ED]' BOARD OH/0 1/ALLEY 1-ORIAI.

H/.7'ORY STAFF Compton Allyn Christine L..Heyrman joseph R Reidy Cilicimial,Mitset, Ce,iter University of Delatiwre Howard University Editors in Hist<,ry Advisciry Board Wayne K. Durrill 1. Blaine Hudson Steven J. Ross Christopher Phillips Stephen Arcm Umveysity f I,oliiSttlle University of Solitbeni Department of History University of alifornia(: alif)r),ta R. Douglas j [ Uitiversity of Cinci,inali at Los Anee/es urt ivt: Shite Unit, ersity Harry N. Scheiber Joan E. Cashi„ University of California Managing Editors james C. Klotter Berkeley Jennifer Reiss Obio Slate University it Filst),Historic,11 Sticiely j'be. 1 Andrew R. 1..Cayton Steven M. Stowe Bruce Levine Miami Unit,ersity Imbiia Uitiyersffy Ruby Rogers University of California Center Cilicinnati Mliseum R. David lidmunds tt Salita Crut Roger D. Tate University rif Texas D,dias Somerset Con,jilifitity at Zane L. Miller Editorial Assistant College Kelly Wright Ellen T. Eslinger University of C.inciniliti DePaill University joe W. Trotter,Jr. Depaytment of History Elizabeth A. Perkins Uiliversity of Cincinnati Pri,exie Mellon Univenity Craig T Friend Ck,/tre College Universityf <, entral(: Florida Altina Waller james A. Ramage U„ii,eysily f<)Collnectielft Nortber„Kentlicky University

THI: Fll, HISTORIC: CINCINNATI Mus'EUM CENTER SON A[ SOC'[ BOARD DIRECTORS BoARD OF TRUSTEES 1 1-Y OF

Chair Helen Black Laura Long President Ted Steinbock H. C:.Buck Niehoff David Bohl Steven R. I.ove Dr.It. Ronald Brown D. Craig Maier President Past Chair Vice- Otto M. Budig,Jr. Kevin W.Mooney Valerie [..Newell Emily S. Bingham Brian Carley Slicn:in R Murphy Vice Chairs Richard 0. C:oleman Scott Robertson Secretary-Treasurer Keli [. Ormsby owe Bob Coughlin Elizabeth York Schiff Henry Greg Kenny Diane l..Dewbrey Steve C. Steinman Director Ronald 7'ysoe Martind R. Dunn Merrie Stewart Stillpass Mark V. Wetherington Jane Garvey Jane (; lohn T.Taylor arvey furney P.Berry 77 Charles 1.[-Gerhardt, III james L.Turner easurer Sandra A. Frazier Dee Gettler H. Vincent William C. Porrman. Ill corge Michael N. Harreld Leslie Hardy Charles Westheimer Secretary J. Blaine Hudson R. Keith Ilarrison Jennifer R Mooney Daniel H. Jones John W. Hauck Margaret Barr Kulp President and CF.0 Mark J. [I. iuser Thomas T. Noland, Jr. McDonald illglass W. Timothy 1 Hoberg Barbara Rodes Robinson Rober[ E Kis[inger Vice President of Museums Nicholas X. Simon John E. Fleming J. Walker Stites,III Dace Brown Stubbs David Y.Wood Ronald R. Van Stockum, Jr.

bio Valley History (ISSN Society, 1.31(}S. Third Street. Department o!1 11!tory, subscriprion To Ohio Valley of Cincinnari. Himiry. Back issues 8.00. 746-3472) is published in ILouisville, Kentucky·,40208. University are $ Cenwrand For information „ Cinchin.iti. Ohio. and Editorial Oifices located ar Cincinnari Museum more n 1.ouisville, Kennicky,by the Universiry of Cincinnati. The Filson I hstc,rical Society.are Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnici Museum Center alid Cincinnati, Ohio,45211-0373. privare non-profit organizations including membership,visit The FAson Historical Society. Contact the editorial offices ar suppixted almost entirely by www,cincymliseum.orK or call gifts, mhips, 513-287-7000 1-800-7.33-2077. PeriO lical( postage paid at [email protected] or grants, spons< or durrilwk@ 2 1. edu. admission and membership fees. 1:or more information on 1-he Cincinnati. Ohio,with ali eiii.3 Lic. Obio Valley History is Memberships of Cincinnati Filson 111:corical Society, additim.il entrl Lc,Liisville, a of - including membership.visit Kentucky. collaboration 1-he Filson Hist<,ry Museum al ltici!( inati IPostmaster send addres. Historical Society.Cincinnati Museum Ccnrcr or Thc Fils(in www.filsonhistorical. org or call and the Historical Socierv include 502-635.5083. changes to Thc Filson Hisrorical Museum inte( a

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OHIO VA I. 1..EY HISTORY OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 2003

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,Inc.

Contents

Beyond the Quest for the Real" Eliza Harris": Fugitive Slave Women in the Ohio Valley Keith Griffler 3

Family Ties, Party Realities, and Political Ideology: George Hunt Pendleton and Partisanship in Antebellum Cincinnati Thomas Macb 17

Christ Unchained: African American

Conversions during the Civil War Era

Dan Fountain 31

Liberty on the Border: A Civil War Exhibit James Ramage 47

Cover: Cincinnati from The Zoar Community: A Review of Ohio Covington,Kentucky, an Historical Site ca.1851, by Robert S. Mitchell Snay 51 Ducanson Oil( on canvas An). African American artist, Ducanson painted this Reviews 55 impressive panorama from an illustration, changing two of tbe Upcoming Events 66 white figures in tbe illustration to slaves. Cincinnati Museum

Center

SUMMER 2003 1 Contributors

KEITH GRIFFLER is Assistant Professor of African Arnerican

History in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. His second book, Wade in tbe Water: Tbe Underground Railroad and African American Freedom in tbe Obio Valley, is forthcoming from the University Press of

Kentucky. He is co-producer on a public television documentary of the same name,supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's National Black Programming Consortium.

THOMAS S. MACH is Associate Professor of History at Cedarville University,specializing in U. S. nineteenth-century political

history. He is currently completing a biography of Cincinnatian George Hunt Pendleton, the father of the first major federal civil service reform legislation in United States history.

DAN FOUNTAIN teaches history at the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. He earned his Ph.D. in early American history from the University of Mississippi where he completed his dissertation under the direction of Winthrop Jordan.

JAMES A. RAMAGE is Regents Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University. He is the author of Rebel Raider:Tbe I.ife of General Jobn Hunt Morgan Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,1986) and Gray Ghost:The Life of Col.Jobn Singleton Mosby Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,

1999).He is currently writing a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

MITCHELL SNAY is Professor of History at Denison University. He is the author of Gospel of Disunion:Religion and Separatism in tbe Antebellum South New York: Cambridge University Press,

1993).

HISTORY 2 OHIO VALLEY Beyond the Quest for the Real Eliza Harris": Fugitive Slave Women ill tbe Obio Valley

KEITH GRIFFLER

I was not that of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, or Josiah Henson. that of Eliza fictional character HarrietfugitiveBeecherfromStowe'slavery It thenineteenth Harris,the best-known inof n was century, a story a s, Uncle Tom' Cabin. In s that runaway bestseller,the most widely read work of the abolitionist movement, a young enslaved woman named Eliza flees her Kentucky home on the southern shore of the Ohio River and makes a daring escape across the frozen surface, already broken up into floating cakes of ice, to Ohio, where abolitionists con- gained duet her to Canada. Millions of Americans and Europeans UNCLE TON'S CABIN; their introduction to the antebellum network for aiding fugitive slaves, the Underground Railroad,through Stowe's work. Eliza LIFE AMONG TILE LO\\'I.Y. Harris became something of a symbol for what was, in Victorian

terms, labeled the panting" fugitive."' BY

The of IIARRIET BEECIIER STOKE. success Uncle Tom's Cabin, though no doubt gratify- the conductors"" the Underground Railroad, might ing K4bb-#'- to on 'Sf,„T. AR- also have been just a little frustrating. The real heroes of the drama that played out north of slavery's border were all but un- known to a public that took so much interest in mere figments of Stowe's imagination. Left out of the memory of a clandestine operation that was on the way to achieving legendary propor-

tions, they would be faced with the somewhat peculiar task of f.:4 VOL. IT. reclaiming a central role in an enterprise they had created and tr es*HUNDRED BOSTON:AND TnEX.,1.TlfCUSAN. - nourished.2 py JOHN P. JEWETT &COMPANY * Nothing better demonstrates this dominance of what the his- Clor CI, '-Ef,AN ])I t)1!It): torian Larry Gara has called the legend" of the Underground 0

Railroad"over the actual entity than the quest for the identity of the real"" Eliza Harris. Harriet Beecher Stowe herself inadvert-

ently set off this strangest of historical preoccupations a couple Uncle Tom' Key Uncle Title page of s of after the publication of her classic with the follow-up to Cabin by Harriet Beecber Tom'yearsCabin. s Under attack by proslavery forces for inventing a caricature of stowe. Tbe Filson Historical Society slave life,she provided a detailed volume purporting to be the" original facts and documents under which the story is founded."Within the work, she included a reference to the Eliza Harris escape story as mirroring an actual

SUMMER2003 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL ELIZA HARRIS"

occurrence,and the search for the real"" Eliza was on. Given license by the author,such Underground Railroad notables as William Mitchell, Levi Cof- fin,John Parker,and a son of Rev.John Rankin would include her story in their memoirs, finding themselves compelled to claim insider knowledge of the real"" Eliza to prove their Underground Railroad mettle. ; Perhaps predictably,almost all of these com- mentators pretending to be in the know about 22 the real"" Eliza KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. stuck to the details of her story dent which brought the original to her punch as he did so, yc" and her provided by Stowe, venient at all ints aloi person even notice may be simply narrated. p' little jobs in our line qu though the latter admitted that she based the While the writer was travelling in Ken- does the knockin' down, tucky, many ago: she attended church in all dressed up,sh. - years physical description of the character on a" iii a small country town. While there, her first chop,when - ·the s, oughter attention was called to beautiful quadroon soo me, now !" beautiful quadroon girl"she but a professional pride, ho" saw once on girl, who iii of the slips of the church, sat one day I ' Mr. Twickei m a trip through Kentucky. In meeting the ex- and appeared to have charge of some young nother day, I 'm just co children. The description of Eliza may Pearl river, where J w pectations of their public, they endowed the suffice for description of her. When the gers , then, ag,Lin. I cork a to Henry Clay, author returned from church, she inquired or sou real"Eliza with attributes, the source of Talents is difE}rent, yo, about the girl, and told that she was was as roarer when there ts 11,. 1 which had nothing to do with the purported good and amiable as she was beautiful; that be done ; but at 13 hl: it don't she a pious girl, and member of the yo see come nat of fugitive who crossed the icy was a if tliar ' feller in the, case a woman church; and, finally, that she owned s a was anything and everything Ohio River somewhere in the portion by Mr. So-and-so. The idea that this girl eumstance:ind : flourishi eastern was a slave struck a chill to her heart, and carry 't through better ' of the They also all agreed that she him, state. she said, earnestly,0, " I hope they treat see that 'M ali ! I her kindly." get dong, and make t passed through the hands of Ripley' John were more particule th s c' 0, certainly," was the reply ; they " rather wish tliey was 1 Rankin,though the Stowe used think much her story appears as of as of their own chil- be a licap more relishin' dren." know." have stemmed from incident yer to a Cincinnati probably in accordance with her reference in

In her Key to Uncle Tom's the Key to a" Presbyterian clergyn»lan of Ohio"),which most readers familiar Cabin, Stowe admitted tbat with the territory would have taken be Rankin. Beyond that,the sbe based tbe physical to accounts description of Eliza Harris differed widely,with each cast in an improbable light necessary to the alleged quadroom girl"sbe on a " involvement of its author. Mitchell claimed to have sheltered the real"" Eliza saw in Kentucky.Tbe Filson Historical Society the second night out, though he was never close enough to Ripley to have done so. Coffin went a step better and asserted that his wife gave Eliza Harris the name by which she became famous,a doubly perplexing circumstance for the of fictional namesake a character. One should trust least of all these oth-

erwise reliable sources on the Underground Railroad,given that their motiva- tion to stretch the truth was greatest:

he one exception to this general rule is the testimony left by John T Rankin,Jn,son of the famous Presbyterian minister of the same name whose house atop the hill in Ripley has remained the Underground

Railroad's most famous landmark. To be sure, in his case no more reason authoritative character than that of his better-known exists to assume its in

contemporaries. On the contrary,as one of fourteen children of a man whom he felt had an insufficiently appreciated role in the Underground Railroad, John Rankin,Jr.,likely had the largest stake in claiming a connection to Eliza Harris. In contrast to his far more prominent father and oldest brother, he

4 OHIO VALLEY H ISTORY alone related the story of a Kentucky fugitive slave woman-actually two slave women rolled into a composite-as that of the real"" Eliza. What makes his narrative especially interesting is neither that he claims to have known her, that details nor its appear most authentic, but that his Eliza is so altogether different from all of the others,not only in how she appears,but,more impor- tant,in what she does.'

According to Rankin, Eliza's involvement with the Underground Railroad did end, not as it does in Uncle Tom's Cabin, when she, her husband,and her child reached young Canada. Instead, she returned to Ripley,intent on liber- ating of her family. John more Rankin, Sn, according to his son, was as- tounded"and warned her against it. Returning whence she came could cost her her life. The woman whose winter crossing of the Ohio's broken ice had captivated the American and British public and who had convinced the noted" negro hunter and a most noted ruffian"who found her that she deserved freedom was prepared to incur the risk.

scout the location and prepare the ground for the rescue. He obtained heworkbroughtand thewithconfidencehera Frenchof theCanadianslaveholdersmanofwhomthe district.she employedBut Elizato insisted taking on charge of the escape plot itself so John Rankin,Jr.,and one of his brothers-both accustomed to helping fugitives cross the river northward direction- in a rowed the woman Last spring, while the author was in New described as a" stout, heavy woman of about five feet, York, a Presbyterian clergyman, of Ohio, four inches in height"back into the den of slavery. John came to her, and said, c I understand they dispute that fact about the crossing Rankin,Jr.,wrote,I "never knew my Father to be so anx- woman's the river. Now, I know all about that, for ious about anything that had ever happened, for he was I got the story from the very man that always opposed to any one's going over there and risking helped her up the bank. I know it is true, his life."7 for she is now living in Canada." It has been.objected that the representa- Eliza's second crossing, told by Rankin, though not as tioti of the scene in which the plan'for kid- Uncle Tom' nearly so dramatic as the one depicted in s napping Eliza, concocted by Haley, Marks and Loker, the is carica- Cabin, was perhaps even more poignant. She emerged at tavern, 8 gross ture on the state of things in Ohio. once again, not only with her two daughters-one of whom gave birth almost immediately upon reaching Ohio- but also with four other fugitive slave children as well. Local white Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. residents searched the African Filson Historical American homes in the vicinity,but found none The of the fugitives. Because those in the area never spoke about the incident,it Society made never its way into the public's consciousness. The youngest Rankin son wrote,More " people had the satisfaction of knowing that they had tent a helping hand to the largest known number of fleeing fugitives in one bunch, ever passing that way. And they were happy,both men, women and girls to keep the secret, and never to talk about it,as though it were their own."B The same might have been said about fugitive slave women in general. Tellers of the story of the Underground Railroad have focused on brave and

SUMMER 2003 5 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL ELIZA HARRIS"

daring men-black and white-to the exclusion of the many women who were known to participate. This omission is not owing to a lack of evidence. For example, Rankin's father and brother corroborate that the woman who John Rankin,Jr.,describes undertook the rescue mission, though neither con- nects it with the real" Eliza Harris."John Rankin, Sn-whose account may in the end be most trustworthy-ascribes the frozen crossing and the rescue to two different women, though he affirms the details of the rescue operation described by his son,including the lapse of time before the fugitive's return for her daughters,his own suggestion that she don the attire of a man,his oppo- sition to the plan, his extreme anxiety during their absence in Kentucky,and the necessity of leaving two children behind. Adam Rankin,too, provides a matching account of a fugitive who returned with a Canadian man to secure the freedom of family members. In his version, however,the fugitive in ques- tion not only wore the clothing of a man, but unconsciously was one himself. Rankin perhaps succumbed to the notion that only a man would have hazarded such a trip. Levi Coffin relates the same history of a woman's return for her children to the South via Ripley and the Coffin household,though omitting the participation of

the Canadian and the connection to the famous fictional fugitive: 79

o be sure,other contemporary sources T also reveal similar bias with respect to the gender of fugitives. Estimates de- for r ved from advertisements runaways con- made vey the impression that adult males up eighty percent of the fugitive population. Yet the historical record is far from devoid of the

presence of women. On the contrary,the avail- able evidence shows far more women often with children-crossing through the Ohio S Valley than estimates derived from runaway cel- slave ads would lead us to believe. Many

Uncle Cabin, including that of the Ohio Valley' Tom's ebrated fugitive slave cases involved women, s engraving by Charles famous fugitive,Margaret Garner,tried for murdering her child in 1856 Rocbussen. Collection of most Dy.Fritz Daguillard in Cincinnati rather than seeing her reenslaved. For his involvement in the Queen City of the West in the escape of a woman known only as Matilda in 1837,abolitionist James Gillespie Birney found himself convicted and fined. Moreover,if the reminiscences of participants are any indication,women were wel] represented in the fugitive slave population making its way through the Ohio Valley. A large proportion of the cases related by such leading Under-

6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ground Railroad participants as Laura Haviland, John Parker,Levi Coffin, William Mitchell,and John Rankin detail the escapes of women acting alone or in groups including women. Even allowing for selection, more of the fugi- tives traversing the Ohio Valley must have been women than statistics derived from slave advertisements runaway suggest. While accurate numbers are im- possible to ascertain, the conclusion seems warranted that women (and children)constituted a significant pro- 92-»* · » ". -'» portion ofthe fugitive slave population. The figure of 3 - 4.- ,2* 1'-Uls the fleeing female fugitive than was more common has - >· ·- F ,p · j generally been thought. 10

Asecond conclusion that emerges from contempo rary sources and memoirs is that female fugitives,like 61 .-. John : 1 1 6, Rankin,Jr.'s Eliza Harris, were far more active in 1- 6 ---- 1. . , their own causes than the legend of the Underground Railroad might lead us to believe. The Eliza Harris i- escape in Uncle Tom's Cabin was certainly brave, but § -- It 5 2-- desperation of the moment most certainly motivated " 1--_,1 ' 4-*S « .f 't,· Curiously, it. at the conclusion of her mad dash across the ice, Eliza reverts to the character of a Victorian je-*,© S=4%5*14 woman. She falls at the feet of a man who determines // ,»=/*£./'.&%*5.._ 2.--- : -I_%..=.- - .- her fate as his strong hand lifts her to safety,his heart softened at the sight of that weak woman. Rankin,however,had enshrined Illustration from Narrative of the Life and Adventures in his mind the image of a quite different woman, one not suited to the role of of Henry Bibb, 1 849,a the young heroine of a Victorian romance, but one short," stout, middle- Kentucky slave narrative. The Filson Historical aged, strong, and determined her remaining children despite the to rescue Society evident apathy of her husband. John Rankin,Jr.'s Eliza is important not be- she, cause in contrast to the other real"" Elizas, might bring us closer to the identity of the of fictional source the heroine. The significance of Rankin's Eliza lies in the clues she provides to a more important task: shedding light on the experience of the female fugitive slave.11

incinnati, the city from which Harriet Beecher Stowe had first introduced the world to Eliza Harris, became the scene of an event a few years later that produced the most famous true-to-life fugitive. Like the fictional Eliza Harris, Margaret Garner's notoriety lay with her de- her termination to prevent two-year-old child from suffering through a life of slavery,but in other respects the mother of four presented to the world a very different picture of fugitive slave women. Having made their escape from rural Boone County,Kentucky,Garner,her husband,and their children crossed the Ohio to Cincinnati in January 1856 and lodged briefly with a cousin. As the posse led by their master surrounded the premises, Margaret Garner cut her youngest daughter's throat, rather than have her grow up in slavery,and would have done so to all her children had the posse not prevented hen Garner's

SUMMER2003 7 B r YON D TI IE QUEST 1 OR THE "RE AL 1 LIZA HARRIS"

orce case Ini ght have been unique,but het f of charactet, the degree to which she be-

lied Victorian notions of women s weak-

ness and need for pi otection,and her bold defiance ot a world determined to oppress 11 her weic not

Othei fugitive women had to make what must have seemed to them an al- Asb most equally tragic choice the decision to leave child,en behind in slavery Cer- tainly the woman who the younget John real 2% Rankin selected as the " E]17a Har-

ris-had to make such a fateful decision, confronted but the same choice Susan Hall, whom John Malvin assisted to free- public landing 1829 Just before Old slave qua,teis iii dom from a tivel steamer in Cincinnati's in itticky Bc,one C.ou,ity,Ke, Malvin' leaderhip role the famous exodus of the Aft American Tbe } 1al lean popu- 1868 t|bOn Hist, s in Society lation flom the city m response to the city government's announced intention that the hailed from the to enforce Ohio's Black Laws, he discovered two mother same Virginia county and even that the woman wa4 a friend of his with her Malvin succeeding in getting Hall,in an advanced state of pregnancy thit d child, together with one of Iici children, to safety Another daughter, behind, knowing howevet,was too closely watched, and Hall had to leave hei successfully that thete was almo5t no chance of tracking her child down and rescuing het 13

side of the Ohio seldom had the luxury of h ican Americans on either finding thesameptotections fiom which Eliza Harris benefited When A dominated a slave catcher appeared in the early 18306 in the fugitive- Randolph County, African Ainet lian community of Cabin Creek,Indiana (in of local ioughs,"" near the Ohio boidei) with a constable,a wlit,and a posse the situation appeared hopeless for the two young girls they sought Only the eldet ly grandmothei ot two tugitives from Tennessee stood between them ind. their return to slavery,and she was determined to foi feit her own life if neces- home surrounded,the old sat y to save them from that fate With het woman only door of the cabin, defying seized a corn-cutter and placed hetself in the the ciowd and declaring that she would cut the fitst man in two who under- resolve stopped them long took to cross the threshold "Her steadfast Just other enough for help to ari ive The young girls' uncle, together with some small cabin' only But men, loined the woman barring the door,the s egress the the dangers of the situation were by no means over,for the law was on side of the bounty hunters,and they claimed the fugitives" from service,"as the Fugitive Slave Law dectned thetii The gills' uncle bought extia time by

8 OHIO VALLEY HI% TORY demanding to see the writ and disputing its fitness and legality. The posse grew angrier and more violent. They demanded entry,and the residents fi- nally had to yield to avoid a bloodbath that likely would have ended the of the existence community. They ransacked the premises, but could find no trace of the young girls. During the commotion, the girls had slipped out. dressed as boys,and neighbors took them away on horseback to safety.14

he role of protector fell just as heavily on enslaved women as on their After discovering T spouses. in the early 1840s that her husband was to receive three hundred blows with a wooden paddle,Eliza Little,of Jackson, Tennessee, determined that the two had to escape. Local white slaveowners had always considered John Little, born in Murfreesboro, North

Carolina,a troublesome piece of property,and he had ended up ona western Tennessee plantation as a result of numerous other unsuccessful attempts at escape. A field hand on a cotton plantation there, Little married another newcomer to the area,sixteen-year old Eliza,from Petersburg, Virginia. Eliza persuaded her master, who doubled as a slave trader, to purchase her hus- band,but less than a year later he sold John Little and the slave again escaped, only to be captured back in Jackson. Eliza intervened to ensure his survival, immediately seeing to his con- cealment in the woods. When

their master discovered her

spouse's absence, he subjected

1 . Eliza to the torture that

awaited all who attempted or abetted escapes. Years later, she recalled that they" whipped

me in the same way they did the men,"yet she refused to reveal the location of her hus-

band. I" was put under a guard,-but I was too cunrling for him, and joined my hus- band."Together they made

their way one hundred forty miles on foot to the mouth of the Ohio River at Cairo,I 1 nois. Even after her Illustration of escaping slaves from Narrative of and then her husband' shoes had s fully given out, Eliza made the journey to the Life and Adventures of Chicago barefooted,her feet blistered" and sore,"her ankles swollen."" Af- Henry Bibb. The Filson Historical Society ter much hardship, they eventually reached Queen's Bush, Canada, where they became prosperous farmers. Eliza Little,who described herself as brought" up in the house"before her year in the Tennessee cotton fields, believed that the journey produced a great change in hen She forded rivers and streams and waded through bogs, side by side with her husband. She took her turns at

