ships a year passed through Rhode Island’s busy ports. Many carried New England goods — mackerel, pork, beef, cider, beer, onions, flour, butter, candles, apples, cheese and staves — to other colonies along the Atlantic Coast. Others carried goods directly to the slave plantations in the Caribbean or in South America. These ships returned to Newport with sugar and barrels of molasses, which distillers turned into rum. Some of it was sold in New England. But Rhode Islanders soon discovered a new market for their rum: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2421 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tribal leaders and European traders along the African coast, in regions known as the Slave, Gold and Windward Coasts. In all, Rhode Island ships carried nearly 11 million gallons of rum to Africa during the l8th and early 19th centuries. Tribal leaders were willing to dicker with Newport captains, turning over prisoners from rival tribes and other natives in exchange for Rhode Island rum. The African captives were then sold in the Caribbean or in the southern colonies for cash or for more sugar and molasses, creating what was known as the Triangular Trade. Rhode Islanders distilled an especially potent liquor that was referred to as Guinea rum, spirits which quickly displaced French brandy in the slave trade. As a result, slavers from Rhode Island were often called “rum men.” By his mid-30s, Hammond was a rum man. In 1733, he sailed the Dispatch, owned by merchant Godfrey Malbone, to Africa. Six years later Malbone, who owned a house in Newport, a country estate and several slaves, hired Hammond again, this time to take 55 slaves to the West Indies aboard the sloop Diamond. Already, the slave trade was competitive. In 1736, Capt. John Cahoone told Newport merchant Stephen Ayrault that seven Rhode Island captains and 12 other slavers were anchored off the coast of Africa, “ready to devour one another for the chance to trade” for slaves being held at a handful of British ports. Never “was so much rum on the Coast at one time before....” Four years later, the colony’s fleet of 120 ships was “constantly employed in trade, some on the coast of Africa, others in the neighboring colonies, many in the West Indies and a few in Europe,” Gov. Richard Ward told the Board of Trade in 1740. The sugar and slave plantations especially benefited from Rhode Island’s exports. Plantation owners — too busy growing sugar cane to grow their own food — “reaped great advantage from our trade, by being supplied with lumber of all sorts, suitable for building houses, sugar works and making casks,” Governor Ward noted. The West Indies slave owners dined on beef, port, flour and other provisions “we are daily carrying to them.” Rhode Island horses hauled their cane and turned their sugar mills. And “our African trade often furnishes ’em with slaves for their plantations.” For Pollipus Hammond and other slave captains, African voyages posed many risks. The voyages were filthy, laborious and dangerous. “Few men are fit for those voyages but them that are bred up to it,” Dalby Thomas, an agent for the Royal African Company, told his superiors in London in the early 1700s. These captains must be ready to “do the meanest office,” he wrote. Africa teemed with killers — river blindness, yellow fever, malaria. One or two captains died each year from disease, violent storms or slave uprisings. Capt. George Scott barely escaped a slave revolt in 1730, when several Africans aboard the Little George murdered three of his men in their sleep. Caleb Godfrey jumped into a longboat after lightning struck his ship, and he once was mauled by a leopard. If a captain survived —and many did not— he “had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain from a slaving venture,” says historian Sarah Deutsch. In addition to a monthly wage, captains received a 5 percent commission on every slave sold. Many also received a bonus, or “privilege,” of four or more slaves per 104 Africans aboard. The captains were free to sell them or keep them. Some 2422 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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made enough to invest in later trips to Africa. Many joined the Fellowship Club, a mutual aid society, established in Newport in 1752. When the club received a charter from the Rhode Island legislature, 17 of the 88 members had made at least one voyage to Africa. By the time Hammond died, slaving captains formed a third of the society. While some captains made enough money to quit the trade and move up socially, Hammond “never left the wheel,” says Jay Coughtry in THE NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE. “Lack of capital, ambition, or, perhaps, the lure of the sea” prevented men like Hammond “from rising into the ranks of the merchant class,” he says. The Rev. Ezra Stiles arrived in Newport to assume the pulpit of the Second Congregational Church in 1755, about the time Pollipus Hammond quit the slave trade. A bookish man who studied Latin and physics at Yale, Stiles declared Newport “an agreeable Town,” a place of “leisure and books,” and a choice spot to continue “my Love of preaching.” He drank cider, tea and claret, and planned future books, including a history of the world. In 1761, six years after he arrived in Newport, the minister paced off its streets to map the town. Evidence of the town’s booming sea and slave trade was everywhere. He counted 888 houses, 16 rum distilleries and 61 shops near the waterfront. Some of the town’s biggest slave traders belonged to Stiles’ Clarke Street church. Eleven members were either slave traders or captains, including Caleb Gardner, William Ellery and William and Samuel Vernon. Newport was a far cry from New Haven, where Stiles grew up and attended Yale. While New Haven had been settled by strict religious leaders, Newport had been settled by “men who chafed at the economic, as well as religious, restrictions of Puritan society,” says historian Lynne Withey. They “wanted to build prosperous towns and personal fortunes out of the wilderness.” Those attracted to Newport included the Quaker merchant Thomas Richardson, who had moved from Boston in 1712; Daniel Ayrault, a French Huguenot, who arrived around 1700, and Godfrey Malbone, who moved from Virginia at about the same time. William and John Wanton, shipbuilders from Massachusetts, arrived a few years later. These entrepreneurs — or their sons or in-laws — added slave trading to their business ventures. Yet another group of investors arrived between 1746 and 1757, among them Ellery, the Champlins and Lopez. Stiles read the BIBLE in the morning and visited some of the slave traders as their pastor in the afternoon. He socialized with them, too. He dined often with William Vernon, who bought a mansion three doors down on Clarke Street. An ardent gardener, Stiles wrote his name on an aloe leaf on Abraham Redwood’s country estate. Eventually, the pastor was named librarian of the new Redwood Library. While he talked philosophy with Newport’s slave merchants, he also ministered to the town’s slaves. By the mid-1770s, he was preaching to dozens of slaves. Often, he preached to them in small groups in his home. “I directed the Negroes to come to me this Evening,” he wrote in 1771. “I discoursed with them on the great Things of the divine Life and eternal Salvation....” Three days after Pollipus Hammond died, the temperature plunged to 5 degrees. Ice clogged the harbor. That winter, the spindly trees above the waterfront were “full of crystals or frozen sleet or icy “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2423 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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horror,” noted Stiles. It was so cold his window had frozen shut. “I can not come at my thermometer which is usually left abroad all night,” he complained. Head down, his long nose poking forward, Stiles trudged through Newport’s icy streets to attend Hammond’s burial in the Common Burying Ground, on a hill near the edge of town. A prominent stone mason had carved a final thought for the slave captain. His headstone, topped with an angel, said, “Here Lieth the Body of the Ingenious Capt. Pollipus Hammond.” It was Stiles’s habit to visit his church members and their families at least four times a year. Stiles had visited Hammond 10 times before his death. If the two men discussed slavery, Stiles did not note it in his diary. Then again, the pastor had written little about his own ties to the slave trade. His father, Isaac, had purchased an African couple to work in the fields of the family’s 100-acre farm in North Haven. And a year after he became pastor of the Second Congregational Church, Stiles put a hogshead of rum — 106 gallons — aboard a ship bound for the coast of Africa. The captain, William Pinnegar, returned with a 10-year-old African boy. Stiles kept the slave for 22 years, and freed him only after he accepted a job as president of Yale in 1777. In 1756, Stiles gave the boy a name. He called him Newport.

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July 30: The gravesite of Venture Smith had, with the permission of more than a dozen of his living descendants, been opened, and DNA samples extracted. The hope was to discover the family’s links with communities on the West coast of Africa. However, on this date the Associated Press reported in “Archaeologists unearth slave tomb, seeking legend” that this effort had been halted due to a legal action by Nancy Barton, a person not related to the family.

SLAVERY

September: A review appeared in [email protected] of a book on colonization as the “peculiar solution” for American slavery, Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION: A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY (Southern Dissent Series. Gainesville: U P of Florida, 2005). The review, by Eugene VanSickle of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, sparked off an interesting discussion:

