December 25, Sunday, 1853: When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off … Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and many others are the names of wharves projecting into the sea. BOSTON NEW-YORK CHARLESTON NEW ORLEANS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1680
July: The war party of the Issati Sioux with its 3 white captives Père Louis Hennepin, Antoine Augelle, and Michel Accault went down the St. Francis River and camped awhile. Hennepin and Augelle were then permitted to travel down the Mississippi River, under guard of course, to fetch supplies which René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had promised to send and deposit at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. After a journey of about 160 miles downriver, however, a large band of Issati overtook them and carried them back to the great camp at Mille Lacs. This was the end of Hennepin’s exploration down the Mississippi. He definitely did not go to the river’s mouth (as he would in a later timeframe publish). Along the way Hennepin and his guards met the famous French explorer Daniel Graysolon Du Lhut, who had been roaming the region to the west and southwest of Lake Superior. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1681
Fall: Père Louis Hennepin sailed for Europe, where for a year or more he would be secluded in a monastery of his order at St-Germain-en-Laye, writing away at first book, DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANA, NOUVELLEMENT DÉCOUVERTE AU SUD-OEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PA R ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LE CARTE DU PAYS: LES MOEURS ET LA MANIÈRE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES. DEDIÈE À SA MAJESTÉ PA R LE R. P. LOUIS HENNEPIN MISSIONAIRE RÈCOLLET ET NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1683
January: Père Louis Hennepin’s DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANA, NOUVELLEMENT DECOUVERTE AU SUD’OÜEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PAR ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LA CARTE DU PAYS: LES MŒURS & LA MANIERE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES, DEDIÉE À SA MAJESTÉ PAR LA R.P. LOUIS HENNEPIN, MISSIONAIRE RÉCOLLET & NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE (Paris: Chez la Veuve Sebastien Huré), containing considerable material copied from Abbé
Claude Bernou’s RELATION DES DÉCOUVERTES ET DES VOYAGES DU SIEUR DE LA SALLE, SEIGNEUR ET GOUVERNEUR DU FORT DE FRONTENAC, AU-DELÀ DES GRENDS LACS DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, FAITS PA R ORDRE DE MONSEIGNEUR COLBERT, 1679, 1680 ET 1681, which was itself secondhand information accumulated by a non-traveler. DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANE HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1698
From this point in time into 1702 the French would be settling Louisiana.
The Count Frontenac died at Québec and was succeeded by Mr. de Callières, who succeeded in effecting peace with the Five Nations, as a power independent of Great Britain. CANADA
Père Louis Hennepin’s NOUVEAU VOYAGE D’UN PAYS PLUS GRAND QUE L’EUROPE (Utrecht). NOUVELLE VOYAGE D’UN PAYS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1713
Under the terms of the treaty of Utrecht,1 the French Acadians (Cajuns) were to be driven from Nova Scotia to Louisiana:
By this act King Frederick William I of Prussia and the Duke of Savoy each acquired considerable additional territory. Philip remained in possession of the throne of Spain but Naples, Milan, the Spanish territories on the 1. There is not just one date associated with the Peace of Utrecht because this was not one but a complex series of treaties. The April 11th date was when Louis XIV recognized the English succession as established in the house of Hanover and confirmed the renunciation of the claims to the French throne of Louis's grandson, Philip V of Spain. The French fortifications of Dunkirk were to be razed and the harbor filled up, and the Hudson Bay territory, Acadia, St. Kitts, and Newfoundland were ceded to England. By a commercial treaty England and France granted each other most-favored-nation treatment. By a treaty with the Netherlands France agreed to surrender to Austria the Spanish Netherlands still in French hands; these were to be held in trust by the Netherlands until the conclusion of a treaty between the Netherlands and the Holy Roman emperor. A commercial treaty between France and the Netherlands was also signed. France furthermore restored Savoy and Nice to Victor Amadeus II, recognizing him as king of Savoy. France also signed a treaty with Portugal and one with Prussia confirming the kingship of the Prussian rulers. The July 13th date, on the other hand, was when an Anglo-Spanish treaty confirmed the clauses of the Anglo-French treaties relating to the English and French successions. Spain ceded Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain and ceded Sicily (to be exchanged in 1720 for Sardinia) to Savoy. Britain and Spain signed the Asiento, an agreement giving Britain the sole right to the slave trade with Spanish America. The March 7th, 1714 date was when Louis XIV and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI made their peace, and the September 7th, 1714 date was when the Treaty of Baden completed the settlement, restoring the right bank of the Rhine to the empire and confirming Austria in possession of the formerly Spanish Netherlands, of Naples, and of Milan. The November 15th, 1715 date was when the Third Barrier Treaty regulated trade relations between the Dutch and Austrian Netherlands. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Tuscan coast, the Spanish Netherlands, and some parts of the French Netherlands were transferred to Austria. England acquired, from France, Hudson’s Bay and Straits, the Island of St. Christopher, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca which the English had seized during the war.
To implement this plan, the British army took over part of Acadia. Figure skating would begin to get organized in North America, introduced by British officers in Halifax, and in Philadelphia in the mid-1700s. These officers followed rigid precepts of elegance. The first challenge in such High Dutch ice skating was to make each edge a perfect semicircle. As that style would evolve, skating technique would degenerate into jerky moves lacking in gracefulness. Each stroke required effort, breaking the even flow intended by earlier Dutch skaters and producing an unnatural appearance on the ice. Just as the Victorians, arms glued to their sides, would take the poetry of motion out of skating in England, Philadelphians were on their way to nearly ruining figure skating in North America. Devoid of emotion in their superficially elegant attitude, their only demonstration was of pride in having accomplished a perfect figure. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1721
Some Germans settled north of New Orleans.
Père Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, S.J. (October 29, 1682-February 1, 1761) recorded effeminacy and widespread homosexuality and lesbianism among the tribes in what is now Louisiana. The most prominent tribes in the area at the time were the Iroquois and Illinois. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1722
May 23, Wednesday (Old Style): New Orleans became the capital of Louisiana.
Mark Catesby arrived in Charleston. Sherard had arranged for him to return to America in the company departing to create a new colony of Carolina under Governor Colonel Francis Nicholson. In this month they arrived at Charleston. Catesby would introduce the people he met in Charleston to some of the plants he had found in the interior, such as the catalpa and perhaps the spice-bush Calycanthus floridus. The plants he would convey to Britain would include Callicarpa americana, Coreopsis lanceolata, and the American wisteria. (The people who were facilitating this collection journey to the Carolinas also were sending Thomas More to make plant collections in New England. More was probably between 50 and 60 years of age when he arrived in Boston. He would arrange to send some plants back, but also, he would become embroiled in local politics.)
During this month Philip Miller, author of the best-selling DICTIONARY OF GARDENING, was settling in as the Gardener at Chelsea. (Miller would be the first to raise, from seed sent from China to London by d’Incarville, the Tree of Heaven Ailanthus altissima. Carl von Linné, when he would visit England, would be able to persuade Miller that he needed to modify his system of plant classification.) BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1724
A Code Noir for regulating blacks and expelling Jews from New Orleans was proclaimed by Louisiana Governor de Bienville. RACISM ANTISEMITISM
March: Louis XV banned intermarriages between whites and blacks (but not whites and Indians) in Louisiana; this special Code noir for Louisiana also prohibited whites “or freeborn or freed blacks” from living in concubinage with slaves. According to Article 6: “Défendons à nos sujets blancs, de l’un et de l’autre sexe, de contracter mariage avec les Noirs, à paine de punition et d’amende arbitraire; et à tous curés, prêtres ou missionaires, séculiers ou réguliers, et même aux aumôniers de vaissaix de les marier.” (“We forbid our white subjects of either sex to contract marriage with blacks, under threat of punishment and fines; and forbid all clerics, priests, or missionaries, lay or ordained, and even ships’ chaplains, to marry them.”) AMALGAMATION HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1729
In Louisiana, the “Natchez War” erupted. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1742
The 1st sugarcane crop in Louisiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1751
The 1st sugarcane was grown in Louisiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1755
No offensive operations took place between England and France, except a small naval engagement on the banks of Newfoundland, till this year, when an expedition of regular and colonial militia under General Braddock, for the purpose of giving a decided check to the encroachments of the French government on the valley of the Ohio River, was defeated through his disregard of all precautionary measures. The troops which were brought off by the celebrated General Washington joined the provincial troops under Governor Shirley and General W. Johnson. The latter was attacked near Lake George by a large army under Baron Dieskau, whom he repulsed and forced back upon Crown Point. This success restored the spirit of the hitherto discomfited provincial troops, but circumstances did not permit their following up their success this season.
In this year the British captured a French fortress at Beauséjour that controlled the neck of the Acadian peninsula, and were in the process of hegemonizing Canada. They began the expulsion of some 10,000 French- speaking Roman Catholic settlers from Nova Scotia, on the basis of their French origin. The people in question were ethnically offensive because they had originated in France and religiously offensive because they were Catholic. Some of these would wind up in Louisiana. (We’re paying a rather steep price here, folks, but it will lead to such a literary production as “Evangeline.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Fortunately, that level of ethnic prejudice was not being implemented in their colony midway along the American seaboard, in New England. HUGUENOTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1770
The First Spanish governor for Upper Louisiana took control from the French commander. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1779
September 21, Tuesday: A force of Spaniards from Louisiana under the command of Governor Bernardo de Galvez captured the British garrison at Baton Rouge. The surrender included Natchez and other British ports on the Mississippi. AMERICAN REVOLUTION HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1791
Upon the outbreak of revolution, François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand had been sympathetic, but when Paris began its turn toward terror he had second thoughts and determined that in all likelihood despite his sympathy for this revolution, he would probably be somewhat safer if he were elsewhere and not the subject of suspicions. Therefore in this year he traveled on the North American continent. Between 1793 and 2 1799 he would be authoring an exotic novel, LES NATCHEZ, that would not see publication until 1826.
2. It is now considered unlikely that this French author ever as claimed achieved a personal interview with President George Washington, or had resided for any period of time with the actual Natchez tribespeople of Louisiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1802
Denmark made itself the initial European nation to end its participation in the international slave trade.
Slavery was restored in Guadeloupe. In the Peace of Amiens between England and France, Spain ceded Trinidad to the British, who would import large numbers of black slaves to labor in sugar cane fields.The slave colonies were restored to their prewar status except for Trinidad, Haiti (Saint-Domingue), and Louisiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1804
For the Danes of Denmark, their “Act of 1792” approved in 1802 abolishing any and all involvement in slaving at this point came into effect.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE Date Slave-trade Abolished by 1802 Denmark 1807 Great Britain; United States 1813 Sweden 1814 Netherlands 1815 Portugal (north of the equator) 1817 Spain (north of the equator) 1818 France 1820 Spain 1829 Brazil (?) 1830 Portugal HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
In two years Henry Peter Brougham had contributed 35 articles on scientific, political, and economic topics to the Edinburgh Review, such as A CONCISE STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION REGARDING THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE, while preparing his first book, AN INQUIRY INTO THE COLONIAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN POWERS. During this period he also had been engaging in the practice of law!
A negrero was allowed by Governor Claiborne to offload a cargo of 50 new slaves in Louisiana (AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, MISCELLANEOUS, I, No. 177). W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1806
From this year into 1810, off the Mississippi Delta, American gunboats would be operating, chiefly under Captain John Shaw and Master Commandant David Porter, out of the port of New Orleans, against Spanish and French privateers. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
“Person of color” had by this point become established in the vocabulary of white Americans as a polite substitute for “Negro,” etc., as witness this report about race relations in New Orleans by Thomas Ashe in TRAVELS IN AMERICA:
“At the white ball-room no lady of colour is admitted.”
Ashe also reported on the great scarcity of coinage, which led to a system of exchange based upon barter. Some outlying farmers might live out their lives without ever so much as glimpsing a silver dollar. In particular, in Erie, Pennsylvania:
“The words ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ are nearly unknown. In business nothing is heard but the word ‘trade.’ ... but you must anticipate all this from the absence of money.”
Louisiana “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1810
February 12, Monday: Since Fort Bowyer was again attacked by the whole British force, as it retired from New Orleans, Captain Lawrence was forced to surrender it (the site of this old fort is now occupied by Fort Morgan). We can’t be too hard on him. –A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, right?