SUMMER 2003 9 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL ELIZA HARRIS"

watch,as they never dared sleep at the same time. She faced a group of armed white men alone,managing to convince them that she was not a fugitive. I" got to be quite hardy-quite used to water and bush-whacking;so that by the time I got to Canada,I could handle an axe,or hoe,or any thing. I felt proud to be able to do it-to help get cleared up, so that we could have a home, and plenty to live on."John Little saw his wife as anything but weak and in need of bis assistance. From their Canadian home, John Little put their partner- ship in perspective:I "did not realize...that she was a brave woman....My wife worked right along with me...for we were raised slaves,the women ac- customed to work, and undoubtedly the same spirit comes with us here"em- ( phasjs added).15

do n enslaved African American woman named Judy had to more than work beside her husband; she had to work in his place after a debilitating beating. Judy crossed the Ohio River with her son into Indiana, probably in the 1820s, in pursuit of her husband and the gentle-" her family man"who had purchased him, in a desperate attempt to keep togethen Though no longer legally a slave, her husband was compelled to fixed Judy work in Vincennes for the man as a bound servant for a term. allow her work for him purchase struck a deal with this new master to to to the result of herself as well. Her husband received such a brutal beating as a previous escape attempt that she ended up working for both of their terms. Before she completed thorn, however, her spouse died and her master sold suffered hav- Judy to a slave trader who took her to New Orleans,where she ing her son wrenched from her arms on the auction block.'6 Self-reliance constituted a common theme among fugitive slave women, number of many of whom took charge of daring escapes involving a persons. Mary French's northern Kentucky master permitted her to work as a domes- tic in Cincinnati in the late 1840s, believing the family she left behind across the Ohio River effectively bound her to him, though her mistress worried that such visits would spoil"" her. French, however,had other ideas. While in Cincinnati, she approached white abolitionist Laura Haviland for help. The latter provided encouragement and suggested a plan, but ventured no more concrete aid. Some time later, enacting Haviland's approach with her own embellishments, French arrived in Cincinnati escorting a contingent of eight children out of Kentucky slavery,slave posse at her heels. With a reward of her 1,000 for their return serving as incentive for her betrayal,French took charges to African American Baptist minister John Hall,a native of Kentucky. Some of his black Underground Railroad coworkers quickly alerted him that through- slave hunters were hot on the trail,and they dispersed the contingent French out the Queen City's extensive interracial network of activists. Mary herself lodged with the Coffins. Cincinnati's African American brain trust revealed ensured their safe passage northward with an audacity and flair that

10 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY the increasing boldness of the black population along the frontlines. As con- ductors spirited the nine fugitives out of the city,they rushed a large carriage to a location known to be under surveillance, where nine African American residents of roughly the

same description were hustled in with haste, and driven off with speed." 80"40 The slave catchers imme- eROPER,Y diately hailed the police, who descended on the ve- j hicle. Recalled Haviland, T]he African[ American]

man beside the driver de manded the why he reason V. t and his ladies should re-

ceive this inSult to hinder their pleasure ride. By

throwing a light from their dark lantern in the faces of

Illustration ftc„Narrative their pursuers, the hunters they had suspected were recog ized, to their great n of the Lite a id Adventures annoyance. There were those among the n who would not have been ex- of Henry Bibb. The Fi/son posed, perhaps, for half the amount of the reward. 17 Historical Societv

children in a party that an enslaved woman led northward in 1824. AdamsAdamslost touchrecalledwithhisher foreverfromwhenVsheiginiaturnedslaveryback in pursuitofsixof heramesfour children,whom locals had captured after false friends escape as onehad be- them. enslaved could do trayed Some women no more than assist their chil-

dren to freedom,even at the cost of remaining in the institution themselves. The mother of a ten-year-old New Orleans girl named Lavinia instructed her child to take advantage of a riverboat trip to Cincinnati on which she was accompanying her master in order to effect her freedom. The woman ap- prised her daughter of the facilities that the city offered for escape, made known to her the legal ramifications of her sojourn onto free territory for her status as a slave,and warned her of the consequences if she did not take full advantage of this unique opportunity. Carefully carrying out her mother's instructions upon arrival,the young girl located a sympathetic African Ameri- can family that accomplished her rescue. For the mother of fugitive Francis Federic, the price proved high for remaining behind on the Mason County, Kentucky farm in the 185Os:brutalization at the hands of a vengeance-minded master combined with the searing pain of separation from her son. Her son did not let her into the plot to gain his liberty,assisted by a sympathetic abo-" litionist planter"in the vicinity. As he prepared to leave, the specter of the

SUMMER 2003 11 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL ELIZA HARRIS"

treatment his mother would receive nearly overwhelmed Francis Federic: I" could foresee how my master would stand over her with the lash to extort from her my hiding-place."How " she would suffer torture on my account, and be distressed that had left her until should hereafter I for ever we meet in

heaven I hoped."John Parker's benefactor,a woman who assisted him on his escape,was perhaps even more remarkable,especially because she had caught sight of this strange teenage runaway for the first time just before making up held off her while Parker made for her mind to assist him. The woman master the woods. Decades later he still marveled at her bravery and determination to aid a fellow slave:The " last I saw of her she was fighting, scratching, holding her man,like I was one of her own children. I have often wondered what happened to her,for she certainly was in for a severe whipping."18

ccasionally,enslaved women escaped in the effort to reunite their families in freedom. An enslaved woman whom English traveler 0 Edward Abdy encountered in Madison,Indiana,in the early 1830s trail of freedom for her husband and children. was determined to blaze a Having been sold into Cotton Belt slavery from the Lexington, Kentucky, farm where her husband and children remained, she slipped away from the slave trader and returned the four hundred miles on foot to Kentucky. Caught and imprisoned, she again escaped,and,after a wandering existence of some three months, made it as far as Madison. The African American community there assisted her with money for the journey to Canada, where she hoped fervently that her family would join her.19

Though female fugitives often struck for liberty in the company of spouses and children,large numbers of women acted in groups or alone, occasionally followed sometime later by a spouse. After the onset of the Civil War,Lucretia Harper Simpson,then in her forties,set her course for freedom together with afayette, three other women. She had lived all of her life on the same 1. Ken- tucky,farm. Her husband had been a free man,but he had recently died,and she and her companions knew enough about the uncertainty that the war created to risk their lives for their liberty. The four traveled alone at night through the state of Kentucky from their home in Lafayette, crossed the Ohio at Maysville,and continued on to Toledo,where they found work and settled. Mattie Jackson also took advantage of the war to obtain her freedom. For six months, she got up daily at four o'clock a. m. to scout secretly around Louis- ville until she finally made contact with African American operatives of the Underground Railroad. On the pretext of attending a Sunday evening ser- found vice,she slipped away,crossed the Ohio River with their assistance,and freedom in Indianapolis. Similar scenes had taken place on the Ohio for de- cades. From Cincinnati,abolitionist editor James G. Birney reported in 1837, by Six weeks ago, a young married woman escaped from N[ewl Orleans Yesterday, Steamboat and was successfully concealed by her colored friends.

12 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY her husband arrived,and at 5 o'clock in the afternoon they were both in the 20 Stage on their way from this place to Canada. African American women in the Ohio Valley were also heavily involved in the work of receiving fugitives. Historian Julie Jeffrey has written,Although " many of the stories about conductors on the underground railroad highlight the role of men, black women, like their white counterparts, did much of the routine work upon which the smooth operation of the underground railroad depended."They also did a great deal of the less routine work. Fugitives from slavery were also included in their ranks. Harriet Tubman, the best- known conductor on the Underground Railroad,who worked on the eastern- most route,was a fugitive who always traveled armed. One of Cincinnati's Underground Railroad stalwarts, Catherine Doram (known to friends as Kittie),escaped from slavery at the age of twelve. With the thirty-six cents she brought with her,she established herself as a seamstress. By the time of the Civil War,she was materially well off,despite evidently never having mar- ried. Doram's friend, Calvin Fairbank, a noted Underground Railroad opera- tive in his own right, wrote of her,She " rose in her dignity like Sojourner Truth."Doram was among the longest serving members of what Fairbank called the Cincinnati Underground Railroad's directory,"" in which she had served since at least the early 18405,her activism dating to a period before the involvement of Levi Coffin. She used her home to shelter fugitives and she had enough respect to be selected alongside President"" Coffin to the com- mittee formed to raise money for Fairbank on his release from prison in 1864. And she was among the largest donors to his cause.21

ven when they were not themselves fugitives, most women who be- E came involved in the Underground Railroad had experienced bondage. Frances Jane Scroggins,like many other African American Cincinnatians, had been born into Virginia slavery in 1819. Her grandfather, emancipated his child, a white American officer in the War of the Revolution, Frances's mother, together with her four young daughters. No longer en- slaved, they were nevertheless left without means, forcing her mother to risk placing Frances into apprenticeship,often a direct avenue to re-enslavement. Though she suffered frequent beatings, Frances was fortunate; her mother remarried a freeman and they reclaimed her from bondage. The family then migrated to Ohio and,around the age of twenty,Frances took up residence in Cincinnati, where she boarded at the home of Major James Wilkerson. his lodgen Wilkerson soon found that he had much in common with young He, too, had been born into slavery in Virginia, his grandfather had been an officer in the Revolutionary army,and he also was a newcomer to Cincinnati, of a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1841, when one the largest antebellum race riots in American history broke out in Cincinnati, Wilkerson headed up the self-defense efforts of the African American com-

SUMMER 2003 13 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL ELIZA HARRIS"

munity that succeeded in driving off the attackers. Frances Scroggins became an active member of the Wilkerson household.22

Scroggins soon devoted herself to the cause of abolitionism and to the assis- tance of runaways. When a young African American woman named Caroline, who had stepped off a steamboat in Cincinnati with her master in hot pursuit, asked Scroggins for assistance,she did not hesitate. Though a newcomer to the city and to the excitement of its escape dramas, Frances Scroggins knew just what to do. She took the woman's hand and ran with her through Cincinnati's streets to the nearest place of safety. The master, who saw them enter that abode, forcefully demanded the return of his slave. While he was briefly de- tained at the front door,conductors rushed Caroline out the back and within seconds they had hidden her at a neighbor's house, a process that they repeated until she was safely out of Cincinnati and on her way to Canada. Scroggins soon thereafter married Thomas Brown, himself an activist in the Underground Railroad, and they relocated to Pittsburgh, where she continued her Under- ground Railroad work while raising two children. Her daughter became a prominent founder of the African American women's club movement and her son went on to serve in the Ohio state legislature after the war.23

hese women in the clandestine network provided some of the most T efficient and effective operatives. When asked to relate the most notable Underground Railroad episode that came under his observance, noted abolitionist and former Lane Seminary student rebel Huntington Lyman

recalled watching a Cincinnati African American woman row a skiff over to the Kentucky side early one morning to arrange the details of an escape. Unfor- tunately for her,she ran straight into the slaves'owner,who threatened to turn the dogs on her. Still,she managed to communicate her message to the slaves. As a result of her work,Lyman recalled,The " old man,who was a slave holder when he went to bed, was a non-slave holder when he awoke."The story of a mysterious elderly woman known only as Jinney is perhaps even more remark- able. Operating from the southern rather than the northern bank of the Ohio

River,she ferried fugitives from Parkersburg,Virginia,to Marietta,Ohio,never once availing herself of the freedom she assisted countless others to reach. She opted instead to remain in slavery.24 Like their male counterparts,women operatives found themselves caught up in violent clashes between proslavery and antislavery forces. The Berry resi-

dence was a frequent stopping point for runaways, which meant it suffered frequent searches by slave hunting parties. In one encounter,members of a posse attacked Samuel Berry. As her husband endured a terrible beating,Mariam Berry sprang to his defense. This action almost cost her life, together with that of their small baby who she was carrying in her arms, when one of the assail- ants hurled a knife at her. Her daughter recalled,she " caught her wrapper in the door [of an old stove],just as a man cut at her with a spring dirk knife; it

14 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY glanced on the door instead of on mother. I have thanked God many a time for that stove door. But for it my poor mother would have been killed that night. 25 With the exception of Margaret Garner,the female fugitives who passed through the Ohio Valley, together with the women who participated in the work of helping them,remained anonymous in their own time,and their names and their stories have been all but lost in the intervening century and a half. In their place, the fictional Eliza Harris has embedded in the figure of fugitive slave women at least some of the images of the Victorian ideology found in Uncle Tom' Cabin. The the description of her escape in s quest for the real" Eliza"was both literally and figuratively the search for the identity of a figure who never existed. To that extent, it has already too long deflected scholarly attention from a much more important subject of inquiry,that of recovering a history,not of the alleged origin of a popular story about slavery and escape but of the thousands of women whose experiences have been, in effect, dis- carded because they did not match that of a more popularized character of melodrama and romance.

1. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom' Cabin,Or Life Among s 1.ancaster.Penn: The Laxicaster Journal, 1883);William Hedrick, the Lowly (1852; New York: Harper,1965);Joan Sti\\,Tbe Underground Railroad.A Record of Facts. Life New York: Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Authentic Narratives, Letters Oc. (Philadelphia: Porter & 1993); Gara,Tbe Liberty The University Press, Larry Line: Coates, 1822). Legend of tbe Underground Railroad Lexington: University 3. Gara. Liberty l.i? Parker,His Promised Land, 12-14, Press of Kentucky, 1961);Larry Gara,The " Professional ie, Russel B. Nye, Eliza" Crossing the Ice-A Reappraisal of Fugitive in the Abolitionist Movement,"in John R. Sources,"Bulleti, of the Histc,Tical and Philosophical McKivigan,ed.,Abolitionism and Issues of Race and i Society of Ohio 8 (April 1950):105-12;Harriet Beecher Gender New York: Garland Publishing Co.,1999),22-30. Stowe,The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (Cleveland: Jewitt, of include: William Anderson, Life 2. Memoirs participants Proctor and Worthington, 1854),34-35; Mitchell, Unda and of William J.Anderson Chicago:< Daily Narrative ground Railroad,100-104·,Coffin, Underground Railroad, Tribune, 1857),Austin Bearse,Rel'niniscences of Fugitive- 147-51.Parker,His Promised l.and,1 22-26. Slave Law Days in Boston Boston: Richardson, 1880);M. 4. Mitchell, Underground Railroad,100-104,Coffin, B.But\er,My Story of tbe Civil WaT and the Under-ground Underground Railroad, 147-51; Parker,His Promised Land, Railroad Huntington,1nd.:United Brethren Publishing Co., 122-26; Stowe, Key, 34; Russel B. Nye, Eliza" Crossing the 1914);William M. Cockrum,History of tbe Underground Ice-A Reappraisal of Sources,"Bulletin of tbe Historical Railroad,As It Was Conducted by tbe Anti-Slavery League and Philosophical Society of Obio 8 April 1950):105-12. Indiana: J. W. Cockrum Printing Co.,1915);Addison Coffin, The Life and Travels of Addison Coffin Cleveland: 5. John Rankin,Jr.,typescript in John Rankin Papers William Hubbard,1897);Levi Coffin, Tbe Reminiscences of hereinafter cited as Rankin Papers],box 1, folders 2, 3, Levi Coffin,tbe Reputed President of tbe Underground Ohio Historical Society,Columbus [hereinafter cited as Railroad CCincinnati: Western Tract Society,1876);Calvin OHS].

Fairbank,Rev.Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times:How 6. Ibid. He Fought" tbe Good Fight"to Prepare Tbe" Way" 7. Ibid. Chicago: R. R. McCabe,1890);Laura Haviland,A 8. Ibid. Woman's Life-Work:Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland Chicago: Publishing of Friends, l Association 9. John Rankin,Autobiography, " written by himself iii his 1889),H. U. Johnson, From Dixie to Canada: Romances eightieth year,"ca. 1873, Ohio Historical Society, Colum- Orwell, Oh.: and Realities of tbe Underground Railroad bus; Andrew Rankin, Autobiography,"" 1890,Ohio North into Freedom:Tbe Johnson, 1896);John Malvin, Historical Society, Columbus; Coffin, Reminiscences,261- Autobiograpby of Jobn Malvin,Free Negro,1795-1880, 64. Coffin's account closely coincides with those of the Cleveland: The Press of Western Edited by Allan Peskin ( John Rankin,Sr.and John Rankin,Jr.,though he could Under- Reserve University, 1966);William Mitchell, The have known neither. gyound Railroad London: William Tweedie,1860);John R 10. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger,Runaway Parker,His Promised Land:The Autobiography of Jobn P. Slaves:Rebels the Plantation New York: Oxford Parker,Edited by Stuart Seely Sprague New( York:W.W. on University Press, 1999),210-12; Steven Weisenburger, Norton, 1996);Alexander Milton Ross,MemoiTs of a Modern Medea:A Family Story of Slavery and Child- Reformel',1832-1892 Toronto: Hunter,Burk Co.,& 1893);R. C. Smedley,History of tbe Underground Railroad in Chester and Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania

SUMMER2003 15 BEYOND THE QUEST FOR THE "REAL F.LIZA HARRIS"

Murder from tbe Old South (New York: Hill and Wang, Cincinnati: Williams, 1862),121; Williams' Cincinnati 1998),15-176;Colored American,April 29, 1 837,James Directory for 1863 Cincinnati: Williams, 1863),148. G. Birney I-ewis Tappan, April 18, 1837, in Dwight to 22. Hallie Q. Brown,As " the Mantle Falls,"unpublished Dumond,ed., ]. of James Gillespie Birney,1831-1857 etters autobiography in the Hallie Q. Brown Collection, box 29, New York: D. Appleton Century,1938), 1, 379-81. On v. Central State University,Wilberforce,Ohio I hereinafter Birney see also: Salmon R Chase, Speech of Salmon R cited as Brown Collection, CSUI; Brown, Honiespun Chase.in tbe Case of tbe Colored Woman.Matilda,who Heroines, 30-32;Maj. James Wilkerson, Wilkerson's brought before tbe of pleas of Hamilton was court common History of His Travels G'1.abors,in tile United States County,Obio,by writ of Habeas Corpus;March 11, 1837 Columbus,Oh: 1861),2-5, 33-34; David Smith, Biography Cincinnati: Pugh Dodd,& 1837);Haviland, Woman' Life- s of Rev. David Smith Xenia, Oh.:Xenia Gazette Office, Work, 89-128 and passim; Parker,His Promised Land,90- 1881),84; John Mercer 1.angston, From Virginia Plantation 96 and passim; Coffin. Reminiscences, 112-94 and passim, to tbe National Capitol Hartford: American Publishing Mitchell, Underground Railroad,20-45 and A. passim; Co.,1894),11-67. Rankin,Autobiography," " 01-IS. 23. Hallie Q. Brown, As" the Mantle Falls,"unpublished 11. Salem Ohiol[ Anti-Slavery Bugle,November 26, 1847;John autobiography iii Brown Collection, box 29, CSU; Browii, Rankin,Jn, typescript in Rankin Papers, box 1, folders 2,3, Hornespun Hei·oiiies,30-31;Brown, Tales My Father Told OHS. Wilberforce, Oh.:Eckerle, 1925),3-5;W. S. Scarborough, 12. Weisenburger,Modern Medea, 15-176 and passim. The Late T.A. Brown's Slavery,"typescript in the Frances 13. Malvin,North into Freedom,14-16. E. Hughes Collection, box 2. National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center,Wilberforce, Ohio. 14. Coffin, Reminiscences, 171-78; Lacey Manuscript, Wilbur Siebert, April Siebert Underground Railroad,"reprinted in Richmond Palla 24. H. Lyman to 1, 1898, Papers, box 106, OHS; Wilbur Siebert, dium-Item.January 15, January 17, January 19,January Tbe Mysteries of Obio's Underground Railroads Columbus:< I. College Book, 22, 1962. The Cabin Creek community was linked to the ong's 1951),121. one just across the state line in Ohio,and conductors sometimes transferred fugitives between the two in cases of 25. H. Lyman to Wilbur Siebert,April 1, 1898, Siebert Papers, danger.Interview " with Rev. Jacob Cummings, an Escaped box 106, OHS;Wilbur Siebert,Tbe Mysteries of Ohio's Slave,"Wilbur Siebert Papers [hereinafter cited as Siebert Underground Railroads Columbus: Long's College Book, Papersl, box 80, OHS. 1951),121; Amanda Smith, An Autobiograpby Chicago: Meyer, 1893),14-34. 15. Drew,North-Side View of Slavery,198-233.

16. Matilda G. Thompson, Aunt udy'] s StOTy: A Tale from Real 1.ife. Written for tbe Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Fair Philadelphia: Merrihew Thompson,& 1855),22-34.

17. Ilaviland, Woman's j.ife-Work, 167-76. 18. Drew,North-Side View of Slavery,19-19;Johnson, From Dixie Canada, to 28-35; Francis Fedric,Slave Lite m Virginia and Kentucky. Edited by Rev. Charles Lee (I.ondon: Wet·theim, Macintosh,and Hunt, 1863),103.

19. E. S. Abdy,Journal of A Residence and Tour in the United States of North America,from April,1833,to October, 1834 London: John Murray, 1835),v. 2, 365-73. 20. Hallie Q. Brown, Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction Xenia, Oh.:Aldine,1926),84-85, Mattie

jane jackson,Tie Story of Mattie jackson]. I.awrence, Mass.:Sentinel, 1866),20-3; Colored American,February 16, 1839; James G. Birney to Lewis Tappan, February 27, 1837 in Dumond, ed.,Birney Letters, v. 1, 376-77. 11. Julie Jeffrey,Tbe GTeat Silent Arnty of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998),180-90: see also Graham Russell Hodges, Root Clyld Branch:African Americans iii New York and East Jersey,1613-1 863 C:hapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 249-51; Shirley Yee, Black Women Abolitionists:A Study of Actil,ism Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 98-100 and passim; R.J. Young, Antebellum Black Activists: Race,Gender.Self New York: Garlaitd, 1996),1- 22 and passim; Fairbank,Fairbank during Slavery Times, 35, 150-56;summary of letter from unidentified correspon- dent in Angelica, NY,April 3, 1896,in Siebert Papers, box 862 11, OHS;Williams' Cinci,inati Directory fc,r 1

16 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Family Ties, Party Realities, and Political Ideology: George Hunt Pendleton and Partisansbip in -Antebellum Cincinnati

THOMAS S. MA(:H

P- the burgeoning city of Cincinnati in 1825. Indeed,the riz er provided thehemightyvery foundationOhio Riverforbroughtmaintainingmuch themoreQueenthan life-City'givings mostwaterimpor-tc, tailt economic activity: commercial trade. But beyond the farm produce the city's merchants shipped south and the finished goods they broiight in froni the East, Ohio's fastest growing city relied on the river to trinsport immi- grants who would comprise a significant portion of the city's population. As Cincinnati gained economic prominence,its citizenry began to make a politi- cal impact not only on the State of Ohio,but also on the nation.' One of the prolininent families in this river city came westward down the Ohio in 1818. Already having made a significant mark on the national political scene, the Pendleton family introduced its latest addition on July 19,1825,George Hunt Pendleton,who would continue and ultimately expand the family's influence on the developing republic. Pendleton's political career would be impressive: United States congress- man from Ohio during the Civil War,George B. McClellan's vice-presidential running mate in 1864, United States senator from Ohio, father of the first major civil service reform legislationthe -Pendleton Act of 1883and - finally United States diplomat to Germany. Although Pendleton's father was a Whig, Pendleton chose to become a Democrat in the early 1850s as he began his political career. This pivotal decision became the foundation for the developing western Democratic political ideology in the mid-nineteenth century. Pendleton's decision regarding party affiliation proved a difficult one, influenced by a number of factors, some but not all of which were parti- san. An examination of his decision provides a window through which one can view the changing political arena in Cincinnati and Ohio,as well as the variety of factors involved in making such a choice and the continuity of political ideology in the face of a dynamic party system. The fourth of seven children, George Pendleton entered the world as a member of a founding family not only of Cincinnati, but also of the United States. Pendleton's great uncle, Edmund, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress in 1774 and 1775. His grandfather,

Nathaniel Pendleton,was an aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene dur-

SUMMER 2003 17 FAMILY TIES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

ing the Revolution and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Nathaniel Greene Pendleton, Pendleton's father, migrated from Georgia to New York and eventually West to help found the Queen City. In 1841, voters him sent as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives for one term.2 Pendleton's economic and political success provided his seven chil- dren with a respected family name and all the benefits that wealth could pro- vide. Yet those same blessings brought with them high expectations and re- sponsibility.

eflecting their status, the Pendletons pursued the best secondary education possible for their son. They considered inadequate the state's common school system, which the legislature had organized in 1828. Instead they selected Woodward High School,a small college prepa- ratory institution founded by William Woodward and his wife. This school did not meet the goals of the Pendletons, however,and in 1835 they sent young Pendleton to a more rigorous school operated by General Ormsby M. Mitchell:General Mitchell continued

the instruction in the classics that Pendleton had begun at Wood- ward until he accepted a position as Professor of Mathematics at the newly organized Cincinnati College. Pendleton pursued his studies there, focusing on foreign languages and mathemat- ics. He eventually found that even this institution did not suit his needs, and he left in 1841 to carry on his studies under pri- vate tutelage.4 For the next three years Pendleton studied at home, continuing to improve his mastery of French and Ger- man as well as the classical studies. He and his brother,Elliot, spent two years traveling throughout Europe as part of their education.