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During the Early Republic, Americans struggled to address the paradox of slavery and freedom. This dichotomy prompted numerous debates and wild schemes designed to address the existence of slavery in a society based on individual freedom. Among the reform-minded societies that came out of such discussions was the American Colonization Society. This society addressed this paradox through the plan of African colonization. Eric Burin’s study of the American Colonization Society (ACS) is the latest interpretation of the African colonization movement and the actions of that organization at the local level. Part of the Southern Dissent series edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller, its title, as most scholars will note, appears a play on Kenneth Stampp’s THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION (1956). The study focuses on “colonization’s relationship with slavery ... from two vantage points. First, it gauges the movement’s effect on black bondage by providing a panoramic overview of the colonization crusade; second, it scrutinizes ACS activities as they played out at the local level” (page 2). The emphasis on ACS activities at the local level in the South is the most important contribution this study makes, as most studies tend to look at the colonization movement from the national perspective. Burin delves into the debate regarding the true purpose of the ACS, suggesting that “colonization tended to undermine slavery” (page 2). Thus, his examination returns the ACS and African colonization to the antislavery interpretation. Such an assertion is problematic, which Burin admits. Historians have attempted to fit the ACS into a particular mold since the 1920s. Nonetheless, his study is probably the first since P.J. Staudenraus’s THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT (1961) to place the society in the antislavery circle.314 The suggestion that colonization was a crusade against slavery is, arguably, an exaggeration. The vast majority of colonizationists supported the movement in hopes of keeping slavery (and the debate over it) from destroying the Union. Many accepted the Jeffersonians’ proposition that slavery was doomed for extinction anyway; colonization would only aid in the eventual outcome. This thought process did not change much until after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, the Virginia Debates of 1832, and the Nullification Crisis. Most white Americans believed that the republic would fall if there were two free races, especially if one of those races was denied political and social rights. Colonization offered a solution to this dilemma. Burin recognizes this fact: “The enterprise’s longevity and salience partly stemmed from its malleability: the venture certainly meant different things to different people” (page 33). It remains difficult to see colonization as a crusade, especially when John Randolph and Henry Clay, both founding members, insisted that the ACS not address the issue of slavery at all.315 Nonetheless, the membership of prominent slaveholders in the ACS, as well as the number of slaves manumitted for colonization, does imply dissent against slavery in the South. 314. Staudenraus argued that the ACS was a humanitarian organization. P.J. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, 1816-1865 (Columbia: Columbia UP, 1961). 315. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, pages 28-29; AFRICAN REPOSITORY, 1 (October 1825): 225, and 1 (January 1826): 335. 2426 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Burin further locates the true base of support for colonization in the Upper South and Border States. He also demonstrates the influence of revolutionary ideology in the discussion regarding slavery and colonization. The ideals of the revolution were most important to the post-revolution generation. For example, Burin turned to Charles Fenton Mercer, whom he credits with “laying the groundwork for the establishment of the ACS.” Mercer was a southern modernizer “who wished to replace the slave-based agrarian economy with a free-labor, commercial-industrial one” (page 13). There were, indeed, many men similar to Mercer, and to place the impetus for the ACS’s formation on him ignores prominent northern figures such as the Reverend Robert S. Finley from New Jersey. These men looked to an industrial society based on free labor; they sought also to preserve the Union. Colonization was the means to do both and address the question of their time — the fate of slavery and African descendants in America. One quite interesting question that Burin addresses is why colonizationists thought that they could succeed at settling African Americans outside the United States (pages 20-21). Burin cites historian William Freehling’s explanation that the era under examination provided no evidence that the scheme would not work. In the context of the mass migration then occurring in the Atlantic world, ACS supporters had no reason to think that they could not re-settle African Americans. Burin suggests that the problem with the thesis is that Freehling did not consider the realities of colonization at the local level (page 21). Thus, Burin returns to his study’s real contribution to the scholarship on this topic. Colonization was not a simplistic endeavor that effortlessly moved colonists across the Atlantic. Situations at the local level complicated and slowed emigration, making ACS efforts less tenable in reality. For example, Burin finds that liberated slaves in urban areas generally opposed emigration to Liberia; thus, the ACS targeted rural areas. Colonizationists encountered problems there, however, as slaveholders faced scorn and sometimes worse from neighbors (page 36). Moreover, by the early 1830s a rift emerged “between the Upper South men who dominated the powerful board of managers, and the northerners who filled many important positions in the organization” (page 23), which worked against the ACS. The conflict was primarily over the public image of the ACS and its position on slavery. Burin also points out that a split occurred in the movement because of poor fiscal management, which further slowed the organization’s progress (page 24). Another significant contribution of Burin’s study is his examination of manumissions in the South. Burin notes that the vast majority of individual manumissions in the early colonization period took place in the Upper South (page 36). Of greater interest, however, is his conclusion that the number of manumissions also depended on whether slaveholders lived in urban or rural areas. Manumission was much more difficult, he contends, in rural areas. Burin then proceeds to discuss the factors that influenced slaveholders’ decisions. This is an important part of the study, as no other study (that the reviewer “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2427 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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is aware of) has differentiated manumissions specifically for colonization in such a way. That a greater number occurred in the Upper South is not surprising. Northern, free neighboring states had larger immigrant populations, which Burin mentions, specifically the Germans who moved into the western regions of Maryland and later West Virginia. These people had little to tie them to the institution of slavery. In addition, a considerable factor was the industrialization of growing urban centers such as Baltimore. The emergence of the market economy, the transition to mixed agriculture, and the loss of political influence in the Chesapeake region weakened slavery’s hold there. Maryland had the largest (proportionally adjusted) free black population in the country. Further, soil depletion and the migration of planters’ sons to western territories contributed to the declining numbers of slaves in the state and, of course, higher numbers of manumissions (pages 37-40). Burin further differentiates ACS manumissions by examining programs employed by some larger slaveholders. He emphasizes that programs such as those promoted by John McDonogh, a Louisiana slave owner, actually aided in controlling slave populations. The promise of literacy in preparation for emigration and freedom in Africa, Burin argues, gave slaveholders an added element of control over their slaves. The potential pitfall of using slaveholding emancipators like McDonogh as a model, however, is that they were atypical. Burin relied on other historical collections; nonetheless, he seems to place more emphasis on McDonogh than on other slave owners. McDonogh’s plan was to provide education and training that would allow the soon-to-be-freedmen to carry the gospel to Africa, among other things, while profiting from their labors for additional years (page 41). His slaves, in fact, financed their emigration. He also did not release all of his slaves for colonization by the ACS. Slaves freed in such programs, Burin notes, were also predominantly adult males. This practice arguably increased control over slave populations (page 43). Yet, this example is perhaps not so profound given the preference of all the colonization societies for adult males in their colonies, especially those known to be industrious and obedient. Adult males would not drain social resources; adult males would develop the colonies more quickly, allowing increasing numbers to be sent; finally, adult males were most likely to make the colonies prosperous, which would lure free African Americans whose position in the United States, economically and socially, was tenuous. The numbers of African Americans transported, and little else, measured success for most white Americans supportive of colonization. Adult males were the most needed group in the colonies for these objectives to be met. Burin either ignores this fact or views the social control that manumission programs gave to slaveholders as more important. Another of Burin’s contentions that scholars will certainly debate is that “ACS liberations were not instances of complaisant slaves dutifully working toward freedom, as white colonizationists originally expected. Rather, they were the product of tenacious negotiations that fundamentally recast 2428 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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slaveholders’ manumission plans” (page 58). In short, Burin suggests that slaves weighed offers of manumission on condition of emigration carefully to exploit the offers to their best advantage (page 59). In assessing these offers, Burin’s study explores the types of information slaves considered, as well as the sources of that information. Scrutiny was necessary as colonizationists manipulated accounts from the colony to best serve their purposes (pages 70-73). That such activities occurred is not surprising. Auxiliary societies and ACS publications were geared more towards white society because colonizationists relied on white America for the money to cover colonization, place pressure on the government to support the movement, emancipation, and the diffusion of information to African Americans. Burin in fact makes these points (chapter 4) in examining the role of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society in the larger movement the ACS led. The Pennsylvania Colonization Society (PCS), Burin contends, contributed most to the ACS objective by working hard to get funds (pages 79-80). This theme is not given the prominence it deserved in a chapter mostly about the organizational goals of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society and its members’ wishes to help emancipate slaves. While the interpretation fits within the argument that the ACS was an antislavery organization, there was considerable tension between the Pennsylvania society and the ACS — that tension no doubt a factor in the PCS’s joining the New York society in 1838 to promote their own colony in Africa. The chapter also returns to the theme of colonizationists “rationalizing” (page 86) negative reports from Africa for the benefit of the movement. Again, historians need to consider the audience as much as the agenda for this state auxiliary. The PCS appealed to a white audience appalled by the growth in the free black population in Pennsylvania — that is what motivated them to donate money to promote manumission of slaves for emigration. They had to believe that freedom was going to be accompanied by emigration — “a constant theme in discussions of individual manumission and general emancipation” (page ix). The role of the PCS in the context of this study seems overstated. Opinions about the ACS and colonization as well as the success of the organization depended on the “location of the manumission, the magnitude of the emancipating operation, and the observer’s proximity to the enterprise” (page 100). The farther south one went and the greater the slave population, the more the resistance to the movement, especially after 1832. That a full third of the manumissions took place in Virginia (page 101) supports Burin’s assessment that support for colonization was strongest in the Border States. His examination of who was most likely to emancipate slaves for emigration will prove useful as will his analysis of the problems agents had in getting potential colonists to port (pages 105-110). That opposition to colonization increased in the South as the Civil War approached is not a profound observation, however. Colonizationists’ true failure was in containing the debate over slavery at the national level — one of the goals supporters established when the movement began. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2429 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Burin also addresses the legal questions raised by colonization- driven manumission. The two pressing legal questions dealt with whether the state had the power to circumscribe slaveholders’ property rights (disowning slaves) and if the state would sanction slave agency (bondsmen being able to choose) in ACS operations (page 121). The former was a question colonizationists’ founding members recognized in 1816. Part of the reason they did not publicly address the question of slavery was their reluctance to interfere “with the legal rights and obligations of slavery.”316 Burin traces these legal questions throughout the period under review and finds that legal opposition tended to increase as tensions over slavery traversed the national discourse. To no one’s surprise, Upper South judges found in favor of the slaveholders and colonization, while further south, jurists eventually moved to repudiate the notion that slaves could choose between slavery in the United States and freedom in Africa (page 136). The final chapter analyzes the experience of freepersons in Liberia. This subject is very well documented with other studies. That settlers’ experiences varied is clear from their correspondence to the colonization societies or to former masters. Many were disappointed while many others were satisfied with their new homes. Still others preferred a hard existence where they were truly free to a life of degradation in American society. Aside from showing that the settlers’ negative accounts hurt colonizationists’ recruiting efforts, this chapter seemed unrelated to the rest of the study, particularly if the overriding conclusion is that the ACS was an antislavery organization. The conclusion ends the study by suggesting, “Colonization played a vital role in the Civil War” (page 160). That Lincoln was a supporter of colonization is well known. The degree to which he pursued it is probably less so. While tracing the evolution of Lincoln’s notion of colonization, what seems most clear in this portion of the analysis is that the Civil War removed colonization from the national spotlight as a solution to the slavery problem. The vital role of colonization in the war itself is unclear other than the fact that Lincoln clearly went through an evolution of his position on both colonization and slavery as well as what the war would ultimately be about. Certainly, the war and colonization did little to solve the real question — what was to be done with the African American? His strong evidence notwithstanding, historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions of Burin’s work. Likewise, the notion that colonization was a peculiar solution to slavery will spark debate, especially given the prevalence of auxiliary societies that sprang up around the nation after the ACS was created in 1816. That does not mean, however, that THE PECULIAR SOLUTION is without merit. Ultimately, this is a study of how some white Americans struggled to resolve the great American paradox of freedom and slavery while giving finality to the question about the racial future of the United States. Burin makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of colonization and slavery in the era before the Civil 316. AFRICAN REPOSITORY 1 (January 1826): 335. 2430 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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War. The true strength of the book is its examination of colonization at the state level. Here he shows the complexities of colonization as well as the problems facing slaveholders who dared to free their bondsmen. Yet, if the colonization movement was peculiar for anything, it was probably more so for its longevity. The ACS did, after all, continue to thrive and send African Americans to Liberia long after the peculiar institution’s demise. Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: [email protected].