America’s white captains of slaver vessels such as the La Coste of South Carolina, even when caught red- handed and convicted, could expect at the last moment to be the beneficiaries of the “executive clemency” of the President of the United States of America. For instance, on this date William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves, was pardoned by President James Madison (PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240). We can’t be too hard on him, he’s a white man after all. –A white guy’s gotta do what a white guy’s gotta do, right? INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 12 of 2nd M [February 1810]// Severe suffering with the tooth Ach & not courage to have it extracted, pain is very hard to bear, but after suffering is abated we better know how to appreciate our favors. — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1811
January 8, Tuesday-10, Thursday: In what has been the largest slave revolt in the United States, Louisiana slaves revolted in two parishes. The leader of the revolt was Charles Deslondes, a buggy driver from St. Domingue, property of the widow Deslondes. At a plantation about 35 miles from New Orleans the Andry family and their overseers were attacked, killing Mr. Andry’s son Gilbert Thomassin Andry and putting the family to flight. The servile insurrectionaries were able to supplement their hoes, machetes, and clubs with a few firearms and some ammunition and set out downriver. At another plantation, Jean Francois Trepagnier was killed. The slave army by day’s end had gotten almost 25 miles in the direction of the city by the time the wounded Mr. Andry returned with a local militia of some 80 white men. Communication had been made to Claiborne and US troops were approaching, under the command of General Wade Hampton. Troops from Baton Rouge were also approaching. The slaves were immediately overwhelmed by this firepower. Those who hadn’t simply been shot down, including Deslondes and his leaders, were summarily executed and decapitated, and 45 heads were mounted on pikes. At the Destrehan Plantation, there were quick trials in which 21 of some 30 accused were found guilty and immediately executed, and their heads added to the long row of pikes along the levees. SERVILE INSURRECTION
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 8 of 1 Mo// The usual rounds of the day. Rote in the eveng a letter to David Smith of Bolton - ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA October 29, Tuesday: The initial Ohio River steamboat left Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to steam with the current (red line below) to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 29 of 10 Mo// Again nothing has occurd that appears worth inserting & indeed there are many days of this kind, yet it seems best to keep up a diary. perhaps it might be thought by some that it is time lost, but it does not take me five minutes in a day on an average & if I misspent no more time than that, I believe nothing would lay very hevily to my charge. It was the advice of Wm Penn to his children to “keep a Journal if it is was but a line a day” & if there is no other use in it, it keeps one in the use of the Pen & may tend to help us in the Art of Composition if proper attention is paid to it — This I know of a truth, that it is much more easy for me to express my Ideas in writing than it was formerly HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA I am sensible that I am yet very deficient & shall probably remain so, as long as I live, but it is comfortable to believe that I have made some improvement, Whereby I may render myself more useful to myself & mankind - but Alass this brings me to a sense of my short comings, & a subject of which I have not wrote much about of late i.e. the religious improvement, wherein I feel much leaness & Poverty for the want of more faithfulness, I am not sensible that my case is worse than Months ago, being sometimes favor’d with (at least) some emanations of Love & life — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA December: The first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi, the New Orleans, had traveled from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to New Orleans, Louisiana at the mouth of the river on the Gulf of Mexico. But that had been the easy part. On its way downstream the mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio had met the boat and had declared that it might be able to get this 371-ton vessel down the river with the current — “but as to coming up, the very idea is an absurd one.” That mayor would be just about right, as, to get this steamboat back up against the currents of the river system with the powerplant then available (green line below), they would need to leave the vessel almost empty and pilot it very carefully. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1812
January 10, Friday: The steamboat New Orleans arrived in New Orleans. And yes, despite the dire prediction of the mayor of Cincinnati, it would be able to make its way back upriver against the current (since it was almost empty).
Friend Luke Howard observed what we would now term smog above the great metropolis of London: ...the sky, where any light pervaded it, showed the aspect of bronze. Such is, occasionally, the effect of the accumulation of smoke between two opposite gentle currents, or by means of a misty calm. I am informed that the fuliginous cloud was visible, in this instance, for a distance of forty miles.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 10 of 1 Mo// My mind has been brought under feelings which are pleasant, tho’ of a serious nature, for which I desire to be thankful ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
April 30, Thursday: Louisiana became the 18th state of the United States of America.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 30 of 4 M // Altho much unwell with a cold & the morng quite rainy I could not feel easy to omit going to Portsmouth to attend the Moy [Monthly] Meeting. failing of company I took a Chaise & rode out alone. got to the Meeting house in season to meet with the School committee before meeting. The first meeting was Silent. In the last buisness was transacted with love & harmony two were rec’d members & one disowned. After meeting I dined at my much lov’d cousin Z Chases, found him & wife persuing the same rounds, & all things about there then HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA much as when I was a little boy. I love to go there & allways shall while they & I remain in mutability ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
June 4, Thursday: The Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory.
The United States House of Representatives voted 79 over 49 for President James Madison to lead us into another war against Great Britain.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 4 of 6 Mo// I thought best to stay home from meeting to perform an engagement which I could not conveniently have done, & gone. This is the day which has been talked of or anticipated for several Years. One Nimrod Hughs prophecyed that on this day one third of the inhabitants of the World was to be destroyed by hail, & for several weeks & indeed months his book has been newly circulated to get monay by. it first came out about 3 or 4 Years ago. Many were so unwarrantable credulous as to admit the belief of his imposotion & became much terrified. one woman some weeks ago, gave up work & said she had enough to last till this time, & was sure she should then die & many others oeven people of pretty considerable strong minds have been allmost overset with this false prophecy in this Town & many other places. but the Day has now nearly passed & nothing strange or uncommon has happened. to be sure it has been cloudy, has rained a little & jas been very cool for the Season, also the Wind has been fresh ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1813
February 26, Friday: Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette was born in New Orleans, Louisiana (his father, from Bordeaux, had recently married a young Creole woman and established himself as a local wine merchant). The family would include four other children, two of whom would later become well-known Louisiana poets (for instance, Francois-Dominique Rouquette). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1814
Shortly after the birth of Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette in 1813, perhaps in this year, the Rouquette family moved to Bayou Saint John on the outskirts of New Orleans, near settlements of Choctaw tribespeople. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1815
February 10, Friday: The town bells pealed all across Massachusetts, and cannon were discharged, as news arrived of a great victory over the British at New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
February 13, Monday: The news arrived in Boston, by express stage out of New-York through Worcester, that in Ghent “on the 24th December last,” a peace had been concluded between the United States of America and Great Britain, and that the Battle for New Orleans had been merely a waste of everyone’s lives.
February 17, Friday: In support of homeland agriculture, a Corn Bill was introduced into the House of Commons to restrict import of foreign grain. This would enhance the nation’s security but raise the price of bread.
The federal Congress proposed that the United States of America borrow the sum of $18,400,000, by creating an issue of treasury notes in the amount of $25,000,000. A portion of these treasury notes, issued in sums under $100, would be payable to bearer, and would serve as a currency. Treasury notes over $100 were to bear interest at 5 2/5%, making a cent and a half a day on each $100. Both were to be receivable for all public dues and were to be transferable at option, those bearing interest in 6% bonds and those without interest in 7% bonds.
The ratification of the treaty of Ghent that had been signed the previous December 24th ended the War of 1812 between England and the USA. By its provisions all conquered territory was to be mutually restored, and three commissions were to be appointed: the first to settle the title to the islands of Passarnaquoddy Bay; the second to settle the northeastern boundary as far as the St. Lawrence; and the third to, run the line through the St. Lawrence and the lakes to the Lake of the Woods. In case of disagreement, the point in dispute was to be referred to some friendly power. Hostilities on land were to terminate with the ratification of the treaty, and on sea in certain specified times, according to the distance, the longest time being four months. The treaty provided against the carrying away by the British of “any negroes or other property.” Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors for the suppression of the slave-trade. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: At the Congress of Vienna, which assembled late in 1814, Castlereagh was indefatigable in his endeavors to secure the abolition of the trade. France and Spain, however, refused to yield farther than they had already done, and the other powers hesitated to go to the lengths he recommended. Nevertheless, he secured the institution of annual conferences on the matter, and a declaration by the Congress strongly condemning the trade and declaring that “the public voice in all civilized countries was raised to demand its suppression as soon as possible,” and that, while the definitive period of termination would be left to subsequent negotiation, the sovereigns would not consider their work done until the trade was entirely suppressed.3 In the Treaty of Ghent, between Great Britain and the United States, ratified February 17, 1815, Article 10, proposed by Great Britain, declared that, “Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice,” the two countries agreed to use their best endeavors in abolishing the trade.4 The final overthrow of Napoleon was marked by a
3. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, pages 939-75 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA second declaration of the powers, who, “desiring to give effect to the measures on which they deliberated at the Congress of Vienna, relative to the complete and universal abolition of the Slave Trade, and having, each in their respective Dominions, prohibited without restriction their Colonies and Subjects from taking any part whatever in this Traffic, engage to renew conjointly their efforts, with the view of securing final success to those principles which they proclaimed in the Declaration of the 4th February, 1815, and of concerting, without loss of time, through their Ministers at the Courts of London and of Paris, the most effectual measures for the entire and definitive abolition of a Commerce so odious, and so strongly condemned by the laws of religion and of nature.”5 Treaties further restricting the trade continued to be made by Great Britain: Spain abolished the trade north of the equator in 1817,6 and promised entire abolition in 1820; Spain, Portugal, and Holland also granted a mutual limited Right of Search to England, and joined in establishing mixed courts.7 The effort, however, to secure a general declaration of the powers urging, if not compelling, the abolition of the trade in 1820, as well as the attempt to secure a qualified international Right of Visit, failed, although both propositions were strongly urged by England at the Conference of 1818.8
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 17th of 2nd M 1815 / Our friends J Chase & D Brayton go on their visits to families I attended them to Wm Leer Jos Williams & Alice Wyatts - then R Mitchell took my place & went with them thro’ the Day - they took tea with us & in the evening & again waited on them to father Rodmans, Susan Thurstons, Polly Hadwens & John Earls at Wm Lees & John Earls they were remarkably favor’d, & evinced themselves Skillful workmen & wise thro’ the whole. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Spring: General Andrew Jackson belatedly won the battle of New Orleans after the War of 1812 had been over for a number of weeks. John Franklin served at the battle.
4. AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, FOREIGN, III. No. 271, pages 735-48; U.S. TREATIES AND CONVENTIONS (edition of 1889), page 405. 5. This was inserted in the Treaty of Paris, November 20, 1815: BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1815-6, page 292. 6. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1816-7, pages 33-74 (English version, 1823-4, page 702 ff.). 7. Cf. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1817-8, page 125 ff. 8. This was the first meeting of the London ministers of the powers according to agreement; they assembled December 4, 1817, and finally called a meeting of plenipotentiaries on the question of suppression at Aix-la-Chapelle, beginning October 24, 1818. Among those present were Metternich, Richelieu, Wellington, Castlereagh, Hardenberg, Bernstorff, Nesselrode, and Capodistrias. Castlereagh made two propositions: 1. That the five powers join in urging Portugal and Brazil to abolish the trade May 20, 1820; 2. That the powers adopt the principle of a mutual qualified Right of Search. Cf. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1818-9, pages 21-88; AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, FOREIGN, V. No. 346, pages 113-122. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1816
May: The steamboat Enterprise ascended the Mississippi from New Orleans to Louisville. She was commanded by Captain Henry M. Shreve, who had been chiefly instrumental in breaking down the monopoly claimed by Robert Fulton and Livingston of the steam navigation of the rivers (he had carried the case up until he got a favorable decision from the US Supreme Court). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1818
Holland and France resolved to abandon the international slave trade.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE Date Slave-trade Abolished by 1802 Denmark 1807 Great Britain; United States 1813 Sweden 1814 Netherlands 1815 Portugal (north of the equator) 1817 Spain (north of the equator) 1818 France 1820 Spain 1829 Brazil (?) 1830 Portugal HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
Date Right of Search Arrangements Treaty with for Joint Great Britain, Cruising with made by Great Britain, made by 1817 Portugal; Spain 1818 Netherlands 1824 Sweden 1831-33 France 1833-39 Denmark, Hanse Towns, etc. 1841 Quintuple Treaty (Austria, Russia, Prussia) 1842 United States 1844 Texas 1845 Belgium France 1862 United States
Collector Chew reported to the Secretary of the Treasury that during this year he became aware of 3 schooners that unloaded slaves in Louisiana ports (HOUSE REPORTS, 21st Congress, 1st session III, No. 348, page 70).