Upon his arrival at home in Cincinnati, Pendleton met,pro- posed to, and married Mary Alicia I«loyd Nevins Key. Gener- ally known as Alice, she was the daughter of Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and the author of The" Star Spangled Banner,"and the niece of Roger B. Taney,Chief Justice of the United States Su-

preme Court. Taney had served as Andrew Jackson's Secretary of the Treasury and in that capacity had participated in his war on the Bank of the United States. After a brief courtship, Pendleton and Key married in Baltimore in 1846 and took up residence Pendleton thereafter focused his studies the read- George Pendleton, in Cincinnati. on photograph by tbe New ing of law in the office of Stephen Fales, the former of Nathaniel York Photographic Co. partner Cincinnati Historical Greene Pendleton. Admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1847,Pendleton soon formed Society Library, Cincinnati law partnership with boyhood schoolmate, George Ellis Pugh.5 The Museum Center a a part- nership lasted five years until Pugh was elected as Ohio's attorney general. While Edward D. Mansfield, a contemporary of Pendleton, believed that

18 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY broke from his father' men followed the partisanship of their fathers,Pendleton s Whiggery to become a Democrat. An investigation of this break provides an opportunity for examining party identification in Cincinnati and in the nation during the 18405 and 18505. Moreover,it illustrates the variety of influences that went into creating the political ideology of the western Democracy that Pendleton represented and,in many ways,helped form in this period. In the end, Pendleton's story highlights the importance of family ties over family status,party realities over party nostalgia, and political ideology over political rhetoric in the process of choosing a partisan affiliation.6 The factors in George Pendleton's decision to become a Democrat vary,but may provide some insight into the political composition of parties in this era. Historians have grappled for decades with the issues that induced Americans of the early nineteenth century to form and reform their political alignments. Progressive historians explored the economic determinants in partisanship, equating the Whig Party with business, commercial, and property interests. The poorer elements of society,or those not directly benefiting from the chang- ing economy,tended to vote for the Democratic Party. Arthur Schlesinger,Jn, presented a somewhat different thesis based on the political division between business elites, the Whigs,and eastern workers, the Jacksonians. Earlier stud- ies had found similar dichotomies, although Schlesinger's emphasis on eastern workers was unique. More recent works have focused on the impact of the Market Revolution."7 Those benefiting from the new commercial systems developing in the country tended to be Whigs, they argued, while those who did not tended to be Democrats. While Pendleton's Cincinnati was a commer- cial city and should have been strongly Whig, it was an exception to the rule, likely because the Queen City residents had suffered disproportionately dur- ing the Panic of 1819 and blamed the Second Bank of the United States for it. focus Though a different approach than Schlesinger's, these works on eco- nomic factors as causative in party affiliation.

ther historians disagree.8 Lee Benson argues that each party was comprised of members of all economic groups, thus refuting the 0 dictated which in- assertion that economic circumstances party an dividual supported in this era. Benson suggests further that ethno-cultural and religious differences played a role in party selection,and that three main elements determined political preference: national origin, region and era of birth, and religious inclination. He suggests that immigrants from the British Isles tended to vote for Whigs;those from the rest of Europe tended to vote for the Democrats. With reference to religious beliefs, Benson sees a dichotomy between those who held to puritanical"" ideals and those who revered rug-" ged individualism."9 Stephen Fox examines the political milieu in Ohio, find- ing similar ethno-cultural and religious divisions in Ohio politics. Evangelicals,"comprised of Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Con-

SUMMER2003 19 FAMILY TIES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POI-ITICAL IDEOLOGY

gregationalists,who wanted to maintain the moral fiber of society and who sought the eradication of evils such as alcohol,prostitution,and slavery,tended to vote Whig. Anti-" Evangelicals,"who tended to be Catholics, Episcopa- lians, Campbellites,Unitarians,Universalists,freethinkers, deists, or atheists, and who focused on the individual rights of men (ind thus eschewed increased state power for the purpose of maintaining a set of morals),were generally Democrats:'

written synthetic works on Whigs, evaluating much of what the field hadrecently,examinedDanielwhileWalkerelucidatingHowe andideologicalMichaelemphases."Holt have ore new Howe recognizes the merits of both the economic and cultural impulses that

defined Whigs,but focuses on the two" great principles of Whig social thought, order and philanthropy."12 This focus was a key distinctive from the Democ- racy,which could not accept the notion of government controlling the indi- vidual. As an example, Abraham Lincoln had been a Whig, Howe argues, because he believed Whiggery promoted a more civilized lifestyle. Howe's Whigs accepted modernization with restraint. Economic advance was to be embraced and encouraged with governmental support,but they rejected so- cioeconomic equality,toleration of diversity,and acceptance of political con- flict. 13 Holt notes certain economic, ethnic, and religious distinctions be- tween Whigs and Democrats,14 and argues that the Whig ideological" core was] built around beliefs in social order,Unionism, activist domestic gover- nance,a non-aggressive foreign policy,and opposition to executive tyranny."15 However,Holt surpasses Howe by examining regional Whig and Democratic distinctions,including an examination of Ohio in the 18405 and 18505,argu- ing that there were regional differences within the parties. In 1850, Ohio convened a constitutional convention where Democrats held a majority. Meanwhile,the Fugitive Slave Law portion of the Compromise of 1850 that Congress passed severely divided the two parties within the state. When compromise won out at the state constitutional convention,Whigs were less than satisfied. The Democrats had gained reapportionment for the state that would largely benefit themselves. Yet the Whigs had managed to take all state appointive offices and make them elective. Whigs were weary of the flagrant pursuit of lucrative state jobs"that often led to corruption:6 Rec- ognizing that should the state's voters accept the constitution they would im- mediately lose control of the state legislature,they pushed through the strongly antislavery judge and former state senator,Benjamin Wade. to fill the open United States Senate seat. This action only caused further dissension within a national Whig Party already trying to recover from the Compromise of 1850 debate. In the state elections, the constitution was narrowly accepted and Democrats gained control of the state. 17 With the multitude of variables that determined political partisanship,as-

20 OHIO V A I. I. EY HISTORY certaining the reasons for Pendleton's party choice proves complex. The Pendleton family was part of the wealthy elite of Cincinnati, and George Pendleton had the benefits of this esteemed family name in addition to an inherited family fortune. He traveled extensively and obtained an excellent education. As testimony to the family's affluence,the censuses of 1850, 1860, and 1870 enumerate at least one and generally two domestic servants in the service of Alice Key and George Pendleton. His holdings in 1860 amounted to $75,000 in real estate and 3,$000 in personal property. By the following he had census, accrued through inheritance and accumulation real estate worth 250,000 and personal property totaling 25,$ 000. Using the progressive his- torians' model, Nathaniel Greene Pendleton should have been a Whig,and indeed he was. His son,according to the construct, should have followed in his father's footsteps into the Whig fold. Employment of the Market Revolu- tion thesis would that the assume younger Pendleton should have become a Whig. As a lawyer, he could only benefit from the increasing commercial activity and business enterprise in Cincinnati. Contrary to both models, he became a Democrat. 18

Revisionists convincingly suggest that partisanship derived from factors beyond those purely economic. Pendleton fit into both categories of native- born Americans as described in Lee Benson's thesis. His family originally came from Virginia, then moved to Georgia and eventually to New York, before settling in Cincinnati. Benson asserted that the native-born from New York tended to be Whig,while those from Virginia held to Democratic ideals. The Pendletons were native-born citizens who migrated from the New York region, suggesting that Nathaniel Greene Pendleton and his sons would be- come Whigs. Again, only the elder Pendleton fits the model. It is clear that the family' s southern heritage influenced the elder Pendleton's political ideol- and ogy eventually George Pendleton as well. The family was Episcopalian which, according to Fox, placed it within the Anti-" Evangelical"group of partisans who tended to vote Democratic. This partially explains the younger Pendleton' decision be s to a Democrat, but does little to reveal his father's motives for remaining a Whig. George Pendleton either introduces an excep- tion the rule, he to or is an example of the struggle many Whigs faced as their party began to disintegrate. 19

he interpretations of Daniel Walker Howe and Michael Holt add to T an understanding of Pendleton's choice but do not address all the potential variables. Holt's depiction of Ohio Whiggery in 1850 sug- gested that a party was losing power. The state's turmoil and the conflicts from arising national issues,such as the Compromise of 1850,may well have signaled to Pendleton that the Whig Party was in decline.20 Yet,Pendleton was no neophyte and undoubtedly understood the ebb and flow of political power. The difficulties of the party did not cause his father to jump ship.

SUMMER 2003 21 FAMILY TIES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POI. ITICAL IDEOLOGY

Howe's portrayal of the Whig ideological distinctions ma>,shed more light on Pendleton's decision The Whigs' focus on order and control undo,ibtedly concerned Pendleton, for during his long career, he maintained a strong ad- herence tc,the concept of private conscience, believing th.it the government should nc,t regulate priate behaptor. In addition, his southern heritage tent itself to 1 states' rights concept of goker- nance, including the idea that states should decide internal matters such as slavery Perhaps the Ohio Whigs' 1.24,*U»f»*2%@44#. sup- tor Benlamin Wade S port as sencitor so- irk h. -* hdified his resolve be tc, a Democrat. Yet

here, the partisan indicators 4 ms,1 f even are f G}* /. unclear. A sophisticated analysts recog- 3, ' s. nizes that neither of the major parties uls 1=4 , could easily align, even on as potent an 14,4 f slaverv, ind Pendleton' 73 : issue as again, s 34% father remained a Whig. Perhaps this

1 i.. disco shows utily how naultitude 4.. iirse a of factors played some role in influenc- 43 ing his choice of party affiliation. In early 1841, Ohic)Whigs had cause 1 I it'. for optimism when President William

I . /St . In Henry Harrison appointed Ohio.in Tho- 8·,A- ri€ S 1 1 - mas Ewing as Secretary of the Treasury, 421brly &* f p r">46 Z>'fl 3-" 4» but Harr,5on's untiniel> death brought doubt and disillusionment tc, Buckeye Whigs. They seriotislv wondered tf the

nation.11 party would consider the inter- ests ot the West, especially after a southerner,John Tyler,assumed the ex- attributable Tyler' i

Pendleton also looked realistically at his potential constituency. In nexaminingweighingthetheconipositionpolitical strengthof the Cincinnatiof the Whigselectorate,versus Pendletonthe Deniocrats,could not help but notice the high percentage of fc,reign-born Cincinnatians who voted tended to vote Deniocratic. Hamilton Countv had traditionally Demo-

77 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY cratic in the 1830s. As early as 1825, there were 2,411 names on the register of gainfully employed Cincinnatians, with 533 immigrants, including 210 Englishpeople, 166 Irishpeople, 51 Germans,40 Scots,and a variety of other nationalities. The numbers of Irish and Germans,who were largely Catholic, continued to grow and they became, after 1830,a significant voting bloc. By 1850,twenty-seven percent of the people living in Cincinnati had been born in Germany. Seven years earlier,the Germans,realizing their growing politi- cal clout,had organized the German Democratic Union of Hamilton County.13 The following year, Cincinnati elected the first German-born representative to the Ohio General Assembly. Later,he was elected to the Ohio Senate and served as a delegate to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850 and 1851. His understanding of the electorate in Cincinnati deterred Pendleton from considering associating with the Whigs, who used nativist tactics, and later the American Party,a nativist group also called the Know-Nothings.24

born did not mean he would vote Y Democratic.et simply becausePoliticala voterdebatewasin Cincin-foreign nati in this period did not always revolve around traditional party issues. Rather,nativism drove much of the conflict. Consider,for example,the political behavior of Germans in Cincinnati in the 1853 municipal elections. In early 1853, Archbishop John Purcell asked for state funds to be shared with parochial schools in the Queen

City. Local Catholics were concerned that the heavily Protestant public schools excluded reli-

gious instruction. Purcell's request unleashed a firestorm. Simple prejudice drove part of the backlash, but an underlying belief that the com- mon school system inculcated in the next gen- eration the values and ideals necessary for citi- zens of a republic also caused Protestants to es- chew any religious curriculum for fear of encour- aging the spread of Catholicism. Sensing that neither of the two major parties, the Whigs or the Democrats,was responding appropriately to this threat to the common Print of Henry Clay from Alonzo Cbappel portrait, school system, native-born Cincinnatians and Protestant Germans formed pitblisbed by Jobnscm, political factions and independent parties.25 Wilson and Company. The Filson Historical Society Although the Democrats dominated the city by this time,owing in part to the support of its foreign-born population, the issue of foreign ascendance threatened to eat away at the party's power base. Some native-born Demo-

SUMMER 2003 23 FAMILY TIES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

crats formed a secret society within the Democracy to prevent Germans from obtaining public office. The Miami Tribe, as it eventually became known, apparently made little distinction between Catholic and Protestant Germans. When word of the organization leaked out, German Democrats of all faiths felt alienated from the party. The main Democratic organization tried to maintain its support base among immigrants by opposing the open nativism of many of the Whigs, but because of the anti-German sentiment within its own ranks it could not be very strong on the issue. Even further complicating matters, German Protestants had no love of German Catholics, demonstrat- ing the various shades of nativism apparent in Cincinnati in the early 18505.16

Illustration from tbe he Whig Party in Ohio had a history of being unable to garner much October 8, 1 864 issue of George of the immigrant vote. Many Whigs nativists,and the party Harper's Weekly. were as McC[ellan and George T disintegrated, some formed the Know-Nothing Party. Irish and Ger- Pendleton tbe were immigrants who saloons the Sabbath offended Whigs' Democratic nontinees for man went to on many president and vice president politicized sense of piety. Whig anti-Catholicism, xenophobia, and in 1 864. Although tbe prohibitionism tended push immigrants,particularly Catholic immigrants, Democratic Party platfornt to large popula- called for a cessation of into the Democratic fold.27 Because of Cincinnati's immigrant bostilities and restoration tion,Pendleton clearly recognized his need to their support to be sue- of tbe Federal union, secure McC[ellan repudiated tbe cessful politically. His speeches indicate that he deprecated nativism and reli- plank. Tbe peace cartoon gious discrimination. This position was consistent with his ideological sup- shows McClellan straddling of the inviolability of the private conscience. Whether his words drew a war horse and a peace port donkey,ridden by ideals of tolerance or simple political opportunism is uncertain because Pendleton. Cincinnati upon correspondence diaries.18 Nonetheless, Pendleton Historical Society 1.ibrary, of the lack of personal or Cincinnati Museum Center did remain consistent in his opposition to nativism throughout his career. first Pendleton's cam- paign for the United States f · __ fi,0 . House of Representatives

provides an example of his anti-nativist position. Pendleton had previously for and in run won a seat

the Ohio State Senate as a Democrat. But by the campaign for the 1854

41 elections,groups opposing 4 the Democracy attempted distinction be- to make a

tween their anti-Catholi-

cism and the more general Though sense of nativism. MARVEL,OUS EQUESTRIAN PERFORMANCE ON TWO ANIMALS. kig Wonderful undercurrent of Bv he f,( lebrAW Artit. P.49w G EoR©v.11. Mai , asiiied by [1e ioted; Il:re„b.it t ll,:ic r. i ,;:1)31(1 t] 1. 1'1»NIl,ET{'2(: on an xeno- 1>*goitMed ' lfiCE'AN¥PIE Brt d 4 A: X 0-/ 7'4,1,inas/*Ii' r:ve:*rf, PEAr,{ATAN,r:rr..r,•r,4 sm,errff fry,t,e Ar,V, i.ras ir€: d &,,?om¢ L. 4/i*ws' 0 [A. phobia ran strongly

24 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY helped through these groups,particularly the Know-Nothings,the distinction to garner Protestant immigrant support. In this election,the issues went be- yond municipal concerns to include the recent debate over the Kansas-Ne- braska bill proposed by Democrat Stephen Douglas from Illinois. This bill offended the Free Soil sentiment of many northerners and westerners who viewed it as opening up previously free portions of the West to slavery. As a result, Anti-Catholic forces combined with anti-Nebraska partisans to form the Ohio People's Party in order to oppose the Democracy. Even heavily Democratic Hamilton County, which contained Cincinnati, gave a majority vote in the 1854 election to the People's Party. The German Democratic vote fell from eighty-eight percent the year before to fifty-three percent,signaling the growing defection from the Democracy.2' The opposition fusion com- prised of, according to one historian,former " Whigs, virulent nativists, anti- Nebraska Democrats, and non-Catholic immigrants"challenged Democratic ascendancy.30 Though Pendleton's rhetoric in this election would tend to dem- uniformly onstrate a broad-brushed approach, depicting the opposition as nativists, the fusion that he faced was an eclectic collection that defied simple categorization. In 1854,the Democrats nominated Pendleton to represent the First District Cincinnati in Congress. His opponent,Timothy C. Day,accused him and the Enquirer which supported him) of combining the vote of the Catholics and Tribe, the Miamis in his earlier bid for a seat in the State Senate. The Miami Day asserted, was a group trying to control the regular organization of Demo- of crats in Cincinnati that he and a radical faction Cincinnati's Democrats had opposed. Day was clearly trying to divide Pendleton's support base by associating these two disparate groups. Disillusioned with the party because of the dispute over the admission of Kansas, Day secretly ran as a Know- Nothing. He had the support of some radical Democrats who held very con- servative economic views, and saw Pendleton as too moderate. The Germans of Cincinnati had followed their leader, Charles Reemelin, a radical Demo- crat,and opposed the Miamis.31

personal squabbles over political power founded" on no differences ' principle policy," underlyingfactionalizationissues existed.largely32 ofhoughDemocratsor downplayedimportanttheirparty's as Pendleton responded to Day's revival of past disputes with a speech denying he repudi- any connection with the Miami political organization. In addition, ated the Know-Nothings,who Day apparently represented, and suggested that the United States should not only foster immigration but also should end religious and ethnic prejudice. Pendleton continued to speak out against the Know-Nothings prior to the election, saying that they were in reality Whigs foreigners. The Cincinnati who were intolerant of religious minorities and Enquirer, that Commercial,the political enemy of the alleged Democratic city

SUMMER2003 25 FAMILY TIES, PAR l'Y REALITIES, AND POl.17-ICAL IDEOLOGY

officials had illegally naturalized large numbers of immigrants the night be-

fore the election in order to boost the party'S totals.33

cially disclosed his true political persuasion. Although the Coinmercial referredspiteofhishimefforts,memberPendletonof lostthe AmericantheelectionReforinDay,Ticket,who nativistoffi n to as a to nevera group, it passed no judgment on Day and took no official partisan position. The Obic, Statesnian,one of Ohio's leading Democratic mouthpieces, sug- gested that the Democrats did poorly in the election due to the strength of the Know-Nothings.34

Pendleton's anti-nativist campaign demonstrated a cognizance of Cincinnati's growing inimigrant electorate. Yet,this cannot have been a decisive factor for Pendleton because the immigrant community did not vote as a block in elec- tions during the early 1 850s. Yet another fact(,1- played 7. 1 ole in Pendleton's decision tc)become a Democrat: his relationship with Ohio's attorney general and soon-to-be U.S. Senator George Ellis Pugh. Born into a Quaker family, which according to the interpretation of the ethno-cultural historians would place him within the Whig Party, Pugh held no prejudice against those of other nitionalities or faiths. Indeed, he later married Theresa Chalfant, a Catholic, and converted to Catholicism himself. Interestingly,Pugh had been Cincinnati Ic,mmercial noted that he later a Harrison Whig in 1840, but the became a Democrat when the Whigs became a hopeless" minority in Hamilton County."ii Pugh grappled with this decision concurrently with his friend,

Pendleton,and both apparently came to the same conclusion about their own political philosophies and which party would provide the greatest personal advantage.M

One inust consider a final and decisive factor to explaili Pendleton's deci- sic,n to become a Democrat. Although Nathaniel Greene Pendleton was un- successful in passing along his political partisanship to his son, he was much more effective in bestowing upon him his political ideology. The younger Pendleton had more than one choice as he entered the 1850s. He rejected the Know-Nothings because of their nativism and disdain for his position on pri- vate conscience. Pendleton could have joined former Whigs like Abraham Lincoln and others of the Free Soil philosophy who eventually formed the

Republican Party,but he could not support its association with abolitionism. This advocacy would have run counter to his family's southern heritage dat- ing to the colonial period. The southern political philosophy of states' rights, limited federal authority, and concern for a truly democratic governing sys- tem-though reserved for white men-remained a part of Pendleton's ideol- ogy throughout his career and would ultimately influence his decision to be- come a Peace Democrat and oppose the Republican prosecution of the Civil Wan His father dedicated himself to these principles, though surprisingly Jacksonian in concept, and he passed them on to his son. They formed the

26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY basis of the western Democratic ideology that would dominate the party in this region for the decade to come. That Pendleton's father previously held these views further demonstrates the amalgamated nature of the Whig Party. Early in his career, Pendleton's political beliefs evolved to include other Jacksonian tenets such as a strict construction of the Constitution, elevation of the common" man"by insti- tuting an instructed delegate 1 view of representation in Con- 4, lit:. *.." ESREY ' » » gress, strict economy, private conscience, and opposition to concentrated power,particularly sanctioned government- mo- L. nopolies or privilege.37 Unwill- ing to tolerate (as his father had) such emphases as neo-mercan- tilism and political piety,

Pendleton's developing focus precluded association with the

Whig Party. Much of this evo- lution result of arose as a Pendleton' focus national s on rather than just local issues. His father had served in Congress, allowing him to recognize the importance of local concerns in light of national initiatives. In examining the Asbland,home of Henry Clay,Lexington,Kentucky. inability of President John Tyler to become the leader of the Whig Party in the The Filson Historical early 1840s,for example,Pendleton realized that no further impediments stood Society in the way of Henry Clay becoming that party's clarion voice. The Whigs, under Clay,had less and less room for those holding to Pendleton's ideals. To be successful politically,Pendleton understood that he had to temper his per- sonal ambition with his desire to remain true to his political beliefs and his recognition of the direction of the national party organizations.38

endleton's later partisanship seems to support the idea that his father's ideology heavily influenced him,leaving him in the given time period little choice other than the Democracy. In his provocative and insight- ful conclusion, the historian Daniel Walker Howe has argued that the" post- 39 war Democratic party bore certain similarities to prewar Whiggery. Pendleton represents one strain of that conclusion:he upheld his father's south- ern heritage, including his support for white supremacy, states' rights, and strict construction of the Constitution. Pendleton maintained these Jackso- nian principles throughout his career,leading the western Democracy through the Civil War and attempting to direct it beyond. Yet he found justification