Reply to Eugene VanSickle, by Eric Burin Many authors have sat bewildered after reading reviews of their books, wondering if the work under consideration was really their own. As Professor Kirsten Wood noted on H-SHEAR last year, “an author’s idea of what her book is ‘really about’ does not necessarily determine how readers perceive it.”317 The likelihood of misinterpretation is particularly high when the work concerns the nineteenth century colonization movement, a subject that has generated heated debate among historians. Scholars who write about colonization may not tread “dark and bloody ground,” but the field has landmines aplenty. For the most part, Dr. VanSickle, in reviewing SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION, has navigated the turf well, ably summarizing the organization and arguments of the book. At the same time, however, VanSickle’s review did not escape unscathed, as I explain below. In a strange way, VanSickle offers SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION high praise. According to VanSickle, the book’s arguments about slaves’ deliberations over emigration are “not surprising.” Its insights regarding local responses to ACS manumissions are not “profound observation[s].” Its analysis of the legal conundrums posed by ACS liberations should come “to no one’s surprise.” So why are these compliments? Because the literature on these subjects is not extensive, and to declare novel arguments banal is to pay the highest of tributes. “No duh” is another way of saying “case closed.” And yet, despite its putatively mundane character, VanSickle concludes that “historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions” of SLAVERY AND THE P ECULIAR S OLUTION. A book both prosaic and problematic? Like the colonization movement, VanSickle’s review is full of contradictions. VanSickle’s review is reminiscent of the colonization movement in other ways. Indeed, there is a curious similarity between nineteenth century colonizationists and the scholars who study

317. Kirsten E. Wood responds to review of MASTERFUL WOMEN: SLAVEHOLDING WIDOWS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR H-SHEAR (May 10, 2005). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2431 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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them: some scholars, like the colonizationists, often hold convictions so strongly that they remain impervious to evidence and arguments that challenge their preconceived notions. Consider the question of how reports from Liberia influenced the colonization movement in America. Clearly, settler accounts not only shaped the thinking of would-be emancipators and prospective emigrants, they also irked proslavery southerners who protested as scores of Liberian letters, sojourners, recruiters, and refugees circulated through the South. There is abundant evidence on the matter, yet VanSickle opines that the chapter on Liberia is unrelated to the rest of the book, that it does not bear on the question of the ACS’s impact on slavery. Proslavery southerners knew better. As Edmund Ruffin seethed in 1859, when colonizationists urged would-be manumittees to emigrate, bad things happened: “Such lessons, when designed to operate on one individual, and even without having direct effect on that one, may reach hundreds of others, to the injury of their contentment, and their worth as laborers and slaves.”318 Finally, there’s the matter of historiography. I am not, as VanSickle suggests, the first scholar since Philip Staudenraus (1961) to argue that colonization undermined slavery. While many Civil Rights Era historians questioned the ACS’s antislavery credentials, more recent scholars have reconsidered the matter. William Freehling, Douglas Egerton, Peter Onuf, and Elizabeth Varon, among many, many others, have analyzed the ways in which colonization impaired (and aided) slavery. To overlook their important work would be remiss. Put another way, I wrote SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION while standing on the shoulders of giants. And I had a lot of company up there. In the past few years, there has been an outpouring of scholarship on colonization. Since 2000, seven books have been published on the subject, not to mention a host of articles and dissertations. With the hope of abetting work on colonization, I would like to call H-net subscribers’ attention to my ACS Database, which contains information on 560 ACS emancipators, the 6,000 slaves they liberated, the 9,000 free blacks who also moved to Liberia, the counties in which they resided, and the emigrants’ experiences in Africa. Ultimately, I will put this database on the Web. In the meantime, I would be happy to provide data for H-net members who are working on the colonization movement. In conclusion, I would like to thank H-SHEAR, Dr. VanSickle, and all the scholars who have helped me over the years, giant or otherwise. ======From: “Charles Irons” I learned a great deal from Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION and was therefore disappointed to read Professor VanSickle’s clumsy review. Professor VanSickle makes two, related missteps in his comments. First, while he recognizes the importance of Burin’s treatment of “ACS activities at the local level,” he substantially ignores that contribution in his review. Second, he oversimplifies Burin’s characterization of 318. De Bow’s Review 27 (July 1859): 65. 2432 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the ACS as an antislavery organization. Burin acknowledges the well-known proslavery convictions of Randolph and Clay but shows that the ACS could be functionally antislavery in its operation no matter how compromised the emancipationist message was from those at the center. Colonization was often functionally antislavery precisely because of those “activities on the local level” which VanSickle ignores. Each manumission, as Burin shows, pulled scores of black and white Southerners into a series of negotiations about the fate of the manumittee. As Burin puts it, “The tug-and-pull between slaves, their owners, and other parties rendered their liberations logistically complex, financially troublesome, legally complicated, and, at times, socially disruptive enterprises. ... Like pebbles dropped in water, ACS manumissions rippled outward, destabilizing slavery in their wake” (5). VanSickle wants to put colonization firmly in the proslavery column. Burin, on the other hand, acknowledges ideological diversity in the movement’s leadership. Moreover, he shows how manumitted men and women so complicated colonization’s operations on the local level that colonization often assumed an antislavery character in spite of itself. Charles Irons Elon University ======From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. African Americans of the time were not simply making general statements about colonization but very thoroughly critiqued the ACS’s positions in detail; these arguments are extant for scholars to study (and there is also secondary literature on the topic). If we are truly to understand the ACS’s effects on slavery and freedom, we must read antebellum blacks’ arguments against it. What emerges from such an examination is clear: the ACS cannot be considered antislavery unless a very narrow (and basically meaningless) definition of “antislavery” is adopted that would not fit with how most antebellum African Americans saw slavery or how most scholars of African American history view it.

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Slavery, black abolitionists stressed, was not just a matter of individual manumissions and terms of bondage — it was a system, an institution. So to say that any organization was antislavery that did not treat slavery as an institution is to adopt a narrow perspective that renders the term “antislavery” meaningless. As most of us know, individual judges in various locales freed some slaves sent into their courts and kept others in bondage. Were these judges “antislavery” when they freed certain slaves? No — they just saw each case individually and supported slaves in some cases, slaveholders in others. So, too, with the ACS manumissions. African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. Nineteenth-century African Americans responded to this argument, which was often made by ACS apologists, clearly and unequivocally: it was misleading and disingenuous. An early contributor to Freedom’s Journal remarked, “Any plan, which implies in our brethren or their descendants, inferiority, or carries with it the idea that they cannot be raised to respectable standing in this country . . . is wholly at war with our best interests, and we cannot view the Advocates of such sentiments, in any other light, than that of enemies, whatever their principles may be.” Because ACS rhetoric continually described African Americans negatively, this contributor said, it was “increasing prejudice” and “retarding the cause of emancipation.” Free blacks did not see themselves or their enslaved brethren as individuals whose bondage or freedom in each case stood alone. They saw themselves as part of a community, slave and free, with the effects on one group impinging on the lives and experiences of the other. African Americans believed fundamentally that even if some individual slaves were freed by the ACS, the overall prejudice and oppression that was at the root of the organization’s philosophy made the situation in the United States worse for all free and enslaved blacks. In addition, the coercive aspect of the organization should not be overlooked; by arguing that only in Africa could American blacks be free, whites apologized for oppression and excused themselves from trying to change the racist institutions of the United States. This view did not allow blacks to be seen as free agents or as citizens. As another contributor to Freedom’s Journal argued, there was no need to spend “money in colonizing free people in Africa,” since they are already “free at home” and can, “if not satisfied here,” on their own “go where they may 2434 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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think best.” It is troubling to me that despite the admonitions of prominent scholars such as Nathan Huggins and John Hope Franklin, scholarship about nineteenth-century reform efforts directed at blacks does not fully consider their views. Burin does look at the views of those who did emigrate about their own freedom and their prospects, but an understanding of blacks’ views on the larger issue are necessary if we are to make any generalizations about the organization. The majority of African Americans who opposed colonization addressed the central question we seem to be now focused on with the ACS — was it antislavery in theory, practice, or function? Free blacks did not stand by while the ACS argued about their futures — they argued back, and in their full discussions we can learn about what effect the organization had on them, on prejudice, and on slavery. There is much that is interesting and useful in Burin’s account — particularly the individual stories of manumissions and the focus on local histories. Both of these areas (local histories, narratives of ordinary people) are important to historians and interesting to readers. But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. Jacqueline Bacon, Independent Scholar www.jacquelinebacon.com ======From: Clayton E. Cramer [mailto:[email protected]] >From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. While I understand Jackie’s concern, her point seems to be that because the ACS was built on racist assumptions, and served the interests of slaveholders, it could not be an antislavery organization. I am not sure that this is correct. Even among those who strongly opposed slavery there were many (especially in the early Republic period) who held assumptions of black racial inferiority that caused them to back colonization. Today, these ideas seem frighteningly reactionary; at the time,

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with white racial superiority a rising idea among intellectuals across the Western world, it was not at all difficult for some opponents of slavery to see the prospect of full racial equality as impossible. Even Jefferson, prone to what I would call excessive optimism about the potential for rational behavior by the masses, made that point: that the history of abuse under slavery and the white fear of retribution would preclude a society free and equal. Now, you can ascribe that to a slaveholder trying to justify in his own mind the maintenance of a system that prepared his meals, grew his crops, and kept his bed warm at night, but even among abolitionists with nothing to prevent them from looking in the mirror in the morning, you can see this widespread belief that the races were unequal, and would always be so — and yes, I’m thinking of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, whose most “manly” blacks are those of mixed blood. Here’s a suggestion for another way to consider the ACS: a confederation of Americans who buried their differences about slavery long enough to concentrate on what they perceived as a worthy goal — returning blacks to Africa. This would not be the first time that unlikely allies have come together on such matters. Consider the way in which the 1808 ban on imports came about, with a devil’s brew of abolitionists (who were morally opposed to slavery); slave owners who managed to rationalize HOLDING slaves, and even selling them from state to state — but found international slave trading objectionable; and those slave breeders who expected to make a good bit of money by passing what was effectively protectionist legislation, wiping out the cheap competition of fresh imports. Clayton E. Cramer [email protected] ======>From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. [much sensible material cut] >But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after 2436 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. I think Jackie’s argument points to the problem of trying to make the issue “pro” or “anti” slavery. Certainly, African Americans saw the project as relentlessly proslavery, in the specific sense that it strengthened the racial and legal hierarchies necessary to slavery. Meanwhile, however, many defenders of slavery perceived the colonization movement as antithetical to slavery and synonymous with abolitionism. Their argument (when they made one) was that it accepted the premise that slavery was bad. Like most political issues, slavery is not one that is well- captured through any kind of binary opposition. Some scholars have used taxonomies like “anti-slavery,” “anti- anti-slavery,” “proslavery.” Colonization would be in the category of “anti- anti-slavery.” But, I’m not sure that really helps — it’s almost as though one needs a matrix. One axis would be for how bad one thinks slavery is; another axis for how committed one is to a pragmatic policy that might actually end it. So, colonization would be medium in terms of criticism of slavery, but no higher than rabid proslavery rhetors in terms of a realistic policy. (Personally, I like Kenneth Burke’s use of the term “prim irony” (for southerners who bemoaned a racism from which they benefitted and about which they did nothing). In my snarkier moments, I use the term “conscience swot” for colonization because it enabled people to feel better about themselves while not actually having any impact on the institution of slavery. I think colonization bears the same relation to abolition that self-proclaimed “white moderates” had to the Civil Rights movement. They were in its way.) For the authors about whom Jackie is writing, abolition of slavery was necessarily connected to civic inclusion of African Americans; the goal of colonization was explicitly to keep those two policies separated. More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically. It may have been mildly anti-slavery in sentiment (a claim about which I’m dubious), but it was proslavery in consequence. — Trish Roberts-Miller [email protected] ======From: Mark E. Dixon [mailto:[email protected]] “More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically.” The problem with upsetting apple carts is that they tend to fall on people. Like most, perhaps, I have some knowledge of historical niches that have caught my interest, but can’t claim comprehensive knowledge of anything. My peculiar little passion is Quaker history, so I know something of how some Quakers were — for a time — involved in colonization and why they later withdrew.