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The United States cruisers succeeded now and then in capturing a slaver, like the “Eugene,” which was taken when within four miles of the New Orleans bar.9 President Madison again, in 1816, urged Congress to act on account of the “violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are chargeable on unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under foreign flags, and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of slaves into the United States, through adjoining ports and territories.”10 The executive was continually in receipt of ample evidence of this illicit trade and of the helplessness of officers of the law. In 1817 it was reported to the Secretary of the Navy that most of the goods carried to Galveston were brought into the United States; “the more valuable, and the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward, where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and persons have gone from New-Orleans to purchase them. Every exertion will be made to intercept them, but I have little hopes of success.”11 Similar letters from naval officers and collectors showed that a system of slave piracy had arisen since the war, and that at Galveston there was an establishment of organized brigands, who did not go to the trouble of sailing to Africa for their slaves, but simply captured slavers and sold their cargoes into the United States. This Galveston nest had, in 1817, eleven armed vessels 9. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 1st session, II. No. 12, pages 22, 38. This slaver was after capture sent to New Orleans, — an illustration of the irony of the Act of 1807. 10. HOUSE JOURNAL, 14th Congress 2d session, page 15. 11. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 36, page 5. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA to prosecute the work, and “the most shameful violations of the slave act, as well as our revenue laws, continue to be practised.”12 Cargoes of as many as three hundred slaves were arriving in Texas. All this took place under Aury, the buccaneer governor; and when he removed to Amelia Island in 1817 with the McGregor raid, the illicit traffic in slaves, which had been going on there for years,13 took an impulse that brought it even to the somewhat deaf ears of Collector Bullock. He reported, May 22, 1817: “I have just received information from a source on which I can implicitly rely, that it has already become the practice to introduce into the state of Georgia, across the St. Mary’s River, from Amelia Island, East Florida, Africans, who have been carried into the Port of Fernandina, subsequent to the capture of it by the Patriot army now in possession of it ...; were the legislature to pass an act giving compensation in some manner to informers, it would have a tendency in a great degree to prevent the practice; as the thing now is, no citizen will take the trouble of searching for and detecting the slaves. I further understand, that the evil will not be confined altogether to Africans, but will be extended to the worst class of West India slaves.”14 Undoubtedly, the injury done by these pirates to the regular slave-trading interests was largely instrumental in exterminating them. Late in 1817 United States troops seized Amelia Island, and President Monroe felicitated Congress and the country upon escaping the “annoyance and injury” of this illicit trade.15 The trade, however, seems to have continued, as is shown by such letters as the following, written three and a half months later: —
PORT OF DARIEN, March 14, 1818. ... It is a painful duty, sir, to express to you, that I am in possession of undoubted information, that African and West India negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for sale or settlement, or passing through it to the territories of the United States for similar purposes; these facts are notorious; and it is not unusual to see such negroes in the streets of St. Mary’s, and such too, recently captured by our vessels of war, and ordered to Savannah, were illegally bartered by hundreds in that city, for this bartering or bonding (as it is called, but in reality selling,) actually took place before any decision had [been] passed by the court respecting them. I cannot but again express to you, sir, that these irregularities and mocking of the laws, by men who understand them, and who, it was presumed, would have respected them, are such, that it requires the immediate interposition of Congress to effect a suppression of this traffic; for, as things are, should a faithful officer of the government apprehend such negroes, to avoid the penalties imposed by the laws, the proprietors disclaim them, and some agent of the executive demands a delivery of the same to him, who may employ them as he pleases, 12. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 1st session, II. No. 12, pages 8-14. See Chew’s letter of Oct. 17, 1817: HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 1st session, II. No. 12, pages 14-16. 13. By the secret Joint Resolution and Act of 1811 (STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 471), Congress gave the President power to suppress the Amelia Island establishment, which was then notorious. The capture was not accomplished until 1817. 14. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, pages 10-11. Cf. Report of the House Committee, Jan. 10, 1818: “It is but too notorious that numerous infractions of the law prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States have been perpetrated with impunity upon our southern frontier.” AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, MISCELLANEOUS, II. No. 441. 15. Special message of Jan. 13, 1818: HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 137-9. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA or effect a sale by way of a bond, for the restoration of the negroes when legally called on so to do; which bond, it is understood, is to be forfeited, as the amount of the bond is so much less than the value of the property.... There are many negroes ... recently introduced into this state and the Alabama territory, and which can be apprehended. The undertaking would be great; but to be sensible that we shall possess your approbation, and that we are carrying the views and wishes of the government into execution, is all we wish, and it shall be done, independent of every personal consideration. I have, etc.16
This “approbation” failed to come to the zealous collector, and on the 5th of July he wrote that, “not being favored with a reply,” he has been obliged to deliver over to the governor’s agents ninety-one illegally imported Negroes.17 Reports from other districts corroborate this testimony. The collector at Mobile writes of strange proceedings on the part of the courts.18 General D.B. Mitchell, ex-governor of Georgia and United States Indian agent, after an investigation in 1821 by Attorney-General Wirt, was found “guilty of having prostituted his power, as agent for Indian affairs at the Creek agency, to the purpose of aiding and assisting in a conscious breach of the act of Congress of 1807, in prohibition of the slave trade — and this from mercenary motives.”19 The indefatigable Collector Chew of New Orleans wrote to Washington that, “to put a stop to that traffic, a naval force suitable to those waters is indispensable,” and that “vast numbers of slaves will be introduced to an alarming extent, unless prompt and effectual measures are adopted by the general government.”20 Other collectors continually reported infractions, complaining that they could get no assistance from the citizens,21 or plaintively asking the services of “one small cutter.”22 Meantime, what was the response of the government to such representations, and what efforts were made to enforce the act? A few unsystematic and spasmodic attempts are recorded. In 1811 some special instructions were sent out,23 and the President was authorized to seize Amelia Island.24 Then came the war; and as late as November 15, 1818, in spite of the complaints of collectors, we find no revenue cutter on the Gulf coast.25 During the years 1817 and 181826 some cruisers went there irregularly, but they were too large to be effective; and the partial suppression of the Amelia Island pirates was all that was accomplished. On the whole, the efforts of the government lacked plan, energy, and often sincerity. Some captures of slavers were made;27 but, as the collector at Mobile wrote, anent certain 16. Collector McIntosh, of the District of Brunswick, Ga., to the Secretary of the Treasury. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, pages 8-9. 17. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, pages 6-7. 18. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, pages 11-12. 19. AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, MISCELLANEOUS, II. No. 529. 20. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, page 7. 21. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, page 6. 22. HOUSE REPORTS, 21st Congress 1st session, III. No. 348, page 82. 23. They were not general instructions, but were directed to Commander Campbell. Cf. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, IV. No. 84, pages 5-6. 24. STATUTES AT LARGE, III. 471 ff. 25. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, VI. No. 107, pages 8-9. 26. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, IV. No. 84. Cf. Chew’s letters in HOUSE REPORTS, 21st Congress 1st session, III. No. 348. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA cases, “this was owing rather to accident, than any well-timed arrangement.” He adds: “from the Chandalier Islands to the Perdido river, including the coast, and numerous other islands, we have only a small boat, with four men and an inspector, to oppose to the whole confederacy of smugglers and pirates.”28 To cap the climax, the government officials were so negligent that Secretary Crawford, in 1820, confessed to Congress that “it appears, from an examination of the records of this office, that no particular instructions have ever been given, by the Secretary of the Treasury, under the original or supplementary acts prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the United States.”29 Beside this inactivity, the government was criminally negligent in not prosecuting and punishing offenders when captured. Urgent appeals for instruction from prosecuting attorneys were too often received in official silence; complaints as to the violation of law by State officers went unheeded;30 informers were unprotected and sometimes driven from home.31 Indeed, the most severe comment on the whole period is the report, January 7, 1819, of the Register of the Treasury, who, after the wholesale and open violation of the Act of 1807, reported, in response to a request from the House, “that it doth not appear, from an examination of the records of this office, and particularly of the accounts (to the date of their last settlement) of the collectors of the customs, and of the several marshals of the United States, that any forfeitures had been incurred under the said act.”32
Cuba was granted the privilege to vend its tobacco worldwide.
An invention important to the development of the cloth industry occurred during this year. William Eaton developed a self-acting frame. Because this development would have an impact on the demand for bales of cotton as a raw material for cloth, it would have an impact on the demand for field labor to grow this cotton, and therefore would have consequences in terms of human slavery — and in terms of the international slave trade.
1 At one point during the year, cotton was reaching 31 /2 cents per pound on the world market. With cotton being that highly valued, the value of the labor of slaves, and the value of farmland, was also high. With one’s slaves and one’s farmland being of high value, one would take care to take care of them, and to work them as hard as they could possibly be worked. The important thing was, to create cotton and get it to market, and sell it for enough money to have collateral to purchase more slaves and more land, on margin, at high prices. But in Liverpool, the cotton importers for the mills of England were becoming alarmed. A manufacturer who had only one source of raw materials was at the mercy of that source. The importers began to diversify by
27. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 1st session, II. No. 12, pages 22, 38; 15th Congress 2d session, VI. No. 100, page 13; 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, page 9, etc.; HOUSE REPORTS, 21st Congress 1st session, III. No. 348, page 85. 28. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, VI. No. 107, pages 8-9. 29. HOUSE REPORTS, 21st Congress 1st session, III. No. 348, page 77. 30. Cf. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 16th Congress 1st session, III. No. 42, page 11: “The Grand Jury found true bills against the owners of the vessels, masters, and a supercargo — all of whom are discharged; why or wherefore I cannot say, except that it could not be for want of proof against them.” 31. E.g., in July, 1818, one informer “will have to leave that part of the country to save his life”: HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, VI. No. 100, page 9. 32. Joseph Nourse, Register of the Treasury, to Hon. W.H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury: HOUSE DOCUMENT, 15th Congress 2d session, VI. No. 107, page 5. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA switching some of their orders from America to East India. Toward the end of the year, the price of American cotton on the Liverpool dock was wavering. In December the news of this would reach America, and in one day the price of the cotton in transit would decline by 19%. By the end of the year cotton would be selling in 3 New Orleans for 14 /10 cents a pound. With cotton that low, the value of the labor of slaves, and the value of farmland, would be similarly lowered. With one’s slaves and one’s farmland being of low value, and with high interest to pay on large short-term loans taken out in order to purchase them, one would take care to work them as hard as they could possibly be worked, and it would not make a whole lot of difference if the slaves were worked right into the ground, or if the ground itself were worked down to sterile barrenness. The important thing was, to create cotton and get it to market and get whatever one could get for it, in order to meet the payments and not lose the plantation and thus lose the prestigious status of being white planters. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The history of slavery and the slave- trade after 1820 must be read in the light of the industrial revolution through which the civilized world passed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between the years 1775 and 1825 occurred economic events and changes of the highest importance and widest influence. Though all branches of industry felt the impulse of this new industrial life, yet, “if we consider single industries, cotton manufacture has, during the nineteenth century, made the most magnificent and gigantic advances.”33 This fact is easily explained by the remarkable series of inventions that revolutionized this industry between 1738 and 1830, including Arkwright’s, Watt’s, Compton’s, and Cartwright’s epoch-making contrivances.34 The effect which these inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to 572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830, and to 3,366,000 in 1860.35 Very early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney’s cotton-gin, soon answered this question: a new economic future was opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into this one staple. Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor large farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war 33. Beer, GESCHICHTE DES WELTHANDELS IM 19TEN JAHRHUNDERT, II. 67. 34. A list of these inventions most graphically illustrates this advance: — 1738, John Jay, fly-shuttle. John Wyatt, spinning by rollers. 1748, Lewis Paul, carding-machine. 1760, Robert Kay, drop-box. 1769, Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle. James Watt, steam-engine. 1772, James Lees, improvements on carding-machine. 1775, Richard Arkwright, series of combinations. 1779, Samuel Compton, mule. 1785, Edmund Cartwright, power-loom. 1803-4, Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine. 1817, Roberts, fly-frame. 1818, William Eaton, self-acting frame. 1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule. Cf. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, pages 116-231; ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, 9th ed., article “Cotton.” 35. Baines, HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE, page 215. A bale weighed from 375 lbs. to 400 lbs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom, recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an industrial system. The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world’s cotton market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound, 8½d. From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the latter year it reached 4d.; the only exception to this fall was in the years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to “corner” the market, sent the price up as high as 11d. The demand for cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough had pronounced “prodigious,” and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which, except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and the Crimean War, continued until 1860.36 The steady increase in the production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822 the crop was a half- million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the world’s consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that, in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856, and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.37 Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in 1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton “corner;” by the end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy. The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave régime in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years 1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of the cotton market, risked all on a political coup-d’état, which failed in the war of 1861-1865.38
36. The prices cited are from Newmarch and Tooke, and refer to the London market. The average price in 1855-60 was about 7d. 37. From United States census reports. 38. Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, THE COTTON KINGDOM. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA April 24, Friday: The vessel Caroline departed from Philadelphia under master James Serrill for New Orleans, transporting a slave cargo of 2 women, 3 boys, a girl and a female infant:
Milly Female 45 years 5'2" Crogham, owner — Louisiana
Rhodea Female 32 years 5'3" Washington Jackson, owner — Philadelphia
Humphrey Male 14 years 5'2" Crogham, owner — Louisiana
Dillie Female 12 years 4'6"
William Boy 5 years
James Boy 4 years
Lucy Female 1 year
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 24th of 4th M / Aunt M Wanton remains much as Yesterday - a poor suffering mortal both in body & mind. - & how long she will remain is uncertain tho’ from all human probability it cannot be long ere the Scene of life must close RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1819
January 10, Sunday: Benjamin Henry Latrobe arrived in New Orleans, where he would design the central tower of the St. Louis Cathedral.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 10th of 1st M 1819 / In the morning meeting, there was a short testimony which felt to me to be about right - In the Afternoon we were silent, both to me were rather dull seasons. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1820
The first US tidewater canal, the Fox Creek Canal, was completed.
Architect and canal engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe died of yellow fever in New Orleans.
The Commissioners of the land office were authorized to survey and sell lots on the Onondaga salt spring reservation, as with other unappropriated lands in the state, the proceeds to go to the Commissioners of the Canal Fund. $20,000, from the first sales is to be applied to the improvement of navigation on the Oswego River.
