Volume 16 • Number 3 • Fall 2016

OHIO VALLEYHISTORY

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A Collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati. VOLUME 16 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2016 VOLUME 16 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2016 FALL 3 • 16NUMBER • VOLUME Ohio Valley History is a Submission Information for Contributors to OHIO VALLEY STAFF David Stradling Phillip C. Long collaboration of The Filson University of Cincinnati Julia Poston Editors Nikki M. Taylor Thomas H. Quinn Historical Society, Cincinnati LeeAnn Whites Texas Southern University Joanna Reeder Museum Center, and the The Filson Historical Society Frank Towers Dr. Anya Sanchez Department of History, University Matthew Norman University of Calgary Judith K. Stein, M.D. Department of History Steve Steinman of Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati CINCINNATI Carolyn M. Tastad Blue Ash College MUSEUM CENTER Anne Drackett Thomas Cincinnati Museum Center and One digital copy of the manuscript, saved in Microsoft Word, *Regarding general form and style, please follow the BOARD OF TRUSTEES Albert W. Vontz III should be sent by email to: 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. For The Filson Historical Society Book Review Editor Kevin Ward specific style guidelines, please visit The Filson’s web- William H. Bergmann Chair Donna Zaring are private non-profit organiza- Matthew Norman, Editor or LeeAnn Whites, Editor site at: http://www.filsonhistorical.org/programs- Department of History Edward D. Diller James M. Zimmerman tions supported almost entirely Ohio Valley History Ohio Valley History and-publications/publications/ohio-valley-history/ Slippery Rock University Asst. 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A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society. Contents

3 Race, Slavery, and Freedom in the Ohio River Valley during the Civil War Era Jonathan W. White

6 Black Hoosiers and the Formation of an Antislavery Stronghold in the Central Ohio Valley Mark A. Furnish

28 Telling Testimony Slavery Advertisements in Kentucky’s Civil War Newspapers Timothy Ross Talbott

48 “At Liberty to Take Possession” How Cincinnati Riverboat Law Turned “Have-Nots” into “Haves” during the Civil War Era Matthew Axtell

72 Collection Essay Letters of Black Soldiers from Ohio Who Served in the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantries during the Civil War Katie O’Halloran Brown

80 Review Essay What Happened to Kentucky? Gerald J. Prokopowicz

84 Review Essay Reconsidering Battles and Leaders in the Ohio Valley’s Civil War Stephen Rockenbach

89 Book Reviews

106 Announcements

on the cover: African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters (c. 1863-1865). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Contributors

Matthew Axtell received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2002 and his PhD from Princeton University in 2016. He is currently employed as the assistant counsel for Environmental Law and Historic Preservation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, D.C. He has published a number of articles concerning slavery, the environment and the role of law.

Mark A. Furnish received his PhD in U.S. history from Purdue University in 2014. He is presently assistant researcher at the Frederick Douglass Papers Project, at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. He is working on a book manuscript entitled “A Rosetta Stone on Slavery’s Doorstep: Eleutherian College and Lost Antislavery History of Jefferson County, Indiana.”

Gerald J. Prokopowicz is professor of history at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He is the author of Did Lincoln Own Slaves? And Other FAQ about Abraham Lincoln (2009) and host of over 350 episodes of Civil War Talk Radio (www.impedimentsofwar.org).

Stephen Rockenbach is professor of history at Virginia State University, where he teaches courses in American history, military history, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. He is the author of War upon Our Border: Two Ohio Valley Communities Navigate the Civil War (2016).

Timothy Ross Talbott has his MA in public history from Appalachian State University. He is the associate director of Education, Interpretation, Visitor Services and Collections at the Pamplin Historical Park and National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Virginia.

2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Race, Slavery and Freedom in the Ohio River Valley during the Civil War Era

he Ohio River valley is one of the most important symbols in the history of race in nineteenth-century America. For decades southern slaves set their sights on its shores, hoping to cross onto the free soil on the Tother side. Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired to write the most important novel of the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, after reading about the harrowing escape of a slave woman and her child who had scrambled across large chunks of floating ice to gain their freedom on the north shore. Dred Scott’s landmark case began in St. Louis, just north of where the Ohio meets the Mississippi. And the Ohio River helped shape a young Abraham Lincoln’s views of race and slavery. One night while traveling down the Ohio in a steamboat in 1841, Lincoln observed a dozen slaves “shackled together with irons” being transported from Kentucky to the Deep South to be sold. The injustice of that scene “was a contin- ual torment to me” that still had “the power of making me miserable,” he wrote fourteen years later, “and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.” The banks of the Ohio River have proved a fertile ground for the scholarly study of race. Most recently, Matthew Salafia’s Slavery’s Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River (2013) examines the political, social, and economic interactions between white and black people north and south of the river. Rather than seeing the Ohio as a stark dividing line between slave and free territory, Salafia argues that it “was an economic conduit tying the region together.” White people in this border region accommodated one another, and the areas north and south of the river had much in common when it came to the treatment of African Americans. Salafia concludes, “This was not a region without conflict, but residents never gave up on the idea of living half slave and half free.” Much of the recent scholarship has focused on the effects of black migration northward during and after the Civil War. By the 1850s, most midwestern states had effectively banned black immigration, creating societies essentially for white citizens only. But studies by Darrel E. Bigham, Nicole Etcheson, and Leslie A. Schwalm have found that an increasing number of African Americans moved up the Mississippi and across the Ohio during the mid-to-late 1860s. Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation threatened to overturn racial hierarchies not only in the South, but also north of the Ohio River. White civilians felt threatened by the influx of black refugees and migrants, believing that federal authorities in

FALL 2016 3 RACE, SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN THE OHIO RIVER VALLEY DURING THE CIVIL WAR ERA

Washington cared more about the needs of southern slaves than about those of white northerners. As one Indiana newspaper crowed in 1863, “the crest of the black wave of freed negroes is surging across the Ohio…placing the negro side by side and in competition with white labor, forcing the State to assume the support of a horde of black paupers, idlers and thieves, and…paving the way for… the amalgamation of the two races.” The Ohio River—once a River Jordan for the enslaved—was now a gateway to territory that had been previously closed to free blacks. The essays in this special issue ofOhio Valley History bring new complexity to our understanding of race in the Ohio Valley during the Civil War era. Each, in its own way, reveals how black men and women used different mechanisms to claim some of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of citizenship. Some held public celebrations; others resorted to judicial proceedings; some ran away from their masters and sought to deceive those who captured them; others used the pension system to claim the support of the federal government. In an insightful social history of Jefferson County, Indiana, Mark A. Furnish recreates life in a place where African Americans enjoyed an unusual amount of autonomy and economic opportunity in the antebellum period. Ex-slaves and free blacks overcame great obstacles to become community leaders in Jefferson County—first by acquiring property, then by building community organizations that allowed residents to participate in political activism. Through their actions, Furnish shows how the black community was able to overcome societal obstacles and even win white men and women over to the antislavery cause. Most importantly, Furnish challenges the prevailing assumption that antebellum America was only a place of “smothering racism,” and that midwestern blacks did not build strong community organizations until after the Civil War. Timothy Ross Talbott’s splendid essay reveals how tensions between slaves and white authorities intensified during the war. Hundreds of fugitive slaves from across the South were arrested in Kentucky, where, under state law, county officials placed them on the auction block. Using newspaper advertisements for the sale of captured slaves, Talbott traces patterns of slave resistance as well as the ways that white Kentuckians responded. Of equal importance, Talbott’s research reveals how tenaciously Kentucky slave owners clung to the South’s “peculiar institution,” even after it had been abolished in the other border states and was on its way to national extinction in 1865. In a blending of legal, social, and economic history, Matthew A. Axtell explains how Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was able to apply egalitarian legal principles he had helped develop in the Ohio River valley during the antebellum era to the nation as a whole during the Civil War. Using debt collection procedures embodied in Ohio’s 1840 Watercraft Law, slaves, free blacks, and poor whites used the legal system to acquire property during the Civil

4 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JONATHAN W. WHITE

War, even though they were often excluded from the courts under other circumstances. As Axtell argues, these wartime developments helped embed these principles into our nation’s constitutional law through the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Katie O’Halloran Brown’s essay reminds us that in order to understand the Ohio Valley’s role in the Civil War, we must look for men from the region who fought in regiments from other states. In this case, Brown reproduces the letters of several African American men from Ohio who fought in the famous 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantries. Their letters reveal—in voices that are too often lost to history—the difficulties faced by black soldiers and their families during the Civil War. Taken together, these articles present a complex portrait of the Ohio Valley during the Civil War era, shedding new light on the history of race in nineteenth- century America. Along the way we encounter fascinating stories of black men and women, such as steamboatman Joe Spencer, blacksmith Elijah Anderson, and President William Henry Harrison’s barber, George DeBaptiste, among others, who overcame intense race-based opposition to build meaningful lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Jonathan W. White, guest editor Christopher Newport University

FALL 2016 5 Black Hoosiers and the Formation of an Antislavery Stronghold in the Central Ohio Valley Mark A. Furnish

n August 1, 1850, around two hundred African Americans conducted a parade to commemorate the British West Indies’ Emancipation Day in the streets of Madison, Indiana, a bustling county-seat town of Oroughly eight thousand citizens located on the Ohio River about halfway between Cincinnati and Louisville. As most of the participants were residents of the city’s eastside Georgetown district, it was natural that they met early that morning at the heart of their neighborhood, the corner of Walnut and Fifth Streets, to line up and make final preparations. Once the appointed step-off time arrived, however, African Americans from throughout surrounding Jefferson County were aligned in colorful but dignified cohorts: Masons in full regalia, women’s clubs enrobed in spotless white, and children’s church classes wearing their Sunday best. Bearing bright badges, signs, and banners emblazoned with patriotic slogans, the procession moved south on Walnut for three blocks before turning west on Main Cross Street to march more than a mile along the length of the city. Throughout most of this course, the participants could easily view the Kentucky shoreline of the Ohio River. Although evidence is sketchy, the parade route apparently ended back in Georgetown, where neighborhood festivities continued throughout the day.1

Madison, Indiana (c. 1854). JEFFERSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY RESEARCH LIBRARY

6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

Jefferson County’s African American community conducted this annual rit- ual in Madison throughout the turbulent 1850s and even elaborated on it as the decade progressed. The 1854 program, held at Melodeon Hall, one of the city’s pre- mier social venues, included a banquet with a featured orator. The twenty-five-cent admission contributed to the city’s black schools. In 1856 and 1857 the procession marched the length of the city but exited its western end, where participants spent the day at Clifty Grove, picnicking, socializing, playing games, and listening to speeches. It is not clear whether a parade was held in 1860, but 125 black citizens marked the day by taking an excursion on the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad to enjoy a picnic in the surrounding countryside northwest of the city. That evening, women of the “colored” Second Baptist Church held a “Fair and Supper” at the Melodeon Hall to raise money to repair their church building. One attendee, F. D. Bland, praised the taste and quality of the affair and commended his fellow white citizens: “We were gratified at seeing so large a number present.”2

Main Cross Street, Madison, Indiana (c. 1850s). JEFFERSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY RESEARCH LIBRARY

Historians of abolitionism have been aware of these August First celebrations for generations, but only in recent decades have they begun to decipher their deeper meanings. Since the 1990s, historians have begun to draw insights from literary scholars’ concern with aesthetics and rhetoric, specifically with how people represent themselves in form and content to persuade others. Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer claim that abolitionists widely used “print and image—language and representation” to create “a broad culture of dissent,” whose purpose was “to shape political discourse and alter public opinion in an effort to liberate the nation from the bonds of slavery and place it on the road to greater democratic equality.” Historians now view August First

FALL 2016 7 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY celebrations—encompassing speeches, music, banquet toasts, banners, showy attire, and even quasi-military parades—as artistic works of political rhetoric, performance art, whose purpose was to confront observers in a festive setting with the abolitionist ideas of universal freedom and equality in the hope they would embrace them. Displaying a high degree of sophistication, these events approached this goal practically by simultaneously displaying the competency of the black community’s social organization while reminding white citizens that the nation’s cherished republican ideals remained severely under-realized. Two other points of scholarly consensus are especially salient when one considers the annual Madison event: August First celebrations were the product of mature, well-organized black communities with strong leadership, and the expanding white participation in them demonstrated the growing acceptance of abolitionist ideas across the urban North.3 To interpret Madison’s celebrations as artistic performances of effective abolitionist rhetoric conducted by a substantial and well-organized African American community collides head-on with the vast bulk of scholarly writing on antebellum race relations in Indiana, and the North in general. Since the mid-twentieth century, nearly all such works have been guided by the “smothering racism” interpretation. Faced with abundant evidence that the southern half of Indiana was heavily populated by settlers from the Upland South who generally feared and loathed blacks whether slave or free, historians have concluded that the state was simply too racist to allow any sizable group of African Americans or white abolitionists either presence or influence. As a result of this long-standing assumption of ubiquitous and smothering racism among white Hoosiers, historians have consistently not found what they were never really looking for: vigorous antislavery activity among blacks or whites, especially along the state’s southern border.4 Although Indiana is commonly singled out for being exceptionally racist during the antebellum era, the view that omnipresent and nearly omnipotent antiblack racism distinguished all states north of the Ohio River during the period is widespread. Ira Berlin’s censure is truly sweeping, asserting that the dynamics of the domestic slave trade were so pervasive and far reaching that “free states” did not actually exist until after the Civil War. In fact, northern states constituted “a region whose transition from a society with slaves was still incomplete.” In line with this logic, black communities in the North “assumed many of the characteristics of maroon enclaves.” The word “maroon” was commonly used in the South to designate runaway slaves who lived in small clusters on land that was undesir- able and hard to access, such as in swampy or mountainous areas. Although these enclaves provided their members with personal autonomy and protection vastly superior to virtually any form of slavery, they were still quite vulnerable to raids by slave traders. Berlin argues that African Americans in the North were similar to maroons in that they generally lived apart from white people, resided in the

8 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH least desirable areas (whether in the city or countryside), worked at menial jobs, had no official standing in the political system, and, most importantly, were ever exposed to the threat of kidnapping or recapture and forced enslavement in the South. Although few historians writing recently on early Indiana and the Ohio Valley directly refer to Berlin’s works, nearly all align with his bleak depiction of African American life in the pre–Civil War North as analogous to maroons living in defensive enclaves in the slaveholding South.5 Recent works closely examining African American life in the antebellum North tell a related but somewhat different story; it certainly contains pervasive and often constraining antiblack racism, yet it fully establishes that African Americans exercised their agency not only to create meaningful lives but even to challenge the forces that oppressed them. Those interested in the history of the Ohio Valley have been blessed with a range of studies that detail the herculean efforts of African Americans, in both urban and rural environments, to create the flourishing churches, schools, and voluntary social organizations required to sus- tain individual and community identity, hope, and meaning. Likewise, a spate of recent works on the Underground Railroad provides evidence that African Americans living in small neighborhoods scattered throughout the Ohio Valley risked their lives to assist escaping slaves to reach freedom and in the process arguably enflamed the sectional rancor that produced the Civil War. And yet, this literature on community development has totally overlooked the African American population living in Jefferson County, Indiana. And while works on the Underground Railroad have granted significant space to the efforts of Jefferson County’s African American operatives, these studies provide little social context to help explain why these events occurred where and how they did. An examination of the development of the free black communities in Madison’s Georgetown neighborhood, as well as the nearby rural settlement of Graysville will not only contribute to this rich body of scholarship but also help dispel the smothering racism interpretation that has so long distorted our understanding of African American life in the Ohio Valley.6 Like many other cities on the Ohio River, Madison, which was founded in 1809, originated as a transportation, services, and market center, and its prosperity generally rose and fell based on its fulfillment of these functions. The town’s early economy revolved around providing essential goods for travelers and area farmers, but with the maturation of both steamboat technology and Indiana’s agricultural society in the 1830s and 1840s, Madison became a booming commercial town. Farmers from throughout southeastern and central Indiana had their corn, wheat, and hogs processed at one of Madison’s many mills or pack- ing houses and then shipped to New Orleans and the world beyond from the city’s busy wharves. A host of ancillary industries prospered as well, including breweries, lumber mills, farm implement factories, and steamboat construction.

FALL 2016 9 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY Madison merchants also had ready access to high quality consumer items, which arrived from Pittsburgh and points east. Despite its high aspirations and two decades of rapid economic expansion, though, Madison never seriously com- peted with its older, too-proximate rivals, Cincinnati and Louisville. When the construction of rail lines from the Old Northwest to eastern cities reduced the commercial importance of the Ohio River in the late 1850s, Madison began a slow decline that would not reach its nadir until the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, during its fleeting “golden years” Madison was one of the largest cities in the Old Northwest; its elites exercised considerable social and political clout within Indiana, and its citizens bore a reputation throughout the Ohio Valley for being somewhat socially progressive.7 What shaped the course of Jefferson County’s social and cultural development through its dynamic early years was its unique experience of “first effective settlement”—the propensity for the first settlers into an area to indelibly imprint their characteristics upon the local cultural geography. Although the majority of its early population consisted of natives of the Upland South, from its earliest days it contained a considerable mix of peoples of various origins. In analyzing the results of the 1850 census, the first one to record nativity, geographer Gregory Rose found that the population of Jefferson County was above the Indiana state mean not only for in-migrant natives of the entire South (56.9 percent / 44.0 percent) and the state of Kentucky (33.4 percent / 17.3 percent) but also for natives of the New England region (4.3 percent /2.7 percent), the Mid-Atlantic region (20.1 percent / 19.9 percent), and the state of Pennsylvania (12.6 percent / 11.6 percent). When Rose examined ethnic and racial minorities recorded in this census, he found that Jefferson was also well above the state mean for foreign born of the total population (13.3 percent / 5.5 percent) and for foreign born of the in-migrant population (27.9 percent / 12.8 percent), as well as for in-migrant natives of Germany (8.8 percent / 6.8 percent), Ireland (11.8 percent / 3.1 percent), England (2.2 percent / 1.3 percent), Scotland (2.9 percent / 0.3 percent), Wales (0.1 percent / 0.04 percent), France (0.8 percent / 0.5 percent), and Switzerland (0.8 percent / 0.2 percent). In fact, Jefferson led all counties in Indiana in the total number of natives of Prussia (176), Ireland (1,341), and Scotland (326). For reasons discussed below, it is likely that many of the “Irish” in Jefferson County were from Ulster, and therefore actually Scottish in ethnicity and culture. Notably, Jefferson County was one of eight Indiana counties in 1850 to record more than five hundred African American residents (569), whereby it also exceeded the state mean (2.38 percent / 1.14 percent) for total black population.8 There was constant migration into and out of the Ohio Valley throughout the antebellum era, and yet the principle of first effective settlement meant that the social, religious, and cultural environment of a township, county, or multi- county area could be determined for decades according to what group arrived and

10 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH planted its churches first. Presbyterian congregations never made up the majority of churches in Jefferson County, but the timing of their founding and cultural presence was significant well beyond their numbers. Statistics on church formation in Jefferson County are instructive: by 1820 there were six Presbyterian, six Baptist, two Methodist, and two Christian; by 1850 there were eighteen Presbyterian, twenty-one Baptist, twenty-six Methodist, and seven Christian. Presbyterian congregations made up almost 23 percent of Jefferson County’s total churches in 1850; in no other Indiana county did they have a greater presence. Typical of formalist evangelical bodies that believed in eschatological progress through individual and social development, Jefferson’s Presbyterian churches were responsible for the founding of nearly all local schools and benevolent organizations and for the production of educated men who dominated most profes- sions and who led the majority of civic endeavors. As a result, the influence of these churches and their power-wielding, structure-shaping members was vastly greater than their mere numbers would imply.9 The character of the Presbyterians who settled Jefferson County was particularly consequential. Of the ten Presbyterian churches established in the county by 1830, five were Scottish Dissenting congregations, whose ethno-religious identity originated in early-eighteenth-century conflicts within the Church of Scotland. Three of these belonged to the Associate Synod, two to the Associate Reformed Synod of the West, and all had moved from the Upper South to flee slavery. These two religious bodies, the Associate “Seceders” and the Associate Reformed “Covenanters,” were noteworthy in the antebellum era for excluding slaveholders and denounc- ing racial discrimination. The first Presbyterian church established in Jefferson County was Carmel Associate, founded in 1812. In 1836 it hosted the organizational meeting for one of the earliest abolition societies formed in Indiana. Six other churches followed the lead of Madison’s New School congregation, founded in 1833. Consisting largely of members from the Upland South, mixed with a sizable element from the Mid-Atlantic states, it had an affinity for abolitionist clergy with roots in New England. Six more congregations looked for leadership to the Old School Hanover church, which was founded in 1820 by Kentuckians from the Bluegrass region who migrated north after losing battles against slavery in the constitutional conventions of 1792 and 1799, as well as within their own local presbyteries. Reverend John Finley Crowe (1787-1860). Its long-term pastor, Rev. John Finley Crowe, DUGGAN LIBRARY AT HANOVER COLLEGE

FALL 2016 11 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY moved to Jefferson County in 1823, after members of his Shelby County church threatened him for encouraging gradual emancipation and colonization. This congregation was also the progenitor of Hanover College, which, despite having abolitionists on its faculty and among its student body, was enthusiastically sustained by all wings of Presbyterians in the county.10 Only handfuls of Presbyterians in Jefferson County ever became true abolitionists after 1830, but most were “emancipationists,” meaning they opposed slavery on moral grounds and favored gradual, universal emancipation as its remedy. Principled but realistic, emancipationists believed immediate abolition was not politically fea- sible, and they therefore placed their hopes for the demise of slavery in the principles and measured practices of the Presbyterian Church, the American Colonization Society, and the National Republican and Whig political parties. In fact, their faith in the ability of these institutions to conquer slavery and its train of evils would not fully collapse until the mid-1850s, whereupon they made Jefferson County a Republican Party bastion. Nevertheless, the significant early presence of emancipationist Presbyterians was the key element in making antebellum Jefferson County an antislavery environ, a place in which antislavery sentiment and racial tolerance was meaningful enough that black and white abolitionists had the necessary social space to engage in activities that directly attacked slavery and racial discrimination. Between 1810 and 1860, African Americans fully exploited this opportunity. 11 Fear of themselves or family members being caught in the web of the slave trade was omnipresent for all African Americans living in the pre–Civil War North, but it did not dominate their lives. The free people of color who populated Jefferson County responded to this pervasive threat by developing local communities from which to find protection and draw strength. This process got off to a slow start though; county deed books reveal that many of the earliest black residents were newly emancipated and thus had few resources of their own, while others were still entangled in various phases of gradual emancipation. Nevertheless, free African Americans continued to settle in Jefferson with great hope. In the 1810s black men bearing the names Dickson, Stafford, Johnson, Griffin, and Boddy (variously spelled Body/Broady) paid taxes to the town, and either they or family members were still present and paying property taxes in the 1830s and 1840s. One early black settler of Madison, Lewis Evans, was relatively prosperous by the mid-1830s, operating a shoe store on Main Street that both blacks and whites patronized. Still, blacks remained a very small portion of the total population. In the 1820 federal census, Jefferson was accredited with 8,038 citizens, 112 of them African American, while in 1830, the county’s total count was 11,465, with 240 of them free people of color.12 All this changed in the 1830s when a new series of black laws in the Upper South drove many free blacks possessing trade skills and property north of the Ohio River. Relatively quickly, two African American communities took clear shape in

12 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

Jefferson County. A neighborhood named “Georgetown” became the heart of black Madison, located generally between Walnut and Main (modern Jefferson) Streets, while north of Fourth Street and south of Crooked Creek. In 1850, it was home to roughly 199 of the town’s 298 African Americans, while 105 of the town’s 247 black citizens lived there in 1860. Perhaps most importantly, it was home to the era’s most prominent African American citizens and institutions.13

Map of Madison, Indiana (c. 1854). JEFFERSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY RESEARCH LIBRARY

Two of the most important of these assertive southern blacks arrived in 1836. Though they had the same surname they were not related, and they arrived under vastly different circumstances. Elijah Anderson was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1808. It is not clear whether this light-skinned man was born free, but he was a highly skilled blacksmith when he established a shop at the corner of Walnut and Third Streets, so it is possible that he had purchased his freedom. He quickly appeared on Madison property tax records and about 1845 built perhaps the grandest home in the neighborhood, a two-story Federal-style brick townhouse. William J. Anderson claimed he was born free in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1811, and yet he was caught in the web of the American slave trade. His free but impoverished and widowed mother was forced to apprentice him to a local white man, who kidnapped him and sold him when he was fifteen years old. For ten years, he experienced all the horrors of American slavery: slave markets, auction blocks, coffle marches, stifling pens, deadening field labor, and repeated whip- pings and jailings for seeking freedom of mind and body. After forging a pass that got him up the Ohio River as far as Louisville, he miraculously escaped to the

FALL 2016 13 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY north shore and secreted himself in Madison. Beginning as a lowly hod carrier in 1836, within ten years he owned property both inside and outside of town, and had built a dignified Federal-style brick row house in the heart of Georgetown.14 Three other men who would be crucial to Madison’s African American community arrived in the late 1830s. John Carter was born free in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1814, but at a young age he was already living in Cincinnati and working as a steward on steamboats. Terrified by the intense animosity and violence poured forth by whites during the antiblack riots that swelled over that city in 1829, Carter was one of its many black residents who fled not only the city but the nation of their birth as well. He spent his young manhood in the relative peace of Canada but claimed he was driven back “home” to the Ohio Valley by the thought of his kinsmen living under daily threat. By 1838, he owned property in Madison, and by the mid-1840s he lived on north Main Street, on the western edge of Georgetown, while operating a grocery store on the corner of Main and Second Streets, one block from Jefferson County’s courthouse.15 George DeBaptiste was born to free parents in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1815, but at a young age he was sent to Richmond to learn the trade of barber- ing. By the age of eighteen he was working as the valet of a gambler named Amos, who plied his trade on the steamboats that ran the network of rivers that made up the Greater Mississippi Valley. It is not clear how or why he ended up in Madison, but by 1838 he owned property near John Carter on north Main Street. People who knew DeBaptiste during his later residence in Detroit say he was engaged in trade between Madison and Cincinnati from 1838 to 1840, while Madison sources claim that during this period he was employed as the head butler for the town’s top banker, James F. D. Lanier. Both groups of sources insist that these occupations were the means by which he became acquainted with William Henry Harrison, who was so impressed with him that he hired him as his valet at some point in 1840. DeBaptiste was by Harrison’s side through his untimely death one month after his inauguration as president in March 1841. Afterward, he returned to Madison and operated a barbershop for five years at the corner of Walnut and Second Streets, less than

one block from Carter’s store in the George DeBaptiste (1815?-1875). 16 heart of the town’s business district. BURTON HISTORICAL COLLECTION, DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY

14 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

Chapman Harris was born to a free mother in Nelson County, Virginia, in 1802 but apparently spent most of his younger life in Abemarle County. In old age he told of traveling down the Ohio River from Guyandotte, Virginia (later Huntington, West Virginia), to arrive in Madison by 1839. He soon had work as a teamster for a somewhat prosperous black man named Lewis Evans, although he appears to have done a range of activities throughout his life, from day labor to farming to being a Baptist pastor. In 1841 he was married to Patsy Ann Allen, who, though born a slave in Kentucky, grew up in the Ryker’s Ridge area northeast of Madison. The couple established a small farm within Eagle Hollow, a large ravine created by the waters of Eagle Creek, which entered the Ohio River roughly two miles east of Madison. Although he lived outside of Madison after roughly 1841, Harris and his family would always be deeply involved with the activities of the Georgetown community.17 It is notable that of the four men highlighted here who actually resided in Georgetown—the two Andersons, Carter, and DeBaptiste—all acquired real property almost immediately upon arriving in Madison. Except for William Anderson, who claims to have come with only $1 in his pocket, this reveals that all the men arrived in the town with some wealth. Joe Niehaus extensively researched Madison’s 1837–46 property tax and found that 42 African Americans (38 men and 4 women) paid taxes on real property during that period. There were 213 African Americans (men/women/children) counted among the 3,802 citizens of Madison in the 1840 federal census, thus making 5.6 percent of the city’s population. Of these, 107 (73 women and 34 men) were adults between the ages of twenty-four and one hundred. These figures suggest that somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the African American men in Madison owned real property at this time. All of this clearly demonstrates that Madison’s African Americans, regardless of background, embraced a key tenet of republicanism, which considered the ownership of productive property as the basis of economic independence, citizenship, and respect within American republican society. Property ownership also contributed to self-confidence, assertiveness, and identity—qualities the community’s members would display in abundance over the next quarter century.18 In the 1830s, once African Americans had securely acquired property, distinct community social organizations began to develop. Prior to the late 1830s, African Americans largely attended Madison’s Methodist and Baptist churches that were led and overwhelmingly populated by whites. Between 1839 and the early 1850s, however, African Americans established and constructed buildings for three separate congregations—Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal, and Baptist— which quickly became the central institutions of Madison’s black community. From them radiated virtually all other social welfare associations, including schools, benevolent societies, fraternal orders, and political conclaves. The link between black churches and black schools was particularly close and enduring. Before the Civil War, the state of Indiana made few real substantive efforts to educate its white

FALL 2016 15 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY children and none at all to educate its black children. As a result, both groups established local “subscription” schools as best as they could. Although details are slight, evidence indicates that several private schools for African American children ran in Madison from 1834 until the beginning of state-supported public education in 1869. Invariably, most operated out of structures designated as churches.19

Madison’s A.M.E. Church, present day. Advertisement for a ladies’ fair held by the women of the COURTESY OF ASHLEY B. ROBERTS Colored Baptist Church. Madison Republican Banner, June 19, 1844.