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Let’s consider a brief outline of their involvement in ACS. Quakers were slaveholders — even slave traders — in the colonial period, but through the 18th Century gradually evolved toward anti-slavery. By the Revolutionary era, the yearly meetings up and down the East Coast were making slaveowning a disownable offense. This was comparatively easy in states like Pennsylvania where the idea that one could be both black and free was well- established and a sizeable community of free blacks existed. It was not so easy in southern states in which it was illegal to free a slave. When North Carolina Quakers began to free their slaves, for instance, the 1777 legislature toughened an earlier (1741) law that manumissions were permissible only for meritorious service and that the slaves thus freed had to leave the state within six months or be seized and resold. The 1777 amendment allowed illegally freed slaves to be picked up and resold immediately. For 50 years, North Carolina Quakers got around this law by making the church itself the blacks’ owner of record while allowing them to live freely — or at least as freely as possible, given the time and place. In 1827, however, a North Carolina Supreme Court decision broke through the subterfuge. Writing for the majority, the chief justice wrote, “When Quakers hold slaves, nothing but the name is wanting to render it at once a complete emancipation.” The court ruled that, since Quakers’ opposition to slavery was well known, neither Quakers as individuals nor their meetings could be slaveowners. In the face of these facts, what were the North Carolina Quakers and their “property” to do in 1827? The Quakers didn’t want to be slaveowners and the blacks didn’t want to be slaves. Should the Quakers have swallowed their qualms to prevent the blacks from being sold to worse masters? Should the blacks have asked the Quakers to take them back for the same reason? Should the blacks have abandoned their family ties and moved to free states (which didn’t want them either)? Given the situation, I think it’s not surprising that North Carolina Quakers threw themselves into alliance with ACS. They sent agents to explain the colonization plan to blacks (who could choose to go, or not) and Quakers across the country helped raise money for it. According to 19th Century historian Stephen Weeks, relations with ACS were so intimate that North Carolina Yearly Meeting was practically its “collection agency.” Several Quaker-funded ships left North Carolina ports, including the “Nautilus” which, in 1832, carried 164 emigrants to Liberia from the counties of Perquimans, Pasquotank and Wayne. I have no doubt that black leaders of the era probably frowned on all this. They were focused on upsetting the “apple cart” — specifically on fighting slavery as an institution and creating a place for free blacks in America. Sending blacks out of the country wouldn’t further those goals. That’s what leaders do: Focus on the big picture and discount the effect on individuals. Individuals, however, do what is best for themselves. In the case of many North Carolina blacks “owned” by Quakers, colonization seemed like the best alternative. I can’t fault their decision, or those who helped them. 2438 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mark E. Dixon, www.markedixon.com

October 18: A panel created by President Ruth Simmons of Brown University has suggested that the institution should atone for its ties to slavery: By PAM BELLUCK BOSTON, Oct. 18 — Extensively documenting Brown University’s 18th-century ties to slavery, a university committee called Wednesday for the institution to make amends by building a memorial, creating a center for the study of slavery and injustice and increasing efforts to recruit minority students, particularly from Africa and the West Indies. The Committee on Slavery and Justice, appointed three years ago by Brown’s president, Ruth J. Simmons, a great-granddaughter of slaves who is the first black president of an Ivy League institution, said in a report: “We cannot change the past. But an institution can hold itself accountable for the past, accepting its burdens and responsibilities along with its benefits and privileges.” The report added, “In the present instance this means acknowledging and taking responsibility for Brown’s part in grievous crimes.” The committee did not call for outright reparations, an idea that has support among some African-Americans and was a controversial issue at Brown several years ago. But the committee’s chairman, James T. Campbell, a history professor at Brown, said he believed the recommendations “are substantive and do indeed represent a form of repair.” The committee also recommended that the university publicly and persistently acknowledge its slave ties, including during freshmen orientation. Dr. Campbell said he believed that the recommendations, if carried out, would represent a more concrete effort than that of any other American university to make amends for ties to slavery. “I think it is unprecedented,” Dr. Campbell said, adding that a few other universities and colleges have established memorials, study programs or issued apologies, but not on the scale of the Brown recommendations. It was not clear how much the committee’s recommendations would cost to carry out. “We’re not making a claim that somehow Brown is uniquely guilty,” Dr. Campbell said. “I think we’re making a claim that this is an aspect of our history that not anyone has fully come to terms with. This is a critical step in allowing an institution to move forward.” Even in the North, a number of universities have ties to slavery. Harvard Law School was endowed by money its founder earned selling slaves for the sugar cane fields of Antigua. And at Yale, three scholars reported in 2001 that the university relied on slave-trading money for its first scholarships, endowed professorship and library endowment. Dr. Simmons issued a letter in response to the report, soliciting comments from the Brown community and saying she had asked for the findings to be discussed at an open forum. She declined to give her own reaction, saying, “When it is

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appropriate to do so, I will issue a university response to the recommendations and suggest what we might do.” She said “the committee deserves praise for demonstrating so steadfastly that there is no subject so controversial that it should not be submitted to serious study and debate.” Initial reaction to the recommendations seemed to be appreciative. “It sounds to me like this makes sense,” said Rhett S. Jones, a longtime professor of history and Africana studies at Brown. “I did not expect the committee would emerge saying, Well, you know, Brown should write a check. “I never thought that was in the cards. I’m not sure I think it’s even appropriate that a university write a check, even though it’s pretty widely agreed on that Brown would not be where it is if it were not for slave money. These recommendations seem to me to be appropriate undertakings for the university.” Brown’s ties to slavery are clear but also complex. The university’s founder, the Rev. James Manning, freed his only slave, but accepted donations from slave owners and traders, including the Brown family of Providence, Rhode Island. At least one of the Brown brothers, John Brown, a treasurer of the college, was an active slave trader, but another brother, Moses Brown, became a Quaker abolitionist, although he ran a textile factory that used cotton grown with slave labor. University Hall, which houses Dr. Simmons’s office, was built by a crew with at least two slaves. “Any institution in the United States that existed prior to 1865 was entangled in slavery, but the entanglements are particularly dense in Rhode Island,” Dr. Campbell said, noting that the state was the hub through which many slave ships traveled. The issue caused friction at Brown in 2001, when the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, printed a full-page advertisement produced by a conservative writer, listing “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea And Racist Too.” The advertisement, also run by other college newspapers, prompted protests by students who demanded that the paper pay “reparations” by donating its advertising fee or giving free advertising space to advocates of reparations. The Brown committee was made up of 16 faculty members, students and administrators, and its research was extensive. “The official history of Brown will have to be rewritten, entirely scrapped,” said Omer Bartov, a professor on the committee who specializes in studying the Holocaust and genocide. The report cites examples of steps taken by other universities: a memorial unveiled last year by the University of North Carolina, a five-year program of workshops and activities at Emory University, and a 2004 vote by the faculty senate of the University of Alabama to apologize for previous faculty members having whipped slaves on campus. Katie Zezima contributed reporting.

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November 13: Robin Blackburn reviewed David Brion Davis’s INHUMAN BONDAGE and Simon Schama’s ROUGH CROSSINGS in The Nation. Here are excerpts: The New World Order Beginning in the 1440s and for more than four centuries slavery and the slave trade underpinned a prodigious expansion of the Atlantic economy that transformed every land lapped by that ocean. Before the 1820s the number of captive Africans who arrived in the New World greatly surpassed the number of free European migrants. The value of the Atlantic trade swiftly overtook that of the Mediterranean. Economic historians now believe the rise of plantation colonies added millions of acres of cultivated land to the European economies, diversified output, stimulated a new type of consumption and enabled these societies, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to pull ahead of South and East Asia, which had been the world’s most prosperous and civilized regions. The advent of steamboats, railways and steam-driven engines greatly extended the land area involved, but the harsh toil of cultivating and processing raw cotton, sugar cane and coffee beans was performed by a slave population that rose from 3 million to 6 million between 1800 and 1860. Just at the moment when Europeans and their white American cousins began to exult in their global good fortune, however, a succession of slave revolts and protest campaigns forced them to confront the fact that the entire dazzling edifice was built on horrendous and criminal foundations. Beginning in the 1760s, but with gathering force over succeeding decades, rebels, revolutionaries and abolitionists, both black and white, challenged slavery and the slave trade, as well as other institutions upon which the Atlantic boom had been based — colonialism, monarchy, war and an untrammeled “commercial society.” In THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN WESTERN CULTURE, first published in 1966, David Brion Davis drew attention to the remarkable fact that prior to the mid-eighteenth century slavery had been a widely accepted and entirely respectable institution, yet by the 1780s it had become the target of widespread critique and revulsion. While it is not difficult to see why slaves struggled for freedom during the crisis of empire and monarchy, it is more of a challenge to explain how black rebels and revolutionaries could find allies in societies that were becoming ever more dependent on –and richer from– exchanges with the plantation zone. In his new book, INHUMAN BONDAGE, Davis looks at the entire span of New World slavery, with special emphasis on what was to become the largest slave system: that of the United States. He asks why European settlers resorted in the first place to an institution that was marginal and declining in Europe. And he explores how historians have tried to explain the rise of abolitionism and the eventual success of the century-long campaign to suppress slavery. Although he has written a series of indispensable studies of how the leading Atlantic societies addressed “the problem of slavery,” Davis has never before sought to bring the institution’s rise and fall within the scope of a single