Fall: Frederic Tudor, with the help of his two brothers, prepared to ship the ice of Massachusetts to New Orleans. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1821
Toward the middle of the month John James Audubon would take part, in a field near New Orleans, in a general slaughter of migrating Golden Plover, amounting by his own estimate to a body count of some 48,000. (Hey, what’s gunpowder for, anyway? –It’s for having fun, right?) HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1822
The Reverend Timothy Flint passed on to a place where people hadn’t yet caught onto his act: New Orleans.39
When Moses Lopez, the last Jew in Newport, Rhode Island moved to New-York, care of the Touro Synagogue was taken over by Nathan H. Gould, a Christian.40 The ownership of the synagogue would devolve on the Shearith Israel Congregation in New-York. Abraham Touro died, bequeathing important sums of money for the maintenance of the abandoned synagogue structure “left to the bats and moles and to the occasional invasion, through its porches and windows, of boys who took pleasure in examining the furniture scattered about,” at which his father had once officiated while there had still been Jews living in the vicinity.
(The synagogue would later benefit also by a much larger bequest for its upkeep, $10,000, sent by Judah Touro, another son of the former rabbi, who would accumulate a fortune in New Orleans.)
39. Keep on truckin’, Reverend, keep a-keepin’ on. 40. I don’t know what relation Nathan H. Gould was to Stephen Wanton Gould, but it is likely that they were related, not only because of the similarity in names but also because Moses Lopez and Stephen Wanton Gould were close friends. The Newport government roster for 1856 would list William C. Thurston, a carpenter who lived at 8 Cross Street, as “Keeper of Jews’ Synagogue.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1823
The Reverend Timothy Flint passed on to a place where people hadn’t caught onto his act yet: West Florida.41 Then he returned to New Orleans and to Alexandria, Louisiana.
In Louisiana, Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette was a student at the Collège d’Orléans when his parents sent him north in an attempt to divert his mind from the local Choctaw — a low native people in regard to whom the interest of a white child was inappropriate. The white child would be pursuing his education in more innocuous locales, such as Kentucky and New Jersey.
December: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana and began writing up an account of his adventures.
41. Keep on truckin’, Reverend, keep a-keepin’ on. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1824
End of January: At the plantation of St. James Parish outside New Orleans, Giacomo Costantino Beltrami completed his account of his adventures.
February 17, Tuesday: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami accepted an invitation to address the Freemasons of New Orleans, about his adventures.
Waldo Emerson to his journal:
Pliny’s uncle had a slave read while he eat [sic]. In the PLINY progress of Watt & Perkin’s philosophy the day may come when the scholar shall be provided with a Reading Steam Engine; when he shall say Presto — & it shall discourse eloquent history — & Stop Sesame & it shall hush to let him think. He shall put in a pin, & hear poetry; & two pins, & hear a song. that age will discover Laputa.
April 12, Monday: De Witt Clinton was ousted by Van Buren’s colleagues as an Erie Canal commissioner.
Publication of Giacomo Costantino Beltrami’s LA DÉCOUVERTE DES SOURCES DU MISSISSIPPI ET DE LA RIVIÈRE SANGLANTE. DESCRIPTION DU COURS ENTIRE DU MISSISSIPPI, QUIE N’ÉTAIT CONNU, QUE PARTIELLEMENT, ET D’UNE GRANDE PA RTI E DE CELUI DE LA RIVIERE SANGLANTE, PRESQUE ENTIÈREMENT INCONNUE; AINSI QUE DU COURS ENTIRE DE L’OHIO. APERÇUS HISTORIQUES, DES ENDROITS LES PLUS INTÉRESSANS, QU’ON Y RECONTRE. OBSERVATIONS CRITICO-PHILOSOPHIQUES, SUR LES MOEURS, LA RELIGION, LES SUPERSTITIONS, LES COSTUMES, LES ARMES, LES CHASSES, LA GUERRE, LA PAI X, LE DÉNOMBREMENT, L’ORGINE, &C. &C. DE PLUSIEURS NATIONS INDIENNES. PARALLELE DE CES PEOPLES AVEC CEUX DE L’ANTIQUITÉ, DU MOYEN AGE, ET DU MODERNE. COUP D’OEIL, SUR LES COMPAGNIES NORD-OUEST, ET DE LA BAIE D’HUDSON, AINSI QUE SUR LA COLONIE SELKIRK. PREUVES EVIDENTES, QUE LE MISSISSIPPI EST LA PREMIÈRE RIVIÈRE DU MONDE. PAR G. C. BELTRAMI … (Nouvelle-Orléans: Impr. par Benjamin Levy, 1824).
LA DÉCOUVERTE ... HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA April 28, Wednesday: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami left New Orleans for Tampico, Mexico. He would tour Aguascalientes, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Alvarado, San Luis Potosi, etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1825
Down on his luck, and ill, the Reverend Timothy Flint returned from New Orleans and Alexandria, Louisiana to Massachusetts, and then upon his return to Louisiana, removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, where for three years he would take charge of the Western Monthly Review.
William Wells Brown would have been about eleven years of age during this year, so I am taking the liberty of introducing the following undated material about an unfortunate accident and its severe consequences, from his NARRATIVE, at this point, for lack of any more precise guidelines:
MY master had family worship, night and morning. At night the slaves were called in to attend; but in the mornings they had to be at their work, and master did all the praying. My master and mistress were great lovers of mint julep, and every morning, a pitcher-full was made, of which they all partook freely, not excepting little master William. After drinking freely all round, they would have family worship, and then breakfast. I cannot say but I loved the julep as well as any of them, and during prayer was always careful to seat myself close to the table where it stood, so as to help myself when they were all busily engaged in their devotions. By the time prayer was over, I was about as happy as any of them. A sad accident happened one morning. In helping myself, and at the same time keeping an eye on my old mistress, I accidentally let the pitcher fall upon the floor, breaking it in pieces, and spilling the contents. This was a bad affair for me; for as soon as prayer was over, I was taken and severely chastised. My master’s family consisted of himself, his wife, and their nephew, William Moore. He was taken into the family when only a few weeks of age. His name being that of my own, mine was changed for the purpose of giving precedence to his, though I was his senior by ten or twelve years. The plantation being four miles from the city, I had to drive the family to church. I always dreaded the approach of the Sabbath; for, during service, I was obliged to stand by the horses in the hot, broiling sun, or in the rain, just as it happened. One Sabbath, as we were driving past the house of D.D. Page, a gentleman who owned a large baking establishment, as I was sitting upon the box of the carriage, which was very much elevated, I saw Mr. Page pursuing a slave around the yard with a long whip, cutting him at every jump. The man soon escaped from the yard, and was followed by Mr. Page. They came running past us, and the slave, perceiving that he would be overtaken, stopped suddenly, and Page stumbled over him, and falling on the stone pavement, fractured one of his legs, which crippled him for life. The same gentleman, but a short time previous, tied up a woman of his, by the name of Delphia, and whipped her nearly to death; yet he was a deacon in the Baptist church, in good and regular standing. Poor Delphia! I was well acquainted with her, and called to see her while upon her sick bed; and I shall never forget her appearance. She was a member of the same church with her master. Soon after this, I was hired out to Mr. Walker, the same man whom I have mentioned as having carried a gang of slaves down HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA the river on the steamboat Enterprise. Seeing me in the capacity of a steward on the boat, and thinking that I would make a good hand to take care of slaves, he determined to have me for that purpose; and finding that my master would not sell me, he hired me for the term of one year. When I learned the fact of my having been hired to a negro speculator, or a “soul driver,” as they are generally called among slaves, no one can tell my emotions. Mr. Walker had offered a high price for me, as I afterwards learned, but I suppose my master was restrained from selling me by the fact that I was a near relative of his. On entering the service of Mr. Walker, I found that my opportunity of getting to a land of liberty was gone, at least for the time being. He had a gang of slaves in readiness to start for New Orleans, and in a few days we were on our journey. I am at a loss for language to express my feelings on that occasion. Although my master had told me that he had not sold me, and Mr. Walker had told me that he had not purchased me, I did not believe them; and not until I had been to New Orleans, and was on my return, did I believe that I was not sold. There was on the boat a large room on the lower deck, in which the slaves were kept, men and women, promiscuously — all chained two and two, and a strict watch kept that they did not get loose; for cases have occurred in which slaves have got off their chains, and made their escape at landing-places, while the boats were taking in wood;— and with all our care, we lost one woman who had been taken from her husband and children, and having no desire to live without them, in the agony of her soul jumped overboard, and drowned herself. She was not chained. It was almost impossible to keep that part of the boat clean. On landing at Natchez, the slaves were all carried to the slave- pen, and there kept one week, during which time several of them were sold. Mr. Walker fed his slaves well. We took on board at St. Louis several hundred pounds of bacon (smoked meat) and corn-meal, and his slaves were better fed than slaves generally were in Natchez, so far as my observation extended. At the end of a week, we left for New Orleans, the place of our final destination, which we reached in two days. Here the slaves were placed in a negro-pen, where those who wished to purchase could call and examine them. The negro-pen is a small yard, surrounded by buildings, from fifteen to twenty feet wide, with the exception of a large gate with iron bars. The slaves are kept in the buildings during the night, and turned out into the yard during the day. After the best of the stock was sold at private sale at the pen, the balance were taken to the Exchange Coffee-House Auction Rooms, kept by Isaac L. McCoy, and sold at public auction. After the sale of this lot of slaves, we left New Orleans for St. Louis. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA May: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami made his way back from Mexico to New Orleans, and discovered that in his absence his book had more or less been dismissed as a fantasy. Also, the Roman Catholic church –well aware of the reason why he was carrying a red umbrella rather than a black one– had issued a condemnation of him and his writings. He would soon travel on to Philadelphia.
(Also in this year, according to Colonel Robert Campbell, when some Indians paid a visit to St. Louis, the first thing they did was purchase some red umbrellas and they “walked in Indian file, bare headed with the umbrellas spread over them, making a ludicrous appearance.” It is worth the speculation, that these native’s sense of style had been affected by their encounter with Giacomo Costantino Beltrami two years earlier — because Beltrami had in fact brought with him into the wilderness that large red anticlerical umbrella.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1826
At the age of 41, John James Audubon left New Orleans bound for Liverpool, England. During the next year he would be exhibiting his watercolors in an effort to raise interest in his grand project. By the winter he would have secured an agreement with William Lizars in Edinburgh for the engraving and printing of his work.
Toward the end of this year Charles-Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte and his family returned to Europe42 where he visited Philipp Jakob Cretzschmar in Germany, renewed in England his acquaintance with John James Audubon, and met John Edward Gray at the British Museum.