Also during the 1830s and 1840s, various fraternal organizations were formed within Madison’s African American community. Although established by Prince Hall in Boston in 1784, organized black Freemasonry did not arrive in Indiana until the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It arrived in Madison in 1849, with the establishment of the Eureka Lodge, more formally known as King Solomon’s Lodge Number Three of the Prince Hall Masons. Masons played significant leadership roles in African American communities across the North, so it is assumed that this was the case in Madison too, although details remain sketchy. A cryptic message published in the Madison Daily Courier on August 7, 1849, announced that “Social Fraternity No. 1” requested all “colored organizations” to participate in the funeral procession of Joseph O’Neal. It was signed by John Carter, William Anderson, and Thomas Jefferson Martin. It is likely that this fraternity was, in fact, the Masons, since they usually organized and led funeral processions for their members. Perhaps most interesting is the reference to “organizations,” clearly indicating that multiple social organizations were operating within the community at the time.20 The second major African American community in antebellum Jefferson County was the rural settlement of Graysville. Apparently named for William A. Gray, who was present in the area by 1820, it was a dispersed settlement of small farms located roughly five miles due west of Madison. Although there is much still

16 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH unknown about Graysville and its residents, a surprising amount is known due to a serendipitous visit there in 1834 by Edward Strutt Abdy, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge University. One of the many Europeans who wrote an account of his wanderings in the American Republic during its early years, Abdy was particularly interested in the living conditions of African Americans and commonly went out of his way to investigate them. Forced into an unplanned stay in Madison, he discovered Graysville’s existence while patronizing one of the town’s black barbers. On visiting the settlement, which he never named, but described perfectly, Abdy reported that it consisted of eleven families totaling 129 persons, spread over a rough rectangle one and one-half by one-half miles in length, with a “second colony” of two families about two miles away. The members were generally from Kentucky and Virginia and perfectly illustrated the range of Hoosier black pioneer origins: “Some are liberated slaves—others have bought their own freedom, and the rest were originally freemen.” Like most yeomen in the area, they owned farms between twenty and eighty acres on which they grew wheat, rye, hemp, and a bit of tobacco and raised a small mix of livestock. The settlement had a meetinghouse, which served as a school and a church and where Abdy attended a worship service, although he unfortunately provided no details. Deed records indicate that in 1837 the trustees of Graysville Methodist Episcopal Church purchased land within the settlement to build a structure upon. It is probable that this congregation conducted the worship service Abdy witnessed in 1834. Regardless, it is striking that in the early 1830s this settlement had a school and at least one congregation. Graysville’s population would peak shortly after the Civil War, only to decline to extinction by the mid-twentieth century.21 African American leaders worked hard throughout the antebellum era to create sustaining communities that would protect and nurture their people, and yet, opposition and division often emerged from within the communities. Issues such as differences in skin tone, regional origins, colonization, and emigration caused perennial division within the free black community. Even more fractious, according to Ira Berlin, was the class divide between “respectables” and the “rau- cous working class.” Community leaders ceaselessly espoused values prized by America’s white middling class: diligence, thrift, temperance, and self-improvement. They argued that by living respectable lives of dignity and purpose, “their people” would demonstrate to the white majority that they were worthy of the full rights of citizenship. They were forever fretful that poor black workers—noto- rious for their “swinging gait, tavern life, loud music, and open sexuality”—were confirming whites’ worst racial stereotypes. In return, poor workers detested and distrusted black men who spoke and behaved like white men. No evidence has yet surfaced to indicate there were serious fissures among Jefferson County’s African Americans, but this says more about the small extant primary source base than the community itself. One thing abundantly certain is that Jefferson County’s African

FALL 2016 17 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY American leaders fully embraced the ideal of respectability, and they seem to have done a good job inculcating “their people” with the notion. In 1916, elderly Mary C. Johnson recalled the antebellum Georgetown of her youth as “mostly inhabited by a good class of colored people…industrious and worthy citizens, all owning their own homes and were highly respected by the better class of white people.”22 Activities related to community development required far too much effort and sacrifice to be termed passive, yet they seldom directly challenged race-based legal discrimination or the notions of white supremacy upon which it was based. But beginning in the late-1830s, some of Jefferson’s African Americans began to do exactly that. Elijah Anderson and George DeBaptiste engaged in court activism by refusing to comply with the Bond Law of 1831, which required all African Americans to pay a $500 bond when settling in the state. The purpose of this legislation was to restrict indigent slaves “cast off” by southern slaveholders from settling in Indiana and becoming a charge to county governments. If convicted of nonpayment, the defendant could either be indentured locally to the highest bidder for six months or forcibly removed from the state. Anderson was convicted at his first trial, despite the recognition that he “had resided here two years; had real estate worth $700; and was an honest, industrious man,” and ordered removed from the state. In his appeals case conducted in the Jefferson County Circuit Court in spring 1839, Judge Miles C. Eggleston, who taught legal courses at Hanover College, affirmed the constitutionality of the law, but he quashed the case due to a technical error committed by the lower court. It is unknown whether Anderson fully paid for his representation, had assistance, or it was provided pro bono, but his defense team consisted of some of Madison’s best lawyers, and more than one was an emancipationist Presbyterian. That same spring George DeBaptiste lost his case in both the lower court and the Jefferson Circuit Court and was sentenced to be removed from the state. His appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court was heard in May 1840, where Stephen C. Stevens, a former member of that bench, and prominent Madison Presbyterian elder and abolitionist, defended him. Although the court affirmed the constitutionality of the 1831 Bond Law, due to technical errors in its instructions it did not uphold the lower court’s sentence.23 These cases are more significant than they first appear. On the surface, it seems they were nothing more than symbolic victories. But one must emphasize that the most egregious black laws enacted in Indiana—the Bond Law of 1831, and the Negro Exclusion Act of 1852—were rarely enforced. These laws were usually applied to deal with African Americans considered troublemakers. It is possible that Anderson and DeBaptiste were targeted for routinely providing assistance to escaped slaves, but it is more likely that some whites in Madison were disturbed by the men’s dynamic and successful engagement in a range of activities in the African American community. In short, their personal competency, community leadership, and public

18 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH approval by “the better class of white people” all undermined the concepts of innate African inferiority that justified white supremacy. Therein lies these cases’ significance. By legally challenging the Bond Law, Anderson and DeBaptiste essentially forced Jefferson County’s white leaders to take positions on that law’s actual enforcement in their community. It is notable that both men’s attorneys challenged the very constitutionality of the law. Various reasons can be given for their defeat but it is evi- dent that all the lawyers involved in these cases—the counsels, the prosecuting attorneys, and the judges too—together determined that two men clearly in violation of the Bond Law would not suffer the requisite penalties for doing so. It takes little imagination to deduce what message these results delivered to the two men, as well as to Jefferson’s population at large: free blacks were not going to be legally restricted from moving into the county, and even if they were convicted of breaking laws, they would not be punished by being forcibly expelled from the state.24 Madison’s African American community asserted itself in the public sphere in various ways during the 1840s and 1850s to confront the evils of slavery and racial discrimination. One way it did so was through participation in the Negro Convention movement. The first national convention was held in Philadelphia in 1830 to generate unity of purpose to counter the growing push for colonization. The state convention movement grew out of this national movement in the 1840s and was particularly active in the Old Northwest, where several state delegations peti- tioned successfully to get black law restrictions repealed. In Indiana the heyday of the movement was in the 1850s, when annual meetings occurred at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis. Jefferson County was normally well represented at these gatherings. Although these meetings always emphasized black self-improvement—industry, education, temperance, and the like—they increasingly became forums where members demanded that African American civil rights be acknowledged and upheld. More provocatively, the grand August First parades that Jefferson’s blacks conducted annually in the streets of Madison affirmed the nation’s republican ideals while challenging its heritage of racial caste.25 Undoubtedly, the pinnacle of Jefferson’s African American resistance to racial oppression was their creation and operation of the local Underground Railroad network, beginning in the 1830s. The runaway slave advertisements in the oldest extant Madison newspapers show that fugitive slaves were fleeing into Jefferson by the 1810s, but there is no evidence to indicate that an organized underground assistance network was in existence through the 1820s. Likely, aid during this early period consisted of local blacks providing safe hiding places, food, clothing, and perhaps information and money for the fugitive, who then proceeded on the trek north. One source claims that in the early 1830s, George Evans, living near Hanover, began working with other African Americans near Jeffersonville, Clark County, to move escaped slaves north to the black communities around Vernon, Jennings County. If true, this was likely a new occurrence.26

FALL 2016 19 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY Several accounts indicate that true organization of the escaped slave underground occurred in the mid- to late 1830s with the arrival of the previously mentioned free blacks from Virginia and Kentucky: William and Elijah Anderson, John Carter, George DeBaptiste, and Chapman Harris. Sources show that these men assisted runaways across the Ohio River to hiding places in Georgetown or to meeting places with fellow operatives outside the city. From locations in northern Jefferson County, a series of underground operatives—typically white—moved escaped slaves progressively through Jennings, Ripley, and Decatur Counties to the Quaker settlements in east-central Indiana. Other African Americans reported to have participated in some aspect of this very dangerous frontline work included Griffith Booth, Archibald Taylor, Stepney Stafford, and David Lott. Undoubtedly there were others whose names have not been passed down, including women, for surely they were involved in the hiding, feeding, and clothing of fugitives in Georgetown and Graysville. Elijah Anderson was credited with being particularly active in organizing the underground throughout the county. Apparently he established a group of African American operatives in the Hanover area that included John R. Forcen, Simon Gray, Mason Thompson, James Hackney, and Marston Harris.27 It must be emphasized that the escaping slave underground was anything but static, altering its personnel and tactics to adjust to the fluctuating circumstances it encountered in the region between 1840 and 1865. The restless pursuit of better economic opportunities meant that people regularly moved out of the area, which obviously demanded a great deal of adjustment to coordinate swift and safe hand-offs of runaways. Along with horses, wagons, and feet, Madison’s underground operatives employed steamboats and trains to speed fugitives out of the region. Opposition to the escaping slave underground waxed and waned throughout the era as well, apparently dependent on whom was elected county sheriff. Wright Rea held the office during most of the 1850s, and it seems he made slave catching a priority. With that said, he only held office for roughly eight years of the three decades the underground functioned in Jefferson. In fact, if the surviving sources are accurate, it seems most of the county’s major operatives—black and white—were known or at least highly suspected through the period and yet were generally ignored by law enforcement officials. The real danger came from slave catchers, Kentuckians and their Hoosier allies, who felt justified in threatening and using violence against those they considered slave stealers. Several underground operatives, black and white, reported being directly threatened by Kentuckians or even having a bounty upon their heads in that state. One very credible account says that Chapman Harris and his wife fought off several violent attacks by slave catchers on their home in Eagle Hollow.28 In truth, Jefferson’s African American Underground Railroad operatives were most vulnerable when working outside of the county. During a five-week period

20 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

Map depicting Underground Railroad “Routes Through Indiana and Michigan in 1848.” Madison can be seen to the South. The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, (The Macmillan Company, 1898). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Todd House, a residence known as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The house was located to the west of downtown Madison. JEFFERSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FALL 2016 21 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY from mid-November to mid-December 1856, Chapman Harris, William J. Anderson, and Elijah Anderson were separately seized on steamboats between Louisville and Madison and taken before Kentucky courts on charges of aid- ing fugitive slaves. With the assistance of Madison lawyers, Harris and William Anderson were acquitted, but Elijah Anderson was convicted in Trimble County and sentenced to eight years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Frankfort. He was found dead in his cell there on March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. Among many of his generation, black or white, Elijah Anderson was considered a martyr for freedom.29 During the Civil War years, Jefferson County was definitely “All for the Union!” Tabulations of the total number of men from the county who served the Union cause differ slightly, but all indicate a number around thirty-one hundred. As the county’s population was just shy of twenty-six thousand persons in 1860, that amounts to almost 12 percent of its population. Unfortunately, the total number of Jefferson’s African Americans who wore Union blue is difficult to determine precisely because the community’s most zealous men, dubious that Indiana would ever enlist black troops, joined the units of various states that operated recruiting offices in Indianapolis beginning in late 1862. For instance, several citizens of Jefferson have been found on the rolls of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, and more are likely to be discovered. At least two Jefferson County African Americans, anxious to get into the fight, surreptitiously enlisted in all-white Indiana volunteer units: Theodore Johnson served briefly in the 6th Indiana before dying of disease in Kentucky in February 1862, while John Day completed almost three years of hard campaigning with the 82nd Indiana. Nevertheless, Jefferson’s African American soldiers were primarily associated with their home state’s black regiment, the 28th United States Colored Troops (USCT), in which at least twenty of them served from late December 1863 until January 1866. One local historian has calculated that at least sixty black residents of Jefferson served in the war, which would comprise about 12 percent of the county’s total black population in 1860—the same percentage as of their white fellow citizens.30

Recruitment advertisement. Madison Daily Courier, December 28, 1863.

22 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

The motives that propelled Jefferson’s African American community to destroy slavery and advance racial equality likewise drove its young men to enlist in the Union army during the Civil War. Jefferson native Morgan W. Carter, in a letter he wrote while serving with the 28th USCT in City Point, Virginia in December 1864 perfectly expressed these impulses.

There many a poor fellow lost thear life for thear country and thear people. But poore fellows they died a noble death and in this cause if it is necessary I will give up my life most willingly to benefit the Colored Race. Your kno yourself that we have been trampled under the white man’s heel for years and now we have a choice to elevate our selfs and our race and what little I can do toward it I will do so most willingly. If I should die before I receive the benefit of it I will have the consolation of nowing that the generations to come will receive the blessing of it. And I think it the duty of all the men of our race to do what they can.

Morgan was the nineteen-year-old son of John Carter, whose sense of duty to his people drove him to return to his native Ohio Valley after fleeing to Canada in 1829. Despite all the hardships he had to endure as a black man in antebellum Indiana, Carter successfully passed his vision and commitment to natural rights, civic equality, African American identity, and national honor to the next generation of his family.31 Jefferson County’s antebellum African American communities were complex, dynamic places, and therefore not easily defined at a distance of more than 150 years. In one sense, they were like maroon enclaves, for the danger of being seized by kidnappers and sold south into slavery never completely disappeared until after the Civil War, yet they were vastly more than mere colonies of fear. Many African Americans arrived in Jefferson County with hopes of possessing more freedom and Obituary of John Carter. Madison Daily Courier, opportunity than they had experienced in May 13, 1878. the South, and for most these desires were fulfilled. Secure property rights north of the Ohio were central to this realization, for once secure property was acquired, the full range of community life could blossom. Marriages and families, churches and schools, social and civic voluntary organizations: the basic units of community were secure in Jefferson County in ways they never were for free blacks in Virginia or Kentucky. The bulk of the community strove to live respectable lives marked

FALL 2016 23 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY by industry and decorum and thereby daily demonstrate to their white neighbors that they fully shared their core values derived from evangelical Christianity and yeoman republicanism. Jefferson County also offered African Americans opportunities for free speech and open assembly that were not possible south of the Ohio. The county’s black population exercised these rights fully but judiciously to confront the evils of slavery and racial caste. Whether through articulate petitions decrying national policies that privileged slaveholders, legal challenges to Indiana’s racially discriminatory laws, colorful but dignified pageants that confronted Jefferson County’s hypocritical social practices, or the not-so-secret assistance given to fugitive slaves, members of the county’s black community consistently framed their struggle as part of a larger battle between freedom and oppression. By taking their struggle into the white dominated public sphere in this way, they put increasing pressure on Jefferson’s white middling class to take a stand in this larger battle. In fact, as Jefferson’s African Americans became increasingly aggressive in the 1840s and 1850s by directly attacking slavery and asserting racial equality, its white establishment increasingly sided with them—a population in their midst that shared their basic values and aspirations—against the slaveholders across the river, with whom they had less in common each passing day. Understandably, after the attack on Fort Sumter, Jefferson County’s citizens, white and black, were overwhelmingly united in their commitment to the restoration of the nation through the destruction of slavery and the pernicious social system it sustained. While the race-based discrimination that pervaded the antebellum North was certainly operative in Jefferson County as well, African Americans found there a space of relative tolerance where they could establish an unshakeable foothold, one they nurtured over three decades into a significant antislavery stronghold in the central Ohio Valley.

1 Madison Daily Courier, Aug. 1, 1850. Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rites of August First: Emancipation Day in the Black Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana 2 Madison Daily Courier, Aug. 2, 1860, July 29, 1854, State University Press, 2007), 82–116. Other works Aug. 1, 1856, July 31, Aug. 15, 1857; National Era on this topic include William H. Wiggins, O Freedom! (Cincinnati, OH), Aug. 18, 1853. Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); Shane White, 3 Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer, introduc- “’It Was a Proud Day’: African Americans, Festivals, Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of tion to and Parades in the North, 1741–1834,” Journal of American Abolitionism, ed. Timothy Patrick McCarthy American History 81 (June 1994): 13–50; Mitchell A. and John Stauffer (New York: New Press, 2006), xxii, xxi, Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in xxx–xxxi. My understanding of August First celebrations African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915 draws heavily from Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘No Occurrence in (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); W. Human History Is More Deserving of Commemoration Caleb McDaniel, “The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Than This’: Abolitionist Celebrations of Freedom,” in Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform,” Prophets of Protest, McCarthy and Stauffer, 200–219; American Quarterly 57 (Mar. 2005): 129–51.

24 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

4 Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana Before Cincinnati, 1817–1874” (Ph.D. diss., University of 1900: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis: Indiana Cincinnati, 1985); Darrel E. Bigham, We Ask Only a Fair Historical Press, 1957); Emma Lou Thornbrough, Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850–1880 (Indianapolis: Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Indiana Historical Society, 1965), 13; James H. Madison, Henry Louis Taylor Jr., ed., Race and the City: Work, The Indiana Way: A State History (Bloomington: Indiana Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820–1970 University Press, 1986), 195; Robert P. Swierenga, “The (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Patricia Settlement of the Old Northwest: Ethnic Pluralism in a Mitchell, Beyond Adversity: African Americans’ Struggle for Featureless Plain,” Journal of the Early Republic 9 (Spring Equality in Western Pennsylvania, 1750–1990 (Pittsburgh: 1989): 85–89; Stephen Middleton, The Black Laws in the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 1993); Joe Old Northwest: A Documentary History (Westport, Conn.: William Trotter Jr., River Jordan: African American Urban Greenwood, 1993), 159–60; Nicole Etcheson, The Life in the Ohio Valley (Lexington: University Press of Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Kentucky, 1998); Nikki M. Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787–1861 (Bloomington: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802–1868 (Athens: Ohio Indiana University Press, 1996), 94–102, 109–14; University Press, 2005); Darrel E. Bigham, On Jordan’s Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier Indiana (Bloomington: Banks: Emancipation and Its Aftermath in the Ohio River Indiana University Press, 1996), 296–300; Donald Valley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), F. Carmony, Indiana, 1816–1850: The Pioneer Era 33–55; Victoria L. Harrison, “Man in the Middle: (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1998), 566–69; Conway Barbour and the Free Black Experience in Andrew R. L. Cayton, “Race, Democracy, and the Antebellum Louisville,” Ohio Valley History 10 (Winter Multiple Meanings of the Indiana Frontier,” in The 2010): 25–45; Stephanie Cole, “Servants and Slaves in Indiana Territory, 1800–2000: A Bicentennial Perspective, Louisville: Race, Ethnicity, and Household Labor in an ed. Darrel E. Bigham (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Antebellum Border City,” Ohio Valley History 11 (Spring Society, 2001), 47–70, esp. 66–67; James H. Madison, 2011): 3–25. On rural African American settlements, “Race, Law, and the Burdens of Indiana History,” in see Stephen A. Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: The History of Indiana Law, ed. David J. Bodenhamer African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, and Randall T. Shepard (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1765–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 37–59; James H. Madison, Hoosiers: A New 1999); Stephen A. Vincent, “Past and Future Directions History of Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University for the Study of Indiana’s Black Rural Heritage,” Black Press, 2014), 108–10, 144–47; Matthew Salafia, Slavery’s History News and Notes 80 (May 2000): 5–8; Coy D. Borderland: Freedom and Bondage along the Ohio River Robins, Forgotten Hoosiers: African Heritage in Orange (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). County, Indiana (Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1994); Coy D. Robins, Reclaiming African Heritage in Salem, Indiana 5 Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African- (Bowie, Md.: Heritage, 1995). On the Underground American Slaves (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Railroad, see R. J. M. Blackett, “Freedom or the Martyr’s Harvard University Press, 2003), 233, 65–66, 233–36, 241. Grave: Black Pittsburgh’s Aid to the Fugitive Slave,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 61 (Apr. 6 General works on antebellum northern African American 1978): 117–34; His Promised Land: The Autobiography communities include James Oliver Horton and Lois E. of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Horton, Underground Railroad, ed. Stuart Seely Sprague (New Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York: Norton, 1996); J. Blaine Hudson, Fugitive Slaves York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Elizabeth Rauh and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland The Roots of African American Identity: Memory Bethel, (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002); Keith P. Griffler, and History in Antebellum Free Communities (New Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Black Identity York: St. Martin’s, 1999); Patrick Rael, Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill: (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004); Stanley University of North Carolina Press, 2002). For black Harrold, Border War: Fighting Over Slavery before the Civil urban communities in the Ohio Valley, see Richard War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, Wade, 2010); Scott Hancock, “Crossing Freedom’s Fault Line: 1790–1830 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University The Underground Railroad and Recentering African Press, 1959); Richard Pih, “Negro Self-Improvement Americans in Civil War Causality,” Civil War History 59 Ohio Efforts in Ante-bellum Cincinnati, 1836–1850,” (June 2013): 169–205. History 78 (Summer 1969): 179–87; David L. Calkins, “Black Education and the Nineteenth Century City: An 7 Cayton, Frontier Indiana, 277–79; Jon C. Teaford, Institutional Analysis of Cincinnati’s Colored Schools, Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial 1850–1887,” Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin Midwest (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 33 (Fall 1975): 160–73; Samuel Matthews, “The 2–3, 14–15. Black Educational Experience in Nineteenth-Century

FALL 2016 25 BLACK HOOSIERS AND THE FORMATION OF AN ANTISLAVERY STRONGHOLD IN THE CENTRAL OHIO VALLEY 8 Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United 11 On emancipationists, see James D. Essig, The Bonds States (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), of Wickedness: American Evangelicals Against Slavery, 13–14; Gregory S. Rose, “Hoosier Origins: The Nativity 1770–1808 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, of Indiana’s United States–Born Population in 1850,” 1982), 53–72, 73–74, 94–96; Feight, “Good and the Indiana Magazine of History 81 (Sept. 1985): 201–32; Just,” 96–101, 186. On Jefferson County as an antislav- Gregory S. Rose, “The Distribution of Indiana’s Ethnic ery environ, see Mark A. Furnish, “A Rosetta Stone on and Racial Minorities in 1850,” Indiana Magazine of Slavery’s Doorstep: Eleutherian College and the Lost History 87 (Sept. 1991): 225–37, 250–53. Antislavery History of Jefferson County, Indiana” (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 2014). 9 These statistics were assembled from the following sources: Robert W. Scott, A History of Jefferson County, 12 In 2008, Mollie O’Conner, the First Deputy Recorder of Indiana, part 1 (N.p.: Lulu Enterprises, 2012); Robert W. Jefferson County, Indiana, systematically read through Scott, “Churches of Jefferson County, Indiana,” accessed all of the county’s pre–Civil War deed books and photo- Oct. 2, 2013, http://www.myindianahome.net/gen/jeff/ copied all pages with entries related to African American records/church/churchhx.html (site discontinued); Jackie emancipation or freedom certification (freedom papers). Richards, Churches and Church Records in Jefferson County, I acquired a copy of these photocopies in 2010 and Indiana (Madison, IN: Jefferson County Historical conducted a content analysis and placed their essential Society, 2006); Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, information in table format. My conclusions are drawn Statistics of Indiana, table 14: Churches and Church from that document. On early black residents and census Property (Washington, D.C.: Robert Armstrong, 1853), results, see Scott, History of Jefferson County, 88, 90, 27, 89. 799–807. The “social location” paradigm for antebellum evangelicals comes from Curtis D. Johnson, Redeeming 13 Donald Thomas Zimmer, “Madison, Indiana, 1811– America: Evangelicals and the Road to Civil War (Chicago: 1860: A Study in the Process of City Building” (Ph.D. Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 6–7, 12–14, where he distinguishes diss., Indiana University, 1974), 63–64, esp. 60 (map). among “formalist” (rooted in the European or English Reformation), “antiformalist” (rooted in the eighteenth- 14 On Elijah Anderson, see Jeannie Regan-Dinius, century Atlantic revivals), and African American “Underground Railroad Network to Freedom: The Story denominations. of Georgetown District in Madison, Indiana,” accessed Apr. 30, 2013, at http://www.in.gov/dnr/historic/files/ 10 Scott, “Churches of Jefferson County”; Richards, georgetown.pdf; Madison Evening Courier, June 15, 1874; Churches and Church Records; L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Joe Niehaus, “African Americans in Madison Property Faiths: A History of Indiana Churches and Religious Groups Owners and Pole Tax Payers, 1837 thru 1846,” Black (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 113–38. Property Owners File, carton 5, Local History–Black On Jefferson’s Scottish Dissenting Presbyterians, see History Collection, Jefferson County Historical Society, John R. McKivigan, The War against Proslavery Religion: Madison, Indiana; Historic Madison, Georgetown Historical Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865 Interpretive Walking Tour (Madison, IN: Historic Madison, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 163; H. P. 2008). On William Anderson, see Life and Narrative of Jackson, A History of Carmel Congregation of the United William J. Anderson, Twenty-four Years a Slave; Sold Eight Presbyterian Church, Near Hanover, Jefferson County, Times! In Jail Sixty Times!! Whipped Three Hundred Times!!! Indiana (Madison, Ind.: Courier Company, 1882). On or The Dark Deeds of American Slavery Revealed (Chicago: Jefferson’s New School Presbyterians, see Frank Miles, Daily Tribune, 1857), 5, 11–16, 31–37. There’s No Presbyterian Church on Presbyterian Avenue Madison Daily Evening Star, (Madison, Ind.: Madison Presbyterian Church, 1990); 15 May 25, 1878; Regan- Manual for the Members of the Second Presbyterian Church Dinius, “Story of Georgetown”; Niehaus, “African in Madison, Indiana (Madison, Ind.: Courier Office, Americans.” 1845). On Jefferson’s Old School Presbyterians, see 16 Detroit Daily Post, Feb. 23, 1875; Detroit Advertiser and Andrew Lee Feight, “The Good and the Just: Slavery and Tribune, Feb. 23, 1875; Madison Courier, Mar. 2, 1875; the Development of Evangelical Protestantism in the Regan-Dinius, “Story of Georgetown”; Niehaus, “African American South, 1700–1830” (Ph.D. diss., University Americans”; Deed Book D, 382 (Aug. 19, 1839); Deed of Kentucky, 2001), esp. 419–28; Andrew Lee Feight, Book T, 36 (July 23, 1842); Deed Book 16, 4 (May 9, “James Blythe and the Slavery Controversy in the 1843), Jefferson County Recorder’s Office. Presbyterian Churches of Kentucky, 1791–1802,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 102 (Winter 2004): 17 Indianapolis Journal, Jan. 11, 18, Feb. 1, 1880; Madison 13–38; Carl Cowen and Janet Catherine Craig Cowen, Courier, Jan. 13, 29, Feb. 12, 1880. “Hanover and the People: Prepared for the 150 Year Celebration of Hanover Presbyterian Church, 8 March 18 Niehaus, “African Americans”; Vincent, Southern Seed, 1970,” Archives and Special Collections, Dugan Library, xv–xvi, 6, discusses the importance of real property own- Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana. ership to free people of color.

26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MARK A. FURNISH

19 Richards, Churches and Church Records; Scott, History of Ridge to Greensburg, Decatur County,” number 20, Jefferson County, 91; Anderson, Life and Narrative, 36–38, roll 3, box 44, file 1, Underground Railroad in Indiana, 40–41; Regan-Dinius, “Story of Georgetown;” Historic 2nd ed., vol. 2, pt. 1, William H. Siebert Collection Madison, Georgetown Walking Tour; Thornbrough, Negro Microfilm Edition, M192, Ohio Historical Society in Indiana, 152–53, 158, 161–67; Lori B. Jacobi, “More Library; John Carr obituary, Madison Courier, July 11, Than a Church: The Educational Role of the African 1898; William C. Thompson, “Eleutherian College: A Methodist Episcopal Church in Indiana, 1844–1861,” Sketch of a Unique Step in the Educational History of in Indiana’s African-American Heritage: Essays from Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 19 (June 1923): Black History News and Notes, ed. Wilma L. Gibbs 109; John H. Tibbets, “Reminiscences of Slavery Times,” (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1993), 3–17; typed manuscript, Historic Eleutherian College, 2008, Grant S. Murray, “History of Negro Education in 5–8, 11, 13. The original Tibbets manuscript dates Madison, Indiana,” 1916, Black Schools in Madison File, from 1888 and is located in the Theodore L. Steele Madison–Jefferson County Public Library, Madison, Papers, M0263, box 2, folder 2, Indiana Historical Indiana. Society, Indianapolis, Indiana; Griffith Booth obituary in Madison Courier, July 5, 1889; Indianapolis Freeman, 20 Marsh Davis, Historic African-American Sites and Oct. 31, 1891. Structures, Jefferson County, Indiana (Indianapolis: Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, 1996), 5; 28 See Tibbets, “Reminiscences of Slavery Times,” 12–14, Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, 147–48; Madison Daily 17, 5; New Albany Ledger, Dec. 1, 1856; “J. R. Carr,” Courier, Aug. 7, 1849. number 27, roll 3, box 44, file 1, Underground Railroad in Indiana, 2nd ed., vol. 2, pt. 1, William H. Siebert 21 E. S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United Collection Microfilm Edition; Coffin, Reminiscences, 140; States of North America, from April, 1833 to October, Madison Daily Courier, Feb. 12, 1880. 1834, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1835), 2:367, 364, 367–68; Deed Book N, 517 (Aug. 14, 1837), Jefferson 29 See Louisville Courier, Nov. 25, Dec. 16, 19, 1856, June County Recorder’s Office. 19, 1857; Madison Daily Courier, Nov. 24, 26, Dec. 3, 16, 18, 19, 1856, June 20, 1857; Anderson, Life and 22 Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 238, 239; Madison Narrative, 53–55; New Albany Ledger, Dec. 15, 1856; Courier, Nov. 6. 1916. Circuit Court Order Book 3:155, 171, Trimble County Clerk’s Office, Bedford, Kentucky; Madison Evening Philanthropist 23 (Cincinnati, OH), Aug. 13, 1839. Defense Courier, June 15, 1874; Tibbets, “Reminiscences of lawyers included Joseph G. Marshall, Courtland Cushing, Slavery Times,” 17; Indianapolis Freeman, Oct. 31, 1891. and Wilberforce Lyle. George D. Baptiste vs. State of Indiana ex. rel. Hatcher, Supreme Court Papers, May 30 My figures are drawn from datasheets compiled by Jan Term, 1840, box 74, case 322, Indiana State Archives, Vetrhus from W. H. H. Terrell, Report of the Adjutant Indianapolis; George D. Baptiste vs. State 5 Blackford General of the State of Indiana, 8 vols. (Indianapolis: State (Ind.) 283–87; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, 58–61. Printers, 1865–69). Apparently, as many as seven hundred African American residents of Indiana were recruited Ibid., 24 62–63, 69–71. to out-of-state regiments, particularly the 54th and 55th Massachusetts, 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, 1st 25 Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker eds., Proceedings Michigan Colored, 1st USCT (District of Columbia), of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, 2 vols. and the 8th USCT (Pennsylvania); see Terrell, Report (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 1:173–77; of the Adjutant General, 7:683–92; William Robert Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, 78–79, 144–46; Indiana Forstchen, “The 28th United States Colored Troops: State Sentinel, Mar. 1, 1842; Philanthropist (Cincinnati, Indiana’s African Americans Go to War, 1863–1865” OH), Aug. 16, 1843; Anna-Lisa Cox, “All the Rights: (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1994), 49–68. On Indiana and the Black Convention Movement,” Traces Johnson, see Thompson, “Eleutherian College”; Terrell, of Indiana and Midwestern History 23 (Spring 2011): Report of the Adjutant General, 4:77, 8:413. On Day, see 22–27. Madison Courier, Oct. 1, 1883, Nov. 17, 1886; Terrell, 26 Indiana Republican (Madison, IN), Dec. 31, 1813, Report of the Adjutant General, 6:326. On Jefferson cited in Scott, History of Jefferson County, 89; William S. County troops in the 28th USCT, see Terrell, Report of Dow, ed., Blacks in and around Jefferson County, Indiana the Adjutant General, 7:660–82. The local historian is (Madison, Ind.: Jefferson County Historical Society, George Willick, quoted in Madison Courier, Feb. 3, 1990. n.d.), 4. 31 Edward A. Miller Jr., The Black Civil War Soldiers of 27 Madison Courier, Jan. 13, 28, Feb. 12, 1880; Griffler, Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-Ninth U.S. Colored Front Line of Freedom, 46–47, 84–87; Frank M. Merrell, Infantry (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, “Underground Railroad Route from Madison via Ryker’s 1998), 104–5.