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argument. The result is an absorbing book that obliges us to confront the complex legacy of slavery and emancipation in our own time. The mighty mobilizations that led to the suppression of slavery in the New World from Vermont in 1777 to Brazil in 1888 certainly hold out grounds for hope. They show that societies can change for the better in fundamental ways. But they also show that the victories were sometimes deeply compromised. The acceptance of New World slavery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reflected entrenched legal, religious and philosophical traditions. But it also coincided with a withering away of slavery in many parts of Europe. Jean Bodin, the only philosopher to call slavery into question prior to Montesquieu, did so on the grounds that ordinary people had a powerful prejudice against it. Somehow what was unacceptable in Europe became necessary in the New World. The racialization of slavery partly accounts for this apparent paradox. In most societies slavery had been reserved for outsiders, and this status could easily be specified in ethnic or religious terms. Although few of the slaves in ancient Rome were black Africans, the European legacy of Roman law supplied an authoritative codification that allowed captive outsiders to be transformed into economic property, or chattel. The NEW TESTAMENT seemed to endorse slaveholding, while passages in GENESIS and LEVITICUS were held by many early modern Europeans to justify the imposition of permanent bondage on descent groups. The story of slavery and emancipation in the New World has lent itself to several kinds of falsely redemptive interpretation, most of which rely on what one might call the argument from latent virtue. Such accounts ruefully admit enslavement was largely condoned, rather than challenged, by Christianity, capitalism, “English liberties” and American patriotism, with the escape clause that each of the above contained a latent antislavery meaning that in a few decades –or was that centuries?– would emerge into the light of day. The message was that, properly understood, Christianity, capitalism and patriotism were in essence abolitionist. Once the initial paradox, irony and contradiction had been resolved, the comforting truth would be clear. Eric Williams –the Trinidadian leader and author of the classic CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY (1944)– referred to a variant of this consoling view when he noted in 1964 that “British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery for the sole satisfaction of abolishing it.” The latent virtue argument is not merely complacent; it fails to identify what led some Christians, capitalists and patriots –not the majority, but a brave few– to think and behave differently. It also fails to identify what it was in the original Christianity, capitalism or patriotism that fitted fairly snugly with racial slavery. A surprising number of early slave traders and planters were pious and even learned men. Davis rightly argues that perceptions and norms that expressed a religious worldview were just as important as economic factors in the shaping of the New World regimes. He dwells on changing interpretations of the biblical story of Noah cursing Ham by 2442 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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condemning Ham’s son Canaan, and his offspring, to perpetual slavery. (Ham had exposed the nakedness of his drunken father, but the precise offense was unmentionable.) At its most elementary, the “just so” story legitimized the enslavement of a descent group, an impression that was reinforced by passages in LEVITICUS and DEUTERONOMY sanctioning the permanent enslavement of strangers. Of course the Golden Rule might have excluded outright enslavement or slavery, as it did for many later abolitionists. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Christians, Jews and Muslims frequently referred to Noah’s curse as justification for hereditary enslavement. Davis contrasts his own approach with those of many past historians, including Marxists who, he insists, offered a reductively economic explanation of New World slavery, at the expense of “cultural and ideological factors, especially religion.” In fact, some Marxist historians of slavery, such as (the younger) Eugene Genovese, have placed considerable emphasis on culture, religion and racial ideology — at times more than Davis himself. Davis writes: “Having clarified early Jewish views on black Africans and slavery, it is crucially important not to project blame onto Islamic writers, who from the seventh century onward did establish strong precedents for linking blackness with slavery, often reinforced by references to Noah.... If Jews or Christians had been in the Arab’s place, actively enslaving, purchasing and transporting sub-Saharan Africans, they would surely have generated their own justifying ideology.” A good point, but, if true, where does it leave Davis’s earlier rejection of “economic determinism”? Members of all three religions of the Book made their peace with slavery when it became important to the communities in which they lived. Davis’s concern not to be too hard on religious authorities, especially on any single religion, is understandable since most were at least trying to elevate standards of behavior and an honorable minority expressed concerns about slavery and the exclusion of nonbelievers or strangers from communal protection. But the awkward fact is that the great religions, while sometimes advancing humane values, allowed dangerous loopholes or regarded religious deviance as much worse than cruelty. Christians did not even rate cruelty as a deadly sin, in contrast to sloth and lechery. And each religion had its own strengths and weaknesses. Jews and Muslims, for example, tried to ban or limit the enslavement of fellow believers, something the early Christian churches usually tolerated. Davis does not much distinguish between Protestantism and Catholicism, perhaps because both came to endorse racial slavery. However, Protestants had much greater latitude to devise their own interpretations because they believed themselves to have a personal relationship to God and Scripture. Even when the Catholic Church endorsed racial definitions, it did not authorize believers to determine who was to be the target of enslavement. The famous Papal Bulls permitting Portuguese slave trading were highly specific and conditional, applying only to certain agents of the Portuguese king and so long as the heathens or Canaanites were baptized. Small Protestant “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2443 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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communities were more “democratic” and readier to allow each believer to decide for himself who was a “son of Ham” and what this might mean. Catholic slavery was no less destructive or cruel than Protestant slavery. But it preferred the religiously defined scope of enslavement to be established by clerical authorities and not to be twinned with an obvious physical sign, like skin color, that could be assigned without their help. Spanish Catholicism did validate the racially loaded term “limpieza de sangre” (purity of blood), but the hierarchy was uneasy about it and insisted that the Holy Office retain control over its application. The Catholic practice of racial slavery allowed for greater flexibility and development than was to become typical of Protestant slaveholders. Manumission and the condition of the free person of color probably were a bit easier in the Spanish or Portuguese colonies. On the other hand, the more temperate climate of the North American colonies made for better physical living conditions for the mass of the enslaved. Assessing the precise mix of cultural and economic factors in the formation of New World slavery is not easy, and if Davis occasionally has difficulty here he is hardly alone. It is, perhaps, important to register that while racial feeling certainly preceded the rise of the slave systems and led to their racial character, the “proto-racism” of the sixteenth century was quite different from the full-fledged racism that began to emerge in the eighteenth century. Lars von Trier’s recent film Dogville offers a helpful parable here, showing how fatally easy and convenient it is for a community to allow a stranger to perform the most disagreeable tasks and only later discover they are keeping a slave. Racial ideologies allotted very harsh jobs to those regarded as aliens or a race apart. Davis rightly insists that the racial stereotypes generated by slavery often equated the slave with a beast of burden or domesticated animal. At the same time, phobic forms of racism did not always fit very well with being a slaveholder, since the master’s dependence on the slave could be quite intimate. Slavery was always oppressive, but up close, even the enslaved could gradually establish limits within that oppression. In an aside Davis gives us a fascinating glimpse of an episode in which he learned about this: “When in 1945, I was an eighteen year old soldier on a troopship, I was given a billy club and ordered to descend into the lower depths of the ship, where for four hours I was to keep the ‘Negroes’ (a worse word was probably used) from gambling. Until then I had not even known there were any black troops aboard (the army was, of course, ‘segregated’). When I at last arrived in what seemed like the lowest hold of a slave ship, one of the many crap-shooters asked: ‘What you doin’ down here, white boy?’ I finally found a shadow in which to hide.” INHUMAN B ONDAGE contains passages of great wisdom and leads to some rather unsettling conclusions. But sometimes Davis’s insistence on complexity and his generosity to critics lead him to embrace arguments that do not cohere. He writes: “The expansion of the slave plantation system ... contributed significantly to 2444 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Europe’s, and also America’s, economic growth. But economic historians have wholly disproved the narrower proposition that the slave trade or even the plantation system as a whole created a major share of the capital that financed the Industrial Revolution.” The first sentence did not need the half-retraction of the second. In Britain at least (and probably New England and France too) early manufacturers did depend to a “major” extent on credit extended by merchants and bankers whose fortunes derived from plantations and the plantation trades. Of course, capitalism preceded and greatly stimulated the growth of the plantations. But recently economic historians have become much more willing to identify a major foreign trade component in capital accumulation during the Industrial Revolution. Davis sometimes writes as if sugar, tobacco and cotton themselves created the new consumerism. To some extent they did, but mass consumption really took off only in areas where people had money in their pockets or purses: These were the areas where capitalism had developed. Capitalist social relationships were defined and lubricated by cash, whether wages, salaries, fees, rents or profits. Without this intense boost to demand, the slave plantations would have remained modest and marginal. Elsewhere Davis writes of the “purely capitalistic” British sugar plantations: “The business mentality eventually worked to the slaves’ benefit in the late 1700s and early 1800s. British planters and their agents discovered that slave productivity could be greatly increased by eliminating the most cruel and grisly punishments.... There is a danger, however, in exaggerating the humanitarian effects of the so-called amelioration policy....” The increased output was also a result of working the slave gangs harder and eventually helped to provoke large-scale slave uprisings, which advanced the cause of emancipation. In the 1980s the American Historical Review featured an extensive debate between Davis and Thomas Haskell, who had written an extensive critique of Davis’s brilliant study THE PROBLEM OF S LAVERY IN THE A GE OF R EVOLUTION. Among many other arguments in that rich and subtle book, Davis maintained that British abolitionism, with its early emphasis on “free labor,” helped to express a new type of capitalist hegemony (a concept borrowed from Antonio Gramsci). Haskell, by contrast, viewed abolitionism as a direct and pristine product of the new cognitive space permitted by market relations, prior to and apart from class struggle. The question for Haskell (who failed to accord any significance to black rebellions in the plantation zone) was why it took so long for market relations to perform their alchemy and generate the abolitionist movement. In INHUMAN BONDAGE Davis restates something like his former conclusions, albeit in what is offered as a reformulation of Eric Williams’s argument that abolitionism emerged as a result of imperial crisis: “I doubt that Williams’ orthodox leftist followers would be satisfied by even a well-developed theory relating British anti-slavery to free-labor ideology.... Yet such a theory, based on more empirical evidence, would confirm much of Williams’ most important insights.” Williams had an overly economic account of the imperial crisis, but he was right to see official “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2445 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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abolitionism as contributing to imperial reform and reorientation. Davis’s argument that British abolitionism also drew on “free labor” ideology is well taken and not one that radical historians will dispute. It offered terrain upon which both hardheaded bourgeois and newly conscious workers could stand. (Eric Foner made a similar argument for the American context in his memorable 1970 study FREE SOIL, FREE LABOR, FREE MEN.) Where does the American Revolution belong in this narrative? The result of American independence was to establish a state for slaveholders, while the pattern of Atlantic trade stemming from the Revolution helped foster an enormous slave-based boom. Davis recognizes this, yet he concludes that “most important in the long run, was the Revolution’s legacy of ideology — the popularization amongst blacks as well as whites of a belief in individual freedom and inalienable natural rights.” In his engaging new book, ROUGH CROSSINGS, Simon Schama delves into the archives and comes up with a rather different account. For Schama the antislavery idea was already a strand of “English liberties” or “British freedom”; Lord Mansfield’s famous judgment in the Somerset case was believed by many to have confirmed the claim that England’s free air was incompatible with slavery. While the American rebels suspended the slave trade, several British commanders went further than this and offered freedom to all slaves of rebel masters who would join the loyalist side. In the end about 20,000 did, and their British commanders repaid them for their service when the war ended. The peace treaty required the return of all stolen property, but to the fury of the American side, the British military evacuated about 15,000 former slaves from New York and Charleston. Schama is well aware that British military emancipationism was opportunistic and selective, reserved only for slaves owned by rebels. Somewhat like Davis, he argues not that the British government was genuinely antislavery at this point but rather that its strategic offer of emancipation chimed in with the rhetoric of “British freedom” and allowed many thousands of African-Americans to escape slavery and eventually to reach for, and briefly enjoy, a measure of black self-government. Schama has a little-known story to tell. He follows the former slaves from New York to Nova Scotia, Canada, and then to Sierra Leone, on the West African coast. John Clarkson, brother of Thomas Clarkson, the British abolitionist organizer, went to Nova Scotia at the behest of a group of philanthropists who had raised the enormous sum of £4 million –equivalent to about $600 million in today’s money– to help to resettle Canada’s loyalist black refugees in Africa. Clarkson found well over 1,000 willing to sail, many more than had been anticipated, with Canada’s climate and the hostility of some whites, as well as a longing to return, being part of the explanation. Schama stresses the emergence of capable leaders among the African-Americans and the eventual establishment of a colony marked by lively self-government. This picture is confirmed by Cassandra Pybus, who, in her well-researched EPIC JOURNEYS OF FREEDOM, supplies a vivid portrait of several of the African- Americans who sought freedom with the British, notably Henry 2446 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Washington, one of the leaders of the Sierra Leone group. (Henry Washington was well placed to learn from at least one of the Founders, having been the property of George Washington himself.) The plans for Sierra Leone had initially been drawn up by pioneering English abolitionist Granville Sharp, who championed a type of grassroots democracy called frankpledge, supposedly based on Anglo-Saxon traditions. At all events the members of the young settlement were invited to form themselves into “tithings” and “hundreds” and then, women as well as men, to elect their own leaders who would be responsible for local administration while leaving overall responsibility to the colonial company and its officers. John Clarkson, the first governor of Freetown, managed to make this work effectively and even grew to like the African drumming that had at first alarmed him. But the proprietors declined to reappoint him because they believed that he and his brother had become infected with the Jacobin contagion (both Thomas and John visited France in the early days of the Revolution and looked with favor on its eventual antislavery moves). The system of black self-government was sustained even under the governorship of Zachary Macaulay but was eventually largely suppressed after a black revolt. Schama sees black resistance and revolt in Sierra Leone in the 1790s and afterward as a tribute to the potential of “British freedom,” even when this had been negated or adulterated by the official proprietors of the colony. Davis sees the very same events and assertions as an echo of the legacy of the American Revolution, evident even among those who had escaped from it. No doubt African-Americans appropriated ideas from these and other sources — including evangelical abolitionists, unpatriotic, free-thinking radicals and, last but not least, West African traditions of village and tribal governance. But the eventual mixture was their own. Davis has a chapter on the revolution in Haiti, formerly Saint- Domingue, which he rightly sees as a crucial turning point, establishing the first sovereign state in the world to abolish slavery. While the universalism of revolutionary republican ideology had its effect on the leaders of the Haitian revolution, the British, French and Spanish were defeated only as a result of the tenacity of tens of thousands of colored revolutionaries, many African-born, who fought on even when the famous leaders had yielded. This spirit of the revolution, like the spirit of the Sierra Leone colonists, must in the end be seen as a new strand of black and colored emancipationism that was to fuel many future antislavery struggles. When it came to slavery, Haiti reached conclusions that were to require another generation or two in Britain and the United States. Davis’s book has a brief epilogue, but its last substantial chapter concerns the Civil War and emancipation in the United States. In many ways this is the most intriguing part of the book. At some points Davis seems to imply that emancipation should be seen as a vindication of an antislavery promise held out by the Founders. The problem with this is not only that the Founders formally supported or compromised with slavery but also that many of those antebellum Americans who most consistently opposed slavery, such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2447 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Phillips, were distinctly unpatriotic, indeed sworn enemies of the Constitution. Without the radical abolitionists, many of whom were black, the Southern states might never have seceded. Those who refused burgeoning American nationalism made a critical contribution to antislavery, as Garry Wills has argued in his recent study of Jefferson, “NEGRO PRESIDENT.” Davis avoids a triumphalist account of the Civil War. He sees that war through the prism of its great brutality and dehumanization and the ensuing emancipation of the slaves as heavily compromised by the defeat of Reconstruction. He implies that while in the past he regarded the Civil War as a “good war,” he no longer does, and he seems to question the ease with which Garrison gave up his pacifism. But if the war between the states was not a “good war,” was it at least a necessary war to end slavery? Davis briefly observes that slavery was overcome in a different and better way in Brazil, but he does not indicate whether this route could have been pursued in North America. However, he writes: “No doubt we will always have a small number of psychopathic torturers and serial killers. The worst evils arise when institutions encourage large numbers of ‘ordinary’ people to adopt similar behaviour and win approval and even admiration from, let us say, fellow guards at a Nazi death camp, or even at an American-run Iraqi prison. We are seldom willing to recognize the truth that every war converts normal and ordinary citizen-soldiers into serial killers, often of so-called innocent civilians, as in the massive bombings of World War II. I say this having been rigorously trained to kill Japanese in the planned invasion in the autumn of 1945.” Davis ends this searching and important book on a more positive note, signaling that the ultimate suppression of slavery in the New World could not have been accomplished without both “slave resistance” and the wider “abolitionist movements.” This historic and “willed” achievement, he suggests, raises reasonable hopes for assembling the ambitious alliances needed to redress wrongs in today’s world, including both legacies of slavery and the “still devastated continent of Africa.” The left has not always found it easy to identify its own debt to antislavery, no doubt because much official abolitionism was intensely bourgeois and evangelical. But the leaders of radical abolitionism, from Sharp and Clarkson to Garrison and Phillips, were genuine progressives. Once emancipation became official policy, its radicalism was much diminished and sometimes entirely perverted. It is sobering to reflect that Africa was carved up by the colonial powers in the name of suppressing the slave trade. While the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was a cynical travesty of antislavery, some genuinely abolitionist impulses did lend support to colonialism. Although in many respects extraordinarily pioneering and progressive, abolitionism was (particularly in its official version) remote from the antislavery of the slaves and thus unable, once slavery ended, to identify new forms of racial domination, whether in the New World plantation zone or in the lands colonized by Europeans. William Lloyd Garrison’s decision to close The Liberator in 1865 testified to such a blind spot. Yet the movement had a more radical legacy that deserves to be paid 2448 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tribute. Wendell Phillips and other abolitionists disagreed with Garrison, realizing how much still remained to be done to insure that the former slaves achieved a freedom worthy of the name. Partly for this reason Phillips welcomed the founding of The Nation in the same year that The Liberator closed.