42. Although Waldo Emerson shared quarters with a “nephew of Napoleon” in Florida in 1827 and came to much admire this man, and Charles was indeed a nephew of Napoleon, Charles could not have been the nephew that Emerson admired in St. Augustine. Charles wasn’t even in the New World in 1827, having in 1826 returned to Europe. The nephew whom Emerson came to admire in St. Augustine was an aristocratic supporter of human slavery, and an atheist, and that would have been Prince Achille Murat. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1827
William Wells Brown would have been about 13 years of age during this year, so I am taking the liberty of introducing the following undated material from his NARRATIVE, at this point, having to do with an accident and its unfortunate consequences (for lack of any more precise guidelines):
ON our arrival at St. Louis I went to Dr. Young, and told him that I did not wish to live with Mr. Walker any longer. I was heart-sick at seeing my fellow-creatures bought and sold. But the Dr. had hired me for the year, and stay I must. Mr. Walker again commenced purchasing another gang of slaves. He bought a man of Colonel John O’Fallon, who resided in the suburbs of the city. This man had a wife and three children. As soon the purchase was made, he was put in jail for safe keeping, until we should be ready to start for New Orleans. His wife visited him while there, several times, and several times when she went for that purpose was refused admittance. In the course of eight or nine weeks Mr. Walker had his cargo of human flesh made up. There was in this lot a number of old men and women, some of them with gray locks. We left St. Louis in the steamboat Carlton, Captain Swan, bound for New Orleans. On our way down, and before we reached Rodney, the place where we made our first stop, I had to prepare the old slaves for market. I was ordered to have the old men’s whiskers shaved off, and the grey hairs plucked out where they were not too numerous, in which case he had a preparation of blacking to color it, and with a blacking brush we would put it on. This was new business to me, and was performed in a room where the passengers could not see us. These slaves were also taught how old they were by Mr. Walker, and after going through the blacking process they looked ten or fifteen years younger; and I am sure that some of those who purchased slaves of Mr. Walker were dreadfully cheated, especially in the ages of the slaves which they bought. We landed at Rodney, and the slaves were driven to the pen in the back part of the village. Several were sold at this place, during our stay of four or five days, when we proceeded to Natchez. There we landed at night, and the gang were put in the warehouse until morning, when they were driven to the pen. As soon as the slaves are put in these pens, swarms of planters may be seen in and about them. They knew when Walker was expected, as he always had the time advertised beforehand when he would be in Rodney, Natchez, and New Orleans. These were the principal places where he offered his slaves for sale. When at Natchez the second time, I saw a slave very cruelly whipped. He belonged to a Mr. Broadwell, a merchant who kept a store on the wharf. The slave’s name was Lewis. I had known him several years, as he was formerly from St. Louis. We were expecting a steamboat down the river, in which we were to take passage for New Orleans. Mr. Walker sent me to the landing to watch for the boat, ordering me to inform him on its arrival. While there I went into the store to see Lewis. I saw a slave in the store, and asked him where Lewis was. Said he, “They have got Lewis hanging between the heavens and the earth.” I asked him what he meant by that. He told me to go into the warehouse and see. I went in, and found Lewis there. He was tied up to a HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA beam, with his toes just touching the floor. As there was no one in the warehouse but himself, I inquired the reason of his being in that situation. He said Mr. Broadwell had sold his wife to a planter six miles from the city, and that he had been to visit her — that he went in the night, expecting to return before daylight, and went without his master’s permission. The patrol had taken him up before he reached his wife. He was put in jail, and his master had to pay for his catching and keeping, and that was what he was tied up for. Just as he finished his story, Mr. Broadwell came in, and inquired what I was doing there. I knew not what to say, and while I was thinking what reply to make he struck me over the head with the cowhide, the end of which struck me over my right eye, sinking deep into the flesh, leaving a scar which I carry to this day. Before I visited Lewis he had received fifty lashes. Mr. Broadwell gave him fifty lashes more after I came out, as I was afterwards informed by Lewis himself. The next day we proceeded to New Orleans, and put the gang in the same negro-pen which we occupied before. In a short time the planters came flocking to the pen to purchase slaves. Before the slaves were exhibited for sale, they were dressed and driven out into the yard. Some were set to dancing, some to jumping, some to singing, and some to playing cards. This was done to make them appear cheerful and happy. My business was to see that they were placed in those situations before the arrival of the purchasers, and I have often set them to dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears. As slaves were in good demand at that time, they were all soon disposed of, and we again set out for St. Louis. On our arrival, Mr. Walker purchased a farm five or six miles from the city. He had no family, but made a housekeeper of one of his female slaves. Poor Cynthia! I knew her well. She was a quadroon, and one of the most beautiful women I ever saw. She was a native of St. Lewis, and bore an irreproachable character for virtue and propriety of conduct. Mr. Walker bought her for the New Orleans market, and took her down with him on one of the trips that I made with him. Never shall I forget the circumstances of that voyage! On the first night that we were on board the steamboat, he directed me to put her into a state- room he had provided for her, apart from the other slaves. I had seen too much of the workings of slavery not to know what this meant. I accordingly watched him into the state-room, and listened to hear what passed between them. I heard him make his base offers, and her reject them. He told her that if she would accept his vile proposals, he would take her back with him to St. Louis, and establish her as his housekeeper on his farm. But if she persisted in rejecting them, he would sell her as a field hand on the worst plantation on the river. Neither threats nor bribes prevailed, however, and he retired, disappointed of his prey. The next morning poor Cynthia told me what had passed, and bewailed her sad fate with floods of tears. I comforted and encouraged her all I could; but I foresaw but too well what the result must be. Without entering into any further particulars, suffice it to say that Walker performed his part of the contract at that time. He took her back to St. Louis, established her as his mistress and housekeeper at his farm, and before I left, he had two children by her. But, mark the end! Since I have been HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA at the North, I have been credibly informed that Walker has been married, and, as a previous measure, sold poor Cynthia and her four children (she having had two more since I came away) into hopeless bondage! He soon commenced purchasing to make up the third gang. We took steamboat, and went to Jefferson City, a town on the Missouri river. Here we landed, and took stage for the interior of the state. He bought a number of slaves as he passed the different farms and villages. After getting twenty-two or twenty-three men and women, we arrived at St. Charles, a village on the banks of the Missouri. Here he purchased a woman who had a child in her arms, appearing to be four or five weeks old. We had been travelling by land for some days, and were in hopes to have found a boat at this place for St. Louis, but were disappointed. As no boat was expected for some days, we started for St. Louis by land. Mr. Walker had purchased two horses. He rode one, and I the other. The slaves were chained together, and we took up our line of march, Mr. Walker taking the lead, and I bringing up the rear. Though the distance was not more than twenty miles, we did not reach it the first day. The road was worse than any that I have ever travelled. Soon after we left St. Charles the young child grew very cross, and kept up a noise during the greater part of the day. Mr. Walker complained of its crying several times, and told the mother to stop the child’s d——d noise, or he would. The woman tried to keep the child from crying, but could not. We put up at night with an acquaintance of Mr. Walker, and in the morning, just as we were about to start, the child again commenced crying. Walker stepped up to her, and told her to give the child to him. The mother tremblingly obeyed. He took the child by one arm, as you would a cat by the leg, walked into the house, and said to the lady, “Madam, I will make you a present of this little nigger; it keeps such a noise that I can’t bear it.” “Thank you, sir,” said the lady. The mother, as soon as she saw that her child was to be left, ran up to Mr. Walker, and falling upon her knees, begged him to let her have her child; she clung around his legs, and cried, “Oh, my child! my child! master, do let me have my child! oh, do, do, do! I will stop its crying if you will only let me have it again.” When I saw this woman crying for her child so piteously, a shudder —a feeling akin to horror— shot through my frame. I have often since in imagination heard her crying for her child: — None but those who have been in a slave state, and who have seen the American slave-trader engaged in his nefarious traffic, can estimate the sufferings their victims undergo. If there is one feature of American slavery more abominable than another; it is that which sanctions the buying and selling of human beings. The African slave-trade was abolished by the American Congress some twenty years since; and now, by the laws of the country, if an American is found engaged in the African slave-trade, he is considered a pirate; and if found guilty of such, the penalty would be death. Although the African slave-trader has been branded as a pirate, men are engaged in the traffic in slaves in this country, who occupy high positions in society, and hold offices of honor in the councils of the nation; and not a few have made their fortunes by this business. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA After the woman’s child had been given away, Mr. Walker commanded her to return into the ranks with the other slaves. Women who had children were not chained, but those that had none were. As soon as her child was disposed of she was chained in the gang. The following song I have often heard the slaves sing, when about to be carried to the far south. It is said to have been composed by a slave. “See these poor souls from Africa Transported to America; We are stolen, and sold to Georgia— Will you go along with me? We are stolen, and sold to Georgia— Come sound the jubilee! See wives and husbands sold apart, Their children’s screams will break my heart;— There ’s a better day a coming— Will you go along with me? There ’s a better day a coming, Go sound the jubilee! O, gracious Lord! when shall it be, That we poor souls shall all be free? Lord, break them slavery powers— Will you go along with me? Lord, break them slavery powers, Go sound the jubilee! Dear Lord, dear Lord, when slavery ’ll cease, Then we poor souls will have our peace;— There ’s a better day a coming— Will you go along with me? There ’s a better day a coming, Go sound the jubilee!” We finally arrived at Mr. Walker’s farm. He had a house built during our absence to put slaves in. It was a kind of domestic jail. The slaves were put in the jail at night, and worked on the farm during the day. They were kept here until the gang was completed, when we again started for New Orleans, on board the steamboat North America, Capt. Alexander Scott. We had a large number of slaves in this gang. One, by the name of Joe, Mr. Walker was training up to take my place, as my time was nearly out, and glad was I. We made our first stop at Vicksburg, where we remained one week and sold several slaves. Mr. Walker, though not a good master, had not flogged a slave since I had been with him, though he had threatened me. The slaves were kept in the pen, and he always put up at the best hotel, and kept his wines in his room, for the accommodation of those who called to negotiate with him for the purchase of slaves. One day, while we were at Vicksburg, several gentlemen came to see him for that purpose, and as usual the wine was called for. I took the tray and started around with it, and having accidentally filled some of the glasses too full, the gentlemen spilled the wine on their clothes as they went to drink. Mr. Walker apologized to them for my carelessness, but looked at me as though he would see me again on this subject. After the gentlemen had left the room, he asked me what I meant by my carelessness, and said that he would attend to me. The next morning he gave me a note to carry to the jailer, and a dollar in money to give to him. I suspected that all was not right; so I went down near the landing, where I met with a HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA sailor, and, walking up to him, asked him if he would be so kind as to read the note for me. He read it over, and then looked at me. I asked him to tell me what was in it. Said he, “They are going to give you hell.” “Why?” said I. He said, “This is a note to have you whipped, and says that you have a dollar to pay for it.” He handed me back the note, and off I started. I knew not what to do, but was determined not to be whipped. I went up to the jail — took a look at it, and walked off again. As Mr. Walker was acquainted with the jailer, I feared that I should be found out if I did not go, and be treated in consequence of it still worse. While I was meditating on the subject, I saw a colored man about my size walk up, and the thought struck me in a moment to send him with my note. I walked up to him, and asked him who he belonged to. He said he was a free man, and had been in the city but a short time. I told him I had a note to go into the jail, and get a trunk to carry to one of the steamboats; but was so busily engaged that I could not do it, although I had a dollar to pay for it. He asked me if I would not give him the job. I handed him the note and the dollar, and off he started for the jail. I watched to see that he went in, and as soon as I saw the door close behind him, I walked around the corner, and took my station, intending to see how my friend looked when he came out. I had been there but a short time, when a colored man came around the corner, and said to another colored man with whom he was acquainted — “They are giving a nigger scissors in the jail.” “What for?” said the other. The man continued, “A nigger came into the jail, and asked for the jailer. The jailer came out, and he handed him a note, and said he wanted to get a trunk. The jailer told him to go with him, and he would give him the trunk. So he took him into the room, and told the nigger to give up the dollar. He said a man had given him the dollar to pay for getting the trunk. But that lie would not answer. So they made him strip himself, and then they tied him down, and are now whipping him.” I stood by all the while listening to their talk, and soon found out that the person alluded to was my customer. I went into the street opposite the jail, and concealed myself in such a manner that I could not be seen by any one coming out. I had been there but a short time; when the young man made his appearance, and looked around for me. I, unobserved, came forth from my hiding- place, behind a pile of brick, and he pretty soon saw me, and came up to me complaining bitterly, saying that I had played a trick upon him. I denied any knowledge of what the note contained, and asked him what they had done to him. He told me in substance what I heard the man tell who had come out of the jail. “Yes,” said he, “they whipped me and took my dollar, and gave me this note.” He showed me the note which the jailer had given him, telling him to give it to his master. I told him I would give him fifty cents for it — that being all the money I had. He gave it to me and took his money. He had received twenty lashes on his bare back, with the negro-whip. I took the note and started for the HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA hotel where I had left Mr. Walker. Upon reaching the hotel, I handed it to a stranger whom I had not seen before, and requested him to read it to me. As near as I can recollect, it was as follows: DEAR SIR: — By your direction, I have given your boy twenty lashes. He is a very saucy boy, and tried to make me believe that he did not belong to you, and I put it on to him well for lying to me.
I remain Your obedient servant. It is true that in most of the slave-holding cities, when a gentleman wishes his servants whipped, he can send him to the jail and have it done. Before I went in where Mr. Walker was, I wet my cheeks a little, as though I had been crying. He looked at me, and inquired what was the matter. I told him that I had never had such a whipping in my life, and handed him the note. He looked at it and laughed; — “And so you told him that you did not belong to me?” “Yes, sir;” said I. “I did not know that there was any harm in that.” He told me I must behave myself, if I did not want to be whipped again. This incident shows how it is that slavery makes its victims lying and mean; for which vices it afterwards reproaches them, and uses them as arguments to prove that they deserve no better fate. Had I entertained the same views of right and wrong which I now do, I am sure I should never have practised the deception upon that poor fellow which I did. I know of no act committed by me while in slavery which I have regretted more than that; and I heartily desire that it may be at some time or other in my power to make him amends for his vicarious sufferings in my behalf. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1829
William Wells Brown would have been about 15 years of age during this year, so I am taking the liberty of introducing the following undated material from his NARRATIVE, at this point, for lack of any more precise guidelines:
IN a few days we reached New Orleans, and arriving there in the night, remained on board until morning. While at New Orleans this time, I saw a slave killed; an account of which has been published by Theodore D. Weld, in his book entitled “Slavery as it is.” The circumstances were as follows. In the evening, between seven and eight o’clock, a slave came running down the levee, followed by several men and boys. The whites were crying out, “Stop that nigger! stop that nigger!” while the poor panting slave, in almost breathless accents, was repeating, “I did not steal the meat — I did not steal the meat.” The poor man at last took refuge in the river. The whites who were in pursuit of him, run on board of one of the boats to see if they could discover him. They finally espied him under the bow of the steamboat Trenton. They got a pike-pole, and tried to drive him from his hiding place. When they would strike at him he would dive under the water. The water was so cold, that it soon became evident that he must come out or be drowned. While they were trying to drive him from under the bow of the boat or drown him, he would in broken and imploring accents say, “I did not steal the meat; I did not steal the meat. My master lives up the river. I want to see my master. I did not steal the meat. Do let me go home to master.” After punching him, and striking him over the head for some time, he at last sunk in the water, to rise no more alive. On the end of the pike-pole with which they were striking him was a hook, which caught in his clothing, and they hauled him up on the bow of the boat. Some said he was dead; others said he was “playing possum;” while others kicked him to make him get up; but it was of no use — he was dead. As soon as they became satisfied of this, they commenced leaving, one after another. One of the hands on the boat informed the captain that they had killed the man, and that the dead body was lying on the deck. The captain came on deck, and said to those who were remaining, “You have killed this nigger; now take him off of my boat.” The captain’s name was Hart. The dead body was dragged on shore and left there. I went on board of the boat where our gang of slaves were, and during the whole night my mind was occupied with what I had seen. Early in the morning I went on shore to see if the dead body remained there. I found it in the same position that it was left the night before. I watched to see what they would do with it. It was left there until between eight and nine o’clock, when a cart, which takes up the trash out of the streets, came along, and the body was thrown in, and in a few minutes more was covered over with dirt which they were removing from the streets. During the whole time, I did not see more than six or seven persons around it, who, from their manner, evidently regarded it as no uncommon occurrence. During our stay in the city I met with a young white man with HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA whom I was well acquainted in St. Louis. He had been sold into slavery, under the following circumstances. His father was a drunkard, and very poor, with a family of five or six children. The father died, and left the mother to take care of and provide for the children as best she might. The eldest was a boy, named Burrill, about thirteen years of age, who did chores in a store kept by Mr. Riley, to assist his mother in procuring a living for the family. After working with him two years, Mr. Riley took him to New Orleans to wait on him while in that city on a visit, and when he returned to St. Louis, he told the mother of the boy that he had died with the yellow fever. Nothing more was heard from him, no one supposing him to be alive. I was much astonished when Burrill told me his history. Though I sympathized with him I could not assist him. We were both slaves. He was poor, uneducated, and without friends; and, if living, is, I presume, still held as a slave. After selling out this cargo of human flesh, we returned to St. Louis, and my time was up with Mr. Walker. I had served him one year, and it was the longest year I ever lived.