SUMMER 2003 27 FAMILY TIES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

for some Whig objectives in a Jacksonian ideology reinterpreted,of necessity, because of a changing political milieu. During the war,consistent with Whig tradition,Pendleton frequently fought to limit the expansion ot executive power at the expense of legislative prerogative. One cannot interpret his attacks on Ljncoln's administration as anti-Jacksonian,however,because Pendleton based them on a concern for the maintenance of individual liberties. In his final initiative in the House before leaving his seat,Pendleton furthered this objec- tive by introducing a bill to authorize cabinet members to have non-voting seats in Congress,in his mind another means of keeping tabs on the executive branch. In the end, Pendleton took many of his father's Whig ideals,reinter- preted them within the context of Jacksonianism, and developed a political ideology that defined the western Democracy for decades.40 The amalgamated nature of the Democracy in the mid-nineteenth century extended beyond Pendleton and his western Democratic supporters, but he did not believe the eastern wing of the party maintained its roots in Jackso- nian ideology. Pendleton never strayed from his Jacksonianism,maintaining it as his foundational political philosophy through which he evaluated all political issues. Pendleton and his western Democratic followers differed soniC- what from most eastern Democrats, frequently known as Bourbon" Demo- crats."Both wings of the party supported the long-standing ideals of white supremacy and states' rights. Neither could condone expansion of the central government. Yet on economic issues they parted ways. Bourbon Democrats harkened back to Whig neo-mercantilism. Pendleton parted with his father's Whig heritage here because it contradicted his Jacksonian foundation. Gov-

ernment involvement in support of economic interests smacked of monopoly and privilege and was anathema to any consistent Jacksonian. In his final analysis, Pendleton argued that the Bourbons had left the Jacksonian tradi- tion behind and, therefore, he felt compelled to lead the western Democracy in a different direction. He hoped to convince the Bourbons of the error of their ways.41

endleton never turned his back on the political legacy handed down to P him by his father. This legacy became the centerpiece of western Democratic politics during the rest of the nineteenth century. Pendleton developed this political ideology throughout his career, reinterpreting Jacksonianism to address contemporary issues, but never straying from his ideological roots. In the end, wealth, family status, place of birth and de- nominational affiliation were necessary causes, but did not prove sufficient in and of themselves. The political environment of his city and his time greatly inhabitants and the demise of influenced Pendleton's decision. Cincinnati's the Whig Party certainly played their respective roles. National debates over the expansion of slavery and state squabbles over political dominance had left the party in Ohio in turmoil within and without. Though the Democrats

28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY dominated Ohio's politics in the early 18505, the complex interplay between political factions and ethnic voting blocs within Cincinnati precluded certainty about the future. All of these factors, including Pendleton's relationship with Pugh, had their place:they laid the grotindwork for the most decisive influence. Pendleton was principally influenced by his father's political ideology. In the changing political milieu of the 1840s and 18505,many of those beliefs could no longer find a comfortable home within the Whig Party. The contemporary ob- server,Edward Mansfield, seems to have been partially correct when he argued that fathers influenced the party affiliation of their sons. Though partisanship was not always passed down from father to son,political ideology often was. 4

1. Henry A. 1·ord and Kate B. Ford, History cit ilictilliati, tatic)11 capabilities. Harr> 1..Watsoli. 1.iberty and Pc,it,er: Obio.Witl?1!laistrations id Bic,graphical Sketclks a, Tbe P(,litics f(,Jacks,)Iii.iii Anterica New Yc,rk: Hill and C:leveland: L. A. Williains aiid (. 1881),73-84. c)., Wang, 1990),28-29. 2. (1. M. D. Bl<) 0).1.ife alid Speecl)es of Ge{,rge Hit jit Boston: 8. Arthur Al. Schlesinger,In,The Age of J.i:ksc),i Pe,idleto,;incinnati: ((] Mi.inii l'r hiring and l'ul,lishing Co., Little, Brcm·n and Clo.,1945):Stephen E. Maizlish, 77,e 1868),7-8; C inannati. Enqifirer,September 21. 1924. Tritinit)13f (,Section,ilisni: Tbe Trinsform,ition of Obic) Tbe Natio,ial Iyclopaedia( f ,)Americati Biogratiliy New< Pcilitics, 844-// 856 1 Kelit,Oh.:Kelit State Uni\·ersitp Press, York: James l:White and 0.,(: 1931),3: 273. 10: 240. and Poti, C harles Sellers, 1983),1 10.- Wats()n, Liberty c,·; Biographical Directory f(,tbe A,iterica,1 Congress, The Market Revoliftic)11: Jacks{),lian America. 1815-1846 774-1949 Washington, 1).(:.:United States (, overnment New Yirk: Oxford Uitiversin Press, 1991);Donald .1. Piilitiiig 1-()fice, 1950),1666. Ratcliffe, The" Market Revolution and Party Alignmefits in 3. Woodward" High School in Iincinnati."( Ailierical,1101{rlt.ll Ohic),1828-1840,"iii .]effrey R Broin and Andrew R. [. of Edticatil)11 4 September 1957):520: C:lara l.ongworth Cayrc)11, eds.,Tbe Pitrsuit f{,Public Pou'er: Political DeChambrilli, i/ici/ziniti: St<)ry (jf tbe Oiteenin' (: (New 0,/ture in Obio. 1 7,97-1 86/ (Kent. Ohio: Kent State York: Charles Scribner's Solls, 1939),16(). University Press, 1994),99-116.

4. Edward Deering Mansfield. Personal Men„iries, Social, 9. Williani A. Sullivan.Did " 1.:abor Support Andrew lack- P<,litical,cittd 1.iterary, 1 80.1-/84.3 (1879. reprint,New S()11:"'rilitical Science Qi,arterly 62 (1)ecember 1947): York: Arno and New York limes, 1970),277; 569-8():Edward Pessen. Did" Labor Support Jackson?," 1) DeChambrun. Liticin?zati.65,\ \ rat-icis R Weisenhurger. 1- e Pi,litical Science Qwrterly 64 June 1949):262-74: Walter Columbus: i,issi„g of tbe Frontier, 1 82.f-/850 ( Ohio State Hugins. hicksoni,in Dem(,cracy in tbe Wc,rking Class. A Archaeological atid Histcirical Sciciety. 1941),206. Study <,f the Working/;,en's Mot,cmc„t, 1 829-18.17 Stanford: Stanford L]niversity Press, 1 960):Lee Benson, 5. Pugh and Pelidleton were schc)(,Imates at Wo(,dward High and Cincinnati (:lle, Bloss, Tlie C.(11!cept of Jackst)112,111 Democracy: New York as a c) b e. Life of Pelidletc),1.6, \ Testise (., (Princet<)11: Pri nceton University Press, 1961). Duinas Nialotic,ed.,Diction,iry of American Biograpby More recently,David Brown reexamined the Market New York: harles(. Scribner's Sons, 1934),14: 419-20. Rev(,lution interpretation and found it lacking when applied ,ourt records fc) Cincintiati are curreiitly lioused ill the r the South. Brown asserted that the Market Revc)luti Archives and Rare Books Department of tile Blegen Library to 011 had little impact on the South and theretc, could not be at the University of Citicillilati. Records are vii·y scarce, if re a key factor in why ]ackson gained such support base there. at all extant, before 1857. A courthouse fire reputedly a David Slavery and the Market Revolution: The destroyed f them. Recc,rds Pendletc, Pugh, Brown. " most (, on 1 or Southern other Lphich ctidlet(,himself the South' Place in Jacksonian Historic,graphy," t]1.111 a c.ise iii l' 11 was s Studies 4 C 993):189-2()7. plaintiff, do tic,t survive. carly,(]! Pendleton was involved in real estate claims. George 11. Pendleton to A. M. Searles, 10. Benson. Ioncept of Jacksoniail Demt,cracy,288-328; Political luly 2, 1850, El,en Lane 1>apers, C:hicago Hist(,rical Society, Roiiald P. Formisatic),The Birtb of Mass Parties. hicago; 1rinceton: Priticeton University Gec,rge H. Pendlet<,n to Samuel Bisphain, May 17, Michigait, 1817-1861 1854, Gunther ollections,(: C:hicago Historical Society, Press, 1972);Stephen Fox,(.. The roup(; Bases of Obio Political Bel} hicago; Willi,ims' Cilicimiati Directory itid Bitsiness avic,r. 1 80.1-1848 New York: Garland Adi,ertiser,v. 1 -37 (Cincinizati: C'..S. Williams, 1849-1887); Publishing hic;1989),119-140. Marshall, tbe Vurts(:( and arrington I:' A History ot 11. I).inic] Walker Howe, Tbe Political Culture of tbe Anierican of ()/,New York: American Historical Society awyers in, ( Whigshicago: ((: University of Chicag()Press, 1979); Inc.,1934),4: 281 Michael F. Hc,lt. Tbe Rise and Fall of tbe Anierican Wbig 6. Mansfield.Perso,ial Memories,235. Party.lacksonian Pi,litics and tbe Oliset of tbe Civil War New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).See also 7. The Market Revc,lution refers t()the changing eci,nomic Michael E Holt,Tbe Pc,litical Crisis cif the 1 8503( New practices of Americans after 1815. Farmers began to York: Jc,lin Wiley and Sons, 1978);Michael R Holt, specialize, fc,cusitig on one or two crops to sell for a profit Political Parties and American Political Developmelit fy("11 rather than cm subsistence farming. Manufacturers began the Age f(,jackson to tbe Age of 1-i,ic(,1,1 Baton R<,uge tc,find better more efficient ways to prc,duce alid sell goods. Louisiana State University Press, 1992),237-64. All of these changes were taking place in an economic milieu rife with advances iii cc,mmunications and transpor- 12. Howe, Anterican Wbigs,150.

SUMMER 2003 29 FAMILY I IES, PARTY REALITIES, AND POLITICAL It)EOLOC,Y

13. Ibid.,.3()1. 27, 1 1(,lt, Politil ParMes,75-80.

14. 1-ic,It, Ameth·1,.1 Wbig irty,/', 30, 68, 70, 1 1 5-18. 18. Nci major collecticin of Pendletcm paperb exists at .iny instituric, iii private collectic, Any papers kept ilithe 1 5. Lawretic,I rederick K(,hi, i·eview of 7bc Rise and Fall 1(,tbe n or li. f.imily likely burticd iii fire iii 1 916. l'he locatic, of Anteric, Whig Party: 1,!. ckslitical caused n stated that the chaos c,f the Whig Party at this time Trcittl,les Washiiigtc)! D. C.:1. }Pi,lkinhorn, 1861 1, 1 -8. Pendlmin choose the 1)cinocratic l' Stephen i, ti) art,·. southerii Nathaniel Gree,ic Pendleton held that the states Maizlisli argues that the secc)nd party syst·Ii, had already had tile right inaiiitain slavery and suggested that the disscilved iii Ohio by 1849, perhaps itistifyilig the asserticm tc) Missc,uri Compic,tiiise be reinstated as tlie formula fc,r that Pendletiin saw the Whig demise cc)milig. Holt sees a admitting future states. He sought compromise tc,prevent decline in the Whig Party during the early tc, mid-184()s.a proposing the torniatic, f central corifederaci revival hy the end of the decade.and the eventual destruc- war,even 11 c, a Hitilt Pcildlet( made of border states between the North aiid the South tion of the liarty by the mill-1850s.eorge (; m up tc)prevent bloc,dshed. While slightly later thali the tillie Cinciii,iati: 189()),25. lement(, Eatcm,enry // ay(]/ n. p., d being discussed, this letter expressed the principle of and tbe Art tif Americd„Pt)litics l Bc,ston: 1. irtle, Brown lilli. peric, rights that Nathaniel Greene passed his Co.,1957),146-52, 1 72-78. 1·laizlish, 7>·iumi,b of Watcs' on tc) soil, Marviti Meyers,Tbe jacks(mian Per Sectic, lism, xiii; Nc, I,nis Peters<, bc reside,/' icies (it ecirge. sit.isic)}1: 11,/ im.1 ii, / Stanford: Stanfc,rd University Press, I. Politics and Belief Willian,1 lenry Harriscm 1,,id lob„Tyler l awrence 1957),31:Robert V. Remini, 7-be ife/. of A„drett, ackson/ University Press of Kansas, 1989),31-35, 66-72, 190-97; New York: Penguin lic,oks, 1988),3()5. Holt, Powl/,0 Holt,Ammon Whig Party,208-11. arties, 54. States, INS() 23. J. 1).B. 1)e[1(,w.Statistic·,//View of tbe l/,tite/ 39. I Ic, American Whigs, 302. Washingtc)11, D. C.:n. p.,1834),399, as cited in Fraikis P. we, Slach,Gentlein: ' 104-7()and Weisenbilrger,A " Brief 1-list(,ry of the Inimigrant Cir<,ups m 40. Ibid.,.303-305; iii (,corge, Presented Ohic),"in hi the Trek of tlie Imiliigra,its SS,71'S passmi. to i,(irl Witlke Rock Island, Illinois: August. College na 41. Mach, Gentleman" corge," (; 208-6.3 and pass!"1. Library, 1964),83-84; Weisenburger,dissi/, / g (#the Tbe Screlle Cilicilinatialls Frc,)!tier.314.Alvin 1·: 1 [ai·|(,w, Early Nineteentb- n.p.,1950),36; Clific,i·d Neal Smith, Ceittitry Geyman Settlers i,1 Obio Mainly( Cincinnati1, ,id Envircms).Kentucky, atid ther(.) States C AlcNeal, Ariz.: Westland Publications. 1984),SO.

24. Weisctiburger,Immigrai, " t (iroups iii C)Iiic),"84; Tyler Anbitider, Natit,ism and >larcry: Tbe Nortber,1 rk: Oxford Notbi,igs and the Politics f(,tbe 1 85(js (New fi,' University Press, 1992),18-19, 68-71, 174-81, 256-61. the Charles Reemelin was German statesman. 25. William E. Gienapp, 7 be Origins of tbe Republican Party, 1852-/8.Sh INew York: Oxicird University Press, 1987),6()- 64.

26. Ibid.

30 OHIO VALI-EY HISTORY Christ Unchained: African American Conversions During tbe Civil War Era

DAN FoUNTAIN

If you bold to my teaching,you are really slave Christianity African Americans " I gave a my disciples.Tben you will know tbe truth, the wordsof strengthof theandhistorianenduranceCharlesthat enabledJoyner, nsource alici tbe trittb will set you free. them triumph the collective tragedy of to Over en- John 8:31-32 slavement."2 Such words are typical of the way that historians use Afro-Christianity to counter old I tell you chile.it was pitiful.but God did arguments saying that slavery stripped Africans of their not let it last always. I bave beard slai, culture and reduced them to an intantile state es morning and night pray for deliverance. of existence. However, such worthy attempts by zealous historians refute Some of' would stand to racist or inaccurate in- em up in de fields or

terpretations ot the past have created an illusion, bend over cotton and corn and pray out specifically the impression that most slaves actively loud for God to belp em' and in time you participated in Christianity,attributing the religious see. He did.1 behavior of few slaves the This strident a to many. Clayborn Gantling defense of African American religiosity further sug- gests that no boundary imposed by slaveowners proved too great for the slaves to overcome.-8 Nevertheless, real institutional boundaries and obstacles both restricted

and shaped the African American religious experience in profound ways. Sev- era] recent studies of slavery by Michael Gomez,John Willis,and myself sug- gest that no more than twenty-five percent of the South's bondsmen converted to Christianity before emancipation. 4 The reasons for such a low participa- tion rate include the persistence of African religious ideas and practices, too little access to churches,the example of white Christians who failed to live up to their own teachings, and a proslavery Christian message. These scholars, however,do not challenge the existence of a vibrant Christian element within the slave community. My own earlier work describes this element as the Chris- tian core and credits its members with leading a majority of African Ameri- cans to convert to Christianity during and after the Civil War.5 The Christian core among slaves formed a small but devoted segment of the larger African American population in the South. Many of these dedi-

cated Christians willingly faced threats of physical punishment and even death in order to pursue their faith as they saw fit,in part,because Christianity gave these believers spiritual relief from the everyday pain of slavery and hope for

SUMMER 2003 31 CHRIST UNCHAINED

a better world to come. Most Christian slaves also believed that God would

ultimately provide them with earthly freedom when the time was right, and they regularly but quietly prophesied and prayed about the day when God would break the shackles of bondage and set his righteous people free. When that anticipated deliverance arrived, Christian freedpeopie understood them-

selves as justified in their faith and themselves as the greatest testaient to God's power. The Christian core's faithfulness and accuracy in anticipating emancipation also attracted ever greater numbers of African American freedpeopie to Christianity. Freedom, rather than slavery,proved tc) be the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South.

eligious experiences of slaves in ways that favored the needs c,f whites eforeratherthethanCivilAfricanWar,Americans.slaveholdersThiscommonlycould attemptedanything fromshape the mean to pro- hibiting some religi)us services to dictating the content of a sermon or allow- ing only family prayer meetings:Failure to comply with these restrictions often led to a ban of all religious services, physical punishment, and even death fc,r some Christian slaves. For instance,the Baptist Church in Elkton, Kentucky unanimously adopted the following resolution in 1846: Resolved that it is the opinion of this church that the meetings of the

cole)red people conducted as they are,are of no benefit to them either in a religic,us or cival Isicl point of view and that the secston Isic] of this

rq#ime S=-K» church be instructed not

allow them the of to use

this house any more for that purpose.' Likewise, William Will-

f of North Carolina ft, iams re- called that 1 '/",t),1 5] «,'4' - - 1- 7, his overseer 1 " would whip a slave if he

7/e Sabbath amon.Slaxes.' in Virginia,sold her grandfa- ther south for being religious

Tbe Sabbatb among and praying that God would set the slaves free.'Kentucky native Isaac Slaves,"illustration frimi Throgmorton reported that his whipped slaves who " happy" Narrative of the Life and overseer got at Adventures of Henry Bibb, prayer meetings and repeatedly told them that he would rather see them steal- 849. Tbc,Filscm ing,swearing,and whoring than to be religious.'0 The master of Thonias H. Historical Society Jones swore that if he did not abandon religion I"will whip you to death."11 And while Jones' master ultimately stopped short of murdering Thomas, the sister of John Andrew .jackson paid the ultimate price for her religious prin-

32 OHIO VAI. l. EY HISTORY ciples. She died at the hands of her mistress because she refused to quit praying in spite of several previous warnings to do so.12 Despite all this,some Christian slaves persisted in worshiping their God ac- cording to the dictates of their hearts. One Louisiana slave even believed that such persecution made African American believers better Christians. He ar- gued that when slave Christians faced little opposition All" quiet,den all grow cold, and dey follers de Lord afar off."In contrast,when slaveowners fought slave prayers with punishment or death, all" these troubles and trials dey drives us to de Lord."13 Christian slaves also refused to abandon their faith because

its teachings gave them an identity and future that they could embrace fully. Specifically,Christianity asserts the value of every human being whether black or white or slave or free because all individuals are an important part of the Christian God's creation:4 No one, no matter how lowly in earthly status, is worth less than another person in the eyes of God, and all persons are children of God and equally subject to His commandments:f The Christian God even sacrificed his only son in order to offer eternal life to every individual who accepts and follows his teachings.16 Furthermore, Christian theology promises the gift of eternal life,a heavenly existence of divine justice and peace.17 While the Christian core certainly looked forward to heaven, salvation in their own time held an even greater appeal for slaves. Christian slaves, for example, seized on the biblical story of the Ancient Israelites' exodus from slavery in Egypt and made it their own. As Albert Raboteau has argued, this link with Israel gave" the slaves a communal identity as a special, divinely favored people"and foretold of their future deliverance.18 Slaves who believed

in Christ spoke to one another about their anticipated freedom and made it a feature their and When common in sermons prayers. a devout Christian named

Solomon, for instance, reacted calmly to ill treatment from his overseer he was asked how he could tolerate such treatment. Solomon replied saying it" would not always be so-that slavery was to come to an end for the Bible said so."19 Similarly,Mingo White believed that the slaves had" a instinct dat we was goin' to be free"and as a result frequently prayed for" de Lawd to free dem lack he did de chillun of Is'ael. 20 According to Robert Cheatum,The " negro preachers preached freedom into our ears and our old men and women prophecied about it."21 Finally,Victoria Perry's mother routinely awakened her by praying: Someday we are going to be free: the Good Lord won't let this 1 22 thing go on all the time.

hen Christian slaves learned about the Confederate assault on Fort

Sumter,many believed accurately that their deliverance was at hand. As a result, throughout the war, an increasing number of slaves prayed to God for a Southern defeat and the end of slavery. In later life,former Georgia slave Mary Gladdy remembered that, during the war,slaves gathered 323 for prayer meetings because their" great,soul hungering desire was freedom.

SUMMER 2003 33 CHRIST UNCHAINED

On the plantation where Maria Heywood lived such prayer meetings occurred 24 Once Ebenezer All bout in people house. Hold the four year of the wan Brown's masters left for the war,All " de time dey wus gone de slaves kept 2 5 prayin' to be sot free. And during wartime prayer meetings that she at- tended, Channa Littlejohn remembered that prayers being offered asked very specifically for the Yankees to come.26 Such prayer meetings were so com- mon during the war that some whites sought to prevent their occurrence lest the slaves' prayers come true. Callie Williams pointed out that Dey" tried to make em' stop singin' and prayin' durin' de war"because whites knew all" dey'd ask for was to be set free."Williams goes on to say that attempts by whites to stop these meetings seldom succeeded.27 In fact,according to Tom Robinson, despite attempts by white people to prohibit petitions for divine 3 intervention,All " over the country the same prayer was being prayed. With the war ended and freedom secured, most former slaves had little doubt who was responsible for their deliverance. Many freedmen,like Mingo White and Robert Cheatum, believed that Abraham" Lincoln was the agent of the true and living God"sent to deliver his people from bondage.29 Others like 0. W.Green and Clayborn Gantling emphasized that Twas" only because 30 Former Louisiana slave of de prayers of de cullud people,dey was freed.... Charlotte Brooks gave credit for the coming of emancipation to both God and the North. Brooks believed that We" done the praying and the Yankees

done the fighting,and God heard our prayers way' down here in these cane- 31 fields. Some freedmen, like L. M. Mills of St. Louis, proved extremely

eloquent in their analysis of emancipation. Mills noted that it was no wonder God sent war on this nation! It was the old story of the captivity in Egypt repeated. The slaveholders were warned time and again to let the black man go, but they hardened their hearts and would not, until finally the wrath of God was poured out upon them and the sword of the great North fell upon their first born.31

egardless of what spin freedpeople put on their newfound freedom, of most identified the Christian God as the ultimate source their

deliverance. This was even true for some individuals who previously had been skeptical about the Christian core's expectation of freedom. One freedman admitted,I' "ve heard them pray for freedom. 1 thought it was foolishness then,but the old time folks always felt they was to be free. It must have been something' vealed unto 'em."33 Thus, freedpeople commonly iden- tified emancipation as either the fulfillment of biblical promise or as the an- rewarded, of swer to decades of prayer. In either case, the faithfulness,now the Christian core drew thousands of previously skeptical African Americans to Christianity. Where slavery had once barred the door to Christian salva- tion, freedom allowed the multitude to enter God's kingdom unobstructed. Freedpeople vividly remembered the dramatic impact that the Civil War

34 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY and emancipation had on their religious lives. For instance, Mollie Edmonds recalled: After" surrender us held meetings in big tents and had a preacher, what could tell us the word of God. Before that,there wasn't much Christian- ity amongst us."34 Kentuckian Charles Green pointed out thatt immediately after the war lots" er churches sprung up."1S Virginian Julia Williams simi- 36 larly noted that De" slaves had more meetin's and gatherin's aftah de wan Likewise, Henry Baker exclaimed,We " served de Lawd sho nuff aftuh we wuz sot free cause we had sumpin tuh be thankful fon Aftuh Surrender,niggers' ' dey sung, dey prayed, dey preached...."37 Similarly, Harriett Gresham re- called that upon emancipation,One " and all they remembered to thank God for their freedom. They immediately began to hold meetings, singing soul 8 stirring spirituals. According to Charlie Robinson, When" freedom

come..Dat year us all jined de church..."39

reedmen who had served in

the United also States Army 1.P'f I « ' » ]if' f , \{,f -. remembered their ,,,'. experiences 4 k 7,

during the being crucial in h ] 7.'„' war as encour- I aging their commitment to Christianity. After serving soldier,Kentucky as a na- 31 . WL , ,« tive Barney Stone became a preacher out of gratefulness"... to God for my deliv- 40 Another erance and my salvation. black credited his Union veteran conver-

sion to the fact that,since God protected EETING IN TME AFRICAN ClK·Hal. C (·INNATI, 0111, him during the war,he felt it was appro- priate to trust in Him after being dis- charged.41 Tennessean Julius Jones had" never tended a real service before Illustration from tbe April 30,1853 issue of Illustrated I but religion while I in of those hospi- was grown" got was one war News. Cincinnati tals."42 Finally,white Union soldier Zenas I Haines recalled hearing African Historical Society Library, Cincinnati Museum Center American soldiers who sought conversion while camped in New Bern,North Carolina. As Haines noted in his diary,

Our nights are rendered musical by the plaintive choral hymnings of devotional negroes in every direction, alone and in groups. From their open cabins come the mingled voices of men wrestling painfully and agonizingly with the spirit,and those uttering the ecstatic notes of the unredeemed.43

Haines was hardly the only white person to detect an increase in Christian conversions among African Americans during and after the Civil War. James Mallory,an Alabama slave owner and a deeply religious man, made several observations concerning the religious condition of African Americans in his

SUMMER 2003 35 CHRIST UNCHAINED

community between the years 1862 and 1868. On August 17, 1862, Mallory noted in his journal that a" revival is in progress amongst our blacks, a number were added to the church and baptised."44 Later that year,Mallory continued to note an increase in the number of conversions among his slaves. On October 19, Mallory wrote their" Isic] is quite a revival amongst the servants, from twenty eyght [sic] to thirty were baptized today."45 After emancipation,Mallory became disturbed by the intensity of the freedpeople's increased religious feel- ings. Religious" excitement amongst the freedmen has become alarming,they seem falling fast into idoletry [sic]."The "Negroes,"he continued,have " al- most quit work, waiting for the judgment to come in a few days."46 While one might interpret Mallory's observations as the bitter commentary of a slave owner stung by emancipation, this does not appear to be the case. Mallory,while frustrated by the South's stumbling steps toward free labor,was not vicious in his general remarks about the freedpeople. In fact,just a few days before ex- pressing concern about the religious excitement taking place, Mallory dispas- sionately noted in his journal: The" freedmen are holding a protracted meeting near here, largely attended."47 Given this earlier matter-of-fact observation,it seems that Mallory only became concerned when the freedpeople's Christian enthusiasm reached a crescendo in both scope and fc,rm that he had never seen before. Therefore,Mallory's words most likely bear witness to a religious trans- formation among African Americans that began during the war and acceler- cited with emancipation.