FALL 2016 27 Telling Testimony Slavery Advertisements in Kentucky’s Civil War Newspapers

Timothy Ross Talbott

ust a few weeks before Georgia agreed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, becoming the necessary final state to do so, an advertise- Jment ran in the Paris, Kentucky, Western Citizen. The short notice, posted by Mrs. Mary Redmon, warned readers of her intention to “enforce the law against anyone employing or harboring my negro man, Anthony.” Apparently, to identify and ensure compliance, Redmond provided a brief depiction of Anthony. She described him as “of black color,” and that he was “about 40 years old.” During a time when slavery’s continued existence seemed increasingly unlikely, advertisements like this one indicate that slave owners in Kentucky, like Mary Redmond, would not relinquish their right to slave ownership without a struggle. However, such advertisements also document the rising resistance of African Americans to their enslaved condition. During the Civil War, slaves like Anthony left their masters in increasing numbers, forcing their owners to avail themselves of what legal avenues remained. Due to the actions of many enslaved individuals, slaveholders often found themselves reacting to instead of dictating the situation.1 A comprehensive survey of Civil War–era Kentucky newspaper advertisements sheds light on the financial and social importance of slavery to the state. As African Americans viewed the conflict as a potential means toward their liberty, they used the nation’s internal strife as an avenue of exit from their lives in bondage. To counter black attempts at freedom and maintain racial control, white Kentuckians often turned to the traditional means of advertisements to continue their prewar way of life. These advertisements provide telling testimony of African Americans’ passionate desire for freedom, how that desire altered the institution over the four years of the Civil War, and how white Kentuckians reacted in attempt to main- Captured slave advertisement for eighteen-year-old Lizy, tain control over the state’s who belonged to William James. Louisville Daily Democrat, enslaved population.2 July 17, 1862.

28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

Kentucky, like the other border slave states, was exempt from President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Unlike its sister Border States, Maryland and Missouri, which abolished slavery through state measures during the Civil War, slavery only ended in Kentucky with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which the commonwealth itself refused to ratify. Slavery lived a healthy life and died a hard death in Kentucky. Since before its statehood was granted in 1792, until months after the Civil War, human bondage was a vital part of Kentucky’s economic, social, cultural, and political existence. Attempts to legislate a system of gradual emancipation within the commonwealth ended in failure, and ironically, resulted in new laws that strengthened its firm hold on the state. As war approached, Kentucky’s once enviable geographical location, which provided the state with advantageous prewar political, commercial, and economic ties to both the North and South, now ensured that the state bore the burden of a divided population. In addition, its rich resources made it a target of the contending armies who brought conflict and destruction, as well as an immense disruption to the state’s treasured labor system.3 Advertisements are often commercial in character, and thus a close examination of the notices published in Kentucky newspapers during the Civil War not only provides evidence of the determination of slaveholders to retain control over their increasingly resistant slave property but also offers an intriguing look at how interwoven slavery was into the fabric of Kentucky’s large-scale trade, industry, and economy. In the first year of the war, slave advertisements in Kentucky’s newspapers focus on various commercial aspects of slavery; sales and hiring dominate. Common were advertisements that mentioned “Woman for Sale—Good Cook, Washer and Ironer, without encumbrance,” or “For Hire—For the remainder of the year TWO BOYS about ten or twelve years old, accustomed to dining room work.” Slave renting traditionally started at the first of the year, so in anticipation, hiring advertisements noticeably increased in December. F. D. Poindexter of Louisville offered for rent for the following year “a young NEGRO WOMAN, unmarried and unencumbered,” who was good at domestic tasks. Poindexter explained that he would allow her to work outside the city. John T. Moore itemized the slaves he was hiring out; these included two men and a boy as field hands, two boys as house servants, and two women as “good cooks.” Similarly, the Daily Louisville Democrat’s last issue of the year posted advertisements seeking hired help and offered opportunities to rent good nurses, house servants, cooks, and laundresses.4 Sales and “want to” purchase notices by municipalities and commercial traders also often appeared during the war’s first year. On April 1, 1861, the slave Jim appeared in an advertisement for sale, “by virtue of a decree of the Louisville Chancery Court,” at the Jefferson County courthouse door. Jim was available for purchase on credit. One 1861 advertisement for a courthouse door sale in Lexington explained that a slave woman was being sold for “no fault, but simply because the

FALL 2016 29 TELLING TESTIMONY

owner has more use for the money than he has for the negro.” An enslaved young woman named Lucy, who was determined to be about nineteen years old and had been hired for a year to satisfy her Louisville owner’s “City, School, Gas, and House of Refugee Taxes,” appeared in an advertisement for a public auction on December 2, at the courthouse. Commercial slave traders Northcutt and Marshall advertised that they wished “to purchase a large number of NEGROES OF BOTH SEXES” and explained they would “pay the highest prices offered in the market.” Slave dealer W. P. Davis of Louisville sought “300 NEGROES.” He explained that he was anxious to buy and offered top prices, noting that he always had slaves available for sale. The Southern Pacific Railroad wanted one thousand slaves for hire or purchase to build a section of track, where allegedly the laborers would be “protected from invasion or molestation during the conflict which shall exist between the two sections of this country.” In August, soon-to-be Kentucky Confederate governor George W. Johnson advertised in the Louisville Daily Courier some of his prime Arkansas cotton land for sale in exchange for slaves.5 Clothing stores announced that they “just received an entirely new and complete stock of winter clothing, heavey overcoats, negro clothing, &c.” J. R. Emmit & Company in Louisville, for example, offered “GREAT BARGAINS! NEGRO GOODS, &c.” Especially popular was the sale of “Negro jeans” cloth. Connections to slavery were used to sell everything from plantation bells to pat- ent medicine to molasses to real estate. A “Splendid Farm” went for sale with four hundred acres of land, and, to help spur interested buyers, the sales pitch mentioned some “good Negro Houses.” Individuals looking for employment sought to benefit from occupations produced by slavery. For example, a Lexington man who claimed “considerable experience” and was able to furnish “satisfactory rec- ommendations” placed advertisements with Lexington’s Kentucky Statesman and the Winchester Chronicle, seeking employment as an overseer.6 In addition to being an economic advantage, slavery provided a sense of racial order that white Kentuckians, as well as whites in other slaveholding states, deemed of highest importance. As members of the Border State region who had experienced conflicting ideals over slavery during the antebellum years, Kentuckians sought to maintain that order by several practical measures. In 1799, the state legislature outlined a law that authorized a system of county slave patrols it believed was necessary to maintain law and order in its communities. Some Kentucky owners also resorted to selling unruly slaves to out-of-state buyers. Runaway slave advertisements in newspapers were another such means of control.7 As in the prewar years, runaway slave advertisements appear throughout the state’s newspapers in 1861. Owners sought to reclaim “self-stolen” property by placing notices that offered rewards and provided physical and often personality descriptions in local, regional, and statewide broadsheets. One ad, which owner Abraham Hite posted in the Louisville Daily Journal, offered $150 for the capture

30 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

of Jim Batts, a twenty-seven-year-old slave who ran away on October 30. Hite’s physical description of Batts included the man’s height and weight and that he was bowlegged and had a burn scar on the side of his head. To help identify Batts, Hite explained that he was “sprightly and quick in speech and movement” and noted that he could read and write and that he may be hiding in Louisville or across the Ohio River in Indiana, as Hite “suspected that others are endeavoring to get off with him.” Two slave men, Harrison and Nathan absconded from Fayette County owner George W. Hall on October 18, 1861. Hall offered a $100 reward for the fugitives if they were caught in a county bordering the Ohio River. Harrison was described as about twenty-four years old, five feet, ten inches tall, dark Abraham Hite (1799-1863). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY complexioned, and apparently with an excellent set of teeth. Nathan was twenty-two, “dark copper color, five feet five or six inches high,” and weighed between 140 and 150 pounds. Five men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four ran away from Meade County doctor and large slaveholder Michael McCarty’s farm on September 22. McCarty offered a $125 reward for each if caught out of the state. “STOP HIM! STOP HIM” read the headline of Jessamine County farmer W. C. Young’s advertisement in the Covington Journal, as he sought the arrest of his recalcitrant slave, Sam. Apparently, after advertising earlier and more locally, Young extended his search, likely thinking Sam had made for the Ohio River.8 Runaway notices appeared with increasing frequency during the first year of the war, especially after September, when Kentucky finally declared its intention to remain part of the Union. In fact, almost as many owner-posted runaway advertisements were printed in the state’s newspapers in the last four months of the year (twenty-three) as in the preceding six (twenty-nine). It almost appears as though the state’s enslaved people were waiting for the commonwealth to either declare its secession or affirm its loyalty before deciding to seek freedom. While Kentucky remained neutral, slaves seemed to mark time but when state officials finally declared their loyalty, enslaved Kentuckians saw an opportunity with the coming of their state’s involvement in the war. It did not matter to them whether Kentucky claimed Union or Confederate allegiance, only that it finally claimed a side and turned its attention to war issues. Perhaps they believed distracted owners would expend their time and resources on war-related matters rather than pursuit and recapture. Regardless, slaves viewed the war’s outbreak as a catalyst for change and attempted to take advantage of it.

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The end of Kentucky’s neutrality in September was followed by a flood of both Confederate and Union armies into the state. The first year of the war ended with the Union army occupying the northern and central parts of the commonwealth, while a Confederate defensive line stretched from the Cumberland Gap westward across the state to Bowling Green and continued on to Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, then to Columbus on the Mississippi River. The rush of belligerent armies proved harmful to slaveholder security and led to a rapid rise of another type of slavery advertisement in Kentucky: the captured runaway notice.9

Arrival of the advance division of the national army under General Don Carlos Buell on the north side of the Green River in Kentucky. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 18, 1862. FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

An 1845 state statute required county authorities to post newspaper advertisements when runaway slaves were caught and jailed. These alerted owners to prove ownership, reclaim their property, and pay the captured slaves’ lodging expenses. If a slave was not claimed within six months, he or she was subject to sale by the county sheriff. Starting at the end of 1861 and beginning of 1862, captured slave notices began to appear more frequently. They vividly illustrate the increased movement of slaves taking advantage of the disruption of war. For example, in the October 11 edition of the Daily Louisville Democrat, W. K. Thomas, the jailer for Jefferson County, advertised that runaway slave Hiram had been captured on October 2 and was being held. Thomas, as prescribed by state law, provided a thorough physical description, which included that the eighteen- year-old Hiram had a “full face, bushy head of hair, and boyish appearance.” Also listed in the advertisement was Hiram’s Oldham County owner, whose name the

32 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

slave provided. In addition, the notice stated that Hiram had been captured in Indiana, a free-labor state. Kentucky’s pro-slavery unionist stance hinged in large part on its belief that slavery was best protected within the Union and under the guarantee of the Fugitive Slave Law. If Kentucky had chosen to follow the path of the eleven Confederate states and seceded, that powerful federal statute would have been nullified, leaving slaveholding members of the commonwealth without any legal means to reclaim their runaway property.10 Not only did slaves use the disruption of the war to run away from their owners, but enslaved individuals who entered the state and served as laborers, teamsters, cooks, and body servants for the Confederate army also used the opportunity presented by the geographic proximity of the free states to attempt to escape their bondage. And when in the fall of 1862, Union major general Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio left northern Alabama and southern Tennessee in attempt to curtail Confederate general Braxton Bragg’s Army of the Mississippi’s invasion of Kentucky, hundreds of slaves from that region followed the Union troops northward. Many of those who set out on their own once in Kentucky ended up in the state’s county jails and thus in the state’s newspaper advertisements. Indeed, the majority of the captured runaway advertisements concerned men, but a number of women and children were represented as well. Many of those captured claimed they were owned by masters in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and as far away as Louisiana. For example, one of the two men advertised in the March 15, 1862, issue of the Louisville Daily Democrat claimed to be named Calvin and from Sumner County, Tennessee. A few individuals stated that they were free men of color.11 General Don Carlos Buell (1818-1898). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY Having a large federal army in the state during the fall of 1862 also proved to be a strong incen- tive for many Kentucky slaves to run away. Slave owner Abraham Hite, who had advertised his loss of Jim Batts a year earlier, placed a notice for two young men, William and James. Convinced that both left the area with troops under General Buell the previous week, Hite offered a liberal reward for their capture. That fall the Confederate army, too, lost slaves while occupying parts of Kentucky. Two men, Bob Burnett and Sam Sanders, were captured in Boone County in northern Kentucky on October 20, 1862. Both stated they were from Dyersburg, Tennessee, and had “been with the rebel army for the last nine months.”12

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Captured slave advertisement for Sam Sanders and Bob Barnett, two men who had been with the Confederate army for nine months. Louisville Weekly Journal, November 4, 1862.

Tom Jackson, who claimed to be free and even provided a reference to prove such, was confined to the Franklin County jail on September 2, 1862. The advertisement for Jackson’s capture ran along with nine others in the November 5 edition of the Tri-Weekly Commonwealth. By the November 24 edition of the Commonwealth, only the captures of Jackson and three others of the original nine were being advertised; presumably, the other five had been claimed by their owners. On December 17, only Jackson remained. Apparently no one came to claim him because he was actually free and the jailer did not investigate Jackson’s alibi. Sadly, on March 18, 1863, as state law required, Jackson was advertised for sale, which was to be held on April 20, at the Franklin County courthouse doors. Tom Jackson then disappears from the record.13

Captured slave advertisement for Tom Jackson, a man who claimed to be free. Frankfort Tri-Weekly Commonwealth, November 5, 1862.

34 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

Kentucky masters attempting to maintain control over their rapidly changing labor system—particularly those who believed their human property was head- ing for the Ohio River and beyond—continued to post runaway advertisements. County commissioner sales were also commonly advertised, usually involving the settlement of a deceased individual’s estate or the resolution of a legal suit. For example, in the March 24, 1862, Lexington Observer and Reporter, the Fayette County Court master commissioner ordered that in the case of John Moore vs. N. D. Moore, slaves named Tom (about forty years old) and Mary (about twenty-four years old), along with an infant child, would be sold to the highest bidder at public auction on April 13. Likewise, auctioneer C. T. Worley advertised “some FOUR OR FIVE NEGRO MEN AND WOMEN,” to benefit the creditors of Richard B. Young.14 The increase in captured runaways—brought about by the mounting disruption of the war and thus the ever-increasing number of slaves risking flight— caused sheriff’s sales to rise, too. While jailers posted advertisements for captured runaways, if unclaimed, the slaves were sold by the county sheriff. One sheriff’s sale advertisement, much like the previously mentioned one for a Tom Jackson, involved John Jones, a man of color who claimed to be free and from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jones had been incarcerated in September 1861, advertised in January 1862, and offered for sale in April, after authorities waited the required six months. It is interesting, though, that the Jefferson County jailer waited four months to advertise the incarcerated man when state law required an advertisement be placed ten days after his being jailed. Was the postponed ad perhaps a simple clerical error, or was potential financial gain its true reason?15 On Independence Day 1862, Kentucky state treasurer J. H. Garrard posted a unique advertisement. He offered for sale “TWO LIKELY NEGRO MEN, Jordan and Abner,” both of whom had been recently incarcerated in the Kentucky State Penitentiary for separate charges of manslaughter but were pardoned by Governor Beriah Magoffin “under the provisions of an act approved March 17, 1862.” That new state law called for the men to be released “on the condition that such slaves will agree to be again restored to their original condition of servitude.” Presumably both men “chose” to return to an enslaved status. As the Civil War continued, African Americans increasingly tested the law, which basically claimed that slaves were more productive and better managed under the Notice of courthouse sale of two slaves, Jordan and Abner. charge of owners than in prison, and They received pardon from Governor Magoffin for manslaughter charges on the condition they be sold back into slavery. Frankfort thus reinforced the sense of racial con- Tri-Weekly Commonwealth, July 4, 1862. trol that slavery offered whites.16

FALL 2016 35 TELLING TESTIMONY

Numbers of advertisements for runaway slaves and captured runaway slaves (1861–65)

Captured runaway Year Runaway slaves slaves

1861 52 8 1862 60 242 1863 32 234 1864 18 82 1865 3 11 TOTAL 165 577

The large number of advertisements for captured runaways continued into 1863. It did not seem to matter to proslavery Kentuckians that many of the jailed slaves came from the seceded states and were therefore technically subject to the Emancipation Proclamation and thus legally free. Although Kentucky was exempt from Lincoln’s edict, many of its citizens still vehemently opposed the proclamation. Many white Kentuckians felt betrayed by the federal government’s shift in war aims, from one of preserving the Union to one sanctioning emancipation, which they believed was a direct threat to their traditional way of life. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, the editor of the Tri-Weekly Commonwealth stated that since the release of the preliminary proclamation the previous September, it had attempted to show its “condemnation of this highhanded assumption of power by President Lincoln.” To illustrate the newspaper was not alone in its sentiments, it republished an article from the Louisville Democrat that had originally run two days before. The article claimed that the proclamation was a “flagrant outrage of all Constitutional law, all human justice, all Christian feeling.” It referred to Lincoln as an “imbecile” and an “encourager of insurrection, lust, arson, and murder!” It also stated that it mattered little that Kentucky was exempt, and concluded, “The people cannot, in any state, bear to be so slandered by one who usurps authority.”17 Similarly, Governor James Robinson addressed the General Assembly on January 8, 1863, and outlined his reasons for opposing the Emancipation Proclamation. He asked, rhetorically, that if the slaves of the seceded states were freed “may they not come into Kentucky in vast masses and as effectually destroy the institution here as if our State had not been excepted out of the immediate operation of the manifesto?” Here was the main reason for Kentucky’s contempt. White Kentuckians knew exemption would not ultimately matter; eventually emancipation would come to the state, but that did not mean they would accept it willingly. Robinson recommended the legislature pass resolutions protesting the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, the Assembly went a step further. In an attempt to curb black migration from the states in rebellion, it made it illegal

36 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT for slaves freed by the proclamation to settle in Kentucky. In the meantime, the state’s county jailers and sheriffs continued to hold runaways and offer them to those who wished to purchase slaves in defiance of the federal government, which they believed had duped them with the sudden added war aim of emancipation. Continued actions in defiance of slavery by the enslaved forced white Kentuckians to parry with resolutions and legislation in an attempt to mitigate the rapidly dissolving racial order they so cherished.18 After Confederate forces retreated from the state in the fall of 1862, the Union army occupied greater portions of the commonwealth. Its increased presence within the state, along with the relaxation of its regulations allowing runaways into army camps, encouraged slaves to make more frequent attempts at freedom, which resulted in more captures by county authorities. Kentucky slave owners complained about slave flights both publicly and privately. On June 15, 1863, western Kentucky slaveholder and diarist George R. Browder penned, “There are hundreds of negroes leaving their owners & going to the federals. I feel certain my hired boy Henry has contemplated leaving. He has threatened several times to leave without any provocation.”19 Large numbers of captured runaway notices filled the pages of Kentucky’s 1863 newspapers. One single page of the March 23 edition of the Frankfort Tri- Weekly Commonwealth contained more than seventy capture notices. The passage of a new law on March 2, 1863, somewhat relieved the burden the captured runaways placed on the state’s county jails. It revised the previous statute, drastically cutting the mandatory incarceration time before auction to one month. Ironically, the change made it more difficult for some owners to reclaim their property. Although a large portion of the captured runaways were from seceded states, and thus unlikely to be reclaimed, it was probably also difficult for Kentucky owners to receive proper notice and then retrieve their slaves within just one month. However, the reduced incarceration time did free up jail space, reduce county lodging costs, and gave a buyer’s market to those seeking to make purchases. The change in the law was directly caused by the agency of the enslaved. If it were not for the large numbers of fugitive slaves—people with no recognized political power—there would not have been a need to amend the law.20 Some of the slaves captured and advertised in Kentucky’s newspapers were the property of prominent men. For example, the state’s broadsheets included notices for the jailed slaves of Confederate generals Gideon Pillow, John S. Williams, and Joseph Wheeler. Pillow, who had earned the disdain of Confederates for his cowardly role during the surrender of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862, was relegated to virtual anonymity by the time a slave named Tom from Pillow’s Arkansas plantation was jailed in Hardin County in January 1863, along with another slave, named Isaac Otis, from Franklin County, Alabama. During the Civil War, Williams, a Mexican War hero and farmer from Clark County,

FALL 2016 37 TELLING TESTIMONY

fought primarily in eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and northeastern Tennessee. His slave, Jerry, was arrested and lodged in the Franklin County jail in February 1863. The advertisement noted that Jerry was arrested “dressed in soldier clothes.” It is unknown whether Jerry was in a cast-off Union uniform or outfitted in Confederate wear in the camp service of his owner. Going unclaimed, Jerry appeared in an April advertisement for sale. Wheeler, a West Point graduate, was a respected cavalry commander in the Army of Tennessee. His slave, John, was captured across the Ohio River in Perry County, Indiana. Hoosier authorities transferred John to the Breckinridge County, Kentucky jail, which indicates that the Fugitive Slave Law was still being enforced during the war, at least in part. In an apparent attempt at humor, the jailer amended the normal boilerplate advertisement language, writing, “the owner of said slave is hereby notified to come forward (without his cavalry), prove his right to said slave (without force), pay the fees and expenses, and take him to Dixie.”21

Gideon Pillow (1806-1878). Notice of courthouse sale of Tom Jackson. Frank- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS fort Tri-Weekly Commonwealth, March 18, 1863.

Captured slave advertisement for John Wheeler. Louisville Weekly Journal, February 17, 1863.

Joseph Wheeler (1836-1906). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

38 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

Some advertised incarcerated runaways were young and alone. One girl, Amanda Adilade, who absconded from her Davidson County, Tennessee, master and was jailed in Warren County, Kentucky, was only eleven years old. Stephen, a twelve-year-old boy fled all the way from Alabama before he was imprisoned in Shelby County, Kentucky. John Wesley, twelve also, ran away from his Logan County master and ended up in the Bullitt County jail. A boy named Pleasant was only thirteen when captured in Jefferson County, Kentucky, after leaving a “Widow Woodberry” in Tennessee.22

Captured slave advertisement for Amanda Adilade, an eleven-year-old who ran away from her home in Davidson County, Tennessee. Frankfort Tri-Weekly Commonwealth, August 10, 1862.

Slaves captured in the fall of 1862 began to appear in advertisements announc- ing their sale in early 1863. The Jefferson County sheriff, J. W. Davis, advertised that four incarcerated runaways, John, Jack, Joseph Doyle, and Frank, would all be sold at auction on March 2, 1863, at the courthouse door. Likewise, on April 7, 1863, Breckinridge County’s sheriff, G. W. Beard, advertised that Landy; George; Caroline; Tom Jones; and Tom’s wife, Eliza Jones; and daughter Sarah Jones would all be offered to bidders in Hardinsburg on May 18.23 Urban areas were magnets for runaway slaves. In cities such as Louisville, Lexington, Frankfort, and Bowling Green, fugitives believed they gained a certain degree of anonymity due to large black local populations. The Jefferson County jail, in particular, housed hundreds of captured runaways; in 1863, to reduce its inmate population, the jail offered frequent sales. On April 21, 1863, a sheriff’s sale notice appeared in the Louisville Weekly Journal, offering names and physical descriptions of eighteen slaves: Andy, John, Bill Wilson, Solomon, another John, Jewell, Joe, Eliza, Rufus, Charles, Edmond, Clay, Green, Isaac, Eli, Sally, Elijah, and John West, all for sale in a public auction scheduled for April 27.24

FALL 2016 39 TELLING TESTIMONY

A particularly sad case involved the family of Margaret Moore. Margaret, about thirty-three years old, fled from Sam Moore, her Huntsville, Alabama, master, probably sometime in the fall of 1862 or winter of 1863. She was arrested on February 17, in Louisville, Kentucky, and was advertised on March 16, 1863, held in the neighboring Bullitt County jail, as the Jefferson County jail was full “and no more runaway slaves can be received therein.” Margaret’s capture advertisement was atypical; with her were her daughters, Anna (twelve), Norah (eight), Ridley (six), and Caroline (two). On April 13, Bullitt County commissioner William R. Thompson ordered the family be advertised for sale, stipulat- ing that Margaret and her youngest daughter, Caroline, would be sold together. On May 18, 1863, they were auctioned at the courthouse door in Shepherdsville. Margaret and Caroline were indeed sold to the same man, but the other three girls were all sold to separate masters.25

Captured slave advertisement for Margaret Moore and her daughters, Anna, Norah, Ridley, and Caroline. Frankfort Tri-Weekly Commonwealth, March 16, 1863.

Advertisements of mothers captured with their children are rare, but others were located during the survey. Eliza, who belonged to William Waters of New Madrid, Missouri, and her daughter, who was guessed to be two years

40 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT old, were committed to the Jefferson County jail. Mary, along with a “boy- child about two years old,” was advertised in the Louisville Daily Democrat. Mary and her unnamed son ran away from their owner, Morgan Perry, of Owen County. Lodged in the Jefferson County jail, Louisa, whom the jailer described as in “delicate health”; her five-year-old daughter, Harriett; and three-year-old son, Hugh, all probably waited for an extended period of time, for she claimed to be free. Arrested and placed in the Grant County jail was another slave woman named Louisa, whom the jailer guessed to be about twenty-two years old and had with her sons Henry, “about 4 years of age,” and William, “about 2 years of age.”26 Husbands and wives were captured together, too. The jailer in Union County posted notices for three couples arrested on the same day. The first, James Green and Tennessee Green, “wife of James,” belonged to Gabe Green of Carroll County, Tennessee. The next, Charles Crook and Julian Crook, “wife of Charles,” claimed to belong to Thomas Crook of Laurel County, Tennessee. Since a Laurel County, Tennessee, did not exist, was this couple exerting further agency by providing the jailer with bogus information? The last couple, Steward Matthews, and Mary Jane Matthews, “wife of Steward,” belonged to James Matthews of Madison County, Tennessee. Since all three couples were apprehended on the same day, one wonders if perhaps they were all traveling together.27 Captured advertisements were posted in newspapers from counties all across the state. In fact, notices of jailed runaways were found from 58 of Kentucky’s 110 Civil War counties. Of the 577 captured advertisements located, Jefferson County (Louisville), probably because it was an urban area, and its border location on the Ohio River, led with 177 notices (31 percent). Neighboring Bullitt and Oldham Counties had 27 and 26 notices. Franklin County (Frankfort) had 23. Fayette County (Lexington) had 16. Livingston County, on the Ohio River, had 19. Warren County (Bowling Green) had 35. Although the majority of the notices came from the Ohio River valley, Bluegrass, and Pennyroyal regions, where slave populations were the largest, some eastern mountain counties, such as Clay, Grayson, Greenup, Harlan, and Knox were represented as well. Slave sales continued to be advertised throughout 1863. The June 12 edition of Paris, Kentucky’s Western Citizen included the headline “Public Sale of Land, Negroes and Personal Property!” and offered “Eighteen Negroes, Men, Women, and Children, of various ages, likely and valuable.” The September 18 issue of the same paper announced, “Administrator’s Sale—Seven Likely Negroes,” “PUBLIC SALE of LAND, SLAVES, STOCK & C.—15 SLAVES, consisting of men, women and children” and another, “Commissioner’s Sale of VALUABLE SCOTT COUNTY FARM; SLAVES! 10 or 12 VALUABLE SLAVES.”28

FALL 2016 41 TELLING TESTIMONY

In late 1863, the Union army also began to advertise for slaves. Union general Speed S. Fry posted an advertisement in the November 13 edition of Frankfort’s Tri-Weekly Commonwealth ordering Franklin County citizens to register their “able-bodied” slaves who were over sixteen and under forty-five for use by the army as laborers “upon the Government works.” Also included in the advertisement was the demand for owners to report any slaves who had fled from the Confederate army and were still in their possession. While some enslaved men were likely troubled to see those often viewed as liberators become taskmasters, others probably perceived providing physical labor for the Union army as a move toward military service and, ultimately, freedom.29 The year 1864 saw massive changes in Kentucky regarding slavery. Many of the African American men who escaped the state’s borders in the war’s first three years were already serving in neighboring states’ regiments, both North and South. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee all had black units, which included a number of Kentucky men. However, by 1864, Lincoln had allowed the Bluegrass State to delay the recruitment of African American soldiers as long as it filled its quotas with white troops. When the required white soldiers failed to appear in the spring of 1864, black enlistment began in earnest. Formerly enslaved men flocked to Union recruiting stations within the state seeking the freedom that enlistment guaranteed. The combined willingness to risk flight and recapture, along with the Union army’s evolution in policy regarding Kentucky African Americans, created the environment for massive changes to slavery within the Commonwealth’s borders.30 Although significantly fewer than in 1862 and 1863, county jail notices of captured runaways, along with owner-posted runaway advertisements, continued to be published in the state’s newspapers as slaves started making their way to Union army recruiting posts in the late spring and early summer of 1864. Perhaps the numbers of ads dropped off drastically because slave owners came to reluctantly accept that military service nullified masters’ claims of property, making advertising their losses virtually futile. With the stated altruistic and hopeful purpose of gaining compensation— apparently in an attempt to somewhat mitigate Kentucky slave owner disgrun- tlement—the state itself advertised. James P. Flint, commissioned by Governor Thomas E. Bramlette to take a census of slaves currently in the Union army who belonged to loyal owners, placed these ads. To gain a more accurate count, Flint sought to name agents for each county. Also published were notices that informed citizens that the law disallowing blacks to serve as surrogate soldiers for whites was amended to allow African American substitutes. In addition, advertisements appeared telling unionist slave owners about how to apply for compensation for their impressed laborers.31

42 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

Advertisement by state official James P. Flint calling for slaveholders to help determine the number of slaves who had enlisted in the United States army. Louisville Weekly Journal, May 10, 1864.

Gradually, through the fall and into the early winter of 1864–65, the number of advertisements for captured runaways diminished. And although white Kentuckians knew in 1865 that slavery was dying, they were not content about its demise. As in the war years, when ads appeared more frequently in response to slave runaways, the actions of the recently freed people left owners scrambling for ways to adjust to new circumstances. The reality of slavery’s demise dictated response, and in 1865, the number of advertisements referring to slavery continued to diminish drastically, although they did not entirely disappear. Through the spring, summer, and fall, although fewer and fewer, notices for runaways, jailed runaways, slave sales, and hiring continued to be placed. For example, owner Jane H. Miller ran an advertisement in Lexington’s Observer and Reporter on June 14, 1865, for her five female runaway slaves. However, unlike many earlier owner-posted runaway notices, which offered monetary rewards for capture, Miller issued a legal threat: “All persons are hereby warned against harboring or hiring said slaves, as I shall certainly enforce the law against any person who may do so.”32 As the Thirteenth Amendment neared its December 6, 1865, ratification, other Kentucky owners exhibited similar defiance to adjusting to their rapidly changing world. One owner, apparently protesting the approaching abolition of slavery in Kentucky more than seeking profit, placed an advertisement for sale

FALL 2016 43 TELLING TESTIMONY

to the “lowest bidder,” John, “an Idiot boy,” on the town’s public square on the next county court day. Whether the sale actually occurred is unknown; regardless, however, the advertisement provides evidence of at least some Kentuckians’ continued commitment to slavery many months after it had officially ended elsewhere.33

Notice of courthouse sale of a slave named John on the public square in Paris, Kentucky. Paris Western Citizen, December 1, 1865. KENTUCKY VIRTUAL LIBRARY AT UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

In September 1865, Master Joshua Owens ran a notice that threatened individuals that he would “prosecute to the full extent of the law” anyone who attempted to “hire or harbor” his slaves Sam, Bob, George, or Lewis. Other owners gave warning, too. James T. and Abraham Ware served notice that they would sue anyone trying to hire their man George. Likewise, Joel Cummins of Harrison County claimed exclusive dominion over his slave girl Emma and prohibited her outside employment, as did Mrs. Mary Redmon regarding her slave Anthony. In a December 1, 1865, newspaper, a group of ten Bourbon County citizens, who included U.S. con- gressman Brutus J. Clay, posted a notice under the headline “Violators of the Law Attend!” The advertisement promised prosecution under Kentucky’s

laws for those who attempted to “employ, hire, trade Brutus J. Clay (1808-1878). 34 with or harbor any slave or slaves of ours.” LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

44 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

Advertisement warning individuals against hiring or harboring Anthony, a slave of Mrs. Mary Redmon. Paris Western Citizen, November 17, 1865.