Joseph-Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy’s RUDIMENTS DE LA LANGUE HINDOUSTANIE.
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat’s NOUVEAUX MÉLANGES ASIATIQUES, OU RECUEIL DE MORCEAUX CRITIQUES ET DE MÉMOIRES RELATIFS AUX RELIGIONS, AUX SCIENCES, AUX COUTUMES, À L’HISTOIRE ET À LA GÉOGRAPHIE DES NATIONS ORIENTALES (Volumes I and II, Paris).
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette was sent to Paris to polish up his French at the Collège Royal in Paris. At the time the capital was in a political turmoil. To avoid this turmoil, the student would finish his college studies in Nantes and Rennes in the West of France. He would receive his baccalaureate in 1833 and then travel in Europe for awhile before returning to New Orleans. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA In either this year or the next, Frederick Douglass began as an errand boy in the Auld & Harrison shipyard and became a general assistant. Here is a depiction, by William Russell Birch, (1755-1834), of such an American shipyard, in Philadelphia as of the year 1800: HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Fall: William Lloyd Garrison attacked a Newburyport slave trader by the name of Francis Todd, for transporting about 80 slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans. He declared in print that such a man should be placed in solitary confinement for life, and so he was sued for libel, by the State of Maryland on behalf of Mr. Todd, and his sentence was a fine of $100.00 which he was unable to pay, and so he was thrown into prison and, his 4th failure as a newspaper editor, the newspaper ceased publication. However, the warden of the prison allowed the former editor to have pencil and paper and to have visitors, so he used the last of his business’s funds to have published a tract titled “A Brief Sketch of the Trial of William Lloyd Garrison.” After 49 days of incarceration Arthur Tappan paid his fine, he was freed, and he went on the lecture circuit with an
immediatist anti-colonization approach to the elimination of slavery. While lecturing in Philadelphia he stayed in the home of Friends James and Lucretia Mott. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1830
January: The state of Maryland convicted William Lloyd Garrison of libel against Francis Todd, for saying that a person who would transport slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans, as Todd did, should be placed in solitary confinement for life. Garrison was fined $100 (which he would not be able to pay, and so would be put in jail). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1831
Abraham Lincoln made a second flatboat trip to New Orleans. His father moved again but Abe didn’t go along with the family this time. Instead he settled in New Salem, Illinois, where he would work as a clerk in the village store and sleep in the back. He was learning basic math, reading William Shakespeare and Robert Burns, and participating in a local debating society. In this year he wrestled a man named Jack Armstrong to a draw.
January 3, Monday: The Polish Diet issued a manifesto demanding the reunion of all of ancient Poland.
Noah Webster, Esq. delivered an hour-long lecture on the English language before the House of Representatives.
The negrero Comet was, while carrying slaves from the District of Columbia to New Orleans, wrecked on the Bahama banks. The British would take its cargo of 164 slaves to the port of Nassau in New Providence, British West Indies and there set them free. Great Britain would eventually need to pay indemnity to the American slavemasters for having done such a naughty naughty deed (SENATE DOCUMENT, 24th Congress, 2d session II, No. 174; 25th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 216). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1832
October: By early in this month, an additional 29 cases of the Asiatic Cholera had occurred in Providence, Rhode Island, bringing the score there to a total of 25 dead and 11 recovered.
The epidemic had spread at this point to New Orleans, Louisiana.
When Edward Bettle, who had been courting Friend Angelina Emily Grimké, died of cholera, the Bettle family informed Angelina that her presence at the memorial ceremony in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or at the burial, would be unsettling to them. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1833
William Wells Brown would have been about 19 years of age during this year, so I am taking the liberty of introducing the following undated material from his NARRATIVE at this point, for lack of any more precise guidelines:
I WAS sent home, and was glad enough to leave the service of one who was tearing the husband from the wife, the child from the mother, and the sister from the brother — but a trial more severe and heart-rending than any which I had yet met with awaited me. My dear sister had been sold to a man who was going to Natchez, and was lying in jail awaiting the hour of his departure. She had expressed her determination to die, rather than go to the far south, and she was put in jail for safekeeping. I went to the jail the same day that I arrived, but as the jailer was not in I could not see her. I went home to my master, in the country, and the first day after my return he came where I was at work, and spoke to me very politely. I knew from his appearance that something was the matter. After talking to me about my several journeys to New Orleans with Mr. Walker, he told me that he was hard pressed for money, and as he had sold my mother and all her children except me, he thought it would be better to sell me than any other one, and that as I had been used to living in the city, he thought it probable that I would prefer it to a country life. I raised up my head, and looked him full in the face. When my eyes caught his he immediately looked to the ground. After a short pause, I said, “Master, mother has often told me that you are a near relative of mine, and I have often heard you admit the fact; and after you have hired me out, and received, as I once heard you say, nine hundred dollars for my service — after receiving this large sum, will you sell me to be carried to New Orleans or some other place?” “No,” said he, “I do not intend to sell you to a negro trader. If I had wished to have done that, I might have sold you to Mr. Walker for a large sum, but I would not sell you to a negro trader. You may go to the city, and find you a good master.” “But,” said I, “I cannot find a good master in the whole city of St. Louis.” “Why?” said he. “Because there are no good masters in the state.” “Do you not call me a good master?” “If you were you would not sell me.” “Now I will give you one week to find a master in, and surely you can do it in that time.” The price set by my evangelical master upon my soul and body was the trifling sum of fine hundred dollars. I tried to enter into some arrangement by which I might purchase my freedom; but he would enter into no such arrangement. I set out for the city with the understanding that I was to return in a week with some one to become my new master. Soon after reaching the city, I went to the jail, to learn if I could once more see my sister; but could not gain admission. I then went to mother, and learned from her that the owner of my sister HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA intended to start for Natchez in a few days. I went to the jail again the next day, and Mr. Simonds, the keeper, allowed me to see my sister for the last time. I cannot give a just description of the scene at that parting interview. Never, never can be erased from my heart the occurrences of that day! When I entered the room where she was, she was seated in one comer, alone. There were four other women in the same room, belonging to the same man. He had purchased them, he said, for his own use. She was seated with her face towards the door where I entered, yet she did not look up until I walked up to her. As soon as she observed me she sprung up, threw her arms around my neck, leaned her head upon my breast, and, without uttering a word, burst into tears. As soon as she recovered herself sufficiently to speak, she advised me to take mother, and try to get out of slavery. She said there was no hope for herself — that she must live and die a slave. After giving her some advice, and taking from my finger a ring and placing it upon hers, I bade her farewell forever, and returned to my mother, and then and there made up my mind to leave for Canada as soon as possible. I had been in the city nearly two days, and as I was to be absent only a week, I thought best to get on my journey as soon as possible. In conversing with mother, I found her unwilling to make the attempt to reach a land of liberty, but she counselled me to get my liberty if I could. She said, as all her children were in slavery, she did not wish to leave them. I could not bear the idea of leaving her among those pirates, when there was a prospect of being able to get away from them. After much persuasion I succeeded in inducing her to make the attempt to get away. The time fixed for our departure was the next night. I had with me a little money that I had received, from time to time, from gentlemen for whom I had done errands. I took my scanty means and purchased some dried beef, crackers and cheese, which I carried to mother, who had provided herself with a bag to carry it in. I occasionally thought of my old master, and of my mission to the city to find a new one. I waited with the most intense anxiety for the appointed time to leave the land of slavery, in search of a land of liberty. The time at length arrived, and we left the city just as the clock struck nine. We proceeded to the upper part of the city, where I had been two or three times during the day, and selected a skiff to carry us across the river. The boat was not mine, nor did I know to whom it did belong; neither did I care. The boat was fastened with a small pole, which, with the aid of a rail, I soon loosened from its moorings. After hunting round and finding a board to use as an oar, I turned to the city, and bidding it a long farewell, pushed off my boat. The current running very swift, we had not reached the middle of the stream before we were directly opposite the city. We were soon upon the Illinois shore, and, leaping from the boat, turned it adrift, and the last I saw of it it was going down the river at good speed. We took the main road to Alton, and passed through just at daylight, when we made for the woods, where we remained during the day. Our reason for going into the woods was, that we expected that Mr. Mansfield (the man who owned my mother) would start in pursuit of her as soon as he discovered that she was missing. He also new that I had been in the city HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA looking for a new master, and we thought probably he would go out to my master’s to see if he could find my mother, and in so doing, Dr. Young might be led to suspect that I had gone to Canada to find a purchaser. We remained in the woods during the day, and as soon as darkness overshadowed the earth, we started again on our gloomy way, having no guide but the North Star. We continued to travel by
night, and secrete ourselves in the woods by day; and every night, before emerging from our hiding-place, we would anxiously look for our friend and leader — the North Star. And in the language of Pierpont we might have exclaimed, “Star of the North! while blazing day Pours round me its full tide of light, And hides thy pale but faithful ray, I, too, lie hid, and long for night. For night; — I dare not walk at noon, Nor dare I trust the faithless moon, Nor faithless man, whose burning lust For gold hath riveted my chain; No other leader can I trust But thee, of even the starry train; For, all the host around thee burning, Like faithless man, keep turning, turning. In the dark top of southern pines I nestled, when the driver’s horn Called to the field, in lengthening lines, My fellows, at the break of morn. And there I lay, till thy sweet face Looked in upon my ‘hiding place,’ Star of the North! Thy light, that no poor slave deceiveth, Shall set me free.” AS we travelled towards a land of liberty, my heart would at times leap for joy. At other times, being, as I was, almost constantly on my feet, I felt as though I could travel no further. But when I thought of slavery, with its democratic whips — its republican chains — its evangelical blood-hounds, and its religious slave-holders — when I thought of all this paraphernalia of American democracy and religion behind me, and the prospect of liberty before me, I was encouraged to press forward, my heart was strengthened, and I forgot that I was tired or hungry. On the eighth day of our journey, we had a very heavy rain, and in a few hours after it commenced we had not a dry thread upon our bodies. This made our journey still more unpleasant. On the HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA tenth day, we found ourselves entirely destitute of provisions, and how to obtain any we could not tell. We finally resolved to stop at some farm-house, and try to get something to eat. We had no sooner determined to do this, than we went to a house, and asked them for some food. We were treated with great kindness, and they not only gave us something to eat, but gave us provisions to carry with us. They advised us to travel by day and lie by at night. Finding ourselves about one hundred and fifty miles from St. Louis, we concluded that it would be safe to travel by daylight, and did not leave the house until the next morning. We travelled on that day through a thickly settled country, and through one small village. Though we were fleeing from a land of oppression, our hearts were still there. My dear sister and two beloved brothers were behind us, and the idea of giving them up, and leaving them forever, made us feel sad. But with all this depression of heart, the thought that I should one day be free, and call my body my own, buoyed me up, and made my heart leap for joy. I had just been telling my mother how I should try to get employment as soon as we reached Canada, and how I intended to purchase us a little farm, and how I would earn money enough to buy sister and brothers, and how happy we would be in our own FREE HOME — when three men came up on horseback, and ordered us to stop. I turned to the one who appeared to be the principal man, and asked him what he wanted. He said he had a warrant to take us up. The three immediately dismounted, and one took from his pocket a handbill, advertising us as runaways, and offering a reward of two hundred dollars for our apprehension and delivery in the city of St. Louis. The advertisement had been put out by Isaac Mansfield and John Young. While they were reading the advertisement, mother looked me in the face, and burst into tears. A cold chill ran over me, and such a sensation I never experienced before, and I hope never to again. They took out a rope and tied me, and we were taken back about six miles, to the house of the individual who appeared to be the leader. We reached there about seven o’clock in the evening, had supper, and were separated for the night. Two men remained in the room during the night. Before the family retired to rest, they were all called together to attend prayers. The man who but a few hours before had bound my hands together with a strong cord, read a chapter from the Bible, and then offered up prayer, just as though God had sanctioned the act he had just committed upon a poor, panting, fugitive slave. The next morning a blacksmith came in, and put a pair of handcuffs43 on me, and we started on our journey back to the land of whips, chains and Bibles. Mother was not tied, but was closely watched at night. We were carried back in a wagon, and after four days’ travel, we came in sight of St. Louis. I cannot describe my feelings upon approaching the city. As we were crossing the ferry, Mr. Wiggins, the owner of the ferry, came up to me, and inquired what I had been doing that I was in chains. He had not heard that I had run away. In a few minutes we were on the Missouri side, and were taken directly to the jail. On the way thither, I saw several of my friends, who gave me a nod of recognition as I passed them. After reaching 43. It was apparently a rather ordinary practice to use iron handcuffs to subdue an unruly person of color. According to the journal of Friend Thomas B. Hazard or Hafsard or Hasard of Kingston, Rhode Island, also known as “Nailer Tom,” at one point he was asked to fashion a pair of handcuffs with which to confine a crazy negress named Patience. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA the jail, we were locked up in different apartments. I HAD been in jail but a short time when I heard that my master was sick, and nothing brought more joy to my heart than that intelligence. I prayed fervently for him — not for his recovery, but for his death. I knew he would be exasperated at having to pay for my apprehension, and knowing his cruelty, I feared him. While in jail, I learned that my sister Elizabeth, who was in prison when we left the city, had been carried off four days before our arrival. I had been in jail but a few hours when three negro-traders, learning that I was secured thus for running away, came to my prison-house and looked at me, expecting that I would be offered for sale. Mr. Mansfield, the man who owned mother, came into the jail as soon as Mr. Jones, the man who arrested us, informed him that he had brought her back. He told her that he would not whip her, but would sell her to a negro-trader, or take her to New Orleans himself. After being in jail about one week, master sent a man to take me our of jail, and send me home. I was taken out and carried home, and the old man was well enough to sit up. He had me brought into the room where he was, and as I entered, he asked me where I had been? I told him I had acted according to his orders. He had told me to look for a master, and I had been to look for one. He answered that he did not tell me to go to Canada to look for a master. I told him that as I had served him faithfully, and had been the means of putting a number of hundreds of dollars into his pocket, I thought I had a right to my liberty. He said he had promised my father that I should not be sold to supply the New Orleans market, or he would sell me to a negro-trader. I was ordered to go into the field to work, and was closely watched by the overseer during the day, and locked up at night. The overseer gave me a severe whipping on the second day that I was in the field. I had been at home but a short time, when master was able to ride to the city; and on his return he informed me that he had sold me to Samuel Willi, a merchant tailor. I knew Mr. Willi. I had lived with him three or four months some years before, when he hired me of my master. Mr. Willi was not considered by his servants as a very bad man, nor was he the best of masters. I went to my new home, and found my new mistress very glad to see me. Mr. Willi owned two servants before he purchased me — Robert and Charlotte. Robert was an excellent white-washer, and hired his time from his master, paying him one dollar per day, besides taking care of himself. He was known in the city by the name of Bob Music. Charlotte was an old woman, who attended to the cooking, washing, &c. Mr. Willi was not a wealthy man, and did not feel able to keep many servants around his house; so he soon decided to hire me out, and as I had been accustomed to service in steamboats, he gave me the privilege of finding such employment. I soon secured a situation on board the steamer Otto, Capt. J.B. Hill, which sailed from St. Louis to Independence, Missouri. My former master, Dr. Young, did not let Mr. Willi know that I had run away, or he would not have permitted me to go on board a steamboat. The boat was not quite ready to commence running, and therefore I had to remain with Mr. Willi. But during this time, I had to undergo a trial for which I was entirely unprepared. My mother, who had been in jail since her return until the present time, was now about being carried to New Orleans, to die HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA on a cotton, sugar, or rice plantation! I had been several times to the jail, but could obtain no interview with her. I ascertained, however, the time the boat in which she was to embark would sail, and as I had not seen mother since her being thrown into prison, I felt anxious for the hour of sailing to come. At last, the day arrived when I was to see her for the first time after our painful separation, and, for aught that I knew, for the last time in this world! At about ten o’clock in the morning I went on board of the boat, and found her there in company with fifty or sixty other slaves. She was chained to another woman. On seeing me, she immediately dropped her head upon her heaving bosom. She moved not, neither did she weep. Her emotions were too deep for tears. I approached, threw my arms around her neck, kissed her, and fell upon my knees, begging her forgiveness, for I thought myself to blame for her sad condition; for if I had not persuaded her to accompany me, she would not then have been in chains. She finally raised her head, looked me in the face, (and such a look none but an angel can give!) and said, “My dear son, you are not to blame for my being here. You have done nothing more nor less than your duty. Do not, I pray you, weep for me. I cannot last long upon a cotton plantation. I feel that my heavenly Master will soon call me home, and then I shall be out of the hands of the slave-holders!” I could bear no more — my heart struggled to free itself from the human form. In a moment she saw Mr. Mansfield coming toward that part of the boat, and she whispered into my ear, “My child, we must soon part to meet no more this side of the grave. You have ever said that you would not die a slave; that you would be a freeman. Now try to get your liberty! You will soon have no one to look after but yourself!” and just as she whispered the last sentence into my ear, Mansfield came up to me, and with an oath, said, “Leave here this instant; you have been the means of my losing one hundred dollars to get this wench back” — at the same time kicking me with a heavy pair of boots. As I left her, she gave one shriek, saying, “God be with you!” It was the last time that I saw her, and the last word I heard her utter. I walked on shore. The bell was tolling. The boat was about to start. I stood with a heavy heart, waiting to see her leave the wharf. As I thought of my mother, I could but feel that I had lost “——the glory of my life, My blessing and my pride! I half forgot the name of slave, When she was by my side.” The love of liberty that had been burning in my bosom had well- nigh gone out. I felt as though I was ready to die. The boat moved gently from the wharf, and while she glided down the river, I realized that my mother was indeed “Gone — gone — sold and gone, To the rice swamp, dank and lone!” After the boat was out of sight I returned home; but my thoughts were so absorbed in what I had witnessed, that I knew not what I was about half of the time. Night came, but it brought no sleep to my eyes. In a few days, the boat upon which I was to work being ready, I went on board to commence. This employment suited me better than living in the city, and I remained until the close HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA of navigation; though it proved anything but pleasant. The captain was a drunken, profligate, hard-hearted creature, not knowing how to treat himself, or any other person. The boat, on its second trip, brought down Mr. Walker, the man of whom I have spoken in a previous chapter, as hiring my time. He had between one and two hundred slaves, chained and manacled. Among them was a man that formerly belonged to my old master’s brother, Aaron Young. His name was Solomon. He was a preacher, and belonged to the same church with his master. I was glad to see the old man. He wept like a child when he told me how he had been sold from his wife and children. The boat carried down, while I remained on board, four or five gangs of slaves. Missouri, though a comparatively new state, is very much engaged in raising slaves to supply the southern market. In a former chapter, I have mentioned that I was once in the employ of a slave-trader, or driver, as he is called at the south. For fear that some may think that I have misrepresented a slave-driver, I will here give an extract from a paper published in a slave-holding state, Tennessee, called the “Millennial Trumpeter.” “Droves of negroes, chained together in dozens and scores, and hand-cuffed, have been driven through our country in numbers far surpassing any previous year, and these vile slave-drivers and dealers are swarming like buzzards around a carrion. Through this county, you cannot pass a few miles in the great roads without having every feeling of humanity insulted and lacerated by this spectacle, nor can you go into any county or any neighborhood, scarcely, without seeing or hearing of some of these despicable creatures, called negro- drivers. “Who is a negro-driver? One whose eyes dwell with delight on lacerated bodies of helpless men, women and children; whose soul feels diabolical raptures at the chains, and hand-cuffs, and cart-whips, for inflicting tortures on weeping mothers torn from helpless babes, and on husbands and wives torn asunder forever!”
Dark and revolting as is the picture here drawn, it is from the pen of one living in the midst of slavery. But though these men may cant about negro-drivers, and tell what despicable creatures they are, who is it, I ask, that supplies them with the human beings that they are tearing asunder? I answer, as far as I have any knowledge of the state where I came from, that those who raise slaves for the market are to be found among all classes, from Thomas H. Benton down to the lowest political demagogue who may be able to purchase a woman for the purpose of raising stock, and from the doctor of divinity down to the most humble lay member in the church. It was not uncommon in St. Louis to pass by an auction-stand, and behold a woman upon the auction-block, and hear the seller crying out, “How much is offered for this woman? She is a good cook, good washer, a good, obedient servant. She has got religion!” Why should this man tell the purchasers that she has religion? I answer, because in Missouri, and as far as I have any knowledge of slavery in the other states, the religious teaching consists in teaching the slave that he must never HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA strike a white man; that God made him for a slave; and that, when whipped, he must not find fault — for the Bible says, “He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!” And slave-holders find such religion very profitable to them. After leaving the steamer Otto, I resided at home, in Mr. Willi’s family, and again began to lay plans for making my escape from slavery. The anxiety to be a freeman would not let me rest day or night. I would think of the northern cities that had heard so much about; — of Canada, where so many of my acquaintances had found a refuge. I would dream at night that I was in Canada, a freeman, and on waking in the morning, weep to find myself so sadly mistaken. “I would think of Victoria’s domain, And in a moment I seemed to be there! But the fear of being taken again, Soon hurried me back to despair.” Mr. Willi treated me better than Dr. Young ever had; but instead of making me contented and happy, it only rendered me the more miserable, for it enabled me better to appreciate liberty. Mr. Willi was a man who loved money as most men do, and without looking for an opportunity to sell me, he found one in the offer of Captain Enoch Price, a steamboat owner and commission merchant, living in the city of St. Louis. Captain Price tendered seven hundred dollars, which was two hundred more than Mr. Willi had paid. He therefore thought best to accept the offer. I was wanted for a carriage driver, and Mrs. Price was very much pleased with the captain’s bargain. His family consisted of himself, wife, one child, and three servants, besides myself, — one man and two women. Mrs. Price was very proud of her servants, always keeping them well dressed, and as soon as I had been purchased, she resolved to have a new carriage. And soon one was procured, and all preparations were made for a turn-out in grand style, I being the driver. One of the female servants was a girl some eighteen or twenty years of age, named Maria. Mrs. Price was very soon determined to have us united, if she could so arrange matters. She would often urge upon me the necessity of having a wife, saying that it would be so pleasant for me to take one in the same family! But getting married, while in slavery, was the last of my thoughts; and had I been ever so inclined, I should not have married Maria, as my love had already gone in another quarter. Mrs. Price soon found out that her efforts at this match-making between Maria and myself would not prove successful. She also discovered (or thought she had) that I was rather partial to a girl named Eliza, who was owned by Dr. Mills. This induced her at once to endeavor the purchase of Eliza, so great was her desire to get me a wife! Before making the attempt, however, she deemed it best to talk to me a little upon the subject of love, courtship, and marriage. Accordingly, one afternoon she called me into her room — telling me to take a chair and sit down. I did so, thinking it rather strange, for servants are not very often asked thus to sit down in the same room with the master or mistress. She said that she had found out that I did not care enough about Maria to marry her. I told her that was true. She then asked me if there was not a girl in the city that I loved. Well, now, this was coming HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA into too close quarters with me! People, generally, don’t like to tell their love stories to everybody that may think fit to ask about them, and it was so with me. But, after blushing a while and recovering myself, I told her that I did not want a wife. She then asked me if I did not think something of Eliza. I told her that I did. She then said that if I wished to marry Eliza, she would purchase her if she could. I gave but little encouragement to this proposition, as I was determined to make another trial to get my liberty, and I knew that if I should have a wife, I should not be willing to leave her behind; and if I should attempt to bring her with me, the chances would be difficult for success. However, Eliza was purchased, and brought into the family. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA In France, Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette received his baccalaureate.
He travel in Europe for awhile and then return to New Orleans, to settle at Bayou Lacombe where would be near another settlement of Choctaw tribespeople. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1834
Dr. Samuel George Morton’s SYNOPSIS OF THE ORGANIC REMAINS OF THE CRETACEOUS GROUP OF THE UNITED STATES, and his ILLUSTRATIONS OF PULMONARY CONSUMPTION.