The letters and publications of Northern missionary societies working among the freedpeople during and after the Civil War confirm Mallory's observations. Between 1861 and 1868, organizations like the American Missionary Associa-

tion and National Freedmen's Relief Association consistently published accounts of religious revivals among African Americans living in Union-occupied areas. Most strikingly,these reports do not merely describe an awakening of religious enthusiasm among the freedpeople but point to a large number of conversions. In other words, most of the freedpeople described were not celebrating their age-old faith but were accepting Christianity for the first time.48

cated that its missions to the freedpeople give" some evidence of the P of the Spirit..."49 In particular,theannualmissionariesforhad observedindi presencehe American Missionary Association's report 1861 the hopeful conversion of several individuals"as well as baptisms for a" num- ber of converts, and they credited Christian freedpeople with improving the conditions for African American conversion."2) A missionary working in New-

port News, Virginia, indicated:Were " it not for the religious element among

I " this people the freedpeople would be in great despondency."5' A Rev. Lockwood of the Virginia mission at Fortress Monroe found that the preaching of black Christian ministers there gave African American religious meetings tremendous spirit" and power."2 More ' importantly,Lockwood's description

36 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY of sermons delivered by freedmen reveals that the Christian core had begun actively proselytizing their many unconverted brethren. For example,during a service held near Hampton,Virginia,one preacher who had been a slave warned an African American congregation:I "see sinners out of Christ,going to hell."53 Still another admonished his fellow freedpeople that If" we would have greater freedom of body, we must first free our- selves from the shackles of sin, and espe 4. i,i4 0-.- cially the sin of unbelief. Such exhorta- .

tions proved to be the opening salvos in what would soon become a rapidly expand- ing and successful battle to convert many unbelieving freedpersons.

I sionary reports of modest numbers of AfricanntheyearsAmericanfollowingconverts1861 earlyquicklymis gave way to descriptions of a rising tide of conversions that grew along with the Union Army' s occupation of more and more Con-

federate The S.ftly Massachusetts territory. As runaway slaves entered contraband camps and other Regimelit, African freedpeople' settlements that around the Union Army,white and a,1 s sprang up Americaii wiit,enteritig black Christians greeted them and vigorously sought their conversion. These Charlesto,1 ditring the Civil Wan The Fitson efforts soon bore fruit.i < For example, in 1 862, South Carolina missionary Historical Societv Charlotte Forten reported that ministers in that state baptized one hundred and fifty former slaves on a single Sunday.i6 Reverend Green of Norfolk, Virginia, noted that his Sabbath congregations grew from less than seventy-five to over thousand participants within three one weeks.57 Missionaries iii a contraband Cairo, Illinois, reported, " the camp at During winter of 1862 there was an almost continuous revival"with conversions occurring frequently."" 58 A year later,North Carolina missionaries exclaimed that The" Lord is doing a great work here...and many are being converted to God."59 Likewise,missionaries from Natchez,Mississippi,Norfolk,Virginia,and St. Louis,Missouri,described many"and frequent"" conversions at their mission stations.6° Reverend A.D. Olds, a missionary at a contraband camp in Corinth,Mississippi, reported to the American Missionary Association that he had founded the Union Christian Church there with one hundred original covenant signers. Olds goes on to report that by June 7, 1863, between two and three thousand freedpeople at- tended the church services he conducted. Speaking generally about the freedmen's spiritual condition, Olds wrote,I "have been greatly cheered to see with what frankness they confess their sinfulness their& need of a savion"61 Another Mississippi described missionary conversions among the freedpeople as a"deep, 62 quiet work of grace...extending almost over the entire colored population. These enthusiastic reports suggest that the pure air of freedom allowed the

SUMMER 2003 37 CHRIST UNCHAINED

flame of Christianity to burn brighter than it ever did before emancipation. The diary and letters of Sarah Jane Foster, a missioniry teacher among the freed people of Martinsburg,West Virginia, illustrate a similar spiritual transfor- marion in one African American community. Initially, Foster believed she had never attended better prayer meetings than those in Martinsburg, but she also indicated that worshipers were few."" 63 Approximately two weeks later,how- ever,Foster wrote, I"have just returned from a good prayer meeting...nine or ten manifest a good religious interest...I [also] see great progress in many of my scholars,and the vicious seem to be becoming tractable. Some of the most trouble- some are now seeking Christ."c'}By February 11, 1866, Foster reported that the prayer meetings had become so full that many had to be turned away. Foster attributed this religious awakening to a" deep and widely spread interest"with a number...seeking to find the Savion"As of March 5, 1866,Foster wrote that the religious interest yet continues, and there is best evidence of genuine heart work."65 Finally,on June 18, 1866, Foster declared that A" deep,calm, wide- spread interest still pervades the hearts of the young...and has hardly flagged at 3,66 all since its first awakening nearly six months ago.

Ithough impressive in its duration, Martinsburg's widespread and sustained religious awakening was not unique. In January 1866, the Tbe Christian Advocate Methodist newspaper reported the presence of several revivals of religion in the Virginia Methodist Churches. According to the newspaper's account, the Norfolk district, an AMA mission station since 1862, had experiencednearly "' five hundred conversions' within the last three

nionths."(17 In fact, in its Twentieth Annual Report the AMA wrote, The" reli-

g10 us history of the year among the colored people of Eastern Virginia is marked '68 by a great revival. That same year,the Berea Mission in Kentucky reported having to raise money for a new church as its "place of holding meetings has become too strait"since its Sunday school membership had grown by a factor of four.69 Not to be outdone, Reverend Gabriel Burdett of Camp Nelson, Ken- tucky,described the following year how his flock experienced a great religious interest with over sixty new church members being added in one summer.70 Another sign of great religious change within the African American commu- nity in the South after the Civil War lay in the fact that men,not just women as before the war,converted in large numbers. Indeed, religious revivals had be- come common among both white men and black men in both the Union and Confederate armies.7' Scholars estimate that between 100,000 to 200,000 Union soldiers converted during these revivals and countless others participated in the associated services.72 But the unique experiences of African American men in the war made them especially receptive to these periodic revivals. Black soldiers serving with William Tecumseh Sherman, for example, marked the occasion of Charleston's surrender with enthusiastic camp meeting revivals.73 As previously mentioned,Union soldier Zenas T.Haines recalled hearing of large numbers of

38 OHI O VALLEY HISTORY African American soldiers who sought conversion while camped in New Bern,

North Carolina.74 Likewise, Thomas Wentworth Higginson's account of army life during the Civil War describes large prayer meetings that attracted both the" warlike and the pious."75 So many of the black soldiers in Higginson's camp began attend to prayer meetings that at least one Christian freedman complained of this new development. Higginson wrote that Old Jim Cushman used" to vex his righteous soul over the admission of the un- regenerate to prayer-meetings,and went off once shaking his head and muttering,Too ' much goat shout wid de sheep."'76 Apparently,the wave of

African Americans seeking to convert during the 1-A**F.+--Ir-1 -- Civil War was too much,too for Cushman soon r= - 1 toChristianaccept.core'Havings smallspentband hisof believers,life as oneCushmanof the * - - - - 4 found the rapid wartime expansion of the fa th ful to be overly convenient in its timing.

issionaries in Mississippi also 1

noted that many African Ameri- 4 can men there converted during the wan One missionary working in an African American regiment noted that A" glorious revival

has begun in connection with our labors here...Fifteen of our soldiers dropped on their knees for prayers,at the moment an opportunity was given."77 At Fortress Monroe, Virginia, an AMA teacher reported,A "great many old men and women are seeking the Savior...Last Sabbath 94 baptized, large proportion of them were a f m '»1 AU»T TEMPLE AFRICANWE. * CHURCH ;m ': 0 78 men. Finally, the Reverend Edward Ball of ¢ or.Broadway and Sixth Street, Cincinnati,0. Feb. 8, 1874. Beaufort, North Carolina,recalled that boys led Tbe African Methodist his mission into a deeply spiritual revival. According to Ball,in 1870 the" most Episcopal Cburch of powerful revival...since the commenced the boys prayer- Cincinnati war... among in our was 79 organized February meeting, and has extended among the colored people. on 4,1824. The image of This change African American religious life momentous in occurred primarily tbe Allen Temple built because the Christian core had set an example in its faithfulness to Christianity in 1 870 is from Proceedings of the and had accurately predicted emancipation. For several generations, unbelieving Semi-Centenary African slaves Celebration of the American witnessed the Christian core's steadfast faith in Chris- African Methodist tianity, despite continuing bondage and, times, brutal religious persecution. at Episcopal Church of And with their religious prophesy fulfilled during the war, what greater testi- Cincinnati, 1874. Cincinnati Historical mony to the power of their God could the Christian offer prospective core con- Society Library, verts? Not surprisingly then most former slaves accepted the Christian core's Cincinnati Museum Center interpretation of God as their agent of deliverance. Accordingly,more African

SUMMER 2003 39 CHRIST UNCHAINED

before Chris- Americans than ever embraced

tianity as their religion in gratitude for all that its God had done for them. There was, how- second for the widespread NARRATIVE ever,a reason con- version of African Americans to Christianity.

OF THE Whites did not control black churches after

the wan As Katherine Dvorak demonstrates, LIFE OF HENRY BIBB. most freedpeople seized the occasion of eman- cipation to create their own separate churches.80 This development received con- CHAPTER I. siderable aid from African American denomi-

nations in the North like the African Meth- Church ( and the Afri- Sketch of my Parentage.-Early separation from my Mother.- odist Episcopal AME) Hard Fare.-First Experiments at running Gway.-E,zrnest longing for Freedom.-Abhorrent nature of Slavery can Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion).As noted by historian William Mont- I was born May 1815, of a slave mother, in The bond of and experience Shelby County, Kentucky, and was claimed as gomery, " race the property of David White J:sq. Ite came in- united the [AME and AME Zion] missionar- to possessioii of my mother long before I was ies with the freedmen in ways that whites born. I was brought up iII the Counties of Shel- this by. Ilenry, Oldham, and Trimble. Or, more cor- could never be."81 Beginning in 1862, rectly speaking, in the above counties, I saibly may unique bond allowed the two denominations I logged for where I should have say. was./ up ; from contraband received moral. mental, and religious instruction, to spread their ministry I received stripes without number, the object of camps in the eastern states all the way to Texas which was to degrade and keep me in subordina. in four years.82 By 1 871, most African Ameri- tion. I cm ti'i.ily say, that I drank deeply of the black drag- Christians worshipped in majority 4. m Utter cup of'suffering and woe. I have been can churches led by black ministers.83

04.'

aving deserted antebellum biracial churches, freedpeople celebrated H unlike Title page from a liberating theology quite Narrative of the Life their former of social control that Henry Bibb of Kentucky and Adventures of masters' message thousands infidelity."84 Gone the church' Henry Bibb, a described as having driven" into too was s Kentucky slave endorsement of slavery divine institution.85 Understandably,this new em- narrative. Tbe Filson as a Historical Society phasis increased the attractiveness of the faith for African Americans.86 Daniel and denomina- Stowell argues that as black" members left the biracial churches tions behind, southern black Protestantism experienced a general revival. The freedom and hope born of emancipation led many freedpeople into the newly forming black churches."87 Joe Gray Taylor seconds Stowell's analysis by noting the Negro" church finished the Christian evangelism which had begun during slavery times....The mushrooming growth of black churches in the last third of the nineteenth century is evidence enough of their successful missionary en- deavon"88 In short,the separation of white and black churches provided African Americans with moral and institutional control over a traditionally powerful Afri- symbolic presence in the South. Thus, the church became the center of the

40 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY can American community because whites could not destroy or deny legitimacy to a societal institution that they themselves endorsed. In this way,African Ameri- cans effectively turned the old white-sanctioned institution focused on social con- trol into a vehicle for self-protection and social change.89

final reason for the widespread conversion of African Americans

more effectively practice their Christian faith. Beginning in the contra- band duringuntoldthe CivilthousandsWar of freedpeoplelay the factlearnedthat freedomread enabledresultthemof the camps, era in to as a to war,mostly with the aid of Christian missionaries who combined literacy train- ing with religious instruction. For example, the AMA openly acknowledged that

In the prosecution of its work among the Freedmen...it commissions no teach- ers that are not members of some evangelical church, and in all its work endeav- ors to win men to Christ."90 This approach yielded classes, for example,like that taught by G. W. Carruthers in a Corinth, Mississippi, contraband camp. Carruthers opened his class by having the class read scripture in" concert"and then he instructed his students to repeat the text aloud individually. After Carruthers commented on the text that had been read,he prayed aloud and then asked the class recite the Lord' s Prayer in unison. Finally,the class sang hymns before breaking into smaller groups for academic instruction.91 Not only did this instruction bring many African Americans to accept Christianity,but it pre- pared them to take the faith back into their communities. Armed with literacy,a greater understanding of Christianity,and in many cases their own copy of the Bible, African American Christians in the postbellum era became a formidable force for conversion:2

The results of these developments could be staggering. According to historian Mechal Sobel, approximately 14.3%of the antebellum African American popu- lation, North and South, belonged to a Christian church:But· by the late nine- teenth century,32.5%or 2.7 million out of an African American population of 8.3 million were church members.94 African American church membership more than doubled within roughly thirty years. While some of this growth reflects the merging of the slaves' invisible institution with formal, public churches, much of it can be attributed to postbellum conversions:·i In only its second year of exist- ence,for example,a Tennessee association of freedpeople's churches gained nearly than seven times more converts an association that before the Civil War had supported Southern Baptist missionaries. In 1860, the Southern Baptist Domes- tic and Indian Mission Board reported that it served 114 churches and baptized 215 African Americans for that year.96 In contrast,the General Missionary Bap- tist Association of Tennessee, composed of African American churches,reported in 1869 that it represented 152 churches and baptized 1,456 new members the previous year.97 And this was despite the fact that the General Missionary Bap- tist Association of Tennessee represented only 25 %more churches than the South- ern Baptist missionaries.

SUMMER 2003 41 CHRIST UNCHAINED

T the growth of African American church membership throughout the South.his postbellumIn Georgia,successfor example,in convertingbetweenAfrican1860Americansand 1877 thewouldnumberfuel of black Methodists more than doubled (30,912 to 75,803) and that of black Baptists more than tripled (26,192 to 91,868).98 The Reverend Henry M. Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church described 1866 as a year of revivals in Georgia during which,in just a two month period, Turner and his subordinates received 11,000 new members into the AME Church. Turner, as well as other AME missionaries working in the South,reported that people" who were formerly thought immovable had been brought into the church and 99 powerfully converted.1, Likewise,in 1870 the Louisiana Baptist Conven-

tion reported that the" increase among the colored people has been remark- able. At the close of the war their membership did not exceed 3,000 now 100 Between their churches are scattered everywhere throughout the state... 1865 and 1871 the number of African American Baptists in Louisiana grew from approximately 3,000 to 30,800, leading the state's Baptist Convention 101 to declare this growth unparalleled" in the history of religious movements. The First and Fourth African Baptist Churches of New Orleans alone bap- tized nearly 3,000 new members between 1866 and 1870.102 Similarly,Jack- sonville Florida's Bethel Baptist In- stitutional Church f grew to approxi- mately 100 members during its

twenty-seven years of existence be- fore emancipation. In contrast, the church' membership swelled · » -- s to 1,200 during the twenty-five years after the coming of freedom:03 A . , - * --.,.- survey of South Carolina African American Baptist churches founded during the 1860s demonstrates a similar pattern of membership 1' « «',1, »» ' '«VIfy growth particularly through the »,] » »» , 3,6 4 --9 baptism of new converts. See( Table 1.) Total membership for these

African American churches grew from 4,789 to 9,128 between the years 1867 to 1877,an in- congregation gathering for of ninety A total of 4,626 baptisms converts baptismal service, crease over per cent. or new a 104 location unknown. The accounted for the bulk of this growth. Clearly, conversions among Filson Historical Society church freedpeople were the leading factor in postbellum African American growth.

Edward Wheeler and James Washington both argue that freedom was the" central theme in the history of the black Baptist movement."105 This study agrees but would broaden the interpretation to include the entire African Ameri- Hicks who has can transition to Christianity,as does historian William ar-

42 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY African gued that once freedom" re- TABLE 1. South Carolina American Baptist moved the persecutions and Church Growth 1867-77.

oppressions,new zeal for the POST OFFICE faith sprang up and the once MEMBERSHIP CHURCH smothered flame burst forth NAME OR CITY YEARS BAPTISMS GROWTH

and influence spread...06 its Morris St. Charleston 1867-1877 1225 1000-2216 So central freedom was to Calvary Charleston 1867-1877 725 761-1364 Christianity that in listing his Tabernacle Beaufort 1868-1877 614 941-1475 Lady' Island Beaufort 1867-1877 438 400-789 reasons for gratitude to God, s Edisto Edisto 1867-1877 404 1000-845 the Reverend Barney Stone of Trinity Florence 1867-1877 275 50-752 Kentucky specifically men- Zion Allendale 1869-1877 235 200-367 tioned his deliverance from Salem Charleston 1868-1876 165 105-322

slavery before he did salva- Graham' 1868- Honey Ford s Turnout 1876 174 118-250 107 Another slave Non. even Miller Swamp Allendale 1869-1876 136 80-272

1869-1876 123 100-301 rejected the Christian prom- Mt. Calvary Buford's Bridge Wilson' Creek Storeville 1868-1877 ise of salvation if he could not s 112 34-175 be free this life the in or next.

According the of Jobn Allen Middletoit, to narrative Directory and Pre-1900 Historical Survey of South Carolina's Black Columbia,South Carolina: Middleton Beverly Uncle Silas, Baptists J. A. and Associates,1992), Jones, an 2,11, 11,14,32,34,53,63,72,73,78,80,136. elderly Virginia slave inter-

rupted a church service to ask the minister Is" us slaves gonna be free in Heaven?"When the minister at- tempted to avoid the question by telling Uncle Silas that Jesus gave all Chris- tians eternal salvation,the old slave responded Gonna" give us freedom long' wid salvation?"Uncle Silas reportedly remained standing throughout the

service in expectation of an answer that did not come. Uncle Silas never attended church again.108

Still, within the dark night of bondage, a flame of religious hope lavesnurturedin antebellumby a core ofAmericaAfrican livedAmericanin a worldChristiansenvelopedofferedbythedarkness.promise of light and guidance for those who were attracted to its glow. This flame burned steadily despite the winds of oppression that often caused it to flicker but never extinguished it. Despite its many attractive properties, however, this Christian flame proved too distant to draw all to its warmth while others, wary of its source,stayed far away for fear of being burned. After emancipa- tion, no longer buffeted by the storms of slavery,the flame burned brighter than ever,attracting many to its light in a wave of conversions unprecedented in the history of African Americans. Freedom also allowed those who had

long benefited from the flame-the Christian core-to lead others to its heal- ing warmth and form independent churches that served the needs of African

Americans first and foremost. In this way,Christianity emerged from slavery and the Civil War to become the dominant faith among African Americans. ®

SUMMER 2003 43 CHRIST UNCHAINED

1. George Rawick, Tbe Anierican Slave: A Ct)™posite 13. Report" of Mr. S. G. Wright,Van Buren Camp, Louisiana, Autobiograpby (Westport, C]onn.,Greenwood Publishing, January 1864/'Eighteenth Annual Report of tbe American 1972- vol.), 17,series 2, Florida, 142. Clayborn( antlin,) (: Missionary Association New York: Americati Missionary Association, 1864),20. 2. C:harles Joytier,Believer "- I Know':The Emergence of African-American hristianity."('. in African-A,nerican 14. 1 Corinthians 12: 12-13, New Internatioiial Versic)11·,1 Christianity:Essays in History,Paul E. Johnson,ed. Timothy 4: 4, New International Version.Luke 12: 24, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),37. New International Version; Mathew 10: 29-30,New International Version. 3. In Alnerican Slavery,Peter Kolchin suggested that the Hebitws reaction to Phillips and Elkins led historians to overstate 15. 2 Corinthians 5: 10, New international Version·, 9: evidence for the slaves'" resiliency and autonoiny"and 17-18,New international Versioli: Romans 13: 10-12, New subsequently he pointed to the ticed for nioditications"" iii International Version. the of slave life. Kolchin. Slavery, interpretation American 16. Romans 3: 23-26, New International Ve/·sion;John 3: 16, 5: 16/ 9-1 877( New York: Hill and Watig, 1993),137-38. 14 New International Version. Religion, Short Christian- 4. Daitiel L. Fountain,Long " on on 17. Romans 5: 1-3, New International Version;Acts 17: 31, Slave Religion Ph. diss.,University of ity: 1830-1870," D. Netu International Version;2 7imothy 4: 1, New Interna- Kolchin, Anierican Slavery, Mississippi, 1999, 44, Itter tional Version,John 16: 20,Netu International Version; 146. Sce also Michael A. omez,(; Excbanging Our ountry(: Isaiah 42: 1, Neiu International Versioll.Romans 13: 17, Marks: flie Transforniati(111f (,Africall identities iii tbe Netu International Version; Matthew 11: 28-30, New Ic,lonial aitd Antebelluni South Chapel Hill: University Inteniational Version. Press of North Carolina, 1998).260;John ('..Willis, From" 18. Albert J. Raboteau,African- " Americans, Exodus, and the the Dictates of ]ride to the Paths of Righteousness: Slave Ainerican Israel,"in African Anierican Cbristianity:Essays Hoi, or aiid Christianity iii Antebellum Virginia,"in 'IDe History, Paul E. Johiison,ed. (Berkeley: University of Edge f<,tbe South,Edward Ayers aiid .]ohn C. Willis,eds. in California Press, 1994),13; See also Katherine L. Dvorak, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991 ),37-55, After Apocalypse, Moses,"in MastersSlaves * in tbe Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture:Natiojialist Theory atid tbe of the 1.ord:Race and Religion in tbe American Foundations of Black Anierica (New York: Oxford House South, 1740-1870, John Boles,ed. (Lexington: University University Press, 1987);William ourtland(: Johnson,A " Press of Kentucky,1988),175;Mechal Sobel, Trabelin'On: Delusive Clothii, g: Christiaii Conversion in the Antebelluni Tbe Slave JouTney to an Afro-Baptist Faith Princeton: ( Slave Comillunity,"Tbe O!] 1717.11 of Negro History 81 Press, 1979),125; Ilmothy' Smith. 1997):295-311. Princeton University Religion and Ethnicity in America, American 1-list(,rical 5. Fountain, "]. Religion, Short Christianity,"90. ong on on Review 83 (1978):1182; Eugeneenovese, (; Rolljordan 6. Ibid..55-89 R(,11:The World tbe Slaves Made New York: Pantheon, 1974),253-54. 7. Elkton Baptist Church Minutes, Elkton, Kentucky 1825- 1909, Southern Baptist Historical 1.ibrary aiid Archives, 19. James Williams,Narrative of/ames Williants, an Anierican Nashville. unnessee. Slave:Who Was for Several Years a Driver 0,1 a Cotton Plantation ill Alabama New York: American Anti-Slavery 8. Rawick, Tbi' Americait Slave, vol. 16, series 2, Kansas et al, Society,1838),73-74. 116. (William Williams) Sce also ibid,,vc,1. 8, series 2, Arkansas Pt. 1 &2, 282. (George Brown):Ronnie W. 20. Rawick,The American Slave, vol. 6, series 1. Alabama & Clayton, Mother Wit. The EX-Slave Narriatites of tbe Indiana,416. Mingo( White)