Using the same means of communication that slave owners and jailers employed to perpetuate slavery, Leroy Humbler, an African American resident of Allen County, published a newspaper advertisement seeking information about his lost son Lee Andrew Humbler. He described the youth as “a colored boy,” who was impressed “by the rebels in some of their raids into Southern Kentucky.” One of Humber’s other sons, Sam Henry, had been taken at that time, too, but had returned home. Humbler offered a “liberal reward” for the return of his son or “warmest thanks” for any information that would bring his son home.35 In the first months of the war, enslaved people had very limited opportunity for escape, thus, there was little change in the state’s slavery advertising in newspapers. However, with Kentucky’s declaration for the Union and following the rush into the state by the belligerent armies, attempts at escape and the perceptions of their potential success increased and were directly reflected in 1862 and 1863 in a dramatic rise in advertisements for runaways and captured runaways. White responses countered African American efforts at freedom. State legislators passed laws and spilled much ink in attempts to maintain traditional racial and economic control over the state’s slave population and thwart federal decrees. Owner insecurity heightened in 1864 with the Union army’s acceptance of Kentucky’s slaves into the ranks. There was little Kentucky masters or state officials could legally do to slow the emancipation process, but they continued to draw on an ever-shrinking arse- nal of prohibitions to maintain what little control they had. Advertisements reflect their efforts to prosecute anyone attempting to hire or harbor their slaves. Kentucky’s postwar race relations proved strikingly similar to those of the war years. For white Kentuckians, the refusal to ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments; the racial violence that roiled the commonwealth during Reconstruction; and the widespread embrace of the Lost Cause that has lasted into the twenty-first century show the legacy of a long history of slavery, racial prejudice, and the effort to maintain white supremacy. However, with the fall of slavery, Kentucky’s African American people also continued to push forward their forms of agency by moving to urban areas; developing close-knit rural communities; organizing schools and churches; and, now as

FALL 2016 45 TELLING TESTIMONY

legal citizens, demanding their hard-earned rights. Black men and women, who found remaining in formerly slaveholding Kentucky too difficult, left the state for Kansas or migrated north of the Ohio River. By whatever means possible, African American Kentuckians continued to attempt to exercise their recently won constitutional rights to freedom, citizenship, and equality, all of which had been denied them while enslaved, yet earned through their actions during the crucible of the Civil War.36

1 Western Citizen (Paris, KY), Nov. 17, 1865. 5 Daily Louisville Democrat, Mar. 27, 1861; Kentucky Statesman (Lexington, KY), Mar. 1, 26, 1861; Louisville 2 The primary sources the author of this study used include Daily Journal, June 8, Nov. 26, 1861; Louisville Daily the March 1861 (Lincoln’s inauguration) through December Courier, Apr. 2, 6, 1861. 1865 (ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment) editions of more than twenty-five extant Kentucky newspapers. The 6 Daily Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Mar. 20, 1861; newspapers include all that the author was able to locate Daily Louisville Democrat, Mar. 27, 1861; Louisville at repositories across the state and represent a geographical Daily Journal, July 13, Oct. 10, 1861; Presbyterian Herald diversity, from the Sandy Valley Advocate in eastern Kentucky (Louisville, KY), Mar. 7, 1861; Kentucky Statesman to the Henderson Weekly Reporter in western Kentucky. (Lexington, KY), Apr. 5, 26, 1861. However, a significant portion of the newspapers were from central Kentucky, as these seem the best preserved. Kentucky 7 Astor, Rebels on the Border, 28–32; Gerald L. Smith, newspapers aligned with the Democratic, Opposition, and “Slavery and Abolition in Kentucky: ‘Patter-Rollers’ Were later Constitutional Union (former Whig) political parties. Everywhere,” in Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Antislavery newspapers published during the Civil War in Culture of Central Kentucky, 1792–1852, ed. James C. the state were virtually nonexistent. Klotter and Daniel Rowland (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 76. 3 Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (New 8 Louisville Daily Journal, Nov. 4, 1861. Unlike those in Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 129–30; Diane Mutti most slave states, Kentucky’s enslaved people were not Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding prohibited from learning to read and write. Observer Households, 1815–1865 (Athens: University of Georgia and Reporter (Lexington, KY), Oct. 19, 1861; Louisville Press, 2010), 299. Kentucky’s constitutional convention Daily Journal, Oct. 14, 1861; U.S. Bureau of the Census, of 1849–50 produced an amendment to the state’s bill of Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 (Washington rights, stating “the right of property is before and higher D.C.: GPO, 1860), Garnettsville, Meade County, KY. than any constitutional sanction; and the right to the Mattingly is listed in the 1860 census as owning twenty- owner of a slave to such slave, and its increase, is the same, two slaves. Covington Journal, Oct. 26, 1861. and is inviolable as the right of the owner, of any property whatever.” Harold D. Tallant, Evil Necessity: Slavery and 9 The author has compiled a database containing 577 indi- Political Culture in Antebellum Kentucky (Lexington: viduals committed to Kentucky county jails as runaway University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 155. slaves. Of that total, 242, or 42 percent, of the captured advertisements were published in 1862 newspapers. 4 Kentucky Statesman, (Lexington, KY) Mar. 1, 1861; The Revised Lexington Observer and Reporter, Mar. 6, 1861. Agricultural 10 C. A. Wickliffe, S. Turner, and S. S. Nichols, Statutes of Kentucky and industrial slave labor hiring was especially popular in (Frankfort: A. G. Hodges, 1852); Daily Louisville Democrat, Kentucky due to its focus on diversified crops and the lower Oct. 11, 1861. average number of slaves per owner. Additionally, hiring 11 Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: slaves to help with housework made up a significant amount Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884 (Lexington: of slave rentals. For more on slave hiring in Kentucky see University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 44; Ira Keith C. Barton, “‘Good Cooks and Washers’: Slave Hiring, Berlin et al., eds. Freedom: A Documentary History Domestic Labor, and the Market in Bourbon County, of Emancipation, 1861–1867, ser. 1, vol. 1, The Kentucky,” Journal of American History 84 (Sept. 1997): Destruction of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University 436–60; see also Aaron Astor, Rebels on the Border: Civil Press, 1985), 503–5; Benjamin Franklin Cooling, War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Fort Donelson’s Legacy: War and Society in Kentucky Missouri (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville: University of 2012), 25–28. Louisville Daily Journal, Dec. 17, 23, 1861; Tennessee Press, 1997), 144. Of the database’s total Daily Louisville Democrat, Dec. 31, 1861.

46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY TIMOTHY ROSS TALBOTT

577 individuals, only 75, or 13 percent, were women, 28 Western Citizen (Paris, KY), June 12, Sept. 18, 1863. and 37, or 6 percent, claimed to be free. Louisville Daily Democrat, Mar. 15, 1862. 29 Tri-Weekly Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Nov. 13, 1863.

12 Louisville Daily Democrat, Oct. 11, 1862; Louisville 30 Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky, 52, 62–63. Weekly Journal, Nov. 4, 1862. Kentucky eventually sent almost twenty-four thousand African Americans into the Union army, an amazing 13 Tri-Weekly Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Nov. 5, 24, figure, considering the state’s delayed recruitment. Only 1862, Mar. 18, 1863; Revised Statutes of Kentucky, 637. Louisiana is credited with having more black soldiers than Kentucky. While Kentucky African American 14 Lexington Observer and Reporter, Mar. 24, 1862. men were afforded freedom with their military service, it was not until March 3, 1865, that President Lincoln Louisville Weekly Journal, Revised Statutes 15 Apr. 15, 1862; signed legislation freeing the wives and children of black of Kentucky, 637. Kentucky soldiers. Amy Murrell Taylor, “How a Cold Snap in Kentucky Led to Freedom for Thousands: An 16 Tri-Weekly Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), July 4, 1862; Environmental Story of Emancipation,” in Weirding the Governor Beriah Magoffin Executive Papers, Kentucky War: Stories from the Civil War’s Ragged Edges, ed. Stephen Department of Library and Archives, Frankfort; Berry (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 204. Laws of Kentucky: Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1861–1863 (Frankfort: John 31 Louisville Weekly Journal, May 10, 1864; Western B. Major and W. E. Hughes, Printers, 1863), 243. Of the Citizen (Paris, KY), May 27, Aug. 23, 1864; Tri-Weekly advertisements for captured runaways in the database, Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), May 2, 1864. 234, or 40 percent were published during 1863. 32 Only about 7 percent of the 577 captured runaway slaves in Tri-Weekly Commonwealth 17 (Frankfort, KY), Jan. 5, 1863. the database were published in 1864 Kentucky newspapers. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery 18 James Oakes, 33 Western Citizen (Paris, KY), Dec. 1, 1865. Delaware, too, in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York: Norton, 2013), rejected passing a state law that abolished slavery, and Message of Governor Robinson, to the General Assembly 423; thus, as in Kentucky, only the Thirteenth Amendment of Kentucky (Frankfort: Wm. E. Hughes, printer, 1863), ended the institution there. However, Delaware’s slave Laws of Kentucky: Acts of the General Assembly of the 17, 19; population (roughly 1,800 in 1860) paled in comparison Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1861–1863 , 366. to Kentucky’s (approximately 225,000 in 1860, about 20 percent of the state’s population), which was more than 19 Richard Troutman ed., The Heavens Are Weeping: The all of the other Border States combined. Diaries of George R. Browder, 1852–1886, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1987), 156. 34 Western Citizen (Paris KY), Sept. 29, Oct. 6, 1865, Nov. 10, 17, Dec. 1, 1865. Brutus Junius Clay was a large 20 Tri-Weekly Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Mar. 23, slaveholder from Bourbon County and the brother of 1863; Laws of Kentucky: Acts of the General Assembly of the noted Kentucky emancipationist Cassius Marcellus Clay, Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1861–1863, 362. Lincoln’s minister to Russia during the Civil War. 21 Louisville Weekly Journal, Jan. 13, Feb. 17, 1863; Tri-Weekly 35 Louisville Weekly Journal, Aug. 15, 1865. Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Mar. 18, Apr. 24, 1863. 36 For a look at Kentucky’s wartime shift from unionism 22 Tri-Weekly Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Mar. 18, Apr. 6, to a pro-southern stance, see Jacob F. Lee, “Unionism, Aug. 10, 1863; Louisville Weekly Journal, Jan. 10, 1865. Of Emancipation, and the Origins of Kentucky’s Confederate the 577 slaves with listed ages in the database, 47 percent Identity.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 111 were in their twenties, and 22 percent were in their teens. (Spring 2013): 199–233; Patrick A. Lewis, For Slavery 23 Louisville Weekly Journal, Jan. 6, Apr. 7, 1863. and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 24 Louisville Weekly Journal, Apr. 21, 1863. 2015); Charles Yonkers, “The Transformation of George W. Smith: How a Western Kentucky Farmer Evolved from a 25 Berlin et al., Freedom 568, 569–70; Tri-Weekly Unionist Whig to Pro-Southern Democrat,” Register of the Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Mar. 16, 1863. Kentucky Historical Society 103 (Autumn 2005): 661–90. For an excellent look at Kentucky’s postwar Confederate 26 Louisville Daily Democrat, May 13, Aug. 8, 1862; Tri-Weekly identity and the state’s embrace of the Lost Cause, see Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Apr. 20, 1863, Feb. 9, 1864. Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel 27 Daily Commonwealth (Frankfort, KY), Feb. 9, 1864. Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

FALL 2016 47 “At Liberty to Take Possession” How Cincinnati Riverboat Law Turned “Have- Nots” into “Haves” during the Civil War Era Matthew Axtell

n the three decades preceding the Civil War, during the height of America’s fabled steamboat era, river workers and their lawyers began to erode discriminatory norms of economic and political citizenship by using the for- Imal structures of a peculiarly egalitarian variant of creditor and debtor law that arose from Cincinnati’s waterfront. Within the Queen City of the mid-1800s, disruptive concepts about commerce, initially designed to expedite the exchange of goods on nineteenth-century levees during a period of rapid economic expansion, quickly spread beyond their initial bounds—beginning in the Cincinnati law office of a young Salmon P. Chase. Rather than threatening individual liberty or slowing economic activity, actual and theorized transfers of riverboat property on Ohio River waterfronts during the ages of Jackson and Lincoln sometimes empowered private actors in a way that upset social hierarchies between buyers and sellers, banks and laborers, masters and slaves. Always challenged and often bloody, this egalitarian legal process was briefly backed by centralized government force through the regulatory oversight of the U.S. Treasury Department between 1861 and 1864, helmed by none other than Salmon P. Chase, who sought to implement the lessons he had learned as a Buckeye steamboat lawyer on a nationwide basis during the Civil War.

Cincinnati riverfront (c. 1850s). Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL

On June 19, 1865, during the closing stages of this story, the steamboat W. R. Carter, a Louisville-built craft traveling upstream from New Orleans, arrived at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers at Cairo, Illinois, carrying one of its key protagonists. Sometime around dawn, deckhands tied the craft to Cairo’s wharf, and Salmon P. Chase, the new chief justice of the United States, stepped into town. As recorded in his diary, Chase’s Cairo visit lasted just long enough to kill time while the Carter refueled. After rebuffing an agent for the Illinois Central Railroad Company, Chase was back on the Carter and steaming up the Ohio River by 9:00 a.m. In the closing stages of a “southern tour” of former rebel territory before the start of the Supreme Court’s new term, Chase was on a transcontinental journey he was determined to undertake completely by water: by oceangoing ship from the Potomac River to the Gulf of Mexico, then by steamboat up the Mississippi to the Ohio River. Until he reached Cincinnati, his steamboat trip would not end.1 Although in 1865 Cairo was temporarily benefiting from its status as a wartime shipping depot, many still considered the soggy riverfront land deeply cursed. According to some, Cairo’s water landing was haunted by the ghost of Joseph Spencer, the proprietor of the Patrick Henry, a wharfboat saloon, hotel, and reputed gambling den that lay at the foot of the levee during the 1850s. For Chase, Spencer’s story would have been familiar, as Joe Spencer was representative of the riverboat clients Chase had represented during his earlier legal career in Cincinnati. According to several Ohio River valley newspapers, Spencer had been “a free negro, well known in th[e] city,” alleged to have had “some white blood in him,” who had proven to be “a sharp fellow in every game.” His floating hotel in Cairo was once known throughout the region for its excellent dinners, “snow white sheets,” and “neatest little rooms imaginable.” By running this business, Spencer had amassed what one white Illinois lawyer called a “little fortune,” deposited mostly in Louisville and St. Louis banks. Coupled with the fact he was “generally acknowledged to be ‘smarter’ than many among the whites,” Spencer’s wealth eventually made him very offensive to some people on Cairo’s shore, including a group of white carpenters from St. Louis hired to build a new hotel on land recently purchased by an out-of-state corporate concern. On November 27, 1854, when the river was at its low point, this group descended on the Patrick Henry and demanded Spencer leave town. When he refused, supposedly vow- ing that “the property was his and he would stick to it ’til he died,” the crowd unmoored Spencer’s boat and set it aflame. Spencer appeared on the deck of the Henry for a split second with a gun in his hand, something heavy tied around his neck, and angry words on his lips. He then leapt into the middle of the river, never to be seen again.2

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View of Cairo, Illinois at the junction between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (c. 1856-1867). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

According to Charles W. Batchelor, a white steamboat captain who had witnessed Joe Spencer’s last moments, the incident triggering Spencer’s death was legal in nature, beginning earlier the same day when a white Cairo man who had sold something of value to Spencer, a shipment of pork or an excess flatboat, sued Spencer for failing to honor the debt. Spencer had challenged the white man’s claim, carrying a powder keg into open court and threatening to blow “the entire party to h—ll” if he was not released from the demand. For the Pittsburgh-based Batchelor, Spencer’s courtroom defiance made him “one of the gamest men who ever came within my notice.” Here was a man of color defending his own property claims within a legal system otherwise designed with only the business needs of the white-run Cairo City Property Company in mind.3 When the W. R. Carter landed at Cairo in 1865, it was possible that Salmon P. Chase had never heard about Joe Spencer’s case or his sunken vessel. But for the new chief justice, the fact that a “negro boatman” had once entered a local courtroom in an Ohio River town and insisted that equal justice be done on his behalf would not have been surprising. From the 1830s through the 1860s, from his time as a young lawyer in Cincinnati to his service as secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet, Chase had been employed by many people in Spencer’s position, white and black, free and enslaved working-class riverboat people insisting that existing legal institutions be made available to their own advantage on an egalitarian basis. Though their demands were always contested, federal power eventually supported them during the Civil War. By the time of Chase’s 1865 river journey, one legal tactic they had often relied on—modeled on the streamlined exchange of steamboat property interests in the Ohio River valley during waterfront debt collection proceedings—was even being used by Treasury

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Department agents in a government bid to equalize labor relations throughout the conquered South as a whole. Today, in contrast to the increasingly egalitarian legal world Chase knew by 1865, the legal history of the Civil War era is often considered to have very little to do with the contentious commercial deals and property claims that often gov- erned the private lives of free people of color, such as Joseph Spencer; their slave counterparts; and their legal representatives before the war. For example, the story of slavery’s demise in the United States is generally narrated entirely in public institutional terms, as the direct result of a set of national government policies only theorized by a few white abolitionists prior to the rebellion, and then only imple- mented during wartime. Starting with the shielding of “contrabands” behind Union lines in 1861, and the arming of African American troops in 1862, these government initiatives are said to extend through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and end with the ratification of the three Reconstruction amendments between 1865 and 1870. According to James McPherson, Eric Foner, and legal scholars Bruce Ackerman and Akhil Amar, these federal acts, taken together, launched a “second revolution” in the legal order of the United States that replaced a generally racist patchwork “state of courts of parties” operating on the local level with a strong, centrally managed administrative legal apparatus protecting minority rights. Through this public law institutional history of American emancipation, at least part of Salmon P. Chase’s program—the government-led Treasury Department portion of his agenda—is recovered. But then it is brought to a sting- ing defeat through the dismantling of Abraham Lincoln’s wartime-era state during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. As Eric Foner has argued, this left much of America’s second revolution “unfinished.” Until the government institutions created during Radical Reconstruction were rebuilt a century later, a de facto form of slavery was generally revived on a local level through Jim Crow laws, which apparently cleared the way for an entire population of people to be converted back into units of labor for the benefit of a wealthy few.4 When historians narrate the history of American emancipation in this way, likening it to a type of state-led battle against the institution of “chattel property” fought largely by white government agents, problems sometimes creep in. Within the context of an antebellum world where, according to the public law historian William J. Novak, visions for a “well-regulated society” often coexisted “comfortably with slavery and patriarchy,” and where common resources like Cairo’s wharf were nevertheless just as likely to remain in private rather than government hands, this public institution narrative does not seem fully capable of explaining what made emancipation conceivable as a matter of national law for Lincoln’s generation, circa 1865. Moreover, with its emphasis on the abstract growth of state power during the war and Reconstruction, this narrative remains poorly equipped to explain the market-oriented tack many government-backed emancipation policies eventually

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did take during the Civil War. In the first chapter of Freedom National, for instance, James Oakes notes that key members of America’s white antislavery vanguard (both Chase and the eventual authors of the Thirteenth Amendment) actually saw themselves as defenders of “property rights,” viewing slavery as “a form of theft in which the individual’s inalienable claim of ownership to his or herself was forcibly vio- lated.” Elsewhere, however, Chase and his cohort are categorized rather incongru- ously as making “arguments against…property rights,” as if they were instead seeking to combat the concept of ownership itself. In opposing a national right to “property in man,” were white antislavery advocates like Chase fighting a more general battle against what the historian Amy Dru Stanley has called “modes of economic domination that erode public life”? Or was theirs a battle for more inclu- sive forms of property ownership, fought initially within the hegemonic discursive framework of private commercial law, a market-based institution that recent Ohio Valley historians like Stephen Aron otherwise argue operated against the interests of the nineteenth-century’s have-nots? In general, historians of government-backed emancipation efforts eschew questions such as these, avoiding a sustained inquiry into what extent government-led emancipation policies borrowed from and then subtly subverted, rather than directly challenged, fundamental private law under- standings about property and contract drawn from the antebellum age.5 This article takes a different approach. In particular, it argues that Chase’s wartime work as Lincoln’s Treasury secretary was the logical outgrowth of an egalitarian pre–Civil War commercial world that Chase and his Ohio River clients first helped theorize within the antebellum confines of his Queen City law office, a zone of improvised, arms-length, cross-racial, inter-class legal exchange. As seen in Joseph Spencer’s courtroom insistence that he be given equal justice as a “man of commerce” in his own right and in Chase’s advocacy for similar clients in Spencer’s position, business law arguments about credit and debt occasionally transcended otherwise hardened barriers of race and class in powerful ways during even the most conflict-ridden moments of the Ohio River valley’s steamboat era. Today, understanding the legal history of Chase’s Treasury Department policies through the lens of his earlier career as a steamboat lawyer makes two contributions to the existing legal historiography of the Ohio River region. First, it challenges a dominant narrative depicting everyday economic institutions like property and contract as largely functioning as the near-perfect weapons of the strong over the weak within the nineteenth-century Ohio River valley, as always trending toward a greater entrenchment of unfree labor within this area prior to the Thirteenth Amendment. Second, it details a private law tradition of equitable legal rights thought to have originated from the courtrooms and attorney offices dedicated to adjudicating the profits and losses associated with nineteenth-century Ohio River commerce, a tradition that helped catalyze a “long history of emancipation” predating Fort Sumter and extending beyond Appomattox.6

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The business law concepts most clearly uniting Chase’s early career as a Cincinnati attorney with his later career as a public official in Lincoln’s cabinet were the twin legal concepts of credit and debt. As early as the 1840s, Chase had learned from some of his African American clients that slavery was a form of wage theft that stole black labor from its rightful owner. In 1844, for instance, Milton Clarke, a formerly enslaved steamboat musician from Kentucky who once claimed to have sought Chase’s legal representation, circulated an itemized demand against the estate of his putative master, Archibald Logan, in abolitionist newspapers. “I worked for Mr. Logan for about ten years, for which he has never paid me the first dollar,” Clarke’s notice insisted. As a result, Logan was in debt to him for at least $1,000, representing ten years of labor at $100 per annum. “I consider the above a very moderate charge,” Clarke wrote, “and actually due me, and intend to collect it if I can.” By 1844, Chase wrote to Lewis Tappan—a Wall Street financier, abolitionist, and one of Chase’s white clients—that he considered himself a “full convert” to Clarke’s contract-based view. If Chase ever became a judge “and a fugitive slave in Ohio should bring an action against his pursuing master for wages during his whole time of his servitude,” he pledged that he “would have judgment” in his court.7 Chase understood the legal con- tours of Milton Clarke’s credit-and-debt- based antislavery claim in 1844, and used similar concepts to inform his Treasury Department policies in the 1860s, in part because it was framed in terms that Chase, a white commercial lawyer, already found familiar: collecting riverfront “debts” on behalf of riverfront “creditors” had dominated Lewis Tappan (1788-1873). Chase’s own career from the very begin- Harper’s Weekly July 12, 1873. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ning. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1826 and reading law in Washington, D.C., for several years, the twenty-two- year-old Chase arrived in Cincinnati as a young, upstart lawyer in 1830, eager to begin his legal career. By 1834, he had achieved a modicum of success, primarily by securing the position of solicitor for the Cincinnati Branch of the Second Bank of the United States. This early work was devoted exclusively to debt collection, filing bills “to subject property to satisfy judgments” under a streamlined, pro-creditor statute titled “An Act Regulating Judgment and Executions.” Earning a commission for every new debt collected, Chase’s legal advice supported broad bank claims to debtor property in all of its forms. As the leading

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judgment creditor in town, Chase took the position that the bank dictated the legal terms by which most Cincinnatians held the things that they believed they owned. Specifically, the bank could set aside sheriff sales by other creditors, could appropriate money that these other creditors had made by sheriff sale, and could proceed against a security’s property once the principal’s property was exhausted. Once the bank received a sheriff’s deed to a particular tract of land, for instance, the bank’s ownership interest attached even if it took no additional steps. “Having the legal title,” Chase summarized in a memorandum to his clients, “the Bank [i]s at liberty to take possession at any time and in any way.”8 Chase’s work as solicitor for the Second Bank of the United States helped to establish his professional name within the Queen City of the West during the 1830s. But it did not last into the next decade. Reeling from the expira- tion of its national charter, the bank cut ties with Chase in 1842, following disputes over legal fees. For a few years, without relinquishing his identity as a specialist in debt collection, Chase managed to survive by expanding his law firm’s client base beyond Cincinnati’s traditional lending class. Over time, he and his partner, Flamen Ball, even began to count white carpenters, “lumber men,” and recent immigrants as some of their clients, bringing collection claims on their behalf for modest sums stemming from such working-class activities as “labor and drayage.” Such work naturally brought Chase in close contact with the steamboat trade’s white workforce, a group he once had dis- missed as a lawless “mob” but which he learned was equipped with its own sophisticated legal consciousness.9 In 1842, for instance, Chase began mentoring a young German man named Charles Dimmig, a recent immigrant to Cincinnati of “limited means” who harbored dreams of studying law. Not finding steady work in Cincinnati but “too proud to become a beggar,” Dimmig eventually ended up in New Orleans working as a “common hand” loading and unloading steamboats on that city’s levee. In Cincinnati, Dimmig once sought Chase’s advice because of Chase’s reputation as a man who went “for equal rights and freedom to all men without distinction.” Now, facing a riverfront life in Louisiana that was “unendurable,” rife with caste-like differences, Dimmig turned to Chase again. “I am looked upon and treated almost like a slave,” he informed the latter in a letter from the Crescent City, “classed with the lowest dregs of a white population, mixed with those unfortunate beings whom a cruel fate has doomed to slavery.” Part of Dimmig’s plan to escape this lot involved asking Chase to gather a modest sum owed to him by another man. To emerge from his “slave-like” condition, Dimmig sought to make Chase, former branch solicitor of the Second Bank of the United States, his debt-collecting attorney of record.10

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As Dimmig’s letters hinted, Chase’s growing reputation as an “equal rights” attorney was at least partly earned by his working for another group of clients on the other side of Cincinnati’s color line. A few years earlier, Chase had represented Matilda Lawrence, an “octoroon” woman who had walked away from a lifetime of service to her biological father, a Missouri slaveholder, against a claim that she was still a slave. While Lawrence eventually lost her case, Chase’s work for Lawrence identified him as a rarity within Cincinnati: a white attorney willing to represent African American clients in Ohio courts. Despite the possible risks in alienating some of his genteel white clients, such business represented a potential growth area for Chase as he sought to revive his practice in antebellum Cincinnati after his break with the Second Bank of the United States.11 Thus, along with white working-class litigants like Charles Dimmig, by 1841, Chase’s new client list also included people like Griffin Watson, an African American steamboat steward working on the Ambassador, a Cincinnati–to–New Orleans vessel. Like most of the business meetings Chase chronicled in his professional notes, he left few clues on the precise legal issues at play in his first meeting with Watson, only noting that he satisfied “Griffin Watson, a cold man… as well I could.” A few weeks later, he revealed a little more. Watson, his diary stated, was involved in a common law action for “ejectment” that had been filed in Cincinnati Common Pleas Court, meaning that at least one party was in possession of real estate that another claimed as his own. To block this action, a court injunction had also been filed. It is possible that Watson was a party facing eviction and had retained Chase to file this motion. In Cincinnati city directories for the years 1839 through 1842, Watson was listed as living on McAllister Street, an alleyway a few blocks from Chase’s office. Between 1843 and 1848, however, he was not listed at all, only to reappear in 1849 at a different address. That Watson was one of a small number of people of African descent chosen to be included in special “colored” sections of Cincinnati’s city directory indicates that he was also a man of some social standing in the Queen City. Listed in federal census reports as “mulatto” and a Virginia native, he clearly had staying power and some financial wherewithal. By 1850, the federal census listed him as the head of a household of eight; by 1880, he was listed as the widower patriarch of a living unit of ten, still residing in the Queen City. As W. H. Gibson, an African American resident of Louisville later recalled, Griffin Watson’s occupation as steamboat steward, sometimes yielding $150 to $200 per month, was a “position of rank” within river towns at the time, even allowing a select number of African Americans to out-earn white deckhands while working above them in the cabin sections of their river vessel employers. “These men were highly respected by the citizens generally,” Gibson explained, adding, “most of them acquired property and lived comfortably in their homes.”12

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W. H. Gibson Sr. (1828-1906). History of the Griffin Watson’s entry in the 1857 Cincinnati City Directory. United Brothers of Friendship and Sisters of CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER the Mysterious Ten, a Negro order organized August 1, 1861 in the city of Louisville, Ky., (Bradley & Gilbert, 1897). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Given what we know about Griffin Watson, whether he was defending against an eviction or seeking to repossess a parcel that a different tenant claimed to own, he quite possibly entered Chase & Ball with a good deal of self-assurance, ready to assert a property claim against the rest of the world. Nevertheless, other white attorneys working in Cincinnati would have likely shown him the door. During his interview with Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, Chase’s former law partner, Timothy Walker, recounted a similar instance when he “was consulted by a negro who had furnished a great number of foodstuffs” by unful- filled contract to the white master of a steamboat, a person who was now denying the debt. Citing the state’s so-called Black Laws preventing “negro testimony” against whites, Walker felt powerless to intervene. “In Ohio,” he summarized to Tocqueville, “a negro has no political rights.” Although his prospective client could draw upon a number of his African American workmen to speak on his behalf, their words were meaningless in the eyes of Ohio law. Even

if this generated “the most revolting injustices,” Timothy Walker (1806-1856). 13 Walker turned the man away. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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Chase came to disagree with Walker regarding the capacity of Ohio law to produce just outcomes on both sides of the color line. According to Chase, the state’s discriminatory Black Laws were an illegitimate attempt to introduce “the Aristocratic principle” into the Buckeye State, particularly because these statutes mandated a series of “privileges for the higher classes, and restrictions for the infe- rior.” Accompanying people like Griffin Watson as they asserted property claims within Ohio’s existing commercial order, Chase viewed himself as helping restore true “equal justice” principles to Ohio as a matter of law. “Every law on the statute book,” he lectured in 1845, that is “so wrong and mean that it cannot be executed, or felt, if executed, to be oppressive and unjust, tends to the overthrow of all law, separating in the minds of the people the idea of law from the idea of right.”14 In his prewar debt collection work for white “levee hands” like Dimmig or African American riverboat stewards like Griffin Watson, Chase could utilize a peculiar set of state statutes passed in the 1830s and 1840s, collectively known as “watercraft laws.” As one Cincinnati-based boatman’s attorney explained in 1847, claims under such statutes aided “deserving young men in recovering the fruits of their labors, which are justly due them, and which they can ill afford to lose.” In 1849, one steamboat trade publication edited by a former Cincinnati steamboat captain catalogued “watercraft law” provisions in ten separate inland river states. Each authorized some sort of suit against steamboats, their owners, or their officers. Of particular note was Ohio’s watercraft law, passed on February 26, 1840, and titled “an Act providing for the collection of claims against steamboats and other watercrafts, and authorizing proceedings against the same by name.” According to one steamboat lawyer, this statute gave “special privileges” to claimants against steamboats that were not analogous to anything else under Buckeye law. As interpreted by the state’s courts, there was “no limit to the liability” of a boat under Ohio’s watercraft law, especially in relation to complaints brought by its crew.15 As drafted, Ohio’s watercraft law assigned liability to steamboats or other vessels “navigating the waters within or bordering upon” Ohio waters for debts “contracted by the master, owner, steward, consignee or other agent,” specifically for “materials, supplies, or labor in the building, repairing, furnishing or equipping the same.” But it also made the vessels liable for “damages arising out of any contract for the transportation of goods or persons,” or for injuries to “persons or property” by the watercraft. Moreover, it made vessels answerable for any physical damages or injuries boat hands or passengers sustained from the actions of steamboat officers or anyone else working under their command. The process to collect compensation under the act was familiar, derived from Ohio’s “Act Regulating Judgments and Executions.” Before a court clerk or justice of the peace, a plaintiff filed a claim against a steamboat’s owner or against the steamboat itself, listing the vessel by name or description. An Ohio court officer then immediately issued a warrant for a sheriff or constable to seize the craft or to detain enough “apparel and furniture