February 4, Tuesday: The negrero Encomium, carrying a cargo of 45 slaves from Charleston, South Carolina, to New Orleans, was wrecked near Fish Key, Abaco, and the slaves were carried to Nassau, in New Providence, British West Indies and there set free. Naughty, naughty Great Britain would eventually need to pay the American owners an indemnity for having so mishandled their slave properties (SENATE DOCUMENT, 24th Congress, 2d session II, No. 174; 25th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 216). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
Henry Stephens Randall got married in Auburn, New York with Jane Rebecca Polhemus, daughter of the Reverend Henry Polhemus and Mrs. Jane Anderson Polhemus.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 4th M 2nd 1834 / Sub Committee Meeting. — A pretty pleasant Day - & my mind very quiet. — We hear by those who come from Rhode Island that Sister Ruth is no better - her case pretty decidedly a Cancer in the breast. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA February 10, Monday: Brigham Young “got married with” Mary Ann Angel.
Responders to a fire in the mansion of Madame Delphine LaLaurie at the corner of Royal Street and Governor Nicholls Street –quite an elite address– in New Orleans, Louisiana found that there was a 70-year-old slave woman chained in the kitchen. The slave had remained chained and at risk while Mrs. LaLaurie busied herself saving her furniture. The household’s slaves led their rescuers to a domestic torture chamber in the attic where 7 slaves were immobilized in spiked iron collars. One shackled man, still alive, had a stick protruding from a hole in his skull, the stick having been employed to stir his brains. Genitals had been severed. A woman’s mouth had been stuffed with animal excrement and then sewn shut. Heads and human organs were found in buckets.
The police remembered that in the previous year this mistress had chased a small girl with a whip until the slave fell from the roof, and had then attempted to cover up the murder by dumping the body down a well — the matter had been disposed of by a fine and a stipulation that the remainder of the slaves in the estate would be sold off, but Mme. LaLaurie had then arranged for her relatives and friends to take title to the slaves. When news of the torture chamber spread, a mob would assemble and Mme. LaLaurie and her husband would flee by boat, leaving their butler –who had participated in the torture– to face the wrath of the mob alone (it is believed that Mme LaLaurie died in Paris during December 1842). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
The official truth which this discovery challenged was of course that slavery to the superior white race was the best situation for the inherently inferior black race, in restraining their innate savagery, and that white masters and mistresses were only occasionally and marginally less than benevolent (it was easier for Southerners to explain away rural cruelty as displayed in Frederick Douglass’s tale about that uneducated marginal farmer, Mr. Covey) as they bore the burden of having to provide for their improvident charges.44
So far as the legal system was concerned, sentiment alone could function in these United States of America as a check upon the cruelty of any master toward his or her servant, who must remain under any circumstance entirely defenseless: The protections already afforded by several statutes, that all- powerful motive, the private interest of the owner, the benevolences towards each other, seated in the hearts of those who have been born and bred together, the frowns and deep execrations of the community upon the barbarian who is guilty of excessive and brutal cruelty to his unprotected slave, all combined, have produced a mildness of treatment and attention to the comforts of the unfortunate class of slaves, greatly mitigating the rigors of servitude and ameliorating the condition of the slaves. READ THE FULL TEXT
44. Because this torture chamber was discovered in 1834, I will proceed to attribute the following incident to 1834 also, even though we cannot sure that it happened during this specific calendar year. This did happen in Baltimore at some time within this span of years in which the torture was going on in New Orleans: Frederick Douglass’s crippled cousin Henny had fallen into a fire and burned her hands so badly that she could not open them. Mrs. Auld complained to Mr. Auld, who tied Henny up and whipped her while reciting the Good News from LUKE 12:47 from memory:
“That servant which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1836
August 18, Thursday: The presence of a young slave named Med had been discovered in a home on Pinkney Street in Boston. The girl was alleged to be the property of a New Orleans relative of the occupants. The attorney for the slavemaster actually burst into tears at the prospect that little Med might be set free by the judge and thus severed from her mama, a slave in New Orleans. The judge, however, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, was less impressed by the crocodile’s tears, and by the accusation “mistaken benevolence” which this crocodile managed to blurt out, than by documentary evidence available to the court that it was their intention to sell this child Med once they had her safely back home in the Deep South.
The Alert and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. the island of Fernando Naronha.
AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, August 18th. At three P.M., made the island of Fernando Naronha, lying in lat. 3 55S., long. 32 35W.; and …
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Morning returned to Lynn to attend the Qrly Meeting - it was a large Meeting but not as large as I expected -Thos Anthony was much favourd in testimony after which James Emmons a person not a Member preached & I thought for a thing wholly wrong there was considerable good in his communication —& as this may be read by some who may not take my meaning where I may not be here to explain it may just say I believe it was wrong for him to impose his testimony on the Meeting yet most of his observations were pretty good & did not disturb the Meeting as much as I have known such offerings to do — Then Hannah Robinson appeared pretty well & then Thos Jones after which the Meeting closed - the part for buisness was pretty well conducted — I dined at Micajah C Pratts after which I returned to the Meeting House to another Sitting of the committee - & then went back to Micajahs to tea, & to Isaac Bassetts to Lodge.— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1837
New Bedford, Massachusetts would not reach its peak for another two decades, but it was already most prosperous. The registered tonnage of ships, inclusive of some 300 whaling vessels, centering on the Acushnet River (including those of Fairhaven across the inlet), was exceeded only by the registered tonnage of New- York, of Boston, and of New Orleans (pictured here, in this year):
For the next quarter century, up until Civil War times, this port would continue to enjoy its constant growth and prosperity, and Ishmael, in Herman Melville’s MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE, would refer to it as “perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England.” In this fortunate port, here was Friend Daniel Ricketson HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA portrayed during this year at the age of 25:
(This would be a portrait of Friend Daniel as he would have liked to appear — for in real life after one eye had been struck by another boy, not only would that eye be deficient in vision but it would be distinctly smaller than the other.)
ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.
At this point about half the children of Massachusetts were receiving what passed as a free public education, and were thereby stigmatized as poor white trash. One of the things they were learning in these schools, of course, was that although they were better than unschooled free black children, they were not as good as the children of families who were able to pay to send them to a private school such as the school of the Thoreau brothers.
The Thoreaus lived on the site of the present Concord Free Public Library building (which has been erected in 1873), in the “Parkman house, to fall of 1844.” It was in this home that the Thoreau brothers had their school. I don’t know whether this piece of “Parkman” property in Concord had anything to do with the Bostonian adventurer, historian, and horticulturist, Francis Parkman, or with his physician uncle, the Doctor George Parkman who was a real estate speculator and would get himself murderized and cut into little pieces in 1849 by attempting to collect money he had loaned to the chemistry professor at Harvard Medical College, but I rather suspect not. I suspect, instead, that it had to do with Deacon William Parkman, the first postmaster of Concord, a local guy who if related to George Parkman at all was related but distantly. His house and shop were on the Library corner behind the Black Horse tavern. This building became the Concord post office when Parkman was succeeded as postmaster by the lawyer John L. Tuttle:
Louisiana “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA In support of this I submit the following contemporary entry from Waldo Emerson’s journal:
Henry Thoreau told a good story of William Parkman, who (kept store) lived in the house he now occupies, & kept a store close by. He hung out a salt fish for a sign, & it hung so long & grew so hard, black & deformed, that the deacon forgot what thing it was, & nobody in town knew, but being examined chemically it proved to be salt fish. But duly every morning the deacon hung it on its peg.
This early story about Deacon William Parkman of the general store on Main Street (near where the Concord Free Public Library now stands) would later be worked into the WALDEN text as:
WALDEN: This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New PEOPLE OF England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and WALDEN the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun wind and rain behind it, –and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday’s dinner.
WILLIAM PARKMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA (Of course, for the first half of this year Thoreau was still in his dorm room at college.)
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
DATE: Adrien Rouquette again journeyed from New Orleans to France, this time preparing for the practice of the law. He would have unhappy love affairs, find that he preferred literature to law, and return to Louisiana.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden: Waldo Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1838
John Lyde Wilson’s THE CODE OF HONOR attempted to regulate, and therefore moderate, dueling at such venues as “The Oaks” outside New Orleans and “Bloody Island” in the Mississippi River near St. Louis. Technically, such dueling by white gentlemen was illegal, of course they were being discouraged from honorably killing one another, man to man, but practically, it would have been difficult for a prosecutor, assuming he was willing to try this, to get a jury to convict a gentleman for “defending his honor” against another gentleman if he considered that that other gentleman had impugned it. The book was published in South Carolina, where the law had established a penalty of one year in prison and a fine of $2,000.00 for any person guilty of taking part in a duel — which tells us a lot about the status of “legality” in those years.45
Is this of any importance? Why, yes, anything that pertains to white men is important: I freely admit that, according to white writers, white teachers, white historians and white molders of public opinion, nothing ever happened in the world of any importance that could not or should not be labeled “white.” — W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, “The Superior Race”
45. I ran into precisely the same ideas about the nature of legality in Austin, Texas in 1958, when I went to Woolworths to purchase a pistol. There were laws, of course, regulations having to do with waiting periods and permits and such, but when I inquired at the gun counter about the status of these regulations, the response I received was a grin and the remark “Oh, but you’re not a nigger.” So I paid the man $14.99 for a .455 Webley plus a few dollars for a box of 50 rimmed .45-caliber cartridges, he put them in a paper sack for me, and I walked out onto the Texas street free, white, and twenty-one. I hadn’t even been asked to produce an ID. From this I learned that the purpose of the law is to protect the good people from the bad people, and since then I’ve never had occasion to be surprised at American justice, or at the conduct of our law officers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
Approximately one of these duels in seven –of the ones which were not interrupted by negotiations between “seconds”– resulted in a death, since it frequently happened that the principals would resolve on the field before exchanging balls, or would prematurely and ostentatiously discharge their ball into the air and thus render themselves defenseless. When wounded, it was traditional to forgive one’s opponent.
After an initial misunderstanding with John L. O’Sullivan, editor of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, over Salem coquette Mary Silsbee, Nathaniel Hawthorne became friendly with him and an active contributor to his journal (he would produce 24 tales and sketches for its pages in the next seven years). Deeply moved by his friend Jonathan Cilley’s having been killed in this rifle duel by a young fellow congressman from the South –this is complicated: because he had supposed Hawthorne to have been supposing that responding to the challenge would be the gentlemanly thing to do– Hawthorne authored a memorial essay for this friend.
The Louisville Journal reported, at some time during this year, that “The trial of John Wilson, who officiated as Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, during the last legislative session of that State, and who walked down from his chair and slew Major T.T. Anthony with a Bowie knife on the floor of the house, took place a few days ago. The verdict of the jury was, not guilty of murder, but excusable homicide.”
James Bowie HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Rochester, New York boat tonnage dropped to 408 tons while Oswego boat tonnage reached 6,582 tons and Buffalo boat tonnage reached 9,615 tons. In fact, the flour and bulk wheat receipts at Buffalo had begun to surpass those of New Orleans, Louisiana, the previous leader.
The initial coinage at the new US federal mint in New Orleans was a 50-cent piece (the “O” above the date of this coin, and its great rarity, now makes it worth a half million each on the collectables market — which would amount to an appreciation of some six orders of magnitude).
With Jack Burton about seven years of age, his mother somehow gave offense to their owner Moses Burton, and so Burton sold her to a negro trader for transportation to the slave market of New Orleans, retaining Jack. The orphaned child would transfer his filial affections to Mrs. Burton, his owner’s wife, and would remember her with gratitude. JOHN ANDERSON
Would Jack have appreciated in value by some six orders of magnitude as well were he still legal tender for all debts public and private? Inquiring minds want to know. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141
May 15, Tuesday: Queen Victoria permitted the painter Thomas Sully a long period in which to study her head, face, and shoulders while he elaborated the preliminary paintings of this 18-year-old which are now to be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also winding up in that museum would be the finished huge oil Sully would produce, after its exhibition tour through Boston, Montréal, Québec, New Orleans, and New-York.
Clara Wieck returned from her triumphs in Vienna to Leipzig, where Robert Schumann has entered another depressive phase. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1839
Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots was performed at the Theatre d’Orleans in New Orleans.
During this year a total of 23 American negreros would clear from the harbor of Havana on their way, presumably, to the coast of Africa, presumably to there load human cargoes (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 190-1, 221).
During this year a total of 5 American negreros would arrive at the port of Havana from the coast of Africa, proudly flying the American stars-and-bars (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, page 192).
The negrero Morris Cooper, a vessel from Philadelphia, landed 485 Negroes in Cuba (Niles’s Register, LVII. 192).
The negrero Edwin and George Crooks was boarded by British cruisers (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 12-4, 61-4).
The negreros Eagle, Clara, and Wyoming, with American and Spanish flags and papers and crews made up of Americans, were captured by British naval cruisers and brought into the harbor of New-York. The United States government declined to interfere in the cases of the Eagle and the Clara, and these vessels were taken on to Jamaica. The Wyoming, however, was