Louisiana Writers' Project (New York: Peter [. 1990), American Slave. atig, 21. Rawick, Tbe vol. 5, supp. series 1, Indiana 44, 84. (Maizda Jooper,( Ccceil George) Ohio,48 (Robert heatum).(: See also, ibid.,vol. 6, series 9. Rawick, 7'be American Slave, vol. 16, series 2, Katisas, et. 1, Alabama Indiana,& 56 (James Childress);Jan Furman, iii.,38. (Mary james) ed;Slavery in the Clover Bottoms. lobn Mc(:line's Narrative of His Life During Slavery and tbe Civil War 10. John Blassingame, Slave Testimony:two ' Centuries of Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998),48; 1.etters.Speeches, Intervieit,s,atid Autobiographies Baton Extracts Pro, 1. of Teachers and St.tperintendents of Rouge: 1.ouisiana State University Press, 1977).433. 11 etteTs tbe New England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Thomas 11. H. Jones,Tbe Experience of Thomas H. Jones. Fourth Series (Boston: David Clapp, 1864),8. Who Was a Slave for Forty-7'bree Years (Bostoii: Bazin and 22. Rawick,7'ibe Ainerican Slave,vol. 3, series 1, South Chandler,1862),25. See also Rawick, be'/ Antericall Slave, Carolina Pt. 3 &4,260. Victoria( Perry) See also, ibid., vol. 6, supp. series 1, Mississippi Pt. 1, 202. (Autit Dora) vol. 5, supp. series 1, Indiana Ohio,& 142-43 John( 12. John Andrew Jacksoli,be '/ Experience of a Slave in South Moore);ibid.,vol. 15, series 2,North C.:irolina Pt. 2, 130. Carolina 1.ondon: Passmore and Alabaster, 1862),8. See Fannie Moore) also Rawick, Tbe American Slave, vol. 17,series 2, Florida, 23. Rawick Tbe American Slave, vol. 12, series 2, Georgia Pt. 1 166 harlette((- Martin);Moses Grandy,NaTrative f(>tbe 2,26. (Mary Gladdy) See also ibid.,vol. 17,series 2, Life Of Moses Grandy,Late a Slave in tbe United States of Florida,291 (William Sherinan);ibid.,vol. 7, series 1, Anierica Boston: Oliver Johnson, 1844),35; Rawick,Tbe supp. Mississippi Pt. 2,785. (Dora Franks) Ainerican Slave, vol. 16, series 2, Kansas,et. al.,31 (Rev. Silas.]ackson).Report " of Mr.S. G. Wright, Van Buren 24. Rawick,Tbe American Slave.vol. 2, series 1, South Camp, Louisiatia, january. 1864,"Eighteenth Amiual arolina,Pt. 1 &2,285. (Maria Heywood) Rep{,of tbe American Missionary Association New rt 25. Ibid.,vol. 6. supp series 1, Mississippi Pt. 1. 249. (Ebenezer York: American Missionary Association, 1864),20,Albert Brown) Raboteau.Slave Religicm:1 be Invisible" institution"in tbe 26. Ibid.,vol. 15, series 2, North Carolina Pt. 2, 56. (Channa Antebelltint S(,utb New York : Oxford University Press, 1.ittlejohn) 1978),307-308.

44 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY 27. Ibid.,vol. 6, series 1, Alabama Indiana,& 427. allie((: Virgi nia and the sca is 1.1 ncis of Sout 11 C 11·:.c}lilia shc,rtly after Confederate Williams) See also, ibid.,vc,1. 16, series 2, Kansas, et. al.,49 the Unic,n Army occupied those portions of the Andrew Moss);Raboteau. Slave Religion, 3()8-309. cc):astline in 1861.

28. Rawick, Tbe American Slave, vol. 10,series 2, Arkansas Pt. 50. Il,id.

5 &6, 64. (-Fom Robinson) 51. Ibid.,43. 29. Rawick, Tbe Anteriran Slave, vol. series Alabama & 6. 1, 32. Ibid..53. Indiana, 422. (Mingo White);ibid..vol. 5. supp. series L 53. Ibid. Indiana Ohio,& 49 (Robertheatum); (: Rev. W H. Robinsc) 11, Frit Log Cabit!tc)tbe Pulpit c).1;iftecil Ye,irs iii 54. Ibid.,54. Sce also Atiecdote" and Incidents of a Visit rc, Shiver)'Eati ( laire,(: Wisconsin: James H. lift, 1913),36. Freedmen,-Tbc Freed)}le?i;Rec)rd l October 1865):1. 58. Rawick, TI)e American SI,11' 1. 3. series 1, South c,vi) 35. At least two former slaves who left narratives attributed Carolina It. 3 &4, 45-47 (Reuben Rosbc,rough).Edward their coiiversion ti) the efforts of missinaries sent tc,the L. Pierce, Ihe" Clontrahands at Fortress Monroe,"Athintic Soith Juring or.ifter the 11·(]i] Wan Rev. 1..R. Ferebee. 4. Monthly 8 (November 1861):638. Brief I list<,ry of the S[.it'e l.ife of Rer.L R.Ferebee,and tbe 30. Rawick, The Slat' vol. Al,terical! e. 4, series l. Texas Pt. 1 & B,itth's c,/1 ife.- aild 1:,lir ,Years of His Ministerial 1.ife 2, 92. (0. W. Green);ibid.,501. 17,series 2. Florida, 142 Raleigh: Edwards, Brciughton Co.,& 1882),10: Claybornantling). (; See alsci, ibid.,vol. 3, series 1, South Blasingame, Slave 72'sti,ito,zy, 610. (Flarry ]arvis) Carolina Pt. 3 R 4, 26()-261 (Victoria 1erry):vol. 15, series 56. Char](,tte Forten. 1."ife on the Sea Islands.'in IL(„1 Black 2, North Clare)lina Pt. 2.428 (1)illy Yellasy).vol. 10.series Te.icliers Ditring tbe Civil War New York: Arno Press, 2, Arkansas lt. 5 &6, 64 (T(, Robins( 1. 18. series 2, m m);vc, 1969).80. See.ilsci. 1·:lizabeth Ware Pearson. ed..1.etters Fisk Narratives, 17 (White l·olks Pet).and Atiecdote" and hwil P<,rt Roy,0 /862-/868 (New Yc,rk: Arno Press, Incidents f . Visit Freedmen."The Freed, Reciml c) 1 to ile,i's 1969).145. October 1865):158. 57. Se[,enteentl)An,111,11 Rep{)rt of tbe Ailieric.in Missicm.in· 31. Octavia Albert, The Hc), f Bo,idage (,Cl),irlcitte Br,ciks ise (, r Ass, i,itio, New York: American ilissionary Association, aild Other Sldves jo· 1 ( New Yi,rk: Oxford University Press, 1863),40-41. 1988),55. (C.harlotte Brc,c,ks) 58. Ibid..47. Sce als(,Ibid.,37-39. Entries fc,r F()rtress 32. Blassingame,Shit, Testinicmy.504. CL. 11. Mills) e Ioni·(,e, Newpot-t News, Portsitiouth. 33. Rawick, Tbe Americ,1/1 Slave, vol. 18, series 2, Fisk 59. F.ighteentl)Annt{,11 Report of the Anierica,1 Missionary Narratives, 159. (All Xly Bc, Were Nigger Traders) sses Associ,ition (New ork: American Missionary Assc,ciation, 1864),14. 34. Ibid.,vol. 7, Sllpp. series 1. Nlississippi Pt. 2, 671. (Xiollie Ed moiids) 6().Ibid..12, 21. 22. 1:cir evidence of frequent conversions and 35. Ibid.,vol. 5, supp. series 1. hidiana Ohic;.& 352. (Charles revivals amoiig Afric.in Americans.see also ibid.,42-43. ireen) See entries for South arolina,(: Xlissouri.);Nineteen tb A,1,111,11 Report tbc American Alissionan' Associ,ition 36. Ibid..vol. 16, series 2, Kansas.et. al.,109. (Julia Williams) O/- New Yc,rk: American Alissionary Assc,ciation, 1865).17, 37. Blassingaine,Shit, Testiii1 ity,<, 660-61. CHenry Baker) C 26, 27-28, 33. (See ein·ics for W.ish, iigtcm D.C.,FIc,rida, Rawick, 7bc Slilt' elitiet) 38. Americal! C,vol. 17,series 2, Florida. 16(). K.ins:is &Miss(,uri. Pcirt Hudscm, Mississippi.).Tit' Harriett Iresham)( Amm,1/Rep

44. Grady McWhiney.Warner 0. Moore, Jit, iid. Robert F. 63. Ibid. Pace, eds.,Fear " irdl God and Walk Htim[,ly":171£Agricult, 64. Ibid.,54-55. Journal c,f lanies Mallory,1843-1877 1'uscal()()sa: 65. Ibid.,70. University of Alabama Press, 1997),310. (Entry for August 17, 1862) 66. Ibid.,129.

45. Ibid.,313. (Entry for October 19, 1862) 67. Al." E. burch(: South,"Tbe Cbristia,1 4<. h,ocate. 11 inuary]. 1866: 1 46. Ibid.,391. (Entries for August 26-27, 1868) Tic,entieth Annual of tbe 47. Ibid.,391. (Entry for August 9, 1868) 68. Ret)

SUMMER 2003 45 CHRIST UNCHAINED

Religious New Haven: History of the American People the AMA mission at Fortress Monroe reported,The " Yale University Press,1972),674-78. See also Randall children have allbeen supplied with Testaments,and all the Miller,Harry Stout and Charles Wilson,eds.,Religion and families have nearly 711 been visited and presented with tbe American Civil War New York: Oxford University Bibles."Seventeenth Annual Report of tbe American Press, 1998);Warren B. Armstrong, For Courageous Missionary Association New York: American Missionary Figjbting and Confident Dying Lawrence: University Press Association, 1863),37. of Kansas, 1998);and J. William Jones, Christ tbe in Camp, 93. Sobel,Trabelin' On, 182. or Religion 11} 1.ec's Army Richmond: B.F.Johnson,1888). 94. Raboteau, Slave Religion,209. 72. Shattuck, A Shield and Hiding Place,91,Ah\strom,A Tbe Sacred Religious History of tbe American People,677. 95. Owen, Flame of I.ove,119. Gunnar Myrdal draws the conclusion about same a wave of Africati 73. Shattuck. A Shield and Hiding Place,81, 89. American conversions following the Civil Wan See Gunnar 74. Harris,In tbe Country, 171. Entry for May 12,1863) Myrdal, An American Dilemma:The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,Twentieth Anniversary Edition (New 75. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life iii a Black York: Regintent Boston: Fields,Asgood,Co., & 1870),255. Harper Row,& 1944),860. 76. Ibid.,256. 96. Proceedings of tbe Southern Baptist Convention Eightb Biennial Session Richmond, 1861),57. Copy iii Southern 77. Nineteentb Annual Report of tbe American Missionary Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Association New York: American Missionary Association, Tennessee. 1865),33. 97. Minutes of tbe Second Annual Session of the General 78. Twenty-Firs, Annual Repoit of tbe Ameican Missionary Missionary Baptist Association of Tennessee Memphis: Association New York: American Missionary Association, Post Book and Print Office, 1869), Copy in Southern 1867),27. n.p.. Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, 79. Twenty-Foustb Annual Report of tbe American Missionary rennessee. Association New York: American Missionary Association, 98. wen,() The Sacred Flame of Love,190 Appendix 2); 1870),32. S rowell, Rebuilding Zion,80-83, 90. 80. Katherine L. Dvorak, After" Apocalypse, Moses, lit 99. Walker,A Rock in a Weary Land, 71-72. Masters 6 Slaves in tbe House of the Lord:Race and Religion iii tbe American South,1740-1870,John Boles,ed. 100. Edward Lynn Bouriaque,A " History of the Ouachita during Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988),173-91; Baptist Association the Nineteenth Century,"M.A. thesis, Northwestern Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: Tbe Rehgious State University,1971,64. Reconstruction of tbe South, 1 863-1877 (New York: 101. Glen Lee Greene, House Upon a Rock:About Southern Oxford University Press, 1998),70-71. Baptists in Louisiana Alexandria, Louisiana: Executive 81. William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Board of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, 1973),176. See also,William Hicks, Tree:Tbe African-American Cbitycb iii the South,1 865- History of Louisiana Negro Baptists 1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, and Early American Beginnings from 1 804-1914Laiayette, ( Louisiana: Clenter for Louisiana Studies, 1998),53-55. 1994),71. See also, Clarence E. Walker,A Rock in a Weary Hicks' research found that Louisiana' African American Lasid:Tbe African Methodist Episcopal Cburcb During tbe s from Cit,jl War and Reconstruction CBaton Rouge: Louisiana Baptists grew 5,000 in 1867 to 125,000 by 1902. State University Press, 1982),80. 102. Rev. W.E. Paxton, A History of tbe Baptists of Louisiana 82. Ibid.,59-71. from tbe Earliest Times to the Present (St. Louis: C. R. Barns Publishing Co.,1888),137. 83. Dvorak,After " Apocalypse,Moses,"190. 103. Bethel Baptist Institutional Church,Souvenir Centennial 84. Henry Bibb,' Narrative of tbe Life and Adventures of Henry Celebration Betbe[Baptist Institutional Cburch,Golden Bibb.an American Slave New York: Published by the lubilee Jacksonville,Florida, 1938),5. Author,1850),24. 1104. Edisto's membership dropped from 1098 ill 1868 to 500 ill 85. C:hristopher H. Owen, The Sacred Flame of Love: 1869. This suggests the church probably split into two Metbodism and Society in Nineteentb-Century Georgia congregations. Still, the church rolls to 786 iii 1870 Athens: The grew University of Georgia Press, 1998),129. and 930 in 1871. 86. Ibid. 105. Edward L. Wheeler,Beyond " One Man: A General Survey 87. Stowe]1, Rebuilding Zion,90. of Black Baptist Church History,"Review and Expositor 70 1973):309-19;James Melvin Washington, Frustrated 88. Jc,e Gray Taylor,L<,uisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 Fellowship:Tbe Black for Baton Rouge: I.ouisiatia State University Press),453. Baptist Quest Social Poluer Macon: Mercer University Press, 1986),xi;W.E.B. DuBois 89. Ibid.,129; W.E.B. DuBois, Tbe Sc,wls of Black Folk also emphasizes the importance of freedoin for faith in The Greenwich,CT: Fawcett Publications,Inc.,1962),142-44; Souts of Black Folk,18. Ahlstroin,A Religious History of tbe American People,709. 106. Hicks, History of Louisiana Negro Baptists and Early 90. Ninetcentb Anitwal Report of tbe AmeTicaM Missionary American Beginnings ftom 1804-1914,53-54. Association C New York: American Missionary Association, American 1865),13. 107. Rawick,The Slave,vol. 6, series 1, Alabama & Indiana, 188. (Barney Stone) In listing his reasons for 91. Letter" from Rev.G. W.Carruthers Rev.S. S. Jocelyn, to becoming a preacher,Stone acknowledged his gratefulness" June 13, 1663,"American Missionary Association to God for deliverance and salvation. Maimscripts froni tbe Amistad Collection Microfilm), my my Charles Perdue, al.,eds.,Weevils in the Wheat: Mississippi Roll 1,# Manuscript #71552. See also Letter" 108. L. Jr.,et Inteiviews witb Virginia Ex-Slaves Charlottesville: from Rev. Ec[.R. Pierce to Rev. S. S. Jocelyn, April 24, 1863,"Manuscript 71545.# University of Virginia Press, 1976),184-85. (Mr. Beverly Jones) 92. Christian aid societies like the AMA attempted to provide all families with copies of the Bible. For example, in 1863

46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Review Essay

Liberty on the Border: A Civil War Exhibit to a Union army camp in search of freedom and lift Cincinnati Museum Center, the panel for this choice,they learn that the chances

April 5 -September 1, 2003 are great that their master wi]1 find them, brilig them back,and punish them. If they decide to stay where This they are, they learn that they will continue iii slav- andoutstandingchallenges visitorsexhibit toenlightens,contemplateentertains,liberty ery indefinitely. Another display asks what would do if she he white resident Ohio and what it meant before and during the American c,ne or were a in Civil War in the border of Ohio and western states and a fugitive slave family appeared at their door Kentucky. From the moment askiiig the meinbers of the visitors enter, they are sur- household to participate in the rounded by the sights and sounds Underground Railroad and pro- of history brought to life. Music tect them? If viewers decide to comtemporary to the time plays help, they learn that they might in the background and applies be arrested for violating federal appropriately to the subject un- law,and if they decide not to as- der consideration. In the sol- sist the fugitives, they will have live with their consciences. diers' camp, for example, one to The exhibit three hears the singing of songs such is in sec- as Tenting" on the Old Camp tions, and the first, Liberty" De- Ground."This reviewer visited nied,"challenges visitors to con- the exhibit on a Tuesday after- sider the conflicting definitions noon, and was impressed with of liberty in the antebellum pe- the reaction of the other visitors riod. Immediately slavery con- who obviously enjoyed experi- fronts them-an enlarged pho- encing history up-" close. Some tograph shows slaves picking were standing before artist cotton under the watchful eye of Cincinnatian William Haines Lytle Rudolf Tschudi' large painting a mounted white overseen An s 1826-1863) led tbe loth Obio of Appomattox when a man told Volunteer 1,!fantry Regimelit. interactive console of slave songs Wounded twice in battle Carnifex his son, Your" grandmother, at features a spiritual, ring-shout, Ferry and tben Perryville,Lytle died mother,and I stood in that parlor and boatman' room at tbe Battle of Cbickamauga on song, s in Virginia. This is very historic." September 10,1863. Pbc,tograpb dance,and as viewers move on, and Print Collection,Cincinnati One considers the dilemma of Museum Center the melancholy music hangs in slavery from several perspectives. the background. Graphic pan- For example, an interactive dis- els, photos, documents, and ar- play asks what the viewer would do if he or she tifacts show how Henry Clay walked the" tight- were a slave in Union-occupied Kentucky in 1862? rope of compromise and advocated gradual eman- Two choices emerge: If viewers decide to run away cipation and colonization. A minority of Kentuck-

SUMMER 2003 47 REVIEW ESSAY

ians, such as John G. Fee, demanded immediate focus the disagreement of the Ohio Valley public emancipation and Lincoln's father,Thomas, voted on the slave issue. Color art from the period illus- with his feet by moving out of Kentucky. trates how Garner,a fugitive slave from northern Although Ohio was free of slavery,white resi- Kentucky, when surrounded by slave catchers in dents denied African liberty Americans by law, Cincinnati, murdered her two-year-old daughter social pressure, and mocking entertainment. The rather than have the child returned to slavery. Black Laws c,f Ohio discriminated racially with re- Proslavery people argued that the crime simply il- strictions such as the requirement that a black fam- lustrated the brutality and in feriority of black ily had they free to prc,ve were before settling in the people. Antislavery spokespersons said that a state. Two handbills invited mother killing her child rather people minstrel shows in to f than have her live in slavery il- which white performers in lustrated how horrible slavery t black-face makeup degraded really was. black Americans with jokes, flks..1 Cincinnati and northern I and dances songs, that wreaked Kentucky had two great mili- social daniage that enormous tary alarms during the war and lasted for generations."On the f 1./* 4 jL,*4 4.-,the exhibit's second part, other hand, Levi Coffin and 1%4* 4-* "** : I. »>+7-: Liberty's Trial,"includes thers conducted for the Under- c, Ii,li**firrl.ji , both.«''First,residents went into ground Railroad, and C:incin- 4 nati became hotbed of aboli- 4 »»ji>© ' &- a aarmypanicinvadedwhen theKentuckyConfederatein tionism that gave the nation 1862 and General Henry Heth Harriet Beecher Stowe. There 4 , marched I. on Fort Mitchell with is handbill advertising the thousand a 8.25*K*/6 -9 six veteran troops. play based on Uncle Tom's Union General Lew Wallace Cabin, display of Stowe' 1ERS,14.,*3*'.1.» declared martial law, closed a s 1§ s A writing set that she may have businesses, ordered all males used in writing the novel, and erected The men of tbe toth Obic, into service, a pontoon Infantly a copy of the first edition of the Vc)[unteer Regintent gave bridge to Covington, and tbis jeweled Maltese Cross tc, book. strengthened the defenses in eneral William Haines l,ytle as a The infamous abc,litionist tc,ken of their bigb regard n(, northern Kentucky from Fort 868. collectic, Aliglist 9, 1 Private n John Brown resorted to vio- Thomas to I.udlow. Cincinnati lence in the 1850s, and the ex- police, acting as provost mar- hibit includes,for the first time in this region,John shals, arrested about six hundred black men on the Brown,Jr.'s collection of weapons on loan from the city's streets and at work in its shops and hotels. Ohio Hist(,rical Society. Brown's Sharps carbine, They marched them at bayonet point to a hog pen CoIt Navy Revolver with shoulder stock,and,stand- on Plum Street and forced them over the river to ing against the wall,Brown's pike,offer visitors the work on the fortifications without even allowing chilling realization that in the 1859 Harper's Ferry, them to say goodbye to their families or to grab a Virginia, revolt,John Brown, Sn, planned to arm hat and coat. slaves throughout the South with this crude" but This might have gone down as one more e xample effective close-quarter weapon."The graphic panel, of liberty denied, but someone told Wallace about The Case of Margaret Ciarner,"brings into sharp the unauthorized impressments and the federal com-

48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY mander ordered Cincinnati Judge William Dickson tures Cincinnati's most prominent military hero, take charge and the along military General William Lytle. Like Lytle' to organize men Haines Morgan, s lines. Dickson brought the men back home, gave men greatly admired their coninander, and like them with families, some time their and organized Morgan (who was from Lexington) he was killed them into the Black" Brigade."With dignity,they in the war and honored by his hometown with the returned to the labor and contributed meaningfully largest funeral up to that time. Born in Cincinnati, the successful Union defense. Heth' division to s Lytle was a lawyer and Democratic state represen- withdrew without attacking and the Black Brigade tative before the war. He wrote poetry,and schoc,1- dismissed, was having contributed to one of the best boys throughout the nation meniorized his poem, kind of Union victories,that with little bloodshed. Antony and Cleopatra."Lytle organized the 10th