2007

February 8: According to the Chronicle of Higher Education: Yale U. Will Take Down Portrait Assailed as Racist Yale University will remove a portrait of its earliest major benefactor, Elihu Yale, that depicts him being waited on by a black servant wearing a metal collar, after years of controversy over the painting, which some critics see as a bigoted image at the center of power on the Yale campus. The portrait has hung for a century in the room where the university’s governing board meets. According to the Yale Daily News, a student newspaper, the controversial portrait will be replaced with one showing Elihu Yale alone. The university’s decision is a rare step in academe, many of whose oldest institutions were founded, financed, or led by slave owners or people involved in the slave trade. Last year, Brown University released a report on the slave connections of its founders that said Brown should acknowledge its ties to slavery, build a memorial on the campus, and establish a center on slavery and justice — but not to pay reparations or to apologize. At Yale, three graduate students released a study in 2001 that documented how many of the university’s benefactors profited from the slave trade, and financed some of Yale’s oldest scholarships and professorships. The study noted that eight of Yale’s 12 residential colleges were named for slave owners. The irony is that Elihu Yale himself owned no slaves, according to

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Yale officials.

September 28, Friday: In the pages of the London Review of Books, Nicholas Guyatt explicated the connection that had developed early on in America between race (blackness) and slaveholding as an obligate connection that had been of primary benefit to our poor white Southern trash (providing them with someone they could always be better than), and explained this nation’s post-civil-war record of ingrained and persistent Jim-Crow prejudice as a mere perpetuation of that advantageous prewar mental crime: Our Slaves Are Black INHUMAN BONDAGE: THE RISE AND FALL OF SLAVERY IN THE NEW WORLD by David Brion Davis

THE TRADER, THE OWNER, THE SLAVE by James Walvin

THE FORGING OF RACES: RACE AND SCRIPTURE IN THE PROTESTANT ATLANTIC WORLD, 1600-2000 by Colin Kidd

THE MIND OF THE MASTER CLASS: HISTORY AND FAITH IN THE SOUTHERN SLAVEHOLDERS’ WORLDVIEW by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese

In 1659, during the last months of the Commonwealth, 72 slaves from Barbados managed to escape to London. They complained to Parliament that they had been living in “unsupportable Captivity,” working at the furnaces and sugar mills, and “digging in this scorching Island” with only roots and water to sustain them. They had been “bought and sold still from one Planter to another, or attached as horses or beasts for the debts of their masters.” Many had been badly beaten. Having fled from