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Ohio’s watercraft law, passed on February 26, 1840. Acts of a General Nature Passed by the Thirty-Eighth General Assembly of the State of Ohio (c. 1840). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

to satisfy the demand.” Unless a boat’s owner appeared and posted a bond double the amount of the demand, the vessel was tied up to the dock and the matter followed normal debt collection procedures, where any steamboat property still held could be “sold upon execution to satisfy the judgment.”16 In essence, Ohio’s watercraft law democ- ratized the Buckeye State’s debt collection process within a leading sector of Cincinnati’s economy by turning mechanics, shipbuilders, storekeepers, boat hands, and passengers— stalwart denizens of the steamboat sector’s debtor rolls—into a powerful new creditor Volume 1, issue 1 of The Western class. Indeed, as one commentator argued, Boatman (c. 1848). the watercraft law could be seen as working CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

58 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL an “implied hypothecation” of Ohio River steamers in favor of their builders, crew, suppliers, and passengers, all in preference to the people who financed and puta- tively “owned” these vessels. Most tellingly, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 1843 that the watercraft law was applicable to claims for crewmen’s wages. According to Judge Nathaniel Read, a Jacksonian Democrat who had written the majority opinion in an earlier watercraft law decision, the statute was “equitable in its object” in favor of the river’s working class and would “receive a liberal construction.” Now, Timothy Walker warned, “every boat carries with her a secret lien, for all the debts contracted by her, not only for labor and supplies in building or repairing, but also for running her.” Given the time and place where this happened, this was a radical social development. As interpreted by Ohio courts, the watercraft law was a living application of John Locke’s old “labor theory of appropriation,” wherein each humble river worker was assigned a property right in the “Labour of his Body and the Work of his Hands.” In the context of a legal-commercial world that had been carefully managed by lawyers on behalf of an elite banking class only a few years before, the Ohio watercraft law upended the river’s normal modes of social organization, creating a structure whereby the steamboat economy’s traditional “Have- Nots” could be seen as expectant “Haves” as a matter of law.17 Chase worked in the 1840s to extend the watercraft law’s ability to claim other people’s riverborne possessions, just as he had when interpreting the Bank of the United States charter. The results were seen in the increasingly egalitarian case law that came to dominate the commercial law reports published in Ohio during this era. The idea that the watercraft law created a “secret lien,” for instance, had originated from an 1841 case Chase & Ball brought on behalf of an Ohio storekeeper seeking payment for articles furnished to an Ohio–Mississippi River steamer. In Steamboat Monarch v. Finley, Judge Peter Hitchcock, a twenty- year veteran of the court, ruled against Timothy Walker’s motion that Chase & Ball had named the wrong party by suing the Monarch itself, through the mecha- nism of what was called an “in rem proceeding.” The venerable Hitchcock, who opined in a later case that the law’s in rem provisions indeed “introduced a new principle into the existing jurisprudence,” nevertheless determined that “this law gives a lien upon such crafts for certain claims against them.”18 Following Chase’s lead, subsequent plaintiffs’ attorneys pushed Ohio’s watercraft law even further. By the end of the 1840s, Timothy Walker reported to readers of the Western Law Journal that the statute had broad application. There was, of course, the extension of the law to crewmen’s wages, but there were also rulings extending the law to local steam ferries in addition to interstate steamboats and to claims that arose from incidents that occurred beyond state lines. In Goodrich v. Strader, an 1846 case concerning a Mississippi River steamboat collision that pitted Chase as plaintiff’s attorney against several of Timothy Walker’s steamboat- owning clients, Chase successfully applied a claim under the watercraft law to

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multiple vessels at once. For Timothy D. Lincoln, the lawyer who worked alongside Walker in Goodrich, the state’s watercraft law turned his steamboat-owning clients into an oppressed social class. Like other forms of private property, Lincoln argued in a pamphlet attacking the law, steamboat ownership interests should be considered “inviolable” under the U.S. and Ohio constitutions. The state constitution, Lincoln noted, did not permit lawmakers to reallocate property between private parties without the consent of each side. Yet, he argued, this was precisely the result that the watercraft law accomplished—it allowed “the Legislature of Ohio…to take the steamboat of A…to pay B’s debts.”19 When describing what he considered the most pernicious social effects of open-ended working-class claims under Ohio’s watercraft law, Timothy Lincoln went for the jugular, detailing Brooks v. the Golden Gate, a case from Hamilton County’s district court that he assumed most Ohio judges would find morally reprehensible. While the Golden Gate was plying the Mississippi River near Memphis, Lincoln related, a man named Brooks, “a colored hand upon the boat,” became involved in a quarrel with the engineer, in which “the engineer struck him a blow with his knife, which greatly injured him.” The white engineer then claimed that he acted in self-defense to ward off Brooks, whom Lincoln described as “a much larger and stronger man.” Nevertheless, after he was discharged, the African American boatman had the temerity to bring a claim for damages under Ohio’s watercraft law against the Golden Gate, a boat wholly owned by a man from Indiana, for actions that occurred beyond the state. “The effect of the statute,” Lincoln’s pamphlet howled in derision, was “to produce insubordination among the crew and deck passengers.” Riding at the literal bottom of the vessel, these lowly souls, black and white alike, were once subject to orders from the boat’s captain or her mate under the law. No longer. “They feel quite indepen- dent, since they can sue the boat for any difficulty between them and the com- manding officers, and prove what they wish, especially as neither the boat or her officers can stop to defend against these small claims.… They to be ordered by the mate? They are as good as he!”20 If Salmon P. Chase were still relying on business from the city’s financial elite to support his law practice, Lincoln’s story about Brooks v. the Golden Gate may have been a cautionary tale, forcing him to rethink the expansive reading he had given to the state’s watercraft law. Instead, by the end of the 1840s, having rebuilt his practice around Ohio’s working-class people of color, such as Brooks and Milton Clarke, and their white counterparts, such as Charles Dimmig, he was prepared to extend the egalitarian logic of the watercraft law further downstream, potentially all the way to New Orleans. Nevertheless, jurisprudence under the Buckeye State’s radically egalitarian watercraft law did not naturally flow beyond Ohio’s state lines. During the 1840s, for instance, courts in Kentucky refused to give Ohio judgments under the Buckeye State’s watercraft law “full faith and

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credit” in their local tribunals. At the same time, Kentucky lawyers could draw on the precedent of Steamboat Thomas Jefferson, an 1825 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the crew of an Ohio River steamboat could not recover its unpaid wages under national admiralty law, thus blocking the use of similar watercraft law procedures in federal court. Running throughout such resistance was the apparent concern among Kentucky’s legal intelligentsia that making steamboat ownership interests subject to black and white working- class claims also placed other contested ownership interests—such as the exclusive claims of white Kentuckians over enslaved black labor time in the Bluegrass State—at greater risk. According to George M. Bibb, chancellor of Louisville’s chancery court from 1835 to 1844, wage claims by out-of-state steamboat crews could potentially allow “colored defences” and abolitionist lawyers to gain the upper hand whenever a slaveholder made a claim against a steamboat for a lost slave, particularly “by means of feigned suits in the admiralty undefended, with consent sales upon three days notice, and sentences in rem.” If such claims were given permission to proceed in southern tribunals, it could potentially change the Ohio River from a slaveholder’s lake—with property in slaves honored on both sides of the stream—into an abolitionist’s transit corridor that primarily served to separate slaveholders from their human possessions.21 By the end of 1850, however, resistance to some of the streamlined processes underlying Ohio’s watercraft law and its federal admiralty law analogue lessened within some southern legal circles. This was likely due, at least in part, to a legislative compromise Congress reached in 1850, which seemed to eliminate most possibilities that federal institutions could be used to regulate or prohibit the peculiar institution where it appeared on a state or territorial level. Soon after the Compromise of 1850, for instance, the Supreme Court of the United States extended the reach of federal admiralty jurisdiction beyond the “ebb and flow of the tide” of the Atlantic Coast in an opinion written by none other than Roger B. Taney, future author of Dred Scott. Admiralty law, Taney now reasoned in Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, was plainly “necessary in all commercial countries” for “the safety and con- venience of commerce, and the speedy decisions of controversies, where delay would often be ruin.” As such, “it would be contrary to the first principles on which the Union was formed to confine” such pri-

Roger B. Taney (1777-1864). vately wielded rights to residents of only a limited 22 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS number of states hugging the eastern seaboard.

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After Taney’s Genesee Chief decision, the streamlined procedures of Ohio’s watercraft law, with their working-class applications, eventually broke from their jurisdictional limits in Ohio to play a star- ring role in midwestern tribunals through the obscure mechanisms of federal admiralty law. By 1852, Steubenville’s Humphrey Leavitt, a Jackson-appointed U.S. district judge for Ohio, was hearing an in rem claim arising from the inland waters of the Ohio River, under court rules that permitted all parties having an interest in seized vessels, including crewmen who could not afford to pay the normal court filing fees, to intervene. Meanwhile, a

year later, the new U.S. secretary of the Treasury, James Guthrie (1792-1869). Louisville’s James Guthrie, began directing U.S. FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY customs officers to use admiralty procedures to collect fines, penalties, and forfeitures stemming from violations of new “revenue laws” applicable to the nation’s inland waters, including a federal steamboat inspec- tion law passed in August 1852. In the Buckeye State, Columbus and Cincinnati- based U.S. attorneys, acting in concert with the Treasury Department’s solicitor’s office, began bringing in rem actions against Ohio River steamboats before Judge Leavitt, who preferred not to see them as government seizures but as quasi-private admiralty suits brought through the “milder form of an action for debt.”23 For Salmon P. Chase, the Civil War offered a glowing chance to transport the egalitarian riverfront creditor- and-debtor law practiced in Leavitt’s court during the 1850s (reflecting older Ohio legal practices and precedents from the 1840s) onto the national stage. The moment came in early 1861, when James Guthrie’s new regulatory system for the inland waters, featuring government- led debt collection procedures, fell into the hands of Chase as Lincoln’s new secretary of the Treasury. On April 19, 1861, a presidential proclamation placed ports within jurisdictions in active “insurrection against the Government of the United States” under a naval blockade, while a parallel act of Congress, the First Confiscation

Act, empowered the executive to seize prop- Edward Bates (1793-1869). erty believed to be used “for insurrectionary LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

62 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL purposes.” For U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates of St. Louis, this triggered an authority mentioned as an afterthought in Taney’s Genesee Chief opinion: the wartime prize adjudications of federal courts sitting in admiralty, which Bates believed could also be used as a template for confiscation proceedings, including the theoreti- cal appropriation of rebel-owned steamboats and slaves.24 In theory, admiralty law’s special wartime procedures gave the federal government a way to revive the most radical edge of Ohio’s watercraft law, grant- ing U.S. officers the procedural tools to dismantle the instruments and products of the lower Mississippi Valley’s cotton economy. Indeed, between 1861 and 1865, lawyers appeared in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Samuel H. Treat in Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, asking Treat to undertake prize “adjudications” to condemn, sell, and distribute the proceeds of steamboats docked at a U.S. Naval station near Joe Spencer’s old haunt of Cairo, Illinois, vessels mostly seized by U.S. Navy gunboats of the “Mississippi Squadron.” While the residue of such judicial sales ended up in the coffers of Chase’s Treasury Department, by 1865, Judge Treat was setting aside some of the funds for navy crews that had aided in the “salvage” of enemy steamboats or in the seizure of Rebel-claimed cotton freight. With black boatmen and river laborers from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati becoming a target for the Mississippi River Squadron’s recruiting efforts, and with “the Naval bounty” being promised upon arrival, the proceeds of some of these sales could potentially end up in some black people’s hands. At this point, in fact, the recruiting taglines “Freedom to Slaves” and “Monthly Pay with White Men” were enough to draw Martin R. Delany, Pittsburgh’s free-born African American activist, back from self-exile in Canada to the United States, where he began serving as an army recruiting agent. Referring to the new military bounty system, he observed that “this is one of the measures in which the claims of the Black man may be officially recognized, without seemingly infringing upon those of other citizens.”25 In 1862, Robert Smalls—described in U.S. Navy documents as an “intel- ligent slave” full of “interesting information” about South Carolina’s “inland waters”—demonstrated the subversive potential that federal prize law could have during the Civil War. Born into slavery in 1839, Smalls had been hired out to a string of waterfront businesses in Charleston, where from age twelve he earned wages (sent back to his master) as a sail rigger and stevedore on the city’s wharf. By 1861, he later told a group of federal interviewers, he was “not a regular pilot for Charleston harbor, although [he] kn[ew] the water very thoroughly.” This was because within the Palmetto State, and indeed throughout most of the nation at the time, “a colored man was not allowed to be a pilot.” Nevertheless, on the morning of May 13, 1862, having heard about an army order that any “contraband property” passing beyond blockade lines would be considered free, Smalls took the helm of the Planter, steered it out of Charleston’s harbor, and

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surrendered the vessel to the U.S. Navy. Within days, the Planter was appraised and sold to the U.S. government pursuant to an onshore “adjudication,” and a special act of Congress turned over half of the proceeds to Smalls and its black crew, now considered free under another federal law due to their military service. Smalls would stay on as the Planter’s civilian pilot and would be eventually promoted to serve as its master, earning enough to purchase the home of his former master. By the 1880s, he was serving in U.S. Congress.26

Robert Smalls (1839-1915) pictured with the gun-boat Planter. Harper’s Weekly June 14, 1862. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

When black riverboat workers earning government wages in Martin R. Delany’s Pittsburgh first heard of Robert Smalls’s exploits in 1862, they named in his honor a nearly complete fort they were building. When Salmon P. Chase was treated to a version of Smalls’s story, which Smalls himself told him during a later visit to Washington, D.C., the Treasury secretary found it equally “thrilling.” Helming a civilian executive department whose power began where the blockade ended, Chase was now in position to theorize how federal admiralty procedures could be used by the federal government to transfer the fruits of black labor into black hands even when the temporary emergency of the Civil War ended. For Chase, the path began where it had for clients like Milton Clarke or Griffin Watson before the conflict: through exchange between people who were “willing to pay or see received by all, days wages for days works” and “black Americans, who…load the boats.” Thus, in July 1861, when Judge Humphrey Leavitt issued a ruling that denied the power of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio to confiscate suspected “insurgent” property passing through Cincinnati by steamboat, reasoning that a “state of war” did not extend that far up the Ohio, Chase did not blink an eye. Rather than setting aside equitable debt collection procedures altogether during the war, he bypassed the traditional customs surveyor system and assigned William P. Mellen, an itinerant debt-collecting

64 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL attorney who had spent time in Kentucky and judged slavery a “curse” to the economic prosperity of that state, to serve as his “Supervising Special Agent of the Treasury Department for the Valley of the Mississippi.”27 Headquartered in Cincinnati and granted the authority to stop, inspect, seize, and transfer commercial property that passed through river ports under federal authority, William Mellen set out to implement a set of civilian trading rules that Chase had written on “restricted internal commercial intercourse,” measures that effectively reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, turning U.S. government offices in Cincinnati, rather than private establishments in New Orleans, into the largest “commission and forwarding” houses in the West. If seized by the military prior to passing enemy lines, southern commodities and the vessels transporting them were deemed “captured property,” to be transported to special agents under Mellen’s administration, who took custody of the items, transferring them to New York (if cotton) or putting them up for sale on the spot. Mellen then immediately placed that percentage of the sale proceedings corresponding with the portion assignable to an “insurgent” owner into the U.S. Treasury. Other property, either deserted or voluntarily relinquished, was considered abandoned and was placed into the hands of Mellen’s special agents, where it was sold on the open market, with its proceeds escrowed, less any processing fees due to the government and private laborers (including former slaves) for their trouble in producing or carrying these items to market. In doing all of this, Chase was careful to argue that Mellen was merely playing the fiduciary agent’s role that customs surveyors had been exercising since James Guthrie’s time. If, with the passage of time, a party loyal to the U.S. government came forward, they could recover their lost proceeds through the new U.S. Court of Claims.28 If Ohio’s watercraft law and federal admiralty procedures were two means by which the law could grease the wheels of commerce in a more socially equitable way, Chase’s system, which dispensed with court proceedings until an unknown later date, was the most efficient way of reaching this result during the Civil War. By permitting steamboats, cotton, and even slave-towing masters to pass through the Ohio–Mississippi River system, it was not designed to destroy the slave economy overnight by halting all trade in its products or by emancipating every slave at once. Instead, government-regulated inland river commerce—that system whereby river-going property titles were sometimes subversively divided up and rearranged— would slowly transfer some of the fruits of black labor into the hands of the river’s most oppressed laboring class through a new method of accounting for the old concepts of credit and debt. Thus, in September 1862, when “five negroes, formerly slaves in western Tennessee” who had performed service for U.S. forces appeared in Cincinnati with “a few bales of cotton belonging to their masters,” asking to turn them over to Mellen in exchange for a fee, Chase agreed with Mellen that “the official duty of those supervising the commerce does not require them to ascertain whether the negroes take the money back to their masters.” These men, Chase confirmed,

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could be paid directly for their trouble out of the proceeds of any subsequent sale: “It is not competent for any officer of this Department to enquire into or decide upon the morals of any transaction connected with it previous to its shipment.” Indeed, the proceeds from such sales, one friend of Chase hoped, could eventually enable some blacks to purchase deserted homesteads once owned by southern whites, to some extent “taking the place of the present inhabitants who are in rebellion.”29 Reading through sources produced during this period, one gets the sense that such plans were not empty chimeras of “free labor ideology.” In the papers of John Hunt Morgan, for example, one can find an 1861 letter from his agent stating difficulties in being able to file a federal admiralty claim against the New Uncle Sam to collect the unpaid wages of Morgan family slaves that had been hired to fill out that Mississippi River vessel’s crew. A couple of folders later, there is a document showing Morgan family members being sworn into the Confederate army and more documents indicating that the family’s own assets were being attached in court, then seized. Meanwhile, in the papers of the Mound City Naval Station there are papers indicating that a vessel named the New Uncle Sam had been sold under court order to the U.S. government and converted into a flagship of the Mississippi Squadron, rechristened the Black Hawk. Elsewhere, documents appear detailing the work history of “two colored men” who had performed tasks while aboard squadron vessels, including working as the Black Hawk’s cooks, and a legal opinion by the U.S. attorney general determining that such “black under-cooks” were entitled to military bounties (including money gained from admiralty prize adjudications) on equal footing with the vessel’s white sailors. Meanwhile, in the case files in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio are records distributing the proceeds of a cotton sale overseen by William P. Mellen on the Cincinnati Public Landing, attaching the affidavit of the cotton’s putative loyal Louisiana owner alongside “the claims of negroes,” some of them rumored to be slaves, who were seeking payment “for getting cotton out of the swamps” on equal legal 30 footing with their former masters. John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864). FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL

Finally, in the records of a federal Freedmen’s Court that began operating within Louisville by the end of 1865, researchers can review the wage claims of one Frank Spratt, an apparently illiterate eighteen-year-old man of color from Nashville who had “been working on steamboats as of late.” In 1866, Spratt brought a claim in Louisville’s Freedmen’s Court against the Rose Hite, seeking money damages for repeated beatings he had allegedly received, as well as for the first mate’s decision to leave him onshore forty miles below the Falls City without any pay, deposited where he was told that he might be killed if he lin- gered too long. Through claims like Frank Spratt’s, the possibility once symbol- ized by Joe Spencer, Milton Clarke, Robert Smalls, or Timothy D. Lincoln’s “Brooks”—of African American river and harbor laborers leveraging legal concepts to recover white-owned assets against white people’s consent—was on the verge of being achieved south of the Ohio. In Louisville, formerly enslaved people were using recognizable debt collection procedures in federal tribunals sounding in private law to claim not only control over their own labor time in open court, but all of the residual social “privileges and immunities” that supposedly went along with this. 31 Within the commercial world that Salmon P. Chase came from and briefly surveyed again during his cruise through the vanquished South in 1865—an integrated economic zone that by the time of Chase’s resignation as secretary of the Treasury near the close of the Civil War included virtually all of the navi- gable waters within the United States—people like Frank Spratt were being set loose to steer their own course as a matter of law. In no small part, this was due to egalitarian transformations in the forgotten steamboat laws of the mid- nineteenth-century Ohio River valley, changes that were initially suggested by working-class clients like Milton Clarke, Griffin Watson, and Charles Dimmig, Frank Spratt’s black and white predecessors, as they had sought Salmon P. Chase’s advice in his Cincinnati law office many years before. Enmeshed as it was in the private law of the Ohio River waterfront, Chase’s prewar business law practice was not immune to the increasingly egalitarian and redistribu- tive claims about property ownership that pervaded the democratic politics of the Age of Jackson, and neither were Chase’s policies within Lincoln’s war cabinet. By 1868, even as Chase’s former agents within the Treasury lost their jobs or changed course, the egalitarian legal understanding of private economic life they once stood for was made permanent within America’s new constitutional order through the concept of “equal protection of the laws,” incorpo- rated into the text of the newly ratified Fourteenth Amendment, drafted by U.S. senator John Bingham, a Buckeye lawyer protégée of Chase hailing from the small Ohio River valley town of Cadiz. Today, within the text of our revised Constitution, some of the egalitarian remnants of the Ohio River’s long-lost steamboat economy live on, governing us still.32

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1 The diary of Chase’s “Southern Journey” is found in John 1780–1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Niven ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers,5 vols. (Kent, 1977), 253–54; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1993), 1:535–80. Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford Chase’s Cairo visit is mentioned at 575. University Press, 1991), 47–58. On the relation between redistributionist arguments and Jacksonian egalitarian- 2 See chapter 15, “Reminiscences of Capt. J. S. Hacker,” ism during the antebellum period, in contrast, see Sean unpublished manuscript, Cairo Public Library, Cairo, Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of Ill.; Ensminger v. People, 47 Ill. 384 (1868); Case No. the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford 9132, Supreme Court Case Files, Illinois State Archives, University Press, 1984), 172–216; William Forbath and Springfield, Ill.; Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 19, 1863; Joseph Fishkin, “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” Boston Louisville Daily Courier, Dec. 2, 1854; Evansville Daily University Law Review 94 (2014): 671–98. Journal, Dec. 2, 1854. I owe a special debt to Brent M. S. Campney, “‘The Peculiar Climate of This Region’: The 7 Boston Morning Chronicle, Sept. 12, 1844; Western 1854 Cairo Lynching and the Historiography of Racist Citizen, July 19, 1844; Letter from Chase to Tappan, Violence against Blacks in Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois Apr. 3, 1844, reel 5, Chase Papers, University Press of State Historical Society 107 (Summer 2014): 143–70, which America. On Chase’s potential representation of Clarke, helped me learn about Spencer and identify these sources. see J. Milton Clarke, “Story of a White Slave (1900),” in Wilbur Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, 3 Charles Batchelor, “The Cairo Tragedy,” Louisville Daily Columbus, OH; Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis and Courier, Dec. 2, 1854; Batchelor, Incidents in My Life: Milton Clarke (Boston: Bela Ward, 1846), 84. With a Family Genealogy (Pittsburgh: Eichbaum, 1887), 68–70. 8 On Chase’s early years, see John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 4 James M. McPherson, “Who Freed the Slaves?” 3–54. Examples of Chase’s representation of the Cincinnati Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 139 (Mar. Branch of Second Bank of the United States appear in 1995): 1–10; Paul Finkelman, “Lincoln, Emancipation, the Papers of Timothy Kirby, Cincinnati History Library and the Limits of Constitutional Change,” Supreme and Archives; specifically, see Chase, Solicitor’s Report Court Review (2008): 349–87; Kate Masur, “‘A Rare for Second Bank of the United States, Cincinnati Branch Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation’: The Word (1835), box 34; Chase v. Dorsey, case files, ca. 1841, box 35; ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the Chase, Solicitor’s Opinion, June 1834, box 12; Chase to United States,” Journal of American History 93 (Mar. Herman Cope, Feb. 6, 1835, box 13. For the text of the “Act 2007): 1050–84. For the “revolution” metaphor, see Regulating Judgment and Executions” and Chase’s pro-Bank McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American interpretation of this statute, Chase, Statutes of Ohio, 3 vols. Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); (Cincinnati: Corey & Fairbank, 1835), 3:1709. Bruce Ackerman, We the People, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 2:99–252; 9 Niven, Chase Papers, 1:131, 280. Chase’s transformation Akhil Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography (New toward a more working-class clientele is further chron- York: Random House, 2005); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: icled in Matthew Axtell, “What Is Still ‘Radical’ in the America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877(New York: Antislavery Legal Practice of Salmon P. Chase?” Hastings Harper, 2014). Race and Poverty Law Journal 11 (Summer 2014): 269– 320. Chase’s earlier reference to working class litigants as 5 William J. Novak, The People’s Welfare: Law and part of a mob is found at “From the Cincinnati Gazette, Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: Aug. 11, 1836,” reel 3, Salmon P. Chase Papers, Library University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 248; James of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter LC). Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York: Norton, 10 See Charles Dimmig to Chase and King, Aug. 23, 1842, 2013), 18, 582; Amy Dru Stanley, “Republic of Labor,” reel 4, and Dimmig to Chase, Nov. 24, 1845, reel 5, both Dissent Magazine (Fall 2015), available online at https:// in Chase Papers, LC. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/alex-gourevitch-labor- republicans-slavery-cooperative-commonwealth-review; 11 See William Birney, James G. Birney and His Times (New Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation York: Appleton, 1890), 261–66; Speech of Salmon P. Chase of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: in the Case of the Colored Woman Matilda (Cincinnati: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Pugh, 1837); Oakes, Freedom National, 15–18; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the 6 For the standard argument for nineteenth-century commer- Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford cial law as serving a fundamentally conservative function, University Press, 1970), 74–75; Axtell, “What Is Still see Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, Radical,” 306–7.

68 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL

12 Niven, Chase Papers, 1:151, 156. Watson’s directory 17 See Maskell Curwen, The Public Statutes at Large of references appear at Shaffer’s Advertising Directory for the State of Ohio, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Curwen, 1853), 1839–40 (Cincinnati: Shaffer, 1840), 476; Charles Cist, 1:597–603; Lewis v. The SchoonerCleveland, 12 Ohio 341, The Cincinnati Directory for the Year 1842(Cincinnati: 342–51 (1843); Canal-Boat Huron, 11 Ohio 458, 461; Morgan, 1842), 447. Census entries appear at “Griffin T. Timothy Walker, “Ohio Reports, Volume Twelfth,” Western Watson,” 1850 Census, Cincinnati, Ward 3, Hamilton Boatman 1 (July 1848): 181–86. For Lockean labor- Co., Ohio, roll M432_687, page 259B, image 534; property appropriation theory, see Gregory Alexander and and “Griffen T. Watson,” 1880 Census, Cincinnati, Eduardo Peñalver, An Introduction to Property Theory(New Hamilton, Ohio, roll 1027; Family History film York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 39–41. 1255027, page 474B, Enumeration District 164, image 0716, Ancestry.com. On the relative position of black 18 Steamboat Monarch v. Finley, 10 Ohio 384 (1841); steamboat stewards and riverboat workers within river- Kellogg v. Brennan, 14 Ohio 72, 90–92 (1846). front African American communities, see W. H. Gibson, Semi-Centennial of the Public Career of W. H. Gibson 19 Timothy Walker, “Supreme Court of Ohio: Lucas County, Western Law Journal (Louisville: Bradley & Gilbert, 1897), 30–32; Joe Trotter, August Term, 1847,” (Oct. 1847): Butler “The Steamboat and Black Urban Life in the Ohio 8. Walker cited the following cases in this article: v. Steam Ferry Boat, Lewis v Schooner Valley,” in Full Steam Ahead: Reflections on the Impact of 1844; Cleveland, Steamboat v. Fox, Kellogg v. the First Steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811–2011, ed. 1843; Arkansas Mail 1847; Brennan, 1846; Provost v. Wilcox, Jones v. Watkins, Rita Kohn (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1849, Goodrich 2011), 103–20. For comparative data on wage distribu- 1846. The case is found in “Court of Common Ephraim tion for steamboat crew by race and specific occupation, Pleas: Hamilton Co., Ohio—June Term, 1847: Goodrich v. John Rogers,” Western Law Journal focused on census return materials from St. Louis, see 5 (1847): Thomas Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, 20–25. Timothy D. Lincoln’s anti–watercraft law argu- Liability of Steamboats Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World (Chapel ments are contained in Lincoln, Engaged in Commerce Among the Several States under the Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 181–84. Water-Craft Law of Ohio (Cincinnati: Bradley, n.d.), 3–71. 13 For Timothy Walker’s interview with Tocqueville, see Liability of Steamboats Engaged in Commerce Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to America (New Haven: 20 Lincoln, among the Several States, Yale University Press, 1960), 94–98. On the history of 41–49. Ohio’s Black Laws generally, see Stephen Middleton, 21 “In the Louisville, Ky. Court of Chancery: The Ironton,” The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio Western Law Journal 9 (Apr. 1852): 314–17; G. Edward (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005). White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815– 35, 14 All quotations here are from The Address and Reply on the vols. 3–4 (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 468–73; Presentation of a Testimonial to S. P. Chase by the Colored George M. Bibb, A. R. Woolley v. Steamboat Lancaster, Copy Chancellor’s Opinion and Decree People of Cincinnati (Cincinnati: Sparhawk, 1845), (Louisville: Penn, 22–25. 1836). Kentucky opposition to Ohio’s steamboat law is further discussed in Matthew Axtell, “American 15 See Rice and Headington, Cincinnati, to William Steamboat Gothic: Disruptive Commerce and Slavery’s Dovenor, Jan. 16, 1847, box 1, Steamboats and River Liquidation, 1832–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton History Collection, Missouri Historical Society Library, University, 2016), 302–76. Antebellum opposition to St. Louis. For catalogs and discussions of different state state watercraft laws among southern-leaning jurists watercraft laws,” see, “Watercraft Law—Usage,” Western and lawyers is further explained in Charles McCurdy, Law Journal 5 (Oct. 1847): 8; “Laws of Ohio,” Western “Prelude to Civil War: A Snapshot of the California Boatman 1 (July 1848): 181–86; [C. P. James], “Liens on Supreme Court at Work in 1858,” California Supreme Steamboats,” Western Boatman 1 (Aug. 1849): 405–10. Court Historical Society Year Book 1 (1994): 3–31. While the Western Law Journal was edited by Timothy Walker, a Cincinnati lawyer and law professor, the 22 On the possible calming effects of the Compromise of Western Boatman was edited by Davis Embree, a former 1850 on southern legal attitudes toward federal power, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 Cincinnati steamboat captain. For Embree’s biography, see David Potter, (New Chief see “A Pioneer Fallen,” Cincinnati Commercial, Nov. 30, York: Harper, 1976), 90–120. For the decision, The Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 1870. My thanks to John H. White Jr. of Oxford, Ohio, see 53 U.S. 443 for this latter reference. (1852) (Taney, C. J.). For the larger significance of this decision in U.S. legal history, see Note, “From Judicial 16 The text of the Ohio law appears at Joseph Rockwell Swan, Grant to Legislative Power: The Admiralty Clause in the Statutes of the State of Ohio, of a General Nature, in Force, as Nineteenth Century,” Harvard Law Review 67 (1954): of Dec. 7, 1840 (Columbus: Medary, 1841), 209–10. 1214; [Richard Henry Dana], “History of Admiralty Jurisdiction in the Supreme Court of the United States,”

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American Law Review 5 (July 1871): 581–621; Carl B. Chicago, to M. M. Wagoner, Washington, D.C., Dec. Swisher, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of 15, 1863, Record Group 94, Adjutant General’s Office the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 5, The Taney Records, NARA, Washington, D.C.; Life and Public Period, 1836–64 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 432–56. Services of Martin R. Delany (Boston: Lee, 1883), 151–54.

23 McGinnis v. The Pontiac,16 F. Cas. 112 (D. Oh., 1852); 26 See “Testimony of Robert Smalls,” Freedmen Inquiry “Rules of Practice for the District Court of the United Commission, Testimony Taken in the Department of the States for the District of Ohio, adopted at November South, File No. 3(1) (Nov. and Dec. 1863), 81–82, 1863 term 1849, in cases in Admiralty,” Records of the U.S. O-328 (pt)—333, Roll 200, M619, Letters Received District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western by the Office of the Adjutant General, NARA; Official Division, Cincinnati, General Records, Journals, 1849– Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War 1854, 1:1–5, Record Group 21, National Archives and of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, Records Administration—Great Lakes Region, Chicago; 1894–1922), ser. 1, 12:807–25. James Guthrie, “General Regulations in respect to the Act of Congress of August 30, 1852, relating to Steamboats,” 27 See Eliza Smith Brown and Daniel Holland, African May 10, 1853, M735, Circular Letters of the Secretary of American Historic Sites Survey of Allegheny County the Treasury, and D.O. Morton, U.S. Attorney, Columbus, (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum to F. B. Streeter, Solicitor of the Treasury, Washington, Commission, 1994), 111; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for D.C., Nov. 6, 1854, Record Group 206—Records of the Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment(New York: Solicitor of the Treasury, entry 42—Letters Received from Oxford University Press, 1964), 190; Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Attorneys, Clerks, and Marshals, box 120, both in Washington, to William Curtis Noyes, New York, Apr. NARA II, Greenbelt, MD; United States v. Bougher, 24 7, 1863, Letterpress, vol. 1, Salmon P. Chase Papers, F. Cas. 1205 (1854). Leavitt’s debt determination ran Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Flamen contrary to the legal opinion of Kentucky’s U.S. attorney, Ball, U.S. Attorney, Cincinnati, Oh., to Edward Jordan, who independently determined that the United States had U.S. Solicitor of the Treasury, July 15, 1861, Record no standing to bring such cases, and thus refused to bring Group 206—Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, such claims before the Civil War. entry 42—Letters Received from U.S. Attorneys, Clerks, and Marshals, box 120, NARA II; William P. Mellen, 24 Edward Bates, U.S. Attorney General, Washington, D.C., Peach Orchard, Ky., to Salmon P. Chase, Ohio Governor, to Richard Henry Dana, U.S. Attorney, Boston, Dec. 1, Columbus, Oh., Dec. 10, 1859, box 7, Salmon P. Chase 1862; “General Instructions to District Attorneys and Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Salmon P. Marshals to Proceedings Under the Acts of Congress for Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, D.C., to Confiscation,” Jan. 8, 1863, Record Group 56—General William Mellen, Special Agent, May 4, 1861; Chase to Records of the U.S. Department of Justice, entry 1— Enoch Carson, Surveyor of Customs, Cincinnati, Apr. Opinions on Legal Questions, box 14, NARA II. See also 4, 1863; Chase to Edward Barker, New Orleans, Oct. Daniel W. Hamilton, The Limits of Sovereignty: Property 23, 1863, Record Group 56, entry 316—Secretary of Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the the Treasury Correspondence Concerning Restricted Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Commercial Intercourse, vol. 1, NARA II. John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: Free Press, 2012), 141–324. 28 The procedures for this system are outlined and discussed in Rules and Regulations Concerning Commercial 25 See, for example, “Federal Court Decrees Relating to the Intercourse with and in States and Parts of States Declared Distribution of Prize Money, Sept. 1862–Dec. 1867,” in Insurrection (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1864); Record Group 45—Records of the Collection of the Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, to Office of Naval Records and Library, entry 195—Legal William Mellen, Supervisory Special Agent, Cincinnati, Records, vol. 3, NARA, Washington, D.C.; Edward OH, Apr. 4, 1863, William Mellen, “Local Rules Jordan, Solicitor of the Treasury, Washington, D.C., to and Restrictions (May 11, 1863),” Chase to Edwin Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, Washington, Stanton, U.S. Secretary of War, May 28, 1863, all in D.C., Mar. 18, 1864, Record Group 206, entry 80— Record Group 56, entry 316—Secretary of the Treasury Opinions of the Solicitor of the Treasury, vol. 3, NARA Correspondence Concerning Restricted Commercial II; Capt. Pennock, Mound City, to Lt. F. J. Naile, USS Intercourse, vol. 1, NARA II. Chase’s cotton program, of Black Hawk, Aug. 14, 1864, Record Group 45, entry course, was also a way of raising revenue for the United 440—Mound City, Ill. Naval Station Letters Sent, vol. 1, States during the war. For Chase as financier, see Bray National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.; Martin Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks and R. Delany, “Colored Soldiers!” Dec. 1, 1863, Broadside, Politics in the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Letters Received, Record Group 94, entry 360, Adjutant University Press, 1970). On the relationship of his General’s Office, U.S. Colored Troops Division, National “restricted interstate intercourse” system with the Naval Archives Building, Washington, D.C.; Martin R. Delany, blockade, see Craig Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals

70 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY MATTHEW AXTELL

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 287–305. A Jeremiah Irwin, U.S.S. Barge Torrence, to Cmmdr. J. W. helpful discussion of how Chase’s system was applied to Livingston, May 2, 1865; John L. Broome to Livingston, the Lower Mississippi River Valley during the Civil War Record Group 45, entry 441—Records of Mound City appears in Louis Gerteis, “Salmon P. Chase, Radicalism, Naval Station, Letters Received, vol. 3, National Archives and the Politics of Emancipation, 1861–1864,” Journal Building, Washington, D.C.; James Speed, U.S. Attorney of American History 60 (1973): 42–62. For perhaps the General, to Edwin Stanton, U.S. Secretary of War, Apr. most famous application of this system, this time on 12, 1865, Record Group 60—General Records of the the Atlantic Seaboard, see Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Department of Justice, entry 2—Opinions on Legal Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment(New York: Questions, vol. 15, NARA II; Frederick Way, Way’s Packet Oxford University Press, 1964). Directory, 1848–1994 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), 54, 346. See also John Harding, Brig. Gen., 29 See Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Goodrich’s Landing, La., to Yeatman, Treasury Agent, Washington, D.C., to A. J. Howard, Surveyor of Memphis, Sept. 7, 1863, in United States v. 163 Bales Customs, Louisville, Aug. 24, 1861, William Mellen, of Cotton, Case No. 119, Mixed Case Files box, Record Special Agent, Cincinnati, to Secretary Chase, Group 21, U.S. District Court for the Southern District Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 1862, and Chase to Mellen, of Ohio (Cincinnati), National Archives and Records Oct. 1, 1862, Record Group 56, entry 316, vol. 1, Administration—Great Lakes Region, Chicago. NARA II; William Curtis Noyes, New York, to Salmon P. Chase, Washington, D.C., Apr. 20, 1863, in The Salmon 31 Proceedings of Freedmen’s Court, Minutes Jan.–Nov. P. Chase Papers, vol. 4 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University 1867, M1904, roll 119; Complaint of Frank Spratt, Press, 1997), 13–15. Feb. 20, 1866, M1904, roll 120, Affidavits and Records Relating to Complaints, C–S, Record Group 30 W. P. Shyrock, St. Louis, to C. C. Morgan, Lexington, 105—Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and June 3, 1861, box 15, Thomas Morgan, Camp Boone, Abandoned Lands: Kentucky, Subordinate Field Offices: TN, July 5, 1861, box 15, Order of Attachment, Louisville, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. Agricultural Deposit Bank of Lexington v. John Hunt Morgan, et al, Fayette County Circuit Court, Dec. 23, 32 On Bingham and Chase, see Gerard N. Magliocca, 1861, box 16, all in Hunt-Morgan Papers, University American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of Kentucky Special Collections, Lexington; “Vessels of the Fourteenth Amendment (New York: New York Engaged in Mexican War and on Western Rivers dur- University Press, 2013), 27–29, 73–87. Correspondence ing the Civil War,” 98, 130, 140; “Register of River between Chase and Bingham discussing the Fourteenth Steamboats, 1865,” Record Group 92—Records of Amendment’s draft language appears in Letterpress the Office of the Quartermaster General, entry 1443, Books—vol. 6, Salmon P. Chase Papers, Historical National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.; Society of Pennsylvania.

FALL 2016 71 Collection Essay Letters of Black Soldiers from Ohio Who Served in the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantries during the Civil War

rivate correspondence between African Americans from the Civil War era is rare; however, a surprising number of personal letters between family members survive in pension records at the National Archives. In order to Preceive a widows’ pension, claimants had to prove their status as dependents of a deceased soldier. Some women submitted the correspondence they had received from their husband or sons as evidence of their dependent relationship. The letters reproduced in this article reside in the pension files of several black soldiers from Ohio who served in the famous 54th and 55th Massachusetts (Colored) Volunteer Infantries. Unlike most of the surviving correspondence from these regiments, which were published in newspapers during the Civil War, these letters offer private perspectives of many of the issues and concerns facing black families during the war, including pay inequality, homesickness, faith, and the threats of illness and death. Formed in Boston in early 1863, the 54th and 55th were the result of Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew’s determination to raise a black regiment. An abolitionist, Andrew supported the idea of recruiting black soldiers since the beginning of the war as a means of meeting state enlistment quotas; however, not until the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, was his dream realized. Recruitment for the 54th began in mid-February. Though it was initially designed to consist entirely of men from Massachusetts, recruitment efforts soon expanded across the North. Volunteers poured into Boston in overwhelming numbers, filling the ranks of the 54th by May 11. The many men left over were mustered into the newly formed 55th the following day. Many of these soldiers were from the Ohio River valley, an area that supplied roughly 18 percent of the men for the 54th and about 65 percent of those of the 55th.1

72 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY KATIE O’HALLORAN BROWN

Lieutenant Samuel K. Thompson of Company C, 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment with unidentified soldiers at an earthwork fort (c. 1866). LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Both regiments experienced trouble soon after mustering in. During recruitment, volunteers had been promised $13 per month, the same pay as white soldiers; however, during the summer of 1863, the War Department decided that black soldiers would only be paid $10 and must also pay a clothing allowance, decreasing their monthly pay to $7. Though the state of Massachusetts offered supplemental pay to black soldiers, many refused to accept either this or their reduced pay on the grounds that to do so would acknowledge and accept their inferiority to white soldiers. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th even advocated mustering out, as the soldiers “were enlisted on the understanding that they were to be on the same footing as other Mass. Vols.” However, both regiments remained in the field and Congress enacted legislation equalizing pay in June 1864. The issue of pay inequality is one of the central themes present in the writings of these black Ohioans.2 The letters transcribed below have been kept as close to the originals as possible; however, a few of the authors had a tendency to use large letters at the beginning of words. Letters that were clearly capitalized have been retained as capital letters; those that were larger than normal but not clearly capitalized have been rendered as lower case for the sake of readability. Spelling and punctuation have been

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863). retained as nearly as possible to how they appear in LIBRARY OF CONGRESS the original letters.

FALL 2016 73 LETTERS OF BLACK SOLDIERS FROM OHIO WHO SERVED IN THE 54TH AND 55TH MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRIES DURING THE CIVIL WAR A Sick Soldier in the 54th Massachusetts Writes Home to His Wife Amos Hall was a 34-year-old farmer from Oxford, Ohio, who left his wife and four children to join the 54th Massachusetts. He was mustered into Company I as a private on May 13, 1863, and was promoted to sergeant a few months later. Hall fought with the 54th at Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1863, and Olustee, Florida, in February 1864, and was hospitalized in Jacksonville during the spring of 1864 for sickness caused by the humid climate and long marches. Though he was able to rejoin his regiment in South Carolina in August 1864, he was hospitalized again at Beaufort where he spent the last week of his life before dying on September 16 of dropsy, a disease of the heart. Hall wrote the following letter during his last month of service. Although short, it reveals a deep faith in God and love for his family, speaking openly of his constant homesickness while also touching on the issue of pay.3

Letter from Private Amos Hall to his wife, Violet, and children (c. 1864). AMOS HALL PENSION FILE, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

74 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY KATIE O’HALLORAN BROWN

Morris Island SC Aust the 12 18/64 my Deere loving and most afeconett Wife and Deer childrin Good morning, I feel truly thankfull that It is threw the tender merseys of a Kind God that after A long Continuence or Dely [delay] of not writing long Before this But living in Some Hopes of Geting A ferlgh [furlough] to of [have] Gotin Home Before now, But I Hope the Presents of this letter May find you and the childrin in A Good State of Helth; But this time I am Compeld to Rite this I Know not a Plesent letter Stating that my Helth Is not At all Good, for Ever our march in florida and the Battle of olustee I Have not Bin Right Well, I Had Bin at the Hospittle At Beufort for some time from there I Came to the Regt at Morris Island Where I Got A Back Set And for the last Month or More Past I Have Suferd All But the Horid Pangs of Death, But thank the God of Heavin I feel to Be geting A Great deal Better my Complaints is A Heavy Cold on the longs [lungs] and the Hart diseas cosid [caused] from Hardships I Have Strove to Get A ferlogh Heere lately But I Have lernt that there will Be no more ferloughs Grantid fror [for?] the 54th untill it is Knowen What is to Be done With the Regt, as there is Much trouble at this time Conserning our Pay. Hope the Expresion of my condition will not Distress you atall But I desier to let you Know Jus How matters are Some of the letters that you Had Sent to me; I Being [in] the Hospitle And Sargent fisher4 not Knowing But that I Had Startid Home He Remaild them And Sent them Back Home So I Hope you Have got them Again, I Had the Pleasure of Seing my Brother Say, He ware [were]—Heere to See me yesterday His Helth is not Good Eather He Has the Reumatism very Bad, He Sends His love to all at Home the times Heere is very Dull the Soldiers living is very Hard, But when our Pay is to Come I Cant Say But we look for Sone [some] Changes Soon, But we trust to the Hand of the lord for the future to work oure [our?] Good for us Give my love to all Deer friends I ask you Please to Anser this letter And litt me Heere How the times are at Home State the Best and the worst I Shall Rite Soon Again; I Ask youre deer Prayers; Put youre trust in god for our future Good Remember me to my deere litle ones and deere friends I Still Remain youre deer Husbent Sargt Amos Hall Co I 54th Rgt Mass Volt at Morris Island, SC Preying that the God of Armeys May Ever Bless and Care for you all

While in the hospital, Hall befriended William A. Davis, a 35-year-old private in Company F from St. Albans, Vermont. Following Hall’s death, Davis wrote a personal condolence letter to Hall’s widow, Violet. Davis’s letter offers unique insights into African American views and attitudes towards death from the time. This condolence letter is particularly unique in that it focuses less on Hall’s patriotism and courage on the battlefield, elements which were common in such letters, and more on his devotion to family.5

FALL 2016 75 LETTERS OF BLACK SOLDIERS FROM OHIO WHO SERVED IN THE 54TH AND 55TH MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRIES DURING THE CIVIL WAR 1864 Beaufort South Carolina Hospital No 7 Ward F Sept 17th Mrs Hall i sit down to pen you a few lines but it is verry painful to do it but still it is my duty to do it as a friend of your mus Most beloved Husband and as I have ben With him through all of his Sickness on Morris island Where he Was taken down and in Beaufort Where he died but i have ben sick all the time myself With the chronic diareah I have taken care of him night and day as i Would of [have] a brother he has Sufferd for nothing at any time Evry thing Was done for him that Could be done by the doctors he told me he Could not had any more done if he had ben to home but he said that Was not What he Wanted his only Wish and prayer Was to get Well so he could get home With his own Family and friends to die he Says i know i cannot live long unless i get help soon but you Write to my dear wife and tell her i am willing to go When the lord Calls for me to go and Wants you to prepare to meet him in heaven if not in this world his things and papers are all sent to you by Exspress there is five rings that i took off his fingers after he died and two Small ones i took out of his pocket for Chrildren Which makes seven in all he had one of the Worst Diseases there is in the World that is in the the dropsy and i never saw any one Stand their Suffering as long as he has and not want to give up till the morning he died Which Was the 16th of Sept at two oclock in the afternoon he Was buried to day the 17th i think you Can get his boddy any time you Wanto by Writing or calling on Doctor trainer6 in the head Qarters he has never had a cent of pay Since he has ben in the regiment so it is worth looking after at 20 a month Whilst he Was Sargent his Commishion is in his book in his coat pocket With the rest of his papers all that he Ever Showed me you must Excuse my Writing as i am So Weak i cannot hardly Write my hands trembles Very bad i think of nothing more at presant any thing i can assist you about i am Willing to do i miss him as much as though he Was my own brother the minister that came to see him Evry day is a going to Write to you also i must come to a close so i will bid you good by and may god bless you in your trouble and afflicion From a Sincere friend of your Husband Yours in haste From William.. A.. Davis of Comp F 54th Mass Vols but in the hospital now at beaufort South Carolina Hospt No 7 Ward F

Two Soldiers in the 55th Massachusetts Write Home About Money Isaiah A. Thompson was a 23-year-old farmer from Canterbury, Ohio, who enlisted alongside his younger brother George W. Thompson as a private in Company C of the 55th Massachusetts. From the correspondence that follows, it appears that neither son could afford to send money home to their mother. Isaiah’s files contain very few details about his service, other than a note in his

76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY KATIE O’HALLORAN BROWN company descriptive book identifying him as “a good soldier.” He died at James Island, South Carolina, on July 3, 1864, from wounds received in combat. Unfortunately, George also died during the war of typhoid fever and malaria at Folly Island, South Carolina, on November 3, 1863.

The 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment singing John Brown’s March in the streets of Charleston on February 21, 1865. Harper’s Weekly, March 18, 1865. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The first letter has been torn; the fragment that remains is reproduced below. While all of Thompson’s letters speak of the pay issue and the unfortunate reality of not having money to send home, the first also mentions mustering out as a potential solution to protest the inequality in black soldiers’ pay.7 on this Island a Geo Cromwell 8 recivd a leter from his wife to day and was happy to heair from heair i wish you would tell mother that we Cant send heair eny muny untill we ar payed of [off] and we cant tell when that will be the goverment wants to pay us of at ten dollas per month and we will not take it and thirfor [therefore] thay may hold us 4 months longer and if thay give us 13 dollars then thay will have to disband us and send us home no moer Mr Isaiah A Thompson Co.. C… 55th. Regt.. Mass * Folly Island Sept the 16 1863 Deair mother i imbrace the opertunity to infrm you that i am well at perscent and hope thaes few lines may [find] you well i recivid a leter from Mrs Mary J Rice witch stated that you would like to hav me send you som muny witch i will as soon as i git

FALL 2016 77 LETTERS OF BLACK SOLDIERS FROM OHIO WHO SERVED IN THE 54TH AND 55TH MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRIES DURING THE CIVIL WAR payed of and that will be som time betwen now and the first of January we [are] not going to stay heair but a litle while we ar going to Forttress Monroe v.a.9 ithink it will be much halthear [healthier] then it is heair and closer to home thn we ar now nomre at persant Your10 Thompson * Morris Island SC 1863 it is with plesher i set myself down that i am well at presant and hope thoes few lines may find you well i would have sent you som money my self from camp meigs11 i was sick so long and had to by my own Rashens for i could eat seach [such] as the Goverment furshed [furnished] i still remane your son Isaiah A Thompson

A Soldier Writes to his Mother Concerning Pay Leyne Sterling Brown, a mason from Columbus, Ohio, was a private in Company D of the 55th Massachusetts. Though he was promoted to corporal on May 29, 1863, he was reduced to private five months later on October 20 for reasons that are not specified in his files. He died of wounds from the Battle of Honey Hill, South Carolina, on November 30, 1864. The date on the following letter indicates that it was composed the day that the soldiers finally received their pay in accordance with to the new legislation. Despite having received all pay that he was owed, Brown speaks of the guilt that he felt at not being able to send his mother more money. His letter is particularly striking in that it reflects the harsh reality for soldiers struggling to provide for their families back home.12

Folloy Island 55 Regt Mass vol October the 8 [?] 1864 Dear mother I am Ever happey to Dot [drop?] you a few Lines to Let you know that I am Well I hope those few Lines will find the Same mother I will Sende you som money wich to the amount of $ $1.25 Dollers wich was as much as I could Send at the present under the sircumstances mother I want you to use this as you plese I received $1.69.90. now you know how much I cepe [keep] for my Self I Should of Sent more but from all probilitey we Wont Be Paid of verey Soon A gane So mother I Dide the Best that I could Mother when you get this Write With out Delay for I Shall Be Eager to [hear] from home concerning this money they Paide ous [us?] off to Day from the Date of in Listment all the Back Pay. No more at present But I Still Remand your Son L S Brown to L. Brown13

Katie O’Halloran Brown Virginia Tech

78 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY KATIE O’HALLORAN BROWN

I would like to thank my professor and mentor Dr. Jonathan 5 Emilio, Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, 364. Davis survived the White of Christopher Newport University for his support war and was discharged for disability on June 8, 1865. and help researching, transcribing, and editing this article. 6 John Treanor, Jr. of New York was promoted to surgeon 1 A total of 183 men from the Ohio River valley mus- of volunteers on October 13, 1863 and had become chief tered into the 54th, including 155 from Ohio, 7 from medical officer of the hospital at Beaufort by January Kentucky, and 21 from Indiana; 387 men from the 1865. See the pension record and combined military Ohio River valley mustered into the 55th, with 222 service record for John Treanor, Jr.; Mark A. DeWolfe from Ohio, 97 from Indiana, and 68 from Kentucky. Howe, ed., Marching With Sherman: Passages from the See Luis F. Emilio, History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865 (Boston: and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November Boston Book Co., 1894), 339-88; Noah Andre Trudeau, 1864-May 1865 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1926), Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts 225. Volunteers, 1861-1865 (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1996), 9-10; Robert Ewell Greene, Swamp Angels: 7 Pension record and combined military service record A Biographical Study of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment for Isaiah A. Thompson, as well as the widow’s pen- (N.p., 1990); Christian G. Samito, Becoming American sion record and military service record for George W. Under Fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Thompson of Company C of the 55th Massachusetts. Politics of Citizenship During the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 242. 8 George Cromwell of Company C was a 20-year-old farmer from Toledo, Ohio. Though Cromwell was 2 Robert Gould Shaw to father, July 1, 1863. Russell wounded at the battle of Honey Hill on November 30, Duncan, ed., Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War 1864, he survived the war and was mustered out on Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Athens: University August 29, 1865. of Georgia Press, 1992), 366; Samito, Becoming American Under Fire, 56-62. Although some soldiers refused to 9 Fort Monroe was a Union held installation on the southern accept the supplemental aid, others desired to accept tip of the Virginia Peninsula. The 55th was never sent there. this money out of concern for their families. However, 10 This word may be “Your” or possibly “Geo.” Though the only citizens of Massachusetts were eligible to receive the handwriting on this letter is similar to that of the other benefits. See Trudeau, Voices of the 55th, 23. two letters by Isaiah, it may have been written by his 3 Pension record and combined military service record brother, George. This letter and the following letter are for Amos Hall, National Archives and Records written on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper. It is Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C. unclear which letter was written first.

4 Sgt. Albanus S. Fisher was a 32-year-old laborer from 11 Camp Meigs in Massachusetts was where the 54th and Norristown, Pennsylvania, who was originally promoted the 55th received training before being sent south. to first sergeant in mid-1863 but was then reduced to 12 Pension record and combined military service record for fifth sergeant on May 11, 1864 “by reason of incom- Leyne Sterling Brown. petency.” He was discharged on August 20, 1865. See Emilio, Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, 379; pension record 13 This refers to Lavinia Brown, Leyne Brown’s mother. and combined military service record for Albanus Fisher.

FALL 2016 79 Review Essay What Happened to Kentucky? Gerald J. Prokopowicz

hy did Kentucky, a slaveholding state that became a bastion of seg- regation and neo-Confederate Old South symbolism after the Civil War, remain loyal to the Union from 1861 to 1865? In the current decade,W Anne Marshall, John Inscoe, Aaron Astor, Luke Harlow, Christopher Phillips, and others have examined the extraordinarily fluid and confusing politics of the state before, during, and, especially, after the war, when Kentucky in effect seceded after the Confederacy had been defeated, raising a statue to Jefferson Davis in 1924 and leaving the Thirteenth Amendment unratified until 1976. The question continues to attract scholars, with two new books taking very different approaches to the problem. In For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War, Patrick A. Lewis offers a clear and compelling example of a Kentuckian who supported the Union because of his proslavery views, not in spite of them, so that his seeming about-face after the war from northern to southern sympathies was actually nothing of the kind. Bridget Ford, in Bonds of Union: Religion, Race, and Politics in a Civil War Borderland, makes a more subtle argument that the Ohio River borderland between Kentucky and Ohio was the setting for various forms of loyalty to the Union.1 Lewis tells his story through the life of Union military officer Benjamin Buckner (no apparent relation to Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner). Buckner was a conservative, slave-owning Democrat who volunteered to fight against the Confederacy in 1861, while at the same time trying to win

Patrick A. Lewis. For Slavery and Union: the heart of a woman whose family supported Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties secession. Buckner recruited a company for in the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 272 pp. the 20th Kentucky Infantry Regiment and ISBN: 9780813160795 (cloth), $50.00. fought at Shiloh but became disenchanted

80 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY GERALD J. PROKOPOWICZ with the Union cause after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He, along with sixteen other officers, resigned from his regiment, and in the postwar era he played an active role in fighting against political and social change in Kentucky, especially the establishment of voting rights for African American men. His initial decision to fight against the Confederacy, Lewis argues, was made not in spite of his devotion to slavery but because of it. In his public statements and in wartime letters to his future wife, Buckner made it clear that he saw the U.S. government as the guaran- tor and protector of slavery and that he feared the consequences of what he saw as the rash act of secession. When the war failed to bring Bridget Ford. Bonds of Union: Religion, about a quick victory, restoring the Union as Race, and Politics in a Civil War Border- it was, and instead became a war against slav- land. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro- ery, Buckner felt betrayed and refused to take lina Press, 2016. 424 pp. 1 halftone. ISBN: 9781469626222 (cloth), $45.00. further part in it, turning back to politics in an effort to preserve as much of his prewar vision of a racially stratified society as he could and uniting with ex-Confederate Kentuckians who shared the same racial ideology. When a political furor arose in 1867 over the disposition of captured Confederate battle flags, Buckner sided with those who would leave them in the hands of the Democratic-controlled state government, just as he and his fellow proslavery unionists would leave the memory of the war in the hands of former Confederates. For Slavery and Union will be extremely useful to anyone who frequently addresses public audiences or undergraduate classes, where the first impediment to understanding the Civil War era is resistance to the idea that slavery was the underlying cause of the war, which, as James Loewen has pointed out, still thrives outside of academia. The very title of the book strikes at a stereotype of northern soldiers as freedom fighters, reinforcing southern apologists’ argument that slavery could not be the war’s cause if there were slaveholding Yankees fighting to preserve it. But in making that argument, they unwittingly concede the big- ger question, for if Buckner and his fellow slaveholding Kentucky unionists were fighting to preserve slavery, then slavery was for them indeed the cause, as it was for slaveholders and those who benefited from slavery throughout the South. Benjamin Buckner’s story is an easily comprehended corrective both for the sim- plistic “free North vs. slave South” understanding of the war as well as the more insidious resistance to the primacy of slavery as the cause of the conflict.2

FALL 2016 81 WHAT HAPPENED TO KENTUCKY?

Where Lewis emphasizes the self-interest of proslavery unionists like Buckner as a key to Kentucky’s wartime loyalty, Bridget Ford offers a more complex argument based on “bonds of union” that could theoretically tran- scend mere self-interest. In three discrete sections, Ford looks at aspects of religion, race, and politics in Louisville and Cincinnati, comparing two major cities of the Ohio River valley on opposite sides of the line between freedom and slavery. The first section focuses on the rivalry between Protestant and Catholic missionaries and evangelists in the 1830s and 1840s, showing how each came to adopt the other’s tactics in its bid to win converts. In the second, Ford reveals the complexity of race relations in the two cities, from white mob violence in Cincinnati and lynchings in Louisville to the interplay of class and race in both cities (where African American hairdressers and barbers provided badges of respectability for their white clients) to the growth of morally grounded antislavery movements. The third section interweaves threads from the first two as Ford describes the bitter separation of Baptists and Methodists into pro- and antislavery denominations in the 1840s, with particular attention to the course of Louisville’s Fifth Street Baptist Church, an African American congregation that in 1845 was sufficiently large and confident to risk separating from the proslavery seceders of Louisville’s white Baptist community. In another chapter, she shows how Cincinnati politics reflected the rise of antislavery sentiment in Ohio, while by 1849 Louisville’s antislavery activists found themselves at odds with the rest of their state. Each deeply researched section of this book is filled with insights and ideas that will enrich the lectures of every history professor who reads it. Less clear is how well the three sections work together to explain the role of mystical “bonds of union” in keeping Kentucky in the Union in 1861. In the preface, the author takes care to define the phrase “bonds of union” in historical context, with attention to its religious and political connotations, but then the phrase practically disappears for the next three hundred pages. When war breaks out in 1861, the reader looks in vain for an explanation of the effect of these bonds. Instead, Ford addresses the “vexing” historical question of why slaveholding Kentucky remained in the Union by examining the pro-Union arguments of Louisville Journal editor George Prentice and Ohio’s radical antislavery leader Salmon P. Chase. Prentice made the case that slavery was better protected in the Union than out of it, an argument strong enough to persuade men like Benjamin Buckner to volunteer to fight. Ford’s presentation of Chase’s view is less persuasive. It may be true that in 1861 Chase, along with the rest of the Lincoln administration, went to some lengths to assure Kentucky and the other border states that the federal government had no authority or intention to disturb slavery where it existed, but the idea that Kentuckians invested in the survival of slavery would be reassured by anything from Salmon Chase’s pen is dubious at best.

82 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY GERALD J. PROKOPOWICZ

Rather than tie in the influence of religion and race from earlier chapters to explain how people in Louisville and Cincinnati reacted to secession, the last chapter of the book plows ahead to describe how these two cities supported the Union war effort over the next four years. This chapter (like all the others) is rich in detail, and it brings back the “bond of union” concept in claiming that black military service, civilian volunteerism, and the wartime rise of an antislavery consensus reflected new bonds of union, but it doesn’t recapitulate how the issues discussed earlier in the work came together, or failed to do so, to create the bonds that held the political allegiance of Louisville and Cincinnati in the Union from 1861 to 1865. Each chapter of Bonds of Union would make a brilliant journal article, but the connections between them are, like the bonds of union themselves, so complex and subtle as to defy easy comprehension. Both of these books make important contributions to the ongoing discussion of Kentucky’s anomalous position as a slave state that didn’t secede and a loyal state that resisted the end of slavery. For Slavery and Union offers an engagingly written chronological narrative with a single person as its focus and a crystal- clear thesis that speaks to the meaning of the Civil War generally, not just in Kentucky, and as such should appeal to anyone with an interest in the era. Bonds of Union, in contrast, is more complicated, perhaps more appropriate for profes- sors than for students. In its argument that antislavery sentiment was among the religious, political, and constitutional bonds that held Louisville in the Union and Cincinnati supportive of the war effort, Ford strikes an optimistic note, but one that raises the question of what became of that sentiment after the war, when Kentucky as a whole turned emphatically away from any notion of racial equality. Lewis is both more persuasive and more pessimistic in his story of Benjamin Buckner’s views, with its implication that Kentucky’s wartime stance was the result not of a deep-seated and multifaceted loyalty to the United States but of an even deeper and more consistent loyalty to proslavery, white supremacist politics.