Purportedly,the Black Brigade was one of the first Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the exhibit displays of African organized uses Americans for military for the first time the regiment's flag,made by women purposes in the war, and the men were so proud in Cincinnati. When it was presented to Lytle, he Peter Clark write book about that they asked to a said,Sir, " tell the ladies that there is not a man in Tbe these ranks who will shed his heart' blood them. The exhibit includes a copy of Clark's not s like Black Brigade of Cincinnati and the engraved sword water beneath these colors." that the men gave with gratitude to Dickson. The most striking artifact in the exhibit is the The region's second crisis arrived with Confed- gold, jeweled Maltese Cross that the men of the erate John Hunt Morgan's crossing of the Ohic, 10th Ohio gave to Lytle. Epitomizing courage,he River and his subsequent raid through Indiana and was wounded in the leg at Carnifex Ferry,Virginia, Ohio. closed and local authorities Businesses de- and in the head at Perryville, Kentucky. At clared martial law in Louisville, Indianapolis,Cin- Chickamauga, Georgia,on the Union right,his bri- cinnati,Covington,and Newport. The Union Navy gade came under attack by advancing enemy forces closed traffic on the Ohio River and ordered the in overwhelming numbers. He declared,Atl " right, of destruction all flatboats, skiffs, and scows to men, we can die but once. This is the time and prevent Morgan's escape. Federal troops captured place. 1-et us charge. His men repulsed the Con- most of Morgan's men at Buffington Island, fol- federates momentarily but Lytle,mortally wounded, ordered lowing Ohio's only Civil War battle. Morgan him- a retreat. The exhibit includes his self was captured in northern Ohio and imprisoned frockcoat,shako hat, boots,sword, and other per- in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. The sonal items. exhibit includes,also on display for the first time in Part III, titled Liberty'" s Legacy, is unique in this region,on loan from the Museum of the Con- that it is the first Civil War exhibit to incorporate federacy,Morgan's saddle,frockcoat,kepi,officer's the theme of David W. Blight's path-breaking 2001 belt, ivory-handled Colt revolvers, and the writing book,Race and Reunion: Tbe Civil War in Ameri- desk he used in prison. From The Filson Historical can Memory. Blight states that a national memory Society,the exhibit displays the autograph book of of the war,one that reunited the once-divided sec- one of Morgan's officers. On the back wall of the tions around a mythology of shared white sacrifice display hangs the guidon of the federal 9th Ken- and valor,was achieved only through white Ameri- tucky Cavalry and, among the battle honors, it cans' collective erasure from that memory of Afri- proudly proclaims, defeated" MORGAN at can American participation in the war and the Buffington...Captured HIM July 26th, 1863." nation's acceptance of southern-style racial segre- Morgan was indeed a famous Kentucky Confed- gation as a whole. Thus, in a sense, Americans' sectional reconciliation could have occurred had erate hero,and on the Union side, the exhibit fea- not

SUMMER2003 49 REVIEW ESSAY

33 not the entire nation jumped" Jim Crow. In fact, received invitations to the Gettysburg reut»lion and the museum staff consulted with Blight in planning black editors were horrified and dismayed that par- the exhibit and he visited it on May 8,2003,when ticipants gave no attention to the fact that Jim Crow he was in Cincinnati to speak in the Seminar on the segregation deprived African Americans of the City lecture series. During the introduction to his promise of liberty. The narrator of the video points talk, he recommended the exhibit as the most out- out that in 1913, white mobs across the country standing he had ever seen in its depiction of the Iynched fifty-one black individuals. politics of Civil War memory in postwar America. Indeed,Liberty' " s Legacy forces visitors to con- He stated that Liberty on tbe Border proves espe- front the reality that racism contitiued after the war. The section includes Ku Klux Klan robe and cially strong in its relating of local events to na- a a bright orange minstrel show costume with a box of black face makeup. One of the features of this section is the video

kiosk with segments from Tbe Birtb of a Nation (1 915),Gone With tbe Wind and Glory ( 3 1939),Roots (1977), 1989). t Very effective commentary calls attention to the stereotypes and racist attitudes in 4 the first two movies and celebrates the

more realistic portrayals in the last two, portrayals that show African Americans

as intelligent, courageous, and strong. If any criticism can be offered of this exhibit section's sweeping and powerful of national culture, it is that Civil War veterans from the Banning Post f(}tbe assessment Grand Army c,f tbe Repul,lic paraded in the local story gives way to a more natic,nal inter- Madisonville,Obio in 1919. Photograph and of the Civil War' racial legacy. Its inter- Prilit Collection. Cincili,lati Muselinl Center pretation s pretation of national reunion does not account for tional hist(,ry. All" history,like politics, is local," the shift of regional politics and identity between Blight remarked in praise. South and North, revealed clearly by the Ohio River

The Blue Gray,& a brief,poignant video, pre- as border and by those who lived on either side of sents film clips of the great blue-gray reunion at it. Kentuckians and Ohioans, despite their shared Gettysburg, July 1-4, 1913, on the fiftieth anniver- racist ideology,clearly did not consider themselves If anything,the Civil sary of the battle. About 53,000 white veter.ins of the same ilk after the wan from both sides attended,and their average age was War shaped this region in terms of regional iden- seventy-fcin„ Newspapers hailed the event as the tity, politics, and experience beyond any that had Great Peace Jubilee,"and the climax was a reen- existed previously,a phenomenon on which the ex- actment of Pickett's Charge, with the shaking of hibit fails to carry through. Despite this shortcom- tbe Border history close and hands across the stone wall at the Bloody Angle. ing, 1.iberty on is up- of should As with 111()st blue-gray reunions,speakers ignored in-depth and,to take full advantage it.one allow least three hours. the fact that slavery caused the war,proclaimed that at James Ramage neither side was wrong,and swept aside the goal of Northern Ke}ltlicky University equality fc,r African Americans. No black veterans

5() OH10 VALLEY HISTORY Review Essay

The Zoar Community: A Review of an a vivid reminder of this important phase of Ohio Historical Site freedom's ferment in American social history. Es- tablished by German religious refugees in 1817, the

In the early nineteenth-century, many Americans community at Zoar was based on the sharing of believed confidently that they could create heaven labor and wealth. The Zoarites, originally Protes- originated on earth. Inspired by the democratic promise of tant dissenters known as Separatists," the Revolution and the perfectionist faith of evan- in the Lutheran State Church of Germany. Similar of the eighteenth gelical religion,reformers created a number of uto- to other German pietistic sects cen- pian communities that dotted the landscape of the tury, these Separatists renounced worldly posses- United States. At Brook Farm in Massachusetts, sions, emphasized a direct relationship with God, Nathaniel Hawthorne and other Transcendentalist and believed that the church should be simple und writers joined George Ripley in an experiment combining literary and manual labon At Oneida in up- state New York, John Humphrey Noyes and his followers engaged in a radical communitarian experi- what termed ment based on was complex marriages."A good number of utopian communities were religious in nature. As early as 1732, German Dunkers led by Conrad Beissel established the

R Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania. Another German pietist, George Rapp, founded the Harmony So- ciety in western Pennsylvania in 1804. Perhaps the best known Dairy 1841)( among the many religious utopias in America were the Shakers, led by Mother Ann Lee who migrated to America in 1774. By the 1830s,the Shakers had founded close to twenty successful communities. bereft of all ceremony. In Germany,the Separatists One of the most successful religious had been aggressive dissenters. They refused to send communitarian experiments in nineteenth century their children to Lutheran schools and their paci- beliefs shielded them from military The America was Zoar Village in eastern Ohio. Skill- fist service. refugees who established fully preserved today in a charming pastoral set- German religious Zoar ting in Tuscarawas County,Zoar Village stands as were led by Joseph Michael Baumler (later changed

SUMMER2003 51 REVIEW ESSAY

Bimler),who to was born in Germ any in 1778. 21,000 by the state of Ohio. The residents of Zoar Driven by religious persecution and a famine that also profited from their location by selling food, struck their communities in 1816, Bimler and his clothing,and other goods to canal workers. Even followers left Germany for a better life in America. without the canal,Zoar prospered. I.ocal residents produced In October 1817, sympathetic Quakers in Penn- a subsistence for themselves and even cre- sylvania aided the Zoarites by selling them land in ated a surplus that they sold in surrounding toWns. the Tuscarawas Valley Ohio. Bimler River in named The settlement at Zoar included a sewing house,a the new community Zoar,meaning a" sanctuary tailor shop, print shop, pottery, butcher, tannery, and mill. from evil"after the biblical city in which Lot sought saw Over the course of the nineteenth

refuge during the destruction of Sodom. On April century,Zoar grew wealthy. By 1874,the Society 19, 1819, Bjmler established the Society of Sepa- owned about 7,000 acres of land and local resi- ratists of Zoar. Driven by economic necessity,the dents were reputed to be worth more than one mil- lion dollars. several factors families at Zoar pooled their resources and estab- But led to the eventual lished what was essentially a communistic society. demise of the Zoar community. The organization The death of Jo-

held all property and seph Bimler in 1853 wealth, and each denied the Society

member of the Soci- the charismatic lead-

agreed follow ety to ership that had sus- the decisions of the tained it during its

Society's three Trust F st three decades. ees, who each served The Civil War chal- for of three a terin lenged the commu- and who each years ity'S pacifist ideals, could be elected several re- as Zoarite The indefinitely. nen went off to fight for the The Trustees appo nted 218.= Union. supervisors for each building of railroads

industry in the com- in the 1880sbrought of the outside munity and worked more world with a standing arbi- into an other- tration committee of isolated wise com-

five to settle all dis- Zoar Furnace,located in tbe tin sbop munity. And the rise for putes. In return of mass production following the author- in many industries ity of the Trustees,members of the Society received made their small shops obsolete. Finally,in 1898, food,clothing,and shelter. Zoar was officially in- the Zoar Society voted to dissolve. Each member corporated by the Ohio state legislature in 1823. received land,a house,and possessions in the divi- sion of Zoar succeeded in becoming an economically assets. self-sustaining con»munitarian society,aided in part Zoar resembled other utopian communities in by its location on the Ohio-Eric Canal. Zoarites, early nineteenth century America in two crucial in fact, helped to construct the canal by digging ways. The first was an emphasis on labon Histori- believe that Market Revolution that be- seven miles of the trench for which they were paid ans now a

52 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY gan shortly after the War of 1812 transformed the century,workers at Zoar practiced traditional skills American economy from a self-sufficient agrarian and manufactured goods on a small scale. Zoarites order commercial and industrial In this to a one. grew thelt nvn flax and produced their own linen. process, small independent artisans like those in They built wagons that became noted for their qual- Zoar witnessed erosion of their skills and an au- ity and traditional blue paint. Even a Zo.ir furnace tonomy as they became entwined increasingly in a was built to forge locally mined iron. market economy. By the mid-nineteenth century, Zoar also alloved women a more expansive role these artisans had become wage earners, providing than was customarv in nineteenth century America, basis for the much a and, like other uto- vaunted free" labor" or- pian G,inti-tiitittles ot- der the North. the in Yet ten unintentionallf transformation to capi- elevated the status of talism was ambiguous, wort-len. For ex- complex, and contested. f ample,of the original Specifically,Americ ansin signers at Zoar who created this period explored the a "commu- meaning of free labor in nity of goods, ap- a variety of ways that in- proximatelv 66% cluded such utopian were,vomen. Indeed, Robert conimunities as at tiI'lles, W'01»17en cn- Owen's New Harmony stituted roughly two- settlement in Indiana. thirds of the Iiiember-

Zoar proved no different. ship of Zoan Men Labor there became cen- and women possessed tral to the communistic equal political rights, endeavors of that and could com- women hold office munity. Practically ev- in the So- erybody-including chil- ciety. Like the Shak- dren--engaged in pro- ers, the Zoarites first ductive work. Teenage chose celibacy, al- girls worked in the dairy though the Society make cheese and but- to permitted marriage after ter,milking cows tWice a 1830. Mar- day, and they carried riages were con-

Number 835-1 heavy buckets of milk on One House 1( 845) tracted by mutual their heads. Those mem- consent,and children taken from bers of the Society not al- were ready engaged in skilled labor assembled each morn- homes at age three so that their mothers could work. ing at 5:30 a.m. to receive their work orders for the The Zoar Village of today closely approximates day. People usually lived where they worked. For the appearance of the community in the nineteenth example, it is believed that the young girls who century. It remains neatly arranged along rectan- worked in the dairy slept upstairs in that building. gular streets. Many of the original buildings, such Like agrarian communities of the late eighteenth as the dairy,the greenhouse,the bakery,the tin shop,

SUMMER 2003 53 REVIEW ESSAY

and the wagon shop, still stand and are open to tumes. Each tour takes approximately forty-five minutes. Annual include Harvest Festival visitors. The dominant building on the Village site events a is the Number One House, once the home of JO- in August,an Applefest in October,and Christmas seph Bimler. Built in 1835,it is an impressive two- celebrations. Zoar Village is located approximately story home executed in the Georgian style. It has a thirty miles south of Canton and is easily acces- deep and cool cellar used to store food for the en- sible from Interstate 71. For more information,see tire community. Today,the house serves as a mu- the Zoar website at www.zca. org or email TourZoar@wilkshire. seum, explaining the origins, growth, and decline net. of the Zoarites and displaying examples of Zoar furniture and crafts. All the buildings at Zoar house Mitchell Snay faithful of life the are reconstructions in commu- Denison Unit)eysity nity during the nineteenth century. The garden,situated 1 \St'.314 prominently at the center of the village, reflects the reli- gious beliefs of the founders.

It was planted in neat geomet- ric patterns to symbolize the New Jerusalem described in chapter twenty-one of Rev- elation. Twelve paths lead to- ward of thirteen a center trees, representing direct routes to Christ.

Historic Zoar Village is a testimony to the dedication and skills of public historians at the Zoar Community As- sociation, the Historic Zoar Garden Club,and the Ohio Historical Society. Visi- Tin sbop 1825),( reconstructed in 1970 tors are offered two separate tours of the buildings that are led by informative guides in period cos-

54 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Book Reviews

Andrew Obio: Tbe R.L. Cayton. His- American state "vi) ( For Ca>ton,the overarching of People. Columbus· The Ohio tory a theme of Ohio's history 15 the" transformation ofa State University Press, 2002 472 pp radical imperative to do good into a conservative ISBN 0814208991 (cloth),35 $00 desire live well " ( The to vii) lives and work of a multitude of Ohioans exemplify for him a social history ( good evolution W riting a state or a one at any that began with a nascent nineteenth-cen- rate) is a formidable task How does one tury middle-class culture of respectability provide coherent a narrative for an essentially ar- undergirded by a belief in progress and in serving bitrary political entity-the boundaries,population, the public interest From that starting point Ohio- and culture ofwhich blend so Indistinctly with those ans have moved to a more individuallv focused of neighboring states; Many state historians have twentieth-century ethic of material well-being and resolved this conundrum essen- self-fulfillment Cayton's atten-

tially by ignoring it, choosing to tion to these larger themes, how- focus on the relatively well-defined ever,does not prevent him from record of the state's political his- tory or sidling into unabashed Vill V

hagiographies of famous residents THE HISTORY OF A PEOPLE The scene on tlie Kent State Univeisity and their deeds However,Andrew campits at aiound noon on May 4, 1970 National Guardsnien advancing R L Cayton has risen to this un- toward people protesting Ante),can Cambodia enviable challenge by teasing out i 13,».' f*-' " intervention in on Blanket themes and Ohio his- Hill below Taylor Hall Courtesy of meanings in Kent State Univeistty,Kent,Ohio

tribution to the genre for and useful 3 tory a unique con- Ly». n*,< il »*= 45 ':' Cayton,a celebrated historian of the Midwest and Distinguished a 14

f Professor of History at Miami Uni- Miwil'"'» - ,s 4, .,«11 » i=»*st k : versity,organizes his material ina t,«« thematic and chronological style, his chapters (e g.,Improving Ohio,Consid- ering Ohio, Defining Ohio) simulta- neously reflecting both 1 14 hir , 9,; general eras and p 44,' r S underlying motifs Drawing on copious 4 social,economic, political, and literary data from a wealth of primary and sec- ondary sources, he insists that the book above all iS " a narrative driven by the i, $, stories people have told about life in an

SUMMER 2003 55 BOOK REVIEWS

exploring a number of other ideas and experiences, Were all respectable" Protestants"of the late 1800s does undermine the cohesion of the nor it narrative really aware" of the dilemma created by their ad- book as a whole. In this, his volume is far superior vocacy of a public culture that reflected their val- alternatives?" ( to Walter Havighurst's now dated thematic study ues and silenced 215) Statements Obio:A History. like these-as well as several others starting with Despite its many excellent points,this book (like Ohioans felt"or Ohioans" thought"leave the criti- cal reader asking, " he really that?" any) has some shortcomings. There are, for ex- Can say of this slight the of ample,a few factual errors, for example, the mini- None is meant to importance work the field of Ohio history. While it does mum number of acres for purchases under this to Obio and 1ts Congress's 1820 Land Act was 80, not 8 Ip. 16]; not replace George Knepper's classic the dates of Rhodes's and Celeste's terms as gover- People as a comprehensive volume o f the state's his- really do Rather,it nor are misreported Ipp. 385 and 3931; and former tory,it is not meant to so. serves Daytonian Larry Flynt publishes Hustler,not Pent- as an impressive complement to that work,and one that all devotees of the subject read. house p.[ 390]).But these small glitches are not must Kevin Kern enough to detract significantly from the text'S util- University of Akron ity as a reference. In addition, Cayton's laudable desire to let the words of Ohioans tell the story too often gets the better of his own manifest literary linder gifts. As a result, many sections are littered with Gregory Evans Dowd. War Heaven: Pontiac,tbe Indian Nations, fragments of quotations-often as short as one or Johns Hopkins two words-interspersed with similarly fragmented and tbe Britisb Empire. overall effect be distract- links of his own. The can University Press,2002. 384 pp. ISBN: ing, leaving the reader to wish the author had 0801870798 (cloth) 32.$ 00. brought his considerable talent to bear on para- phrasing a bit more. I ndian the assertion of British Other significant limitations in this book arise authorityresistanceover the regionto that is now the Ameri- Midwest has been studied by several historians from Cayton's otherwise welcome thematic ap- can proach. For example, his presentation sometimes recently, but prior to the publication of Gregory Evans Dowd' War Under Heaven,the last schol- precludes a meaningful discussion of aspects that s do not fit"" within his thematic contexts, for ex- arly monograph with a sharp focus on Pontiac to Howard Peckham' Pontiac and tbe In- ample, Ohio's Native American, colonial,and ter- appear was s dian Uprising which published in 1947. Since ritorial heritage. At the same time,Cayton's desire was that discussions of Pontiac' War have to emphasize his major themes sometimes feels time most s forced, resulting in generalizations that seem too presented it as an episode in a larger process occur- broad. The idea of progress"" is a useful theme to ring over decades on a continental scale. Thus in The Middle Ground Richard White begins his be sure, for example,but did the pioneers clearing their land in the early 1800s understand this con- analysis in New France in the seventeenth century of cept,if they thought about it at all,in the same way and proceeds through the end of the War 1812. Eric Hinderaker in Elusive Empires and Dowd him- that industrial-age progressives did? Was it true self his earlier book,A Spirited Resistance, start that nineteenth-century Ohioans never meant for in colonial Pennsylvania,and their art, architecture, songs, and literature to be their stories in earnest in nineteenth War strictly ornamental, but always" in the cause of proceed like White to the century. something larger than aesthetic satisfaction?"76) ( Under Heaven is different, both in focusing on

56 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY events in 1763 and 1764,and in l,idia, xii, Talk C{)10,tel concentrating on a narrower re- ts 1,ig a to Botiquet."Ejigraving liesed gion, though admittedly large on 07 a West pai,iti,ig. Froni one, south of the Great Lakes, W//ian, Slitb,„ An Historical Account of the Expedition against the Ohio north of Ohio River,and east of Indians, in the year MI)CCLXIV: the Mississippi. under the command of Henr, Bouquet, Esq...Philade] 1) Dowd gains much by keeping 1) ia, 1765: Lundcm. 1766).Gitirtesy of Blt)-ton this focus. He convincingly dem- Historical Collection.Detroit Pliblic that Librarr onstrates neither the ex-

change of goods (a preoccupation of White and most other schol- with French ars a Canadian ori-

41?0*113{.Tt:·, INI,1,\N NATION,1 .„- entation) nor the intrusions of CY TH-F BRITISH EMPiR.E land-hungry white settlers (a prominent theme in discussions of colonial Pennsylvania and the history of the Ohio Valley after Daniel Boone) caused the disputes thatt

led to war. In 1763, very few agriculturally minded settlers had come to the region where the war started, and the Indians there were demonstrably 9 > more upset with the British army than they were with any traders. It was the proliferation of forts that angered them. At its heart,Pontiac's War was 4 i a struggle over the future direction of British impe- rial policy,and the Indians' refusal to acquiesce in what they feared would be the imposition of mili-

tary rule. This perspective makes the Indians' ac- tions more comprehensible,and Dowd's close analy- sis of their military strategy aimed- at forcing the defined subordinate status that would evolve,Dowd British to abandon their forts makes- the Indian argues, into their position in the United States as leaders seem less quixotic than they generally ap- domestic dependant nations neither sovereign in pear in historical accounts with a longer time frame. their own right nor fully American."" This shift Dowd makes a significant contribution to Brit- in British and Anglo-American thinking was accom- ish imperial history by drawing attention to the im- panied by slights and insults against the Indians that portance of changing understandings of what it were hard to miss. Dowd can Only guess at the meant to be a British subject in the middle years of Indians' motives for fighting the British, but he the eighteenth century. Increasingly, that meant makes a compelling case that they saw the future more than owing allegiance to the sovereign. Brit- awaiting them under British and Anglo-American ish subjects enjoyed particular rights,rights that few rule. officials ever intended to grant to Indians. Conse- Geoffrey Plank quently,in the years leading up to Pontiac's War University of Cincinnati the British stopped calling Indians subjects of the crown. Instead they granted Indians a less well-

SUMMER 2003 57 BOOK REVIEWS

Catherine M. Rokicky. Creating A Per- formly claim economic successes, such aS the furni- fect World:Religious and Secular Uto- ture, seed, and handicraft enterprises of the Shak- pias in Nineteentb Century Obio. Ath- ers or the Zoar stove and milling businesses. With ens: Ohio University Press,2002. ISBN prudent leadership and the use of mediators who 0821414380 (paper),17.95. $ provided a buffer between these isolated colonies and the world,the Shakers,for instance,lasted well topian over a century. of the societiesfervor ofcompeltheir foundersour attentionand becausepartici- In comparison,the Mormons were driven out of pants. As Catherine M. Rokicky points out, begin- Kirtland, Ohio. Rokicky's analysis of the conten- ning in the 1960's, when dissatisfaction with soci- tion and religious anger in this community,in which ety again peaked in America, historians began to leaders from orthodox religions challenged the Mor- the the re-examine communitarian movements in mon teachings, is the best work In the book. She nineteenth century. They produced serious work carefully traces the scriptural and,eventually,Mor- on religious and secular utopias, founded predomi- mon doctrinal origins of polygamy,demonstrating, nantly in two major periods-the as she does also with Zoar Sepa- that first from 1842 to 1848 re- ratism,that these utopian theolo- the establishment of fifty- gies evolved time. Letters, suited in CREATING over five utopias,and the second from A PERFECT WORLD court records,and original or re- 1894 to 1900 that saw thirty-six vised charters help to show this.

experiments. Rokicky has le e * ** Additional strengths of this more 6 -' -5... pirk\' Y.I gathered the best historical work, 071&.id.**i.* slim work lie in the way Rokicky including biographies of leaders draws connections among 1*'4**„«M,144<49}2 3' 11 reformers,and such as Joseph Smith and recent b d':,1 evangelicals, uto- studies of the charismatic perfec- pians,showing that cross-migra- tionist movement,the Spirit Fruit tion from one group to another characterized the nineteenth Society of Lisbon,Ohio. lillilim,im"'*4".liilill cen- Writing for the Ohio Bicenten- tury,especially in Ohio. For in- 3*515518 .4..'ex. nial Series,Rokicky concentrates : stance, the Quakers financially -**]<*,1**aa., ® U,», assisted the Zoar Separatists, the exclusively on utopias within f, 111{ , f1t93«' ,,]---,»t'flltl«t Campbellite contrib- Ohio,asking, Why" did so many ''Fimij ' '' ' '»: »"aji'38'5,f@-ji*%t ** movement »-' ' uted members people in search of creating a per- many to Mormon- feet world look to Ohio for refuge?"5) ( Her an- ism,and migrants from Owenite communities ended feasts. Rokicky explains the swer and ensuing analysts of the failure of both secu- up at Shaker spirit lar and religious utopias provides the framework importance of both Ohio's river system and national Ohio' role for a readable,clear introduction to s in migration patterns,especially from the Burned Over of York the Reserve, in nineteenth century utopian communities. Rokicky District New into Western reformers. She also spends whole chapters on the Shakers, the Zoar drawing evangelicals and social the role of utopian societies. Separatists, and the Mormons, reserving a single examines women in chapter for smaller,secular societies. She concludes Yet while Rokicky discusses some national and that without dynamic and able leadership, international events and movements, these remain

most much communitarian experiments were doomed, generalized and do not provide as texture as identifies westward lasting less than two years,and some had as few as they perhaps should. She ex- twelve members. Long-lasting utopias could uni- pansion, industrialization, and slavery as imping-