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the “disconsolate vault” of Barbados, they were terrified that they might be recognised and returned to the Caribbean. “I am escaped,” one said in a letter to an MP, “I cannot say free, but rather, as one brought over in a Coffin, out of which I may not peep, until the protection of this Parliament unlock it, and say, Arise Freeman and walk.” This petitioner and his desperate associates were not confident that they would be vindicated in their appeals, even though they had one trump card up their sleeves: they were white. The petitioners” circumstances were unusual: they had been transported to Barbados as suspected Royalist insurgents after the failed Salisbury Uprising of 1655. But, in the mid-17th century, white people could be found near the bottom of the slave hierarchy as well as at its apex. As the plantations in the Caribbean and the American South were established, white labourers performed many of the onerous tasks that would later be done exclusively by blacks. Political prisoners from the English Civil War were sent directly into West Indian slavery, and poorer whites were encouraged (by destitution, misleading advertising or organised kidnapping) to become field hands in Virginia and the Caribbean. By the end of the century, this had become impossible. Slavery in the English Atlantic had coalesced around the subjugation of Africans, and a colour line had been drawn which reassured even the humblest white labourers that they couldn’t be subjected to the very worst forms of exploitation. For nearly a century thereafter, racialised slavery went largely unchallenged. Then, quite suddenly, things began to change. In 1772, the chief justice, Lord Mansfield, issued the famous Somerset Decision, which was taken to have outlawed slavery on English soil. In 1787, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce began their campaign against the slave trade. Parliament eventually voted to end the trade in 1807; the United States followed suit in 1808. Slavery in the British West Indies was abolished in 1834, and even the tenacious slave system of the American South was destroyed in 1865. The story of Atlantic slavery continues to attract historians, perhaps because it encompasses the moral absolutes of depravity and redemption. In the most popular version, a few brave campaigners change the moral sensibility of entire nations, and slavery is eventually banished from the Americas. (A similar story frames the current celebrations in Britain marking the bicentenary of abolition.) But behind this narrative of tragedy and triumph lies the more complicated issue of race. How did slavery and blackness become indelibly linked in the 17th and early 18th centuries? And why did the rise of antislavery in Britain and America coincide with an intensification of racial thinking? David Brion Davis’s INHUMAN BONDAGE throws light on the process by which slavery became exclusively black. There were many European precedents for white slavery, not only in the classical period but in the trading networks of the late medieval Mediterranean. The word “slave” derives from sclavus, or Slav, and the vast majority of slaves in Western Europe before the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 were taken from the lands “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2451 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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between the Black Sea and the Caspian. (They were literally Caucasian.) Cut off from this supply, and from the lucrative overland routes to Asia, European merchants and explorers sought an alternative passage around the cape of Africa. In the process, they stumbled on a new supply of enslaved peoples made available by black traders on the African coast. They also encountered the indigenous Canary Islanders, the Guanche, who acted as guinea pigs for New World slavery; and, inadvertently, they found America itself. The discovery of vast new lands to the west led to an immediate and enormous need for labour. In the early 16th century, Native Americans –especially in the Caribbean– were ravaged by European microbes to which they had no resistance. And then, after 1542, they were exempted from slavery by the Spanish Crown. Africans, who had been exposed to the same microbes for centuries, were brought to Spanish America and Brazil as a replacement workforce. While they fared better than their native predecessors, the mortality rates for field labourers were usually appalling. Over the course of the 17th century, this reinforced the logic of slavery: whites were loath to opt for indentured service in the plantation system because they were unlikely to survive the experience. Planters and slave traders had either to enslave white people or to bring over more Africans. As the example of the Royalists in Barbados suggests, white slavery was not out of the question in 17th-century America, but planters and traders were nervous about enslaving white people, principally on religious grounds. The Royalist petitioners pleaded in 1659 that they were Christian rather than white, and the same belief in the incompatibility of slavery and Christianity recurs throughout the fascinating account of the colonisation of Barbados published in 1657 by the English agent Richard Ligon. Many planters remained nervous about bringing religion to their slaves in the 18th century. Even as some argued that Africans were naturally inferior to whites, planters feared they would lose their powers to enslave when their workers became Christians. If African slavery came to dominate the labour systems of the Americas for pragmatic rather than ideological reasons, we might wonder when ideology –and theories of race– entered the picture. Davis chronicles a variety of attempts to rationalise black slavery and inferiority, from the biblical curse of Noah to the quasi-scientific concept of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre) which prevailed in the Spanish Empire. The question of how, exactly, these intellectual influences shaped social and political action is harder to fathom, especially in the more autonomous societies of the British Atlantic. James Walvin’s new book takes a different approach. In an effort to get away from the “big meta-narrative,” Walvin presents biographical sketches of three participants in Britain’s 18th- century slave economy. John Newton (1725-1807) was a slave captain who became an Anglican cleric and, towards the end of his life, an opponent of the trade. Thomas Thistlewood (1721- 86) was an overseer and eventually a slaveholder in western Jamaica who compiled a meticulous diary of his activities. Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-97) was a black slave who worked as a 2452 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sailor in his early years until he raised enough money to buy his freedom. (Like Newton, he became an important witness against the trade.) These diverse figures give us some sense of what it meant to experience slavery at first hand. Walvin’s framework is simple: Newton is the slave trader who came to repent his actions; Thistlewood the English Everyman who was corrupted by plantation life; Equiano the African who triumphed over slavery. But the stories keep wandering away from this simple characterisation, towards ambiguities which upset the image of the 18th century as marking a gradual triumph over the inhumanity of slavery. John Newton was a dissolute young man who discovered a sense of discipline through the patient and strict management of slaves. He sailed from England to West Africa to the Caribbean with no apparent acknowledgment of the immorality of his actions. He didn’t talk about race, or national origin, or purity of blood: he simply negotiated with African slave traders, chained his purchases in the dark hold of his ship, applied thumbscrews to the troublemakers, and sold his cargo at a profit in the fever- ridden harbours of the West Indies. Meanwhile, he wrote love letters of a rare tenderness to his wife, and became interested in religion. This might be the stuff of a classic conversion narrative. A stroke in 1754 put an end to Newton’s slaving days and set him on the road towards the Church. In 1764 he wrote an autobiography, which was intended to demonstrate that he had repented of his wild youth. But in his catalogue of callow sins and foibles, Newton found no place for slaving. Instead, he confessed to infidelity, sexual licentiousness and indolence. When he mentions the slave trade –with which he was closely involved for a decade– he nonchalantly concedes that it is “in many respects far from eligible,” but that he was “satisfied with it, as the appointment Providence had marked out for me”. More than twenty years passed before Newton turned on “that unhappy and disgraceful branch of commerce.” In the meantime, he befriended a very young William Wilberforce and moved to London. Newton reconsidered the morality of his early years only when the antislavery campaigners of the late 1780s encouraged him to testify. After writing a pamphlet in 1788, and appearing before the Parliamentary committee investigating the trade, he withdrew once more from the debate. Newton could have been one of the most powerful and credible antislavery voices, but he played only a small role in the campaign. The careers of Thomas Thistlewood and Olaudah Equiano also diverge from type. Thistlewood’s diary provides damning evidence against him, recording his numerous rapes and beatings of slaves as well as his slow ascent into the planter class in Jamaica. And yet his unchecked appetites also led to his becoming emotionally dependent on his slaves. As an overseer, he began a relationship with a slave woman called Phibbah, and worked hard to sustain their connection all through his life. Phibbah had managed to acquire cash and property even before she met Thistlewood, selling food and animals in the informal trading networks that gave modest hope to Caribbean blacks. Thistlewood looked after her money, and even borrowed from her early in his “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2453 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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career. In 1760 she gave birth to his son, and he set aside money in his will for Phibbah to buy her freedom. It’s hard to contest Walvin’s verdict that Thistlewood was a brutal man, but his enduring attachment to Phibbah and her family raises difficult questions. Was this villainous planter “civilised by his slaves”? Did he find some form of redemption among the creolised Africans he had subjugated? Olaudah Equiano has become a controversial figure among scholars. In his autobiography, he claimed to be an Igbo born in what is now Nigeria, and offered a wrenching account of the Middle Passage which was an especially effective piece of evidence in the antislavery campaign. Recently unearthed baptismal and naval records suggest, however, that he may have been born in South Carolina. Walvin doesn’t go into this uncertainty, but the undisputed facts of Equiano’s life throw up their own uneasy questions. While one can appreciate his delicate position before he secured his manumission papers in 1766, he continued to work in the trade as a free man. He didn’t derive his entire income from slavery: he spent some time as a hairdresser in London, and even travelled in 1773 on a Royal Society expedition in search of a northeast passage to Asia. But, as with Newton, it was some time before he became unambiguously opposed to the enslavement of black people. Equiano agreed in 1775 to accompany the scientist and businessman Charles Irving on a colonisation venture. Irving was well aware of Equiano’s adaptability: they had originally met in a Haymarket barber’s shop, and Irving had been impressed enough to recruit him as a scientific assistant on his voyage towards the North Pole in 1773. Two years later, Irving’s new scheme called for black slaves to plant provisions and haul mahogany and logwood in a colony on the Mosquito Coast. Equiano agreed to buy slaves in the West Indies and to assure them that, in spite of the hostility of the Spanish and the wariness of the colony’s indigenous population, they were embarking on something other than a suicide mission. It is an incongruous tale: in 1776 a black man and a white man, having developed a friendship over several years, founded a new American colony based on slave labour. Paul Lovejoy, who has investigated this venture carefully, believes that Equiano and Irving saw the plantation as a social experiment as well as a commercial opportunity: the slaves might eventually be freed, after proving themselves in the new colony. But Equiano’s actions suggest that he had yet to turn against racialised slavery in spite of his own experiences. Having assured his new African recruits that they had a bright future, he fled the plantation when it was beset by bad weather and harassed by the Spanish (both were eminently predictable). The entire slave population eventually died in a vain effort to escape from the colony by sea. This disastrous affair should not detract from Equiano’s role in the antislavery campaign of the late 1780s and 1790s, but it adds another complication to the straightforward story of antislavery’s triumph. The moral certainties of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce had shallower roots than we might imagine. Was racialised slavery based on a racist ideology? White 2454 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Englishmen and women recognised differences of skin colour from the moment that black people arrived in significant numbers (as entertainers and servants, mostly) in the late 16th century; but they were slow to develop any coherent system of racial superiority to back up their prejudices. Historians of English racism often cite Elizabeth I’s proclamations in 1596 and 1601 against the presence of so many “blackamoors,” and note that the Crown hired a Lübeck merchant to remove black people on both occasions. But Elizabeth’s complaint focused on practical matters and religion rather than “race”: there wasn’t enough food to support England’s existing population, she insisted, and the recent black arrivals were “infidels” rather than Christians. In 1596 she rounded up nearly a hundred Moors for a prisoner exchange with Spain, suggesting a still more instrumental motive for their expulsion. (Their English masters were asked to take comfort from the fact that Christians would be redeemed from captivity as a result of the swap.) Othello (1604) helped to subvert popular prejudices against North Africans –who often appeared as the villains in Renaissance drama, and were stereotyped as lascivious– but the intellectual basis of Iago’s pathology seems remarkably thin: “I hate the Moor” is his monotonous refrain. Scientific racism –which held that white people were endowed with superior qualities to black, and were perhaps a different species– did not gain intellectual traction until the middle of the 19th century. Instead, as Colin Kidd argues in THE FORGING OF RACES, it was religion that provided the benchmarks against which physical difference and racial potential could be measured. After a spirited opening chapter on the illusory nature of racial thinking, Kidd discusses the many (sometimes unintended) collisions between theology and race in the early modern period. Arguing that scripture should be considered “the primary cultural influence on the forging of races” before the 19th century, he plunges into an admirably plain-speaking exploration of some burning questions. Was Adam white or black? Which race did Cain encounter in the land of Nod? Did Moses provide a precedent for miscegenation? Kidd’s achievement is to persuade us that, for theologians and philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries, these questions were pressing and relevant to the modern world. He also contends that the idea of monogenesis – that all of humanity is descended from Adam and Eve– was a bulwark against racial inequality. One of the many surprising conclusions of this book is that “‘whites’ conquered the world without any overt ideology of white superiority.” Grassroots prejudice against black people – which might help John Newton to apply his thumbscrews, or Thomas Thistlewood to indulge his sexual appetite– ran far ahead of any formal racism in the treatises of European theologians and philosophers. The gap between racism in theory and in practice is, unfortunately, beyond Kidd’s purview: this is an intellectual history which rarely wanders beyond the pulpits and studies of a curious elite. But the book clearly demonstrates that ideas, and especially the fundamentals of the Christian religion, could not be simply placed in the service of an expanding imperialism. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2455 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Until the notions of monogenesis and of a single Creation were undermined in the 19th century, the most effective way of making religion serve racism and slavery was to invoke Providence and to suggest that God had intervened in history to create racial differences. The Scottish jurist Lord Kames, one of the leading lights of the moderate Protestant Enlightenment, speculated in 1774 that God created racial differences when he scattered the peoples who built the Tower of Babel. A more venerable and influential rationale was drawn from the ninth book of Genesis. As the floodwaters around Mount Ararat were receding, Noah whiled away an afternoon drinking wine from his vineyard. After resolving to sleep off his stupor, he was disturbed in bed by one of his sons. Ham, according to the story, not only exposed Noah’s nakedness but encouraged his brothers to laugh at their father. When Noah woke up, he cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and declared that his posterity would from now on be slaves to Ham’s brothers, Shem and Japheth, and their descendants. David Brion Davis suggests that this story, which had been revived at various points in the medieval period (most notably by Muslim slave traders working in Africa), was brought to Europe in 1498 by the Portuguese philosopher Isaac ben Abravanel. Abravanel claimed that Canaan and his descendants were Africans, while Japheth was the patriarch of the white race. He offered this interpretation not long after black slaves had become a familiar sight in Portugal, and just as Iberian slave traders began to expand their operations in West Africa and the Americas. Davis and Kidd agree that the scriptural basis for this racial interpretation of Noah’s curse was extremely weak, and that early modern Christians often acknowledged this. Nothing in the Bible suggested that Canaan was black, and the logic behind the curse itself was as mystifying as anything in the Old Testament. Why not curse Kush, Canaan’s brother? Or apply some more immediate punishment to Ham himself, who was responsible for the ridiculing of his father? Seventeenth-century clergymen such as Peter Heylyn veered between embracing the racial version of this story and dismissing it as “a foolish tale.” (Heylyn did both, at different moments in his life.) Some 19th-century commentators tripped on the awkward question of how stuffy old Noah had become both drunk and naked when he tumbled into bed. But the usefulness of the story outweighed its essential strangeness. The idea of Noah’s curse became a kind of “popular mythology,” in Kidd’s phrase, even while its credentials as formal ideology were extremely weak. It would retain its appeal (in America at least) until the 1860s, when it became one of the last rallying cries of the embattled Confederacy. Kidd began his research with the loose idea that religion had restrained racial prejudice: the reluctance of Protestants to abandon the belief in monogenesis forced them to avoid the convenient conclusion that Africans or Native Americans were naturally inferior beings. Noah’s curse, and the ability of Enlightenment thinkers to combine monogenesis with provocative speculations about racial difference, suggest instead that religion could be used to rationalise racism or slavery even while monogenesis might keep them in check. For those with the 2456 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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stamina and the curiosity, this point can be seen even more clearly in THE MIND OF THE MASTER CLASS, a massive study of slaveholders in the American South by Eugene Genovese and the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Eugene Genovese is the First Mrs Rochester of the American historical profession. Nearly forty years ago, he won prizes and rave reviews for his studies of the antebellum South, and he enlivened a stagnant field by bringing a Marxist analysis to the sectional conflict. Cheered on by the New Left, he claimed that the South had developed into a distinctive slave society ranged against a North of capitalist exploitation. In the afterglow of the Civil Rights era, historians took for granted that Genovese would be as scornful of slavery as he was of capitalism, and his early commitment to writing about slaves as well as masters did much to deflect attention from the conservative potential of his argument. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, Genovese and his wife produced a series of books which seemed troublingly like apologias for white slaveholders. They also fired off angry letters to newspapers and professional organisations about political correctness and multiculturalism, and they were effectively sidelined by their liberal colleagues. A reader of THE MIND OF THE MASTER CLASS who is unaware of this back story may be surprised by its belligerence. “This book is about white Southerners,” reads the first sentence, “and it is not about their ‘whiteness’– whatever that term may mean.” There’s more of this, including the Genoveses” determination to write about “the War for Southern Independence” rather than the “Civil War” or “the War of Northern Aggression.” Then there’s the thesis: the “master class” of white Southerners preserved slavery before 1860 not for material motives, but because they feared the bourgeois individualism, religious experimentalism and rampant capitalism that might prevail in a “free” society. Southerners read their Bibles carefully, found encouragement there, and strove for a political, moral and intellectual decency that only a slave society could facilitate. The Genoveses themselves seem beguiled by the master class and its logic. The epigraph of their book is from Santayana: “The necessity of rejecting and destroying some things that are beautiful is the deepest curse of existence.” The crabby introduction applauds our current aversion to racial subjugation as “a rare example of unambiguous moral progress,” then adds a discordant caveat: “Whether what is now recognised as wrong was always wrong –wrong in all circumstances and contexts– is a more complex issue than generally acknowledged.” The exhaustive survey of Southern intellectual life that follows is slanted towards the book’s central preoccupation with explaining a slaveholding worldview. Like Michael O’Brien, in his CONJECTURES OF ORDER (2004), the Genoveses are exasperated with the tendency of historians to dismiss Southerners as anti-intellectual, provincial or crassly materialistic. Unlike O’Brien, they suggest that slavery was the phenomenon about which Southerners thought most deeply and sincerely. For the Genoveses, Northern antislavery campaigners in the 1840s and 1850s gravely endangered the authority of scripture by replacing the injunctions of the Bible with the judgments of “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2457 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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conscience. Southerners linked this sort of moral experimentalism with the liberal social thinking that had eroded family relations in the North, or with a heartless capitalism throughout the Western world, or even with the French Revolution. Southerners maintained slavery as a “hedge,” the Genoveses claim, against “the excesses of their own epoch.” Their achievement was to wage a principled and pious rearguard action against the unhinged moralising of the North. It would be foolish to deny the religious sincerity of many Southerners, but Mammon was hardly banished from the South after the American Revolution. In 1860, two-thirds of the richest men in America lived below the Mason-Dixon line. The slave system itself was deeply embedded within the broader American economy. Slaveholders dealt amicably with Northern merchants and suppliers, and cotton became the export commodity that drove the nation’s capitalist expansion in the antebellum years. Even if we accept the premise that religious conviction trumped material interest, there’s another problem that returns us to the issue of race. The Genoveses concede that Southerners had trouble justifying racialised slavery from the Bible; so why were the slaves of the master class exclusively black? This question receives no sustained discussion, and at crucial moments the Genoveses struggle to deny the obvious conclusion that Southerners fused their biblical arguments for slavery with an unbiblical racism. Noah’s curse, for example, was the most popular Southern justification for keeping black people in chains. The Genoveses admit that the curse was viewed even by many Southerners as the “scripturally and intellectually weakest point in the biblical defence of slavery,” but they also acknowledge that it “emerged as the politically strongest.” The interesting question is why this should be so, and surely the Genoveses dodge this because they won’t like the answer. Southern defenders of slavery were willing to appropriate scripturally weak arguments when these might serve their political agenda: to keep blacks rather than whites in chains. There are other omissions in this long book which undermine the Genoveses’ central argument: that Southerners defended the Word by maintaining slavery. Slaveholders frequently reached for Providence rather than the Bible to explain black inferiority, and these arguments depended on religious and historical speculation rather than the verities of scripture. In the 17th and 18th centuries, according to the most popular providential claim of the antebellum era, God had brought blacks from the barbarism and ignorance of Africa to receive learning and religion on the American plantations. He would send the black race “back” to Africa when their education was complete. This comforting narrative enjoyed support throughout the South (and in the North), and gripped leading theologians such as Benjamin Palmer of New Orleans even after 1860. But these more slippery, providential arguments are absent from THE M IND OF THE MASTER C LASS, as is any sustained discussion of the scientific racism that became popular in the United States from the 1840s onwards. One of the Genoveses’ most prominent subjects, the politician James Henry Hammond, provides telling testimony against their thesis. If Hammond was a God-fearing Christian who read his 2458 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Bible faithfully, he had a strange way of showing it. In the mid-1840s, he was driven from the governor’s mansion in Charleston when word leaked out that he was having sexual relations with all four of his nieces. A decade later, his career miraculously revived, he became the most prominent spokesperson for what was later termed herrenvolk republicanism: the idea that one race could live happily and prosperously by subjugating another. There’s nothing about Hammond’s personal life in THE MIND OF THE MASTER CLASS –even his wife refused to live with him when he insisted on keeping his slave mistress in their home– but the omission of his views on race is especially startling. In 1858 he told the US Senate that all successful societies depended on “a class to do the menial duties,” and that this “mudsill” had been provided in the South by slavery. “We do not think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity,” Hammond said. “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race.” He also warned his Northern counterparts that their dependence on a white, enfranchised population to do this work was a huge mistake. The North had been wrong to abolish racialised slavery, and would get its comeuppance when the West was fully settled and the urban poor turned on the Northern master class. A handful of Southerners, like the eccentric social theorist George Fitzhugh, endorsed white slavery by the end of the 1850s for practical rather than religious reasons. Davis notes that Abraham Lincoln may have stiffened his opposition to the South in the belief that Fitzhugh’s ideas had caught on. In fact, Southerners remained unwilling to enslave white people for the same reasons as planters in the 17th-century Caribbean: it was hard to turn white Christians into slaves, and there were distinct social benefits in preserving an indelible line between white and black workers. In the South, the master class consolidated its position by persuading non-slaveholding whites (who outnumbered slaveholders) that racial belonging trumped economic status: poorer whites with no slaves often indulged in the most virulent racism, defining themselves as utterly different from the mudsill that held up the planter elite. The presumption of black inferiority was ubiquitous among the whites who built and maintained these slave systems, but it rested on shaky intellectual and religious foundations. Perhaps these prejudices gained their power from the fact that they were more often worked out in actions than in words. This might help to explain why, when Britons and Americans finally turned against slavery, they focused much more on the institution itself than on the people they had enslaved or the prejudices that had supported the trade. In fact, whites proved surprisingly amenable to racist thinking even as they rejected racialised slavery. Historians have long recognised that the development of a formal, intellectual racism in the Caribbean and United States was inspired by the antislavery challenge: when slaveholders came under concerted attack for the first time after 1770, they searched for a more durable basis for black inferiority in the hope that this would sustain slavery indefinitely. Although they lost the argument, planters found that their white antislavery “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2459 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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opponents were far less hostile to new thinking about black inability and racial hierarchies. This irony overshadows the idea of abolition as a moral triumph, and forces us to think more carefully about why the movements in Britain and America to abolish slavery did little to combat the toxic racism that outlived it.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: January 3, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.