1 Anne E. Marshall, Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); John Inscoe, Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010); Aaron Astor, Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012); Luke E. Harlow, Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830–1880 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Christopher Phillips, The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

2 James W. Loewen, “Unknown and Well-Known Documents,” in The Confederate and Neo- Confederate Reader, ed. James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 7–9.

FALL 2016 83 Review Essay Reconsidering Battles and Leaders in the Ohio Valley’s Civil War Stephen Rockenbach

ith the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War behind us, historians may now reflect on the successes made in interpreting the multifaceted nature of the conflict. Compared to centennial observances, modernW professional historians have ushered the discussion of the war beyond the battlefield and into communities, farms, and fields. The experiences of ordinary people—civilians, soldiers, and slaves—have come to the foreground, replacing the emphasis on battles and leaders. However, popular understanding of the war still occurs in the shadow of two long-established suppositions: first, that the main the- ater of war was in the East, and second, that understanding the war involves studying the actions of “great generals” such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George McClellan, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. This second sup- position underscores the first, often obscuring the importance of military figures who operated west of the Appalachians. Although it might seem that the time has passed for reconsidering the decision-making abilities of military officers, perhaps there is still a place for this approach in the West. Moreover, this apparently well-trod ground may not be as incompatible with social and regional history as once thought. The two works considered here offer perspectives on both the military leadership in the Ohio Valley and the extent to which the war was a mixture of regional and community dynamics.

Charles G. Beemer. “My Greatest Quarrel The first work examined in this review essay con- with Fortune”: Major General Lew nects to both the regional theme and the renewed Wallace in the West. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015. interest in military officers. Charles G. Beemer’s ISBN: 9781606352366 (cloth), $39.95. “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune”: Major

84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN ROCKENBACH

General Lew Wallace in the West, 1861–1862 hones in on one moment of Wallace’s fascinating story and demonstrates why it is important to continue to pry away at the relationships of military officers. Although Wallace is also known for mustering an ad hoc force to protect Washington, D.C., in 1864, Beemer is chiefly concerned with the Hoosier general’s participation in the early war campaigns in Kentucky and Tennessee. The second work under review, Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson’s edited volume of essays, Border Wars: The Civil War in Tennessee and Kentucky, contains a mixture of battlefield analysis, social history, and narrative. This book is a follow-up of sorts to their Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009), which focused almost entirely on the social and political aspects of secession, war, and Reconstruction in these two states. With the present volume, Dollar, Whiteaker, and Dickinson have brought together historians to investigate the military aspect of the relationship between Kentucky and Tennessee. Beemer’s “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune,” as well as the essays comprising the second part of Border Wars, addresses how we historicize leadership. Even a well-known figure like Ulysses S. Grant is best remembered for his late-war campaigns in the East rather than for his early forays into the Ohio Valley. Beemer reminds us that men like Grant and Henry Halleck should not be studied in a vacuum because their own prejudices, goals, and strategies collided with those of their peers and subordinates. Beemer’s exploration of Lew Wallace’s career as an amateur soldier and prideful Hoosier reveals an interesting division between West Point-educated officers and the ambitious citizen soldiers who accepted command of volunteer troops. Beemer argues that Wallace could have risen to military greatness had he only mastered a respect for the chain of command and the discretion to hold his tongue. This takes the contingency of military campaigns beyond the arm- chair generals’ discussion of firepower, numbers, flanking maneuvers, and combat experience and places it in the realm of social relations. Grant’s absence during the Confederate breakout attempt at Fort Donelson was a matter of timing, but Wallace’s decision to disregard orders and rush to block the rebel advance was the result of military intuition. Wallace certainly had the skill to command armies, but he also expected to be placed in the thick of the fight and praised for his successes. According to Beemer, Wallace arrived late to the first day of the Battle of Shiloh because he suppressed his own desire to move around the Confederate flank and instead followed orders. This decision led to further disappointment for Wallace and ignited a controversy that kept Wallace from permanent battlefield command. Wallace’s willingness to critique publicly his superiors energized his detractors to blame him for the delay, claiming that he took the wrong road. This legacy stayed with Wallace after the war, as he continued to fight to redeem his honor. While at once a detailed study of one man’s

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military ambition, “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune” is also sprinkled with the accounts of enlisted men and bystanders. Beemer’s application of the same military manuals Wallace read so carefully lends credence to the conclusion that Wallace had the talent to gain personal glory but was undermined by his obses- sion with honor and duty. Like “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune,” Border Wars prompts the reader to think about the unique mixture of social, institutional, and geographical challenges that war in the Ohio Valley posed. Dollar, Whiteaker, and Dickinson offer a straightforward structure, providing an introductory essay as prelude to a volume sepa- rated into two parts. In the introduction, Dollar Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteacker, and W. Calvin Dickinson, eds. Border Wars: and Whiteaker offer a general narrative of the The Civil War in Tennessee and Kentucky. political and military forces that shaped the war Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015. in Tennessee and Kentucky. This nicely sets the ISBN: 9781606352410 (cloth), $39.95. stage for the essays that follow in the first section, titled “Battles, Skirmishes, and Soldiers,” which is especially strong on guerrilla warfare and the grassroots nature of sectional violence in the Ohio Valley. Wiley Sword’s narrative of the Battle of Franklin stands alone as the only traditional “battle piece” in the first section. In contrast, Michael Toomey’s inves- tigation of the Union army’s lukewarm efforts to launch a campaign into East Tennessee during the first year of the war takes both politics and military strategy into account. Although unionists in that part of Tennessee were willing to support an early Union invasion into Confederate territory, a combination of poor logistics, Confederate countermoves, and disagreement over strategy prevented the campaign from coming to fruition. Toomey draws attention to the significant connections between Tennessee and Kentucky, which are also apparent in Aaron Astor’s comparison of militia organizations in Lexington, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Tennessee. Astor employs a bottom-up approach to show the social, political, and cultural importance of the militias that became the foundation of Civil War armies. The remainder of the essays in part 1 follow a similar path to understanding region and community as important factors in the experience of war in the Ohio Valley. However, unlike Astor, the authors focus solely on either Kentucky or Tennessee, with no comparison between the two. Derek Frisby’s analysis of the impact of Federal troops on Middle and West Tennessee uncovers an important distinction between the Union forces and unionist civilians. Frisby shows how

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Confederate guerrillas succeeded in both frustrating Union military authorities’ attempts at conciliation and causing Tennessee Unionists to distance themselves from Federal forces. Patricia Hoskins sees the same principle at work in Kentucky’s Jackson Purchase region, where Union officers’ attempts to combat guerrillas only caused more conflict along the state’s southern border. Scott Tarnowieckyi notes a similar ineffectiveness of Union forces in Kentucky’s Green River region. He describes the escalation of guerrilla violence, reaching an apex in 1864 as guerrilla attacks on unionists increased to chaotic proportions, often targeting U.S. Colored Troops and the public buildings they garrisoned. Collectively, these essays show that the war in Kentucky and Tennessee was fought at the community level. Astor, Frisby, Hoskins, and Tarnowieckyi reveal that military success had as much to do with communities and regional loyalty as with grand strategy and military leadership. The second section, titled simply “Leaders,” includes essays on a number of the major military figures associated with the war in the West. The chapters here strive for the same balance Beemer applies to Wallace, seeking new explanations for victory and defeat. For example, Brian McKnight’s reconsideration of the role of weather and terrain in the military career of Gen. Felix Zollicoffer demonstrates the influences of the unique topography of the Ohio Valley on military operations. As much as the Cumberland Gap flummoxed Union troops intent on entering eastern Tennessee, McKnight argues effectively that terrain and weather also confounded Zollicoffer’s objectives at Wildcat Mountain and along the banks of the Cumberland River. Military success is traditionally defined simply in operational and strategic terms, yet Stephen Engle looks to other factors that determined an officer’s success on and off the battlefield in his essay on Don Carlos Buell. Buell’s career was limited by his own conservative politics and a reluctance to accept the evolution of military policy toward total war. Engle adroitly compares Buell to McClellan, in the sense that both commanders demonstrated the ability to build and lead armies but were undone by their reluctance to equate victory with more aggressive political objectives, such as confiscation and emancipation. Earl Hess gives a similarly inspired analysis of Braxton Bragg’s leadership during the Stones River campaign, using the voices of Confederate and Union soldiers to underscore the success Bragg achieved under difficult circumstances. Hess contends that Bragg’s combative personality sullied his reputation. Christopher Losson expands upon this exploration of Bragg’s personality and professional relationships by taking a close look at the general’s embattled relationship with Benjamin Franklin Cheatham. More than simply a case of conflicting personali- ties, Losson uncovers a dysfunctional relationship between Bragg and his subordinates, which may offer another explanation for limited Confederate gains in the West. Losson posits that infighting within Bragg’s command limited the

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general’s effectiveness and led to his eventual resignation. In “My Greatest Quarrel with Fortune,” Beemer reveals a similar dynamic between Lew Wallace and his West Point-educated superiors, which likewise prevented Wallace from regain- ing permanent battlefield command. Military skill and experience, at least in the cases of Bragg and Wallace, were not as important as the ability to cooperate with superiors and subordinate oneself to the chain of command. The added perspective of personality, background, and motivation elevates the essays in part 2 of Border Wars above the hackneyed “great leader” narratives common in Civil War studies. Jack Hurst provides an intriguing analysis of Grant and Nathan Bedford Forrest as men with similar challenges who rose above their meager beginnings to become bold and charismatic leaders. Both products of the Ohio Valley (Ohio and Tennessee, respectively), Grant and Forrest experienced meteoric ascension through the ranks fueled by decisiveness and cool-headed resolve. Hurst argues that despite Grant’s West Point education, both men were outsiders in the world of military professionalism. Whereas Beemer views Wallace’s conflicts with Grant as a result of differences in military education, Hurst sees class and social status as more important to relationships between army officers. Thus, for him, both Grant and Forrest achieved military success despite demonstrating a lack of deference and concern for formality that rubbed both subordinates and superiors the wrong way. But where some individuals struggled to conform to the structure of military command, others took to martial formalities and the battlefield like the proverbial duck to water. As Tennessee was engulfed in war, Governor Isham G. Harris assumed a role as both political and military leader, attaching himself to the Confederate command and rallying Tennessee troops. According to Sam Davis Elliot, Harris made himself an asset to the Confederate army while using his political influence to support officers he thought would best defend Tennessee and achieve victory. Benjamin Franklin Cooling’s afterword to Border Wars underscores this connection between civilians and the military, while describing how the experience of war would reso- nate into the postwar years and Reconstruction. Our interest in battles and generals will not easily fade, but these two books attest to the prominent value of social relations and social context as determining factors in war. The armies that clashed at Pittsburg Landing, occupied Nashville, and guarded the Cumberland Gap were principally made up of men from throughout the Ohio Valley who were filled with thoughts of their own communities, families, and loved ones as they looked to their officers for guidance and leadership. And yet those officers were flawed, conflicted, and temperamental, with their own hopes, fears, and peculiarities. The work of these historians attests to the blurry line between social and military history. Perhaps by the American Civil War’s bicentennial the line will have disappeared altogether.

88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Book Reviews Bishop McIlvaine, Slavery, Britain, and the Civil War Richard W. Smith

ew histories of nineteenth-century American Freligion include material on Episcopal bishop Charles P. McIlvaine. Yet, as Richard W. Smith makes clear in Bishop McIlvaine, Slavery, Britain, and the Civil War, the Ohioan occupied an important leadership position. Perhaps most significantly, his extensive British connections positioned him to promote English sympathy for the Union during the American Civil War when that loyalty remained very much up for grabs. As an evangelical Episcopalian who came of age during the Second Great Awakening, McIlvaine rose quickly to positions of influence and prominence. He began his career aus- piciously at age twenty-three, when the U.S. Senate selected him as chaplain. Subsequently considered for important and prestigious pul- pits as well as the presidencies of leading uni- versities, McIlvaine served as chaplain at West Point and pastor at St. Ann’s parish in Brooklyn Richard W. Smith. Bishop McIlvaine, Slavery, Britain, and the Civil War. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2014. 328 pp. before settling down to a long career as Ohio ISBN: 978147902909 (cloth), $29.99; bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 9781479702893 (paper), $19.99. McIlvaine lived in an America and led a church wracked by conflict over slavery. These McIlvaine embraced an “aggressive, biblical abo- conflagrations manifested acutely in Ohio, where litionist position,” this assertion seems overblown mob attacks on abolitionists became almost rou- (29). Some of McIlvaine’s copious correspon- tine in the 1830s and race riots brought deadly dence that might shed light on his position does clashes in Dayton and Cincinnati in 1841. not survive, and Smith can offer little to docu- Disputes about how best to address slavery ment such an opinion. If the bishop espoused resulted famously in the 1834 dismissal of stu- this cause, he kept it close to the chest and did dents, the abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld not work actively with Ohio’s cadre of abolition- among them, from Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary. ists. In his abundant available writings, McIlvaine Ohio Episcopalians, however, mostly ignored seems to have been far more concerned with doc- the issue, concerned that these disputes would trinal concerns than social ones, though he did split the church. Though Smith maintains that support the ordination of black clergy.

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Between 1830 and the outbreak of the Civil to support a new nation devoted to human bond- War, McIlvaine traveled four times to England. age. Many regarded the Union cause as simply a His work in transatlantic benevolent, Bible, ecu- war for empire, and they needed American cotton menical, and missionary societies introduced him to supply the textile mills that fueled their own to leading British figures, and he often addressed economy. Though the British government ulti- important gatherings, preached to large crowds, mately withheld recognition of the Confederacy, and rubbed elbows with dignitaries. The extent of it is not at all clear that McIlvaine’s efforts figured his entrée into British society seemed confirmed importantly in this decision. when, in 1858, the Prince of Wales and his entou- Smith demonstrates mastery of copious rage accepted an invitation to call at McIlvaine’s material and has conducted meticulous research Cincinnati home during a trip to the States. in hundreds of documents, letters, and major The bishop’s thick nexus of relationships with newspapers of the day. Ultimately, however important Britons in church, society, and govern- the book suffers for its organization and writ- ment fitted him to promote English loyalty to ing, which follow the bishop’s day-to-day affairs the Union during the American Civil War. This too closely. Page after page reads as one inci- moment constitutes the high point of Smith’s dent after another, without effective cues for the narrative. Recommended to Secretary of State reader in the form of topic sentences or other Seward by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. indications of a hierarchy of ideas; at times Chase, McIlvaine spent the first four months of unclear references make the book hard to read 1862 in England at U.S. government expense. In and follow. Lacking a clear thesis and strong the midst of significant anti-federal sentiment fur- analysis about what the Ohio bishop’s life and ther stoked by the recent Trent affair, McIlvaine work tell us about religious debates in America worked his contacts among the middle and upper over slavery or about the role of religion in the classes to promote support for the Union. The Civil War, Bishop McIlvaine is the chronicle of British displayed a wide variety of complicated an interesting life, but not much more. concerns about the American Civil War. They Carolyn Dupont feared a strong and united America but hesitated Eastern Kentucky University

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 Calvin Schermerhorn

istorians may look back at 2015 as the Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the Hhigh watermark of a recent flurry of New World (New York: Metropolitan, 2014), scholarship examining the relationship between shared the prestigious Bancroft Prize, while slavery and capitalism. Two books dealing with Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: this subject, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Global History (New York: Knopf Doubleday, (New York: Basic Books, 2014) achieved a 2014) and Greg Grandin’s The Empire of significant amount of publicity through a

90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 Calvin Schermerhorn

90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS controversial and much-disparaged review in the Economist. In a year when Black Lives Matter and #CharlestonSyllabus became fix- tures in public discourse about the continued ramifications of slavery, racism, and violence in the history of the United States, these works have been especially timely in helping to explain the present through the past. Calvin Schermerhorn’s The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 makes important contributions to this scholarship. Instead of focusing on slavery as a form of labor or the plantation as a site of economic production, Schermerhorn orga- nizes the book’s seven main chapters as case studies examining a particular firm or individual involved in the domestic slave trade. By uncovering the strategies and innovations these firms used to surmount particular market challenges, Schermerhorn “narrates a tragedy born Calvin Schermerhorn. The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860. New Haven: of ambition through a discrete set of subjects Yale University Press, 2015. 352 pp. 12 b/w illus. whose participation in the slavery business illu- ISBN: 9780300192001 (cloth), $65.00. minates the process of capitalist development and the promise of American modernity” (5). minimally capitalized trader like Francis E. Rives Drawing on a wide range of newspapers, cus- could obtain a competitive advantage by walk- toms records, and legal documents, along with ing, rather than shipping, slaves from Virginia the correspondence and business records of to Mississippi in the late 1810s. Similarly, the slave traders, Schermerhorn carefully demon- Baltimore-based slave-trading firm Woolfolk strates the many ways the business of slavery & Co. achieved savings by exploiting the mer- and the economic development of the United chant vessels that needed to fill their holds, States were intertwined. contributing to the development of a thriving At their most basic level, profits from the coastal slave trade. This proved both economi- domestic slave trade derived from forcibly relo- cally and politically profitable for the firm by cating enslaved men and women from one mar- increasing its earnings and aligning Baltimore’s ket (where they sold at lower prices) to another maritime community with the interests of slave (where they sold higher), often over vast geo- traders. In the 1850s, Charles Morgan, a New graphic space. Thus, identifying ways to cre- York City shipping merchant running packet atively cut transportation and transaction costs lines between New Orleans and the Texas coast, became essential to the business strategies of leveraged federal subsidies and steam technol- those trafficking in bondspeople. Schermerhorn ogy to become one of the largest shippers of shows, for example, how a small-time and enslaved people in the country.

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The role of finance also figures prominently Overall, Schermerhorn thoughtfully con- in The Business of Slavery. Acknowledging that textualizes the larger economic environment in “varieties” of capitalism have developed over which enslaving entrepreneurs operated. Those time, Schermerhorn defines capitalism as “a involved in the business of slavery exploited highly structured system of trade character- opportunities created by the flows of global cap- ized by debt obligations that bound borrow- ital and by federal policies—from the protective ers’ ambitions, expectations, and imaginations tariffs on imported sugar to subsidies for the to future repayment” (1). Finance, he claims, development of banking facilities and transpor- was “capitalism’s locomotion” (3). Given this tation networks—that allowed slavery to expand emphasis, Schermerhorn spends time eluci- and flourish. More attention to the political dating the complex credit networks and com- economy of slavery, however, would have been modity chains in which enslaving entrepreneurs useful. For example, how did state-level poli- were embedded. The ability to access credit cies, and the politics that produced them, pro- and remit capital was crucial to the success of mote or hinder the interests of slave traders? domestic slave traders, as he shows in a chap- Moreover, like much of the recent scholarship ter on Franklin & Armfield, the most successful examining slavery’s capitalism, the geographic U.S. slave-trading firm of the 1830s. Devising and agricultural diversity of the slave South schemes to orchestrate the complex task of tends to disappear, along with yeomen farm- meeting the needs of buyers desirous of credit ers, women, and laboring poor that also popu- and cash-demanding sellers across distant and lated the region and shaped its development. It scattered markets was central to the firm’s prof- becomes much easier to align slavery with capi- itability. Another chapter, one that will seem talism when focusing on its most active entre- familiar to readers of Edward Baptist’s work, preneurial class, but that simply erases a large explores how many southern banks in the 1830s swath of people who also influenced the politi- sold state-backed bonds to European investors, cal and economic context in which the business channeling European capital to help fund the of slavery evolved. Nevertheless, Schermerhorn’s rapid expansion of cotton and sugar produc- study is a valuable contribution to business his- tion. As a primary form of collateral, enslaved tory and to the larger histories of slavery and people like Sam Watts were made most vulner- capitalism. One hopes that the book’s illuminat- able to the downturns of an overheated econ- ing case studies make their way into the eco- omy in the late 1830s when they were mort- nomic history courses of business schools for gaged by enslavers looking to draw credit from two purposes: as reminders of the historical this rapidly expanding financial system. Here context in which capitalism in the United States and throughout the book, Schermerhorn makes developed and the violence and suffering that a commendable effort to track more than com- can be obscured when economic development modity and credit chains by tracing the lives of is framed primarily through the abstractions of the enslaved African American men and women markets, prices, and efficiencies. whose bodies and labor produced so much of Franklin Sammons the wealth upon which U.S. economic growth University of California, Berkeley depended.

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Soldiering for Freedom How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops Bob Luke and John David Smith

n Soldiering for Freedom: How the Union Army IRecruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops, Bob Luke and John David Smith have successfully explained how the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) worked during the Civil War, the goal of this volume in the How Things Worked series from Johns Hopkins University Press. Admittedly, I was initially skeptical of a history of the USCT in a series thus titled, expecting to find texts on how scientific gizmos worked. I was relieved to dis- cover Soldiering for Freedom offers a solid understanding of how the Union army recruited, trained, and deployed the 180,000 African Americans who contributed mightily to the Union defeat of slavery and the Confederacy as soldiers in the segregated regiments of the USCT. Fortunately, their over- view incorporates the voices of free blacks, mostly from the northern states, as well as those of the slaves who fled to freedom behind the Union lines or were liberated and recruited when Union forces Bob Luke and John David Smith. Soldiering for occupied states in rebellion. While one might Freedom: How the Union Army Recruited, Trained, and Deployed the U.S. Colored Troops. Baltimore: expect this subject to be a straightforward history Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. 144 pp. 12 originating in the provision in Lincoln’s war mea- halftones. ISBN: 9781421413594 (cloth), $39.95; 9781421413600 (paperback), $19.95. sure, the Emancipation Proclamation, the employment of black men as soldiers was far more compli- Their discussion of how the politics and cated. The authors work through the political and bureaucratic maneuvering worked to create the social intricacies of racism: explaining how Lincoln USCT will be especially helpful to undergradu- and abolitionist allies had to overcome the restric- ate students and readers looking for an introduc- tions of the Militia Act of 1792, the Dred Scott tion to the role of African American soldiers and decision of 1857, the resistance of some northern sailors. Luke and Smith cover the combat history governors, many army officers, most of the com- of the USCT through its major battles, starting mon white soldiers and the majority of the white with the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment citizenry. They bring the reader along as the nation leading the attack on Battery Wagner on July 18, enlarged the Civil War from the white man’s war to 1863. Although this doomed attack, familiar to restore the Union to a fight by white and black sol- the public through the movie Glory (1989), is once diers and sailors to also abolish slavery. again highlighted as the great example that black

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soldiers would fight, the authors also dramatize Union camps and trained them as soldiers. An less familiar but heroic engagements, for exam- often overlooked part of the USCT apparatus is ple, at the Mississippi River fortifications of Port how the selection of the white commissioned offi- Hudson and Milliken’s Bend, both in Louisiana. cers worked. (Only late in the war did a few blacks While honoring deserving Union officers, they gain commissions.) Here, Luke and Smith offer readily depict the poor leadership of other com- details that combine the mechanics of recruit- manders, sometimes stemming from sheer stu- ment, examination, and training with accounts of pidity, too often from blatant racism, that resulted diverse personal motivations to serve, highlight- in wasted black lives at the Battle of the Crater ing the genuinely committed officers as well as the in Virginia on July 30, 1864, and the Battle of opportunists out to promote themselves over the Olustee, Florida, on February 20, 1864. The welfare of the black men they would lead. authors’ coverage of these engagements is concise In detailing the barriers and hardships of the and dramatic, and for this book quite sufficient. USCT, Luke and Smith record the injustice of Civil War buffs who want all the details can find unequal pay (June 1863 until remedied in June the specific military maneuvers in Noah Trudeau’s 1864), inadequate training, outdated weapons, Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, excessive fatigue duty, hostility of white sol- 1862–1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998) or diers, and the brutality of Confederate troops, the encyclopedic USCT history, Freedom by the the most infamous being the massacre at Fort Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867,by Pillow, Tennessee, by Confederates under Maj. William Dobak (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Center of Military History, 2011). Luke and Will readers finishSoldiering for Freedom Smith recount the Battle of New Market Heights knowing how the USCT worked? Yes. Will some on September 29, 1864, during the Richmond- want more? Probably, and more in-depth histo- Petersburg campaign, at which fourteen soldiers ries are readily available, for example, in the clas- of the USCT earned the Medal of Honor. But to sic studies by Benjamin Quarles (1953), James gain a blow-by-blow account and understand that McPherson (1965), and Dudley Taylor Cornish the horrific casualties suffered by USCT at that (1966), and in The Black Military Experience, battle stemmed not from the carelessness of racist series 2 (book 1) in Freedom: A Documentary officers but from misplaced confidence of officers History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, edited by strong in abolitionist sentiments and weak in mil- Ira Berlin and others (Cambridge: Cambridge itary strategy, one should turn to James S. Price’s University Press, 1982). Did I wish for more? monograph, The Battle of New Market Heights: At times, yes: I definitely wanted more infor- Freedom Will Be Theirs by the Sword (Charleston, mation on the resistance by USCT soldiers and S.C.: History Press, 2011). the protests by abolitionists against the unequal Such in-depth analysis is not the purpose or pay, but I know I can find these details among strength of this book. Rather, the authors pro- the documents quoted elsewhere. Here I found vide clear explanations of how the government a good introduction on how the USCT worked, recruited free northern blacks for regiments such and for that purpose I recommend Soldiering for as the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (aka Freedom. 11th Regiment, USCT), and managed the enroll- Edythe Ann Quinn ment of the formerly enslaved men flooding Hartwick College

94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS African Canadians in Union Blue Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War Richard M. Reid

n enduring narrative of slavery in the United AStates positions Canada as a “glory land” in which enslaved people fled hoping to secure their freedom. Understood in this way, it would seem natural that people of African descent returned to the United States to extinguish slavery for good. Richard M. Reid’s African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War complicates this narrative, framing African Canadian volunteers as possessing motivations for joining the war that cannot be reduced to moral imperatives. Reid’s work largely succeeds with this grand task, making clear that black volunteers from British North America understood participation in the war as connected to larger social and economic concerns. The book is organized both chronologically and thematically. Reid begins with the statisti- cal presence of black people throughout British

North America, as well as their settlement and Richard M. Reid. African Canadians in Union Blue: migratory patterns across the border. While not Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014. 292 pp. the most interesting, the first two chapters expli- ISBN: 9781606252557 (paper), $27.50. cate two of Reid’s most important arguments in the book. First, he challenges the idea that Land’ for some, but for others it was the ‘least black Canadian settlement primarily consisted worst’ option,” he observes (29). These chapters of runaway slaves; the influx of runaway slaves also confront Reid’s struggle to locate African was geographically and temporally dependent. Canadians in war records, due to incomplete Second, Reid argues that contrary to popular enlistment information and the various ways in beliefs, “black mobility was far more dynamic which people identified “home.” and complex” as people moved back and forth Over the next chapters, Reid discusses the across the border to escape enslavement, seek distinct experiences of black sailors in the navy, employment and better wages, or enhance social a chronological consideration of black volunteers mobility. “Whereas some remained [in Canada] in the army, the unique and protracted engage- for the rest of their lives, others saw the province ment of black doctors, and finally a perfunctory as a short-term sanctuary and left within a few discussion of volunteers’ post-war lives. Although years or even months. It may have been ‘Glory the book does function as a complete history of

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African Canadians in the war effort, not every than ‘the mere attainment of dollars and cents’” part is equal. The strongest and most engaging (141). In this way, black soldiers sought to stretch chapters are at the heart of the book. In chapters the war’s impact, personally and ideologically. 3 through 5, Reid presents a superb discussion The weakest chapters demonstrate the limits of the various motivations and means through of documenting the lives of people at the mar- which African Canadians volunteered to serve in gins of society. Chapter 6 concerns four black the American Civil War. What he accomplishes doctors with ties to British North America who here should broaden historians’ focus from the served in the war. Unlike the fairly detailed his- simple, albeit lofty, motivation of ending slav- tories Reid builds in earlier chapters, these sto- ery. Rather, he argues that all volunteers consid- ries feel rushed and incomplete, possibly because ered the financial benefits to themselves and their of the sample size. While there are moments families. Soldiers often made very strategic deci- where this chapter contributes to Reid’s larger sions about when and where they enlisted, hop- argument about volunteer motivations (a pre- ing to gain the biggest bounty and best treatment. dominate desire to legitimate their professional Thus, their enlistment numbers were lowest at the standing), as a whole it feels like a deviation start of the war and at times when Confederate from what had been a contained narrative. atrocities against black soldiers were publicized. In his first chapter Reid notes that it is dif- The volume of black volunteers rose significantly ficult to trace the lives of black volunteers before after the Union promised to give black troops and after the war as most have left very little, if equal bounties and pay. While ending slavery any, documentation and governmental records was a goal, it was one among many. In this same can explain the soldier, but not the man. This vein, Reid provides a fascinating case for con- lacuna becomes most clear in his final chapter. sidering black sailors as a unique case. For these Reid attempts to paint a mosaic of the many volunteers, many of whom had worked in mari- avenues veterans took after leaving the army and time related jobs before the war, naval enlistment navy. Some returned to their former lives, mar- offered steady employment and wages. Unlike ried and started families; some slid into poverty their counterparts in the army, naval volunteers due to wartime injuries; others expressed pride in did not serve on segregated ships and had more their service, attempting to access war pensions or possibilities for advancement. Thus, it is possible becoming involved in local chapters of the Grand that the ideological impetus to end slavery fac- Army of the Republic. Others, most notably a tored very little, if at all, in their enlistment (66). high proportion of sailors, seemed to have moved Reid also illustrates how black soldiers, on from the war and never looked back. Reid uses Canadian and American, used their service to fragments of a few stories to show the many ways test the boundaries of freedom and equality being veterans’ lives had been changed or not by the war. shaped by the war. Black soldiers were not prom- In brief, African Canadians in Union Blue is an ised equal pay until 1864 and before this date important work, which should encourage schol- some, especially those refused higher rank, pro- ars to more fully research Canada’s impact on tested this inequality by refusing their pay or American histories of slavery and the Civil War deserting. “They believed” he argues, “that the pay and the lives of African Canadians in this period. issue was grounded in the principle of equal rights Nicole M. Jackson for blacks as soldiers and thus had entailed more Bowling Green State University

96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS Civil War Nurse Narratives, 1863–1870 Daneen Wardrop

n this book, Daneen Wardrop examines the Inarratives of white women who served as Union army nurses during the Civil War. She focuses on seven individuals—Louisa May Alcott, Georgeanna Woolsey, Julia Dunlap, Elvira Powers, Anna Morris Holstein, Sophronia Bucklin, and Julia Wheelock—and she provides some biographical data on her subjects when it can be recovered. (Dunlap’s identity was veri- fied only in 2010.) The nurses, who were mostly young, single women, came from a range of class backgrounds, and most of them seem to have been native-born Protestants. Many of them supported woman’s rights, in theory or in practice, and all of them appeared to support emancipation. They served in different locations, in northern cities, in the occupied South, and on the battlefield. They published their memoirs over a span of seven years, starting with Alcott’s Hospital Sketches in 1863 and ending with Wheelock’s The Daneen Wardrop. Civil War Nurse Narratives, 1863– Boys in White: The Experience of a Hospital Agent 1870. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015. 267 pp. ISBN: 9781609383671 (paper), $55.00. in and around Washington in 1870. These women performed a wide variety of duties, such as dressing wounds, bathing sol- Military surgeons ran the gamut in terms of diers, and assisting at surgeries. Underpaid and skill and integrity, including dedicated profes- overworked, they labored in makeshift hospitals sionals as well as shady characters who commit- set up in warehouses and churches. Because of ted graft. Sophronia Bucklin witnessed a doc- the organizational problems in many hospitals, tor’s campaign of sexual harassment against a they performed yet more tasks, such as cook- nurse, one Mrs. Bolier, who had to leave her ing and doing laundry. All of the narratives post because of his misconduct. The reader fin- reveal their concern for the patients, especially ishes the book with a deep appreciation of the when troops experienced mistreatment, neglect, nurses’ determined efforts to provide good care or misdiagnosis. Several of these nurses treated for their patients. blacks as well as whites, and they admired both The memoirs also reveal some under- groups of soldiers equally. In addition, the nar- documented aspects of ethnicity and immigra- ratives convey the power struggles that some- tion in nineteenth-century America, including times broke out between doctors and nurses. stories of Indians who served in the conflict.

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Elvira Powers, who worked in the North and the various human beings she encountered the South, tried to help two Native American in her work. Powers sympathized with white veterans who were returning to their homes in southern civilians who contended with home- the North, the three of them communicating in lessness, hunger, physical sickness, and men- sign language. We get brief, fascinating glimpses tal illness. Yet Wardrop does not provide any of other people caught up in the war. Julia context from the scholarship on the war- Dunlap met an enlisted man, a Spanish immi- time environment or on wartime refugees. grant whose full name is unknown, as he worried The entire book would have benefited from a about his children left in the wartime equivalent stronger context from the scholarship on the of foster care in Philadelphia. Dunlap, who felt history of medicine. some compassion for the Spaniard, neverthe- The author, a professor of English, is pri- less insulted an Irish American woman, remind- marily concerned with the “rhetorical tac- ing us of the unpredictable nature of prejudice tics” and “narrative strategies” these nurses among white Americans from all regions. employed as they told their stories (5, 28). But Elvira Powers is one of the more percep- their actual experiences, interesting in and of tive women in the book. Little is known about themselves, do not fit easily into literary cat- her background except that she came from egories. That is often the case with people who New England and attended the Universalist live through an overwhelming conflict such as Church. She labored in the wartime South as the Civil War. Daneen Wardrop has nonethe- a nurse, a teacher, and an assistant in a home less brought to light some neglected sources for white southern refugees, all of it recounted by female nurses, offering new voices and new in her book, Hospital Pencillings: Being a Diary perspectives on several important issues. Civil while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jefferson, War Nurse Narratives makes a valuable contri- Ind., and Others at Nashville, Tennessee, as bution to our knowledge of women’s lives dur- Matron and Visitor (1866). Gifted with acute ing the War. powers of observation, she composed mem- Joan E. Cashin orable descriptions of the natural world and Ohio State University

Confederate Cities The Urban South during the Civil War Era Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers, eds.

or more than a century after Appomattox, urban history could also be southern history. Fcities barely featured in popular or schol- Thankfully, since the 1990s a rich vein of scholarly narratives of the Confederacy. Lost Cause arship has shown the deep compatibility of slav- explanations helped solidify the memory ery and capitalism, rediscovered southern and of a rural South worn down by the endless Confederate urban spaces, and helped make resources of the urban North. This perspec- works like Confederate Cities possible. tive cast a long shadow over our understand- Editors Frank Towers and Andrew L. Slap ing of the Confederacy and the degree to which explain that these past insights allow them to

98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS

Confederate Cities The Urban South during the Civil War Era Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers, eds.

98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS now address exactly “how southern cities as cities affected the Civil War and in turn how the conflict affected the urban South” (286). Their volume succeeds through eleven highly readable essays that cover an impressive range of topics—secession, nationalism, gender, emancipation, education, and environment—across a satisfying variety of locales: Richmond, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis, Natchez, Mobile, and Hampton Roads. The first half of the collection applies an urban lens to offer new perspectives on persistent debates in Confederate history. J. Matthew Gallman and David Molte-Hansen begin by asking how southern cities shaped the outbreak and course of the conflict. Gallman grapples with the reality that the South’s urban growth paled in comparison to the North’s. While it offered some strategic advantages, Gallman concludes that the Confederacy’s limited urban network “would inhibit its chances of winning Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers, eds. Confederate Cit- ies: The Urban South during the Civil War Era. Chicago: the Civil War” (43). Moltke-Hansen eschews University of Chicago Press, 2015. 336 pp. 1 drawing. sectional comparison to argue that the ante- ISBN: 9780226300177 (cloth), $90.00; bellum South experienced a vital internal pro- 9780226300207 (paper), $30.00. cess of what Louis Kyriakoudes has called “lower-order urbanization” (47). Many settle- of the South’s collective purpose surely ham- ments with populations too small to be consid- pered efforts to mobilize the full resources of ered truly urban nonetheless grew significantly the Confederacy” (93). Benson’s comparative thanks to improvements in key services such as analysis of gendered rhetoric in nation build- transport and communication. Moltke-Hansen ing similarly maintains that the “cosmopoli- believes this “multiplication of urban functions” tanism, complexity, and dynamism” of cities proved essential in the foundation and subse- clashed with nationalists’ calls for “cultural dis- quent viability of the Confederacy (66). tinctiveness, homogeneity, and tradition” (99). Frank Towers and T. Lloyd Benson posit The claim that urban-rural divides hurt the urban mentalities as an obstacle to secession. Confederate project is intriguing, and these Antebellum urban boosters claimed that cities essays suggest it merits further consideration. such as Baltimore, Charleston, and Richmond Keith S. Bohannon addresses another source each had potential to be the “New York of of internal tension in the Confederacy by reeval- the South.” Secessionists pleaded that such uating the urban bread riots of 1863, which dreams could become reality only in a separate Stephanie McCurry has recently characterized nation, but Towers argues that the “divergence as demonstrating women’s political activism between urban and nationalist conceptions in response to government neglect. Bohannon

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depicts a more complex urban milieu, finding Mobile. Green tells us how “old symbols of slav- that the Georgia governor acted repeatedly to ery became spaces for learning” as schools sprang ease civilian suffering and that other factors such up in a former slave auction mart and a wartime as festering prejudice toward Jewish merchants Confederate hospital (216). Readers may well played a significant part in fueling the unrest. ponder how such instances might inform cur- Michael Pierson uses the experiences of Stephen rent debates over Confederate symbols. Spalding—a Union soldier in New Orleans— The final essays look explicitly at how war to argue that key aspects of urban male culture shaped the cities of the New South. William A. transcended the sectional divide. In the bars and Link details the growth of Atlanta’s industry and brothels of the city, the Democratic Spalding felt infrastructure during the conflict and describes immediately comfortable living the same rough how Sherman’s burning of the city only enhanced masculinity he had embraced in several northern its postwar stature. John Majewski contends that cities. Both essays suggest that conceptions of gen- Hampton Roads’s growth faltered before the war der, often seen as divided primarily along sectional due to the combination of slavery’s requirements, lines, had important urban-rural dimensions. poor soils, and an inhospitable climate. The sub- The later essays move past the war to explore sequent extensive economic growth resulted the dramatic consequences of emancipation for not from factors internal to the South but from the urban South. Andrew Slap shows how the northern investment and the dawn of emancipa- increase in Memphis’s African American population. Both authors reiterate a recurrent theme of tion—17.1 percent prewar to over 60 percent by the volume: that the Civil War opened “doors 1865—helped benefit black veterans. These for- previously closed” to African Americans and that mer soldiers built lasting social and professional after the war, cities offered former slaves more networks in the city that allowed 93 percent of “political, educational, and community building Memphis’s African American veterans to secure opportunities,” than the rural South (255, 289). pensions compared to 75 percent of all black This highly recommended collection suc- troops. Justin Behrend examines the astonishing ceeds in the sizeable task of presenting individual revolution of life in Natchez, where the political essays, with their own discrete arguments, that mobilization of former slaves transformed the nonetheless speak to a collective purpose. The uses and meaning of urban spaces. By 1867, for- authors suggest how Confederate cities affected mer slaves attended Republican Party rallies at the war and, most effectively, the manifold ways the Natchez courthouse, where a few years prior that the conflict shaped the character and com- they had been sold at auction. The repurposing position of the urban landscape of the New of Confederate spaces that Behrend describes South. This compelling volume consistently pro- also features prominently in Hilary N. Green’s vides new evidence and new approaches to core explanation of how African Americans, Creoles, questions in both Civil War and urban history. and northern benevolent organizations com- Jack Furniss bined to improve educational opportunities in University of Virginia

100 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS Citizen Officers The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War Andrew S. Bledsoe

n recent years, a number of studies utiliz- Iing the combination of high-level quantitative and qualitative analysis have provided fascinating insight into the motivations behind enlistment, experiences of men in arms, and the interpersonal relationships of America’s citizen- soldiers. Andrew Bledsoe’s Citizen Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War stands as a worthy addition to this literature and significantly broadens our understanding of the roles and ideologies of volunteer soldiers in the Civil War. Bledsoe’s work analyzes “how Union and Confederate volunteer junior officers influenced and were influenced by the persistent citizen-soldier ethos of the republican tradition” and “how company-level military leadership developed in Civil War volunteer armies” (x). Defining both the “citizen-soldier” and the “republican ethos” that drove these men, the author notes that vol- Andrew S. Bledsoe. Citizen Officers: The Union and unteers assumed “the role of soldiers in times Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State of war or national crisis, all the while preserv- University Press, 2015. 352 pp. 10 halftones. 2 charts. ing their identities as free citizens with all the ISBN: 9780807160701 (cloth), $47.50. rights and privileges due them” (1). This ethos, which “involved civic virtue in the form of mili- to uphold the notion that “virtuous citizenship tary service, a claim on the revolutionary heri- demanded that men put aside their selfish inter- tage won by force of arms, suspicion of standing ests to engage in military service for the public armies, and a sense of egalitarianism and political good” (4-5). Driven by belief in self-government involvement,” often “shaped the nature of offi- and egalitarianism, American military service cer selection and leadership in both Union and was, as Bledsoe illustrates, a unique manifesta- Confederate armies” (2–3). Although northern tion of the traditions, ideologies, and beliefs that and southern soldiers embraced different inter- ran as undercurrents of American society. pretations of republicanism and the republican The creation of the Junior Officer Corps— tradition, soldiers used these criteria in selecting company-grade officers who volunteered for their officers and these officers, in turn, attempted military service—emerged out of the necessity

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of war as both the Union and Confederate and men, then, represented a delicate balance of armies expanded exponentially, quickly out- authority and mutual respect that could either stripping the number of regular officers capable manifest in a productive and effective relation- of command. To fill this void, both armies relied ship between these groups—especially when on the officer election system “as a pragmatic officers proved their worth under fire—or ani- acquiescence to the democratic prerogatives of mosity when these anointed leaders overstepped volunteers and to the citizen-soldier ethos that their authority or proved ineffective command- informed and motivated their service” (30). ers. As the war progressed, though, officers Underlying issues, especially those surround- became “part volunteer, with the many ideolog- ing order and discipline, plagued new officers ical accouterments and demands of the citizen- and such problems were tied to, and com- soldier ethos, and part military professional, pounded by, broader notions of republicanism. learning their new vocation” (105). Over time, Yet Bledsoe’s analysis of the origins of this class many of these “inexperienced amateurs” trans- of officers validates many historical preconcep- formed into competent commanders while still tions about these men. Officers, he notes, were managing to “retain the duality of their shared often of a higher class than the men under their citizen-soldier ethos,” which, Bledsoe con- command and “citizen-soldiers expected their cludes, was “a testament not only to the power officers to be men of ability, status, and prestige of the republican tradition and civic identities at in civilian life” (41). Furthermore, volunteer the heart of their American identities but also to soldiers expected that officers would be compe- the compelling ways that ideas—and ideals— tent and cool under fire—qualities also valued shape the course of history” (221). by both military commanders and government Bledsoe’s contribution to the field is signif- officials. In sum though, the democratic nature icant. In providing working definitions of the of the officer-election system “permitted sol- tradition of republicanism, self-governance, and diers to shape their military service on their own the ideals of the citizen-soldier, he has created terms” while simultaneously ensuring a “mea- an excellent reference for any historian inter- sure of mutual dependence between officers and ested in approaching what can be rather abstract volunteers essential to the citizen-soldier ethos, notions. Furthermore, this book, because of its thus reinforcing the ties of loyalty necessary for quantitative approach, provides support for and competent and effective command” (61). perspective on the qualitative evidence that we Unlike officers in the regular army, volun- often encounter when studying volunteer regi- teer officers retained control through personal ments. In my own work on the Union’s Irish connections with their men. “On one hand,” regiments, for example, I have found many of Bledsoe notes, “citizen-soldiers had to trust that the same themes Bledsoe identifies and thus I their officers would not abuse their temporary believe that Bledsoe’s work will play a vital role surrender of personal liberty by leading impru- in helping contextualize these types of interac- dently. On the other hand, citizen-officers had tions as part of the broader experience of volun- to trust volunteers that, despite their status as teer officers and soldiers during the Civil War. equals in the Republic, they would obey and My only issue with this book is the method conform to the indignities and discipline of mil- of sampling. Limiting the “demographic sample” itary life” (86). The relationship between officers to “include officers for whom I have writing or

102 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS other manuscript materials” could potentially other written account of their military service skew the analysis in favor of a certain group of and should be utilized more fully by historians men who actively sought to preserve records of who hope to achieve a more balanced analysis of their service in the years after the war (223). One the “average” Civil War soldier. Neither source is may consider that a truly random sampling of referenced in the book, even though these may the officers (from, perhaps, Bledsoe’s own causal- have helped hash out some of the broader argu- ity and attrition sample) might have provided a ments regarding the struggles facing junior offi- more accurate view of Union and Confederate cers. Yet this criticism is relatively minor and officers. Certainly, limitations exist, but infor- should not detract from the fact that Bledsoe’s mation on men who did not leave writings or book is well researched, well written, well argued, manuscripts can be found. Pension files and the and a most welcome addition to the field. proceedings of courts-martial trials can provide Ryan W. Keating important information about men who left no California State University, San Bernardino

The Civil War Guerrilla Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert, eds.

n his 1867 History of Morgan’s Cavalry, Gen. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri IBasil Duke of Kentucky described the Civil during the American Civil War (New York: War guerrilla from recent memory: “Many Oxford University Press, 1989). In The Civil War Confederate cavalry men…left their commands Guerrilla, Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. altogether and became guerrillas, salving their Hulbert offer eight scholarly, thought-provok- consciences with the thought that desertion was ing essays that explore the “un-civil” war from not to the enemy. These men, leading a com- several key perspectives. paratively luxurious life,…attracted to the same In “The Hard-Line War,” Christopher career young men who (but for the example Phillips contends that the ideology of Missouri’s and sympathy accorded the guerrilla and denied Confederate guerrillas was largely motivated the faithful, brave and suffering soldier) would by Lincoln’s antislavery measures, such as the never had quitted their colors and their duty” Emancipation Proclamation. Using ArcGIS and (530). However, by his 1911 Reminiscences, sophisticated mapping techniques, Andrew Fialka, Duke no longer viewed guerrillas as irregulars in “Controlled Chaos: Spatiotemporal Patterns still devoted to the cause. Rather he condemned within Missouri’s Irregular Civil War,” contends them as deserters from both sides who banded that guerrilla warfare in that region was marked together solely for the sake of plunder. not by sporadic pillaging and bloodshed but rather Such conflicting definitions of guerrillas and focused attacks on Union outposts. In this respect their role in the Civil War have received con- both essays challenge Fellman’s conclusion that siderable scholarly attention since the publica- guerrilla warfare in Missouri was merely a chaotic tion of the late Michael Fellman’s seminal study, “war of ten thousand nasty incidents” (251)

FALL 2016 103 BOOK REVIEWS other manuscript materials” could potentially other written account of their military service skew the analysis in favor of a certain group of and should be utilized more fully by historians men who actively sought to preserve records of who hope to achieve a more balanced analysis of their service in the years after the war (223). One the “average” Civil War soldier. Neither source is may consider that a truly random sampling of referenced in the book, even though these may the officers (from, perhaps, Bledsoe’s own causal- have helped hash out some of the broader argu- ity and attrition sample) might have provided a ments regarding the struggles facing junior offi- more accurate view of Union and Confederate cers. Yet this criticism is relatively minor and officers. Certainly, limitations exist, but infor- should not detract from the fact that Bledsoe’s mation on men who did not leave writings or book is well researched, well written, well argued, manuscripts can be found. Pension files and the and a most welcome addition to the field. proceedings of courts-martial trials can provide Ryan W. Keating important information about men who left no California State University, San Bernardino

The Civil War Guerrilla Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert, eds.

FALL 2016 103 BOOK REVIEWS

demonstrates that Confederate territorial ambitions in the southwest were foiled by the hit- and-run tactics of the Apaches, Comanche, and Navajos. Matthew Hulbert’s “The Business of Guerrilla Memory” examines an eyewitness account of the horrific “Centralia Massacre,” in which Missouri guerrillas butchered unarmed Union soldiers captured while on leave. Sgt. Thomas M. Goodman, the lone survivor, published an account of his ordeal in 1868. Hulbert persuasively argues that Goodman “waded into the partisan arena of [Civil War] memory” to ensure that the Union soldiers, who perished fighting guerrillas, earned their rightful place in the war’s history (141). John C. Inscoe’s “Tales of Race, Romance, and Irregular Warfare: Guerrillas Fictionalized, 1862–1866” illustrates how guerrilla warfare provided the background for both northern and Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert, eds. southern novelists and playwrights who sought The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in to produce patriotic works on the war. Inscoe History, Memory, and Myth. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 258 pp. 9 b/w photos. 4 maps. contends these works, which accurately reflect ISBN: 9780813165325 (cloth), $50.00. guerrilla warfare in the mountain South, are worthy of study as historical documents. Joseph David Brown and Patrick J. Doyle exam- Beilein’s “Nothing But the Truth Is History” is ine conflicting loyalties and anti-Confederate an excellent contribution to guerrilla historiog- resistance in their essay, “Violence, Conflict, raphy that effectively undermines the credibility and Loyalty in the Carolina Piedmont.” They of a foundational work, William E. Connelly’s reveal that the people of that region in both Quantrill and the Border Wars (Cedar Rapids, North and South Carolina reacted differently Iowa: Torch Press, 1910). Beilein demonstrates as Confederate citizens. In North Carolina, that while Connelly interviewed veterans from a strong core of Union sympathizers sparked both sides, he deliberately ignored any source political dissent and violent resistance. However, that clashed with his pro-Union bias, particu- in South Carolina the majority of piedmont res- larly the valuable firsthand accounts he obtained idents were firmly loyal to the Confederacy and from the ex-guerrilla William H. Gregg. dissent did not receive widespread support. Rod Andrews’s “In Search of Manse Jolly” is In “Indians Make the Best Guerrillas: Native a compelling exercise in separating historical fact Americans and the War for the Desert Southwest, from myth through the examination of a legend- 1861–1862,” Megan Kate Nelson pushes the ary South Carolina “Die Hard Rebel.” Although boundaries of guerrilla scholarship to both a regular soldier during the war Manson “Manse” new regions and participants. She effectively Jolly resorted to guerrilla style violence against

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Federal occupiers at the dawn of Reconstruction. example (15). One could also argue that guerrilla The entire book is further strengthened by warfare exploded in Missouri after Confederate Victoria E. Bynum’s perceptive afterword. forces lost control of the state at Pea Ridge and were The Civil War Guerrilla, which may appeal then thwarted in northwestern Arkansas after the more to the academic than the lay reader, is a valu- battle of Prairie Grove in late 1862. Works such able contribution to the field of Civil War schol- as Mark A. Weitz’s study of Confederate deser- arship. Although Missouri’s guerrilla conflict has tion, More Damning Than Slaughter: Desertion received considerable attention from historians, in the Confederate Army (Lincoln: University of the essays in this work continue to bring the strug- Nebraska Press, 2005), have demonstrated that gle in that region into focus. More importantly, localism was a far more significant factor in fan- Civil War Guerrilla breaks fresh ground by focus- ning the flames of guerrilla warfare. ing on other regions in the war-stricken land. The It should also be noted that while Nelson’s Brown-Doyle and Andrew essays are especially essay is a valuable contribution to studies of the commendable for their use of often-overlooked, war in the extreme southwest, it seems oddly yet extremely valuable state and local sources. out of place in this work. Native American war The detailed examination of literary sources, war- practices bear no relationship whatsoever to the time reminiscences, and seminal sources, such as modern concept of guerrilla warfare that devel- Connelly’s Border Wars in other essays also brings oped in the nineteenth century. As it stands, a fresh perspective to the subject. this fine essay adds nothing to the Civil War Yet it should be noted that some histori- guerrilla narrative. Nevertheless, this work is an cal arguments presented are open to challenge. important contribution and a worthy addition Phillips’s contention that the “hard line con- to the growing number of studies on this cru- flict in the western border states exploded only cial, brutal aspect of the American Civil War. after Abraham Lincoln declared slavery’s end to James Prichard be among the war’s primary objectives” is one Filson Historical Society

FALL 2016 105 ANNOUNCEMENTS In Memoriam: Andrew R. L. “Drew” Cayton rew Cayton, long-time supporter of The Filson Historical Society, died on DDecember 17, 2015, after a seven-month illness. An extraordinary scholar, superb teacher, and exemplary colleague, Drew gave freely of his time to numer- ous historical organizations and to the wider public. A self-defined regionalist, he was a founding member of the editorial board of Ohio Valley History and served on it until his death. A native of the Ohio River Valley, Drew Cayton attended University of Virginia (BA) and Brown University (MA, PhD), before returning to the Midwest. He taught at Ball State for eight years, then moved to Miami University in 1990, where he spent the majority of his career, advancing eventually to University Distinguished Professor (2000). Named the Warner Woodring Professor of Early American History at The Ohio State University in 2015, he had just taken up his new duties at the time of his death. Drew’s scholarship pursued a variety of topics, approaches and geographies. He began with a focus on Midwestern history. Placing the region’s early history into western and “frontier” frameworks, he produced monographs including The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Conflict in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825(1986); Frontier Indiana (1996); and (co-authored with Peter Onuf) The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region (1990). His bicentennial text Ohio: The History of a People(2002), was accompanied by radio spots on the state’s history that played throughout the year. He co-edited a clutch of essay collections, including (with Fredrika Teute), the seminal Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830 (1998). He co- edited the massive The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2007). A second phase of his scholarship considered questions of empire. With co- author Fred Anderson he made a major entrée into the diplomatic and imperial history of the United States in The Dominion of War (2005). The work won high praise, named a book of the year by both The Washington Post and The Times Literary Supplement. The importance of that volume and its impact earned them the contract to co-author a volume in Oxford’s prestigious History of the United States, a volume that was in progress at the time of Drew’s death. His most recent book, Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793-1818 (2013), explores different issues, especially of emotion, gender relations, and literature. Through it he made a remarkable intervention into Wollstonecraft studies and the transatlantic world during a time of the radical rethinking of the relations between men and women. While pursuing this varied and successful career as a scholar, Drew excelled as a teacher as well. Over 25 years at Miami University, he supervised 30 MA

106 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANNOUNCEMENTS and 5 PhD students, as well as 15 History Honors theses. His riveting lectures— delivered to some 9,000 students—modeled historical inquiry and captivated countless students. Winner of multiple teaching awards, Drew was beloved by students and university alums. He performed a vast amount of service not only to the profession but also by speaking to the public. He knew all the backroads of his native Midwest, as he crisscrossed it by car to address historical societies, high school teachers, and state legislators. A generous colleague, he was an engaging speaker with a passion for history and a sincere interest in all the people he encountered. He leaves behind his wife of forty years, historian Mary Kupiec Cayton; daughters Elizabeth Cayton (Victor) Broccoli and Hannah Cayton; and grandson Elliott.

Carla Gardina Pestana Professor and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair, UCLA

Go beyond the legend with the largest collection of Viking artifacts ever displayed in North America Vikings: Beyond the Legend xperience a myth-busting exhibition that has captivated millions of people Earound the world. Explore the rich, often-misunderstood Viking culture like never before with the largest collection of Viking artifacts, some never before seen outside of Scandinavia. Over 500 artifacts unearth the facts behind the legends of the Vikings. Jewelry, silverware, pottery, funeral caskets, swords, spears, coins, game pieces, clothing, cookware, and even 1,000 year-old Viking bread are some of the extremely diverse objects included in the exhibition. These artifacts are highlighted by the Roskilde 6, a 122-foot “long boat” excavated from the Roskilde Fjord in Denmark in 1997, the longest Viking boat ever found. Cincinnati Museum Center’s exhibition will mark the ship’s North American debut. Alongside the Roskilde 6 is the Krampmacken, a 25-foot reconstruction of a Viking age merchant boat found in the 1920’s on Gotland Island, Sweden. Vikings: Beyond the Legend opens November 11, 2016 at Cincinnati Museum Center. For more information visit www.cincymuseum.org/exhibits/vikings or call (513) 287-7000.3

FALL 2016 107 ANNOUNCEMENTS Cincinnati Museum Center artifacts are Curate My Community incinnati Museum Center artifacts are popping up around the Greater CCincinnati region as part of Curate My Community, a series of exhibits displayed at partner institutions that allows the Museum Center to continue to share its extensive collections with the public. With the temporary closure of the Cincinnati History Museum and Museum of Natural History & Science to facilitate extensive repairs and restoration to Union Terminal, Cincinnati Museum Center is bringing those museums to you. Iconic pieces of Cincinnati’s natural and manmade history, and staples of Cincinnati childhoods, will continue to educate and delight visitors, albeit in new locations. Curate My Community exhibits are located at a growing a list of locations including Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), the University of Cincinnati, Mount St. Joseph University, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati, and Boone County and Kenton County Public Libraries in Kentucky. Amongst the objects on display are a World War II-era Aeronca Defender airplane, a replica of Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit, an Allosaurus skeleton, and an Egyptian child mummy over 1,800 years old. For a complete list of objects and locations visit www.cincymuseum.org/ curate-my-community.

Temporary Library Closure

he Cincinnati History Library & Archives at Cincinnati Museum Center is Ttemporarily closed to the public to facilitate the renovation of historic Union Terminal. As a result, guests will be unable to visit the Cincinnati History Library but may still access the library’s online catalog, digital journals and other local history resources at library.cincymuseum.org. Limited service via email was resumed in July 2016, but the library will remain closed to the public throughout the dura- tion of the renovation project. We regret any inconvenience this may cause but hope that you will explore our online resources to support your research needs. We look forward to seeing you in the library again when the renovations project is completed. Please visit the library website at library.cincymuseum.org for updates and additional information.

108 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Ohio Valley History is a Submission Information for Contributors to OHIO VALLEY STAFF David Stradling Phillip C. Long collaboration of The Filson University of Cincinnati Julia Poston Editors Nikki M. Taylor Thomas H. Quinn Historical Society, Cincinnati LeeAnn Whites Texas Southern University Joanna Reeder Museum Center, and the The Filson Historical Society Frank Towers Dr. Anya Sanchez Department of History, University Matthew Norman University of Calgary Judith K. Stein, M.D. Department of History Steve Steinman of Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati CINCINNATI Carolyn M. Tastad Blue Ash College MUSEUM CENTER Anne Drackett Thomas Cincinnati Museum Center and One digital copy of the manuscript, saved in Microsoft Word, *Regarding general form and style, please follow the BOARD OF TRUSTEES Albert W. Vontz III should be sent by email to: 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. For The Filson Historical Society Book Review Editor Kevin Ward specific style guidelines, please visit The Filson’s web- William H. Bergmann Chair Donna Zaring are private non-profit organiza- Matthew Norman, Editor or LeeAnn Whites, Editor site at: http://www.filsonhistorical.org/programs- Department of History Edward D. Diller James M. Zimmerman tions supported almost entirely Ohio Valley History Ohio Valley History and-publications/publications/ohio-valley-history/ Slippery Rock University Asst. Professor of History Director of Research submissions/submissions-guidelines.aspx. by gifts, grants, sponsorships, Past Chair FILSON HISTORICAL University of Cincinnati Filson Historical Society Managing Editors Francie S. Hiltz SOCIETY BOARD OF admission, and membership fees. Blue Ash College 1310 South 3rd Street The refereeing process for manuscripts is blind. Referees Scott Gampher DIRECTORS 9555 Plainfield Road Louisville, KY 40208 are members of our editorial board or other specialists in Cincinnati Museum Center Vice Chairs Blue Ash, OH 45236 [email protected] the academy most appropriate to each manuscript. We have The Filson Historical Society Jamie Evans Greg D. Carmichael President & CEO [email protected] no quotas of any kind with regard to authorship, topic, chronological period, or methodology—the practitioners The Filson Historical Society Hon. Jeffrey P. Hopkins Craig Buthod membership includes a subscrip- *Preferred manuscript length is 20 to 25 pages via their submissions determine what we publish. Authors Cynthia Walker Kenny tion to OVH. Higher-level Cincin- (6,000 to 7,500 words), exclusive of endnotes. must guarantee in writing that the work is original, that it Editorial Assistant Rev. Damon Lynch Jr. Chairman of the Board nati Museum Center memberships *Please use Times New Roman, 12-point font. has not been previously published, and that it is not under Kayla Reddington Mary Zalla Carl M. Thomas *Double-space text and notes, with notes placed at consideration for publication elsewhere in any form. also include an OVH subscription. The Filson Historical Society the end of the manuscript text. Accepted manuscripts undergo a reasonable yet rigorous General Counsel Vice President Back issues are $8.00. *Include author’s name, institutional affiliation, editing process. We will read the manuscript closely as to Editorial Board George H. Vincent A. Stewart Lussky and contact information (postal address, phone style, grammar, and argument. The edited manuscript will be Luther Adams number, and email address) on separate cover submitted to the author for consideration before publication. University of Washington, Treasurer Secretary For more information on page. Only the article title should appear on the The Filson Historical Society (FHS), Cincinnati Tacoma Matthew A. Sheakley W. Wayne Hancock Cincinnati Museum Center, first page of the article. Museum Center (CMC), and the University of Cincinnati *Illustrations, tables, and maps that significantly (UC) hold jointly the copyright for all material published Joan E. Cashin including membership, visit Ohio State University Secretary Treasurer enhance the article are welcome. in Ohio Valley History. After a work is published in the www.cincymuseum.org or call Kathleen Duval Martine Dunn J. Walker Stites III *Authors who submit images should also provide journal, FHS/CMC/UC will grant the author, upon writ- University of North Carolina 513-287-7000 or 1-800-733-2077. citations, captions, credits, and suggestions for ten request, permission to republish the work, without fee, placement of images. subject to the author giving proper credit of prior publica- Nicole Etcheson President & CEO Anne Arensberg tion to Ohio Valley History. Each author will receive five free Ball State University Elizabeth Pierce David L. Armstrong For more information on copies of the journal in which the published article appears. Craig T. Friend William C. Ballard, Jr. North Carolina State Trustees Phillip Bond The Filson Historical Society, University Jessica Adelman J. McCauley Brown including membership, visit R. Douglas Hurt Mark A. Casella Kenneth H. Clay www.filsonhistorical.org Purdue University Dr. Brian D. Coley Marshall B. Farrer James C. Klotter Susan B. Esler Laman A. Gray, Jr. or call 502-635-5083. Georgetown College David E. Foxx Robert E. Kulp, Jr. Tracy K’Meyer Robert Fregolle Jr. Patrick R. Northam University of Louisville Jane Garvey Anne Brewer Ogden Clarence Lang David L. Hausrath H. Powell Starks University of Kansas Carrie K. Hayden John P. Stern David A. Nichols Jeffrey P. Hinebaugh William M. Street Indiana State University Katy Hollister Orme Wilson III Christopher Phillips Peter Horton University of Cincinnati Allison Kropp Senior Research Fellow John David Smith Brian G. Lawlor Mark V. Wetherington University of North Carolina, Gary Z. Lindgren Charlotte Dr. Mitchel Livingston

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