58 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY by noted urban historian Zane L. Miller. ing on utopian movements but discusses them chronological broadly. She doesn't develop, for instance, the Fortin's work is divided into four strong,interactive nature of Owenite societies with parts that focus on immigrant" Catholicism (1821- bureaucratizing Catholicism in the Arch- English reformers or the connections among aboli- 187Os), tionists and utopians. Her focus remains specifi- diocese of Cincinnati (188Os-192Os),modern Ca- cally Ohio and the fertile ground it provided for tholicism in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (192Os- experimentation. 196Os),and local church transformed of, by, and Morgan Mcfarland for the people (19605-1996)."xiv) ( Its footnotes

Denison University and bibliography reflect a rich use of primary sources, including the Catholic Telegraph, the archdiocesan archives,and the archives of the Uni-

Roger Fortin. Faitb and Action:A His- versity of Notre Dame. Woven into the account tory oftbe Catholic Arcbdiocese of Cin- are references to major topics in both American cinnati. Columbus: Ohio State Univer- urban and American Catholic history: trusteeismi sity Press, 2002. 489 pp. ISBN: fund-raising in Europe, especially from the Propa- 0814209041 (cloth),34. $95. gation of the Faith and the Leopoldine Foundation; the recruitment of orders of priests and nuns; the establishment of churches, schools,seminaries, oger Faith and makes im- or- portantFortin'contributions to theActionhistory of Catholi-an phanages, hospitals and other charitable institu- cism in the United States, and to American urban tions, participation in national and international history. And the author succeeds admirably in both church councils; the role of the laity; nativism;the tasks. As the first complete history of the archdio- public school question; temperance; financial cri- territorial disputes; devotional Catholi- cese in over seventy-five years (since Rev. John H. ses;parish centennial Lamott's History of the Arcbdiocese of cism;labor;World War II;racial issues;Civil Rights; and the reforms of Vatican II. The issue of sexual Cincinnati, 1821-1921),Fortin's book elucidates several modern themes in American Catholic abuse is sufficiently covered,particularly when con- Church History, particularly the taxonomic shifts sideration is given of the fact that many of the cur- affecting the relationship" of being American and rent legal cases facing the Archdiocese of Cincin- Catholic."xiii) ( The latter topic has been the em- nati post-date the 1756 anniversary curtain call of this study. phasis of a host of recent works including Mark S. While work of such breadth Faith and Ac- Massa's Catholics and American Culture: Fulton a as

Non Sheen,Dorothy Day,and tbe Notre Dame Foot- cannot include every possible subject in detail, Restless in tbe Prom- ball Team (1 999),Jim Cullen's it was somewhat disappointing that Fortin's treat- ised Land: Catholics and tbe American Dream ment of such wealthy, philanthropic converts as 2001),and the American Catholic historian laure- Sarah Worthington King Peter and Reuben Springer ate Jay P. Dolan's In Search of an American Ca- did not receive greater attention. On the other tbolicism: A History of Religion and Culture in hand,Fortin's explanation of the financial crisis in Archbishop Purcell and his brother, Tension (2002).Fortin's exploration of American 1878 involving excellent. Further,the inclu- Catholicism's efforts to reconcile its European roots Fr. Edward Purcell,is with the urban nature of the Catholic Church in sion of an appendix listing chronologically the foun- the United States makes his study an important dation dates of parishes as well as closures and addition to the Urban" Life and Urban Landscape mergers is very valuable. Of use to the general pub- Series"of the Ohio State University Press, edited lic and to historians of the American Catholic

SUMMER 2003 59 BOOK REVIEWS

Church and American urban history,Fortjii's work Carr B. White,the Independent Scouts were an un- deserves place in public and a academic libraries. likely group. Consisting mainly of farmers from the Paul A.Tenkotte mountains of southeastern Ohio and West Virginia, Thomas More College these men became quite effective as scouts and sharp- shooters fights in with bushwhackers in the moun- taineer state. Although White authorized three of- Darl L. Stephenson. Headquarters in tbe ficers to command the unit,Captain Richard Blazer, Brush:Blazer's Independent Union Scouts. a pre-war hack driver,essentially took charge of the Athens: Ohio University Press,2001. 355 scouts. According to Stephenson,although nothing pp. ISBN 821413813 (cloth),29. $95. in his prewar life had marked Blazer as a commander who would excel at special service in the army,"he espite the overwhelming literature possessed the aggressive spirit necessary to wage the American Civil War,when it comes toonWestthe kind of war the region demanded and in doing so Virginia,historical scholarship has been a mile wide was quite successful. So successful was the Indepen- and an inch deep. While there are some fine studies dent Scouts that it hardly ever lacked for volunteers. the mountaineer few studies exist that on state, re- The Independent Scouts campaigned throughout ally the complexities of the for the penetrate war West Virginia in 1863 and 1864. From the Kanawha citizens of the fiercely divided region that came to Valley to the Shenandoah, Blizer's men performed form during the military conflict. The a new state well against Confederate raiders. General George publication of Darl Stephenson's Crook was so impressed by their fine study on guerilla warfare in success that he mounted the group the state adds significantly to West horses in 1864. And in the 1. on Virginia history. Shenandoah Valley,General Philip When one thinks of guerrilla Sheridan equipped the men with warfare or partisan rangers in West Virginia and, particular, in 6 its, .»» » dered Blazer' track and 3_'"i, -i,ij Spencer repeatiiigs men riflesto and or- the Shenandoah Valley,the name 2 401*, destroy Mosby's Rangers. In the John Singleton Mosby immedi- .,«4 and fall, B] ately comes to mind. In the col- 1*J -*summer azer's scouts encountered Mosby s men in and lective memory of Ainericans of f around Harpers Ferry and, in a that region the thought of Mosby y conjures images of southern up *" ' , , the ability chivalry, dashing heroism, and rupt partisan ranger's IC' ff to attack Sheridan's rear guard. swift cunning raids, all combined - 6, ' 1' » 4**.., " » t,»» Bl 1izer »-.ofdidconflicts,so,in part,managedby effectivelydis give the Gray" Ghost"legend- to to series turning the tables on Mosby, ary fame. Thus, partisan warfare dressing his Union men as Con- in this region has been viewed essentially through 9,7.'federatellirangers and penetrating Mosby's ranks in the lens of those seeking to give Mosby his place in disguise. The final battle between Mosby and Blazer the historical literature of the American Civil Wan came in November 1864 at Kabletown,and Mosby's Stephenson' book the Independent Scouts s new on men defeated the scouts and captured Blazen will help balance the story of partisan warfare in Stephenson has done a fine job of piecing together West Virginia. the life and times of Blazer's Independent Scouts.His Organized in the fall of 1863 by Union Colonel research is impressive and his writing style is lucid

60 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Head- and clean Students and scholars alike will find she gave motiey. She similarly collected art not to understanding quarters in tbe Britsb indispensable when stud>ing fc,und her o,vn musetini, but with the guerrilla warfare in West Virginia. that it would be bequeathed to the Cincinnati Art Steplieit D. Engle Musetitii (ivhere the authot of this hook served as Florida Atlantic University directc,r for 20 years).Emery,however,exerted coii- siderable control over the art she cc,]lected. .on-

sulting local and internatic,nal experts but alwavs

Millard E Rogers, Jr. Ricb i,i Good making her C)/v 11 decisions, she began in 1907 to buy Works:Mary M. Emery of Cincinnati. painting doiie in a cc,nservative style-Barbizon land- Akron, Ohio: University of Akron scapes. eighteenth-century aristocratic British por- ISBN: Press, 2001. 240 pp. traits alid European old Masters-which she hung 1884836666 (cloth),34. $95. in her home, Edgecliff. Her attention to framing, wal] surfaces,spacing and furniture suggests she in- coniplete aesthetic n the ind 18905, number of wealth,· tended to create 7. envirc,nmetit. ciety women18805 emerged asaimportant art collect(,so-rs Emery's philanthropy also extended to organiza- in America: Isabella Gardner in Boston, Bertha tions that. like illuseums, aiiiied at imprc,r'ing the and the education Palmer in Chicago, Louisine Havemeyer in New domestic and urban em'ironment

York, ane.] Stanfc,rd in San Francisco,Arabella Huti- ot the inasses: colleges, hospitals, the YMCA. the tingtoii in Los Angeles, and Alice Barney in Wash- zoo. the Episcopal church and waric,US honies"" t<,r ington D.C. Millard Rogers' biography of Mary orphans,students,workiiig girls,and destitute moth- She titinued her husband' tradition of assis- Emery helps fill in the collective portrait that is emere- ers. cc, s if refusal fund ing 0t these women's activities,as well as suggesting tance tc)African Aliiericans, not his to how Cincinnati's art matronage"developed in a organizations that drew a cc,Ic,r line. Her largest unique direction. project, though again Miie in which she did not ac- Emery was representative of her peers. Well-edu- tively participate, was the construction of a town cared,her marriage to nianuticturer and real estate for factory workers, intended tc)avoid the congested magnate Thomas Emery brought her great wealth. conditions of low-incotiie housing elsewhere. In- stead, Mariemont, miles outside Cincinnati, She held a secure place in Cincinnati's high society, ten with in and home in New- would be modeled the architecture and ideal of a matision town a summer on port, RI, which lent her cultural authority and con- community of an old English village. Rogers does fidence. As Rc,gers emphasizes, she also strongly not place Mariemont within either the City Beauti- believed in the responsibility f(,the rich to spend for" ful 1170vemetit or other planned communities such the physical,social,civic and educational betterment" as Pullman,but he promises a future book dedicated the of their fellow hometown citizens. She was also typi- to town. Ricb Good cal of her generation in comilig to philanthropy af- iii Works in general d()es not offer a ter being widowed and with no living children as detailed contextualization of Mary Emery's life and heirs. Creating a legacy,iii the naines of her hus- work within regional or national trends,but its thor- band and children, was an explicit goal. oiigh excavation from primary sources of Emery's Unlike more flamboyant contemporaries,Emery history is a welcome addition to the literature on did not challenge genteel norms for women. She Gilded Age women, a contribution that sees elite less Thorstein Veblen' conducted her benevolence indirectly,relying heavily women as s vicarious consum- than cultural on her secretary Charles Livingood,rather than act- ers as entrepreneurs. Wendy Katz ing on the boards of the many organizations to which lean Universitv of Nebraska-I.incc,In

SUMMER 2003 61 BOOKRE 1 \'E W S

Robert E Martin. of tbe Hero Heart- old and new moral values in his ministry because, land:Billy Sunday and tbe Transforma- while his focus on sobriety,moral discipline. and tion of American Society, 1862- 1935. faith were not original, his style and methods were. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Billy Sunday seemed the very epitome of the Ameri- University Press, 2002. 163 ISBN: pp. can dream and of Victorian ideals regarding man- 0253341299 (cloth), $ 27.95. hood,success,and moral reform. Having risen from poverty and gained attention through his own dar- ing and hard-work on both the baseball diainond isingBilly SundayProm an becameimpoverishedthe best-Iowaknownchildhood,Ameri- and the revival circuit, Sunday offered living proof revivalist between can the beginning c,f his minis- that America offered opportunity to all and that a try in 1896 and his death in 1935. Byespousing a C.'hristian life (which Sunday believed led to mate- fundamentalist Christianity in earthy and provoca- rial gains)could help deliver success. Likewise,Sun- tive sermons centered on uplifting the nation day brought the methods of business to the revival through personal salvation and individual moral- tent,relying on advertising and a sophisticated nu- Sunday reached millions ity, and became a national merical accounting of the souls he helped save that sensati on. Atthe height of his fame jii 1917,Sun- meshed with the enthusiasm for efficiency that char- day held a revival iii New York City lasting a full acterized Progressive America. Sunday also ap- ten weeks. Although his influence declined subse- pealed to contemporary ideas ot masculinity that quently, he was still an important enough figure Americans increasingly conflated with character and that, upon his passing, his family received cond()-niorality by arguing that hristjanity(: ind nianli- hand and hand. His lences from President Franklin D. Roosevelt among ness went own successes others. seemed to prc,ve as inuch. Robert E Martin's new biography rescues the While Martin recognizes that Sunday's social memory of Billy Sunday from earlier assuniptions thought naively posited an inseparable association that his" ministry was more a inatter of escapism between larger social problems and individual mo- obstructionism than honest confrontation of or an rality (i.e. vice resulted from personal failings and the issues of his day and places Sunday's appeal in not social factors),he argues that Sunday was not the context of several important trends in Progres- entirely out of step with other Progressive reform- sive America. Martin contends that Sunday's min- ers who attacked society's ills, refc,rmers who often istry,while sonietimes rooted in nostalgia and myth, saw personal moral change as a prerequisite for so- represented an attempt to reconcile the home-spun cial improvement. In any case, Sunday's short- Christian values he cherished with an increasingly comings as a true Pr<)gressive were probably offset modern United States. (xiv) Furthermore, Martin by his many other appealing characteristics, espe- finds that Sunday's popularity was largely rooted cially his identity as a Midwesterner steeped in the in his image that embodied many modern values values of his native region-and this is perhaps the characteristic of the early twentieth century, even most novel argument Martin makes. At the time, as his thought harkened back to an earlier time. the Midwest benefited from the perception that the After opening chapters detailing Sunday's child- East coast was declining while the West remained hood and rise to moderate prominence as an out- underdeveloped and therefore it was a good thing fielder in the fledgling National League, the con- to be a son of the heartland. According to Martin, flict between image and reality in Sunday's life be- these many factors combined to make Sunday an comes Martin's main focus and greatest contribu- ideal figure to alleviate" the tension and anxiety tion. Here he argues that Sunday appealed to both that resulted from the transition from the rural ag-

62 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ricultural America of the nineteenth century to the York or Boston. Ezekiel, a native of Dayton and a urban industrial nation of the twentieth."130) ( self-proclaimed feminist, experienced firsth:ind the

Despite an over-reliance on block quotes, surprise of outsiders who assumed that the Mid- Martin's writing is generally crisp and clear. Al west and social reform must be mutually exclusive. though his argument forces him to juggle several Yet not only did feminism in Dayton thrive, it did distinct historical literatures-including scholarly so in a manner that might surprise soine scholars. understandings of masculinity,regionalism,and the Second-wave feminism is usually characterized as growth of professional sports-Martin manages to a two-part moveient in which liberal feminism pre- keep his book both accessible to non-specialists and dated radical feminism and proved more successful thorough enough scholars to interest most in the in accomplishing its goals. In Dayton, however,a fields he touches. In doing so he,like Billy Sunday, single strand ot feminism emerged (242).one bridges gaps in a manner that will likely please his which more closely resembled radical femitism. audience Dayton had no local NOW chapter,and no vocal Ket,in P. Bower liberal until the inovement Freedom of Choice coa- of University Cincinnati lition developed in response to an Ohio antiabor- law tion in 1978. Femitiisn in the heat tland was

no watered-down version of east coast feininism:it

was in some ways more coherent,less fractured and Judith Ezekiel. Feminism in tbe Heart- inore radical. land. Columbus: Ohio State Univer- Ezekiel's studi' focuses on four overlapping femi- sity Press, 2002. 300 pp. ISBN: nist organizations: Dayton Women's Liberation,the 081425098X (paper),24. $95. Dayton Women's Center,Dayton Women Working, and Freedom of Choice. She uses the emergence of udith Ezekiel's thoroughly researched history of each organization to demarcate a new stage in feminist movements in Dayton,Ohio,challenges J Dayton's feminist movement, as issues and inter- commonly held beliefs about the development and ests diversified to include abortion,rape,and sexual characteristics of feminism in the United States. The harassment iii the mid-to-late 1970s, and the early few scholarly histories of second-wave feminism cur- idealism borne of consciotisness-raising was re- rently available big-city feminism,"and center on " placed by pragmatism and single-issue agendas. focused primarily New York, Boston, are on or Sprinkled throughout these institutional histories Washington, D.C. These studies claim to represent are the voices of fifty-nine women interviewed be- the national movement,yet feminism, like so many tween 1980 and 1999. Their fascinating stories reform efforts in the 1960s and 1970s was prima- personalize the narrative and allow Ezekiel to rightly rily a grass-roots activity. Just as scholars of civil claim that her study creates space" for new voices." rights have moved beyond key leaders and theo- X) retical contributions to investigate the movement's Ezekiel's organizational analysis is particularly impact on the local level,Ezekiel urges scholars of strong. In part due to the thoroughness of her re- feminism beyond the in their to venture east coast search, she speaks with authority about the devel- search for the meaning and experience of second- opment,structure, and impact of each group. She wave feminism. analyzes the role of leaders and participants,as well Dayton, viewed by many as a typiCal American as their relationship to the media and to other ma- city,"the heart" of Middle America,"vii) ( yielded jor political and institutional forces in Dayton,such a very different kind of movement than did New as churches that were, surprisingly, the most im-

SUMMER 2003 63 11()OK REVIEWS

port:int external source of income for Dayton Wallace T.Collett. McCartbyism in Cin- Women's Liberation. She convincingly argues that cinnati:Tbe Bettman-Collett Affair. Dayton feminism was less fractured than in other Rosemont,Pennsylvania: Wallace Collett, cities because there little between was antagonism 2()02. ISBN: 091712506 (paper). feminists and the New I.eft. This observation is particularly important because it weakens scholars' claims that feminism emerged otit of the sexism ot terincinnatiplan fc,adoptedr an Americanthe firstcitycol-innprehensive1925,butmas-over the Left. New Iii Dayton, the break between femi- the years the city's planning effc,rts have not been and the Left nists wis niore of a no" fault divorce." without detractors. Most recently,in 2002,spurred 23) by allegations that planning in- The author is less successful, 44{&*0*8*j.*r **:*' 3 terfered with develop- 2*-- '* economic CT311./,0 . »- however,in her examination of L.... 5--"'. · 4-- - ilidivid,ials than of their organi- glist RESIGNATIONS*4" CUt ment,Planningthe citydepartabolishednient tindthe TOIrS 149*1618***diI _.. sub)merged the Land zations. Theit-stories are capti- UR116<8139. Use Man- v,iting, so Intich so that at tinies, agement Group and the Historic tY ··.., . · Conservation Officeiiito the Ezekiel prefers to take them at ,»s, .»{jft€* De- face value rather than to interpret ,- 1 partment of Community Devel- 10*a1€' „. =,& tliem. Eager let these k,. %1 to woien 1 j,t« 1 opment and Planning. Wallace speak fc, themselves, she ffjif T. Collett's brief book, r cippeirs THE BETTMANSCOLLEFAIR hesitant to inipose her own analy- McCartbyism in Cincinnati: sis on her subjects. Nevertheless, # :. *2:*> The Bettman-Collett Affair.pro- these ices important he 0'.12,33 v() are to 1:'9*.«0 ,»»s,%* vides an insider's view of attacks story,and niake it a compelling 4%*ft 6 '*on planning in an earlier era and read. Judith Ezekiel' St:»' s Feminism 6 * iii a different pc,litical climate. iii tbe Heartland is a fascinating v:gailit/:18:,"11'/jin'lli.4,/MI.2 Based on his personal jour- and contribution important to nals, Collett's book presents a multi-faceted collection of documents and the histc,ry of second-wave feminism and,niore gen- commen- erally,American social movements,especially in the tary chronicling the election-season redbaiting cam- Midwest. Ir is also a significant contribution to paign he faced,as a member of the Cincinnati City feminist scholarship that should encourage more Planning Commission along with Henry Bettinan, the chairman. and ollett(: research of feminist organizations at the local level. commission's Bettman Wendy Kline had allowed Sydney Williams,who had previously

University of Cincinnati belonged Itc,a Marxist study group,to be appointed Director of Planning for the City of Ciiicinnati in 1953. That fal] Republican politicians, fed infor-

marion by the FBI, brought Williams' past to light. The Commission prc,mptly fired him. City Coun- cil then demanded that Collett and Bettman, who

had defended Williams,resign their positions. Fifty

years later,Collett decided to tell his story,believ- ing, as he writes in his preface, that the events chronicled will" be instructive as we seek today to understand how political practices can at any time

64 OHI() VALLEY HISTORY veer far from basic American principles." The anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s is not

a new story. However, it is unusual to read of a community that successfully niobilized to challenge redbaiting tactics. Not only did Collett and Bettman refuse to resign,but citizens in Cincinnati organized cotitribute and to tinie money for their defense, as well as to support civil liberties in general. In the words of civic activist Iola Hessler,I "think that the jackals of Cincinnati are about to feast on the corpse of the freedom of thought and the right of an individual to pursue the truth."28) ( The work of Hessler and others resulted in the Republican Party losing its city council majority in the fall elec- tions. This was a clear vindication of Bettman and Collett, although Williains did not regain his job. the McCartbyisin iii Ci,icinnati is memoir ot a participant,not a scholarly treatment ot the events. But,as Americans once again face challenges to their civil liberties, Collett's fascinating little book suc- cessfully reminds us of the ability of citizens to mobilize to defend their rights and of the impor- tance of citizens te| ling their stories. Andrea Tuttle Kor,iblub

Uilit,ersiti Of Cilicillilati

SUMMER 2003 65 Upcioming Events

Cincinnati Seminar on Mar. 11, 2004 the City,2003-2004 Tracy Teslow,University of Cincinnati Exhibiting Difference:Natural History Museums Cincinnati Museum Center at and tbe Race Question Union Terminat

Department of History, Apr.8,2004 University of Cincinnati Kim Gruenwald,Kent State University

Technology and Regionalism in tbe Obio Valley Oct. 9, 2003

Walter Lang:, University of Cincinnati am, May 13, 2004 A Higher Standard of Excellence:Tbe Develop- James Holmberg, The Filson Historical Society of tbe Architectural Profession in Cincinnati ment Down tbe Obio and into tbe Wilderness: and Northern Kentucky Before World War I Tbe Lewis and Clark Expedition and tbe 0bio Valley Nov. 13,2003

Bridget Ford, University of California, Davis

Borderlands of Belief:Religion and Race in Cincinnati Seminar on the City is a joint program of Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal Cincinnati and Louisville on tbe Eve of tbe and the University of Cincinnati Department of Civil War History. The lectures, which take place the second Thursday of each month from October 2003 Dec. 11, 2003 through May 2004, at 7:30 p.m.,are held in the Reakirt Auditorium or the Newsreel Theater,Cin- Ruby Rogers, Cincinnati Museum Center cinnati Museum Center, 1301 Western Avenue. A Obio Remembers tbe Civil War in Metal and special subscription for the Seminar series is avail- Stone able at $5 for CMC members and graduate stu- dents and $10 for non-members. The subscription includes the lecture, monthly reminders, Jan.8,2004 notes on and form for dinner. a reservation The lectures are James Ramage,Northern Kentucky University free and open to the public. Morgan's Raid in Ohio Please join us for tbe twelfth annual Cincinnati Seminar on tbe City. Feb.12,2004 John Fairfield, Xavier University

Movies and Cities:An Historical Account of Their Interpretation

66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Filson on Main Now- Open

Lewis and Clark:Tbe Exploratic,n of tbe American West, 1803-1806"

The Filson Historical Society brings you this new exhibit to introduce you tc) the significant rc,le that the Louisville,Kentuck>,area and the Ohio Valley played in this national story. As the nation celebrates the bicentennial of the Expedition, children and adults alike call come into contact with the genuine substance of our history co,intry's at Filson oti Main. Housed iii Brorvn-Forman Corpc,ration's newly renovated building 626 the at West Nlain Street, exhibit features The Filson's nationally recognized Lewis and lark(: Collection, which tells the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition throtigh portraits, artifacts, letters, diaries, docu- ments, books, maps, newspapers, ind. photographs. Louisville played an important role in the legendary journey west that took place between 1803 and 1806. William Clark, expedition coleader, lived in I.ouisr ille with othet· 1»lellibers ot his family. Meriwether Lewis came to Louisville to meet C:]ark on Oct()her 14, 1803, thtis formitig one of the most famous partnerships in .American histor>.Now,experience the journey for your- self Filson at on Main.

Location:

626 West Main Streett L()uisville,Kentucky 40202 502) 566-0()84

Hours:

Monday -Saturday,9:30 a.m. tc)5:00 p.m. Sunday, 12:30 p.m. tc)5.00 p.m.

Group rates are available.

A gift shop offers a variety of books, dolls, maps, and other memorabilia. Parking is widely available near the Main Street gallery,and several restaurants cater to Main Streett traffic.

SUMMER 2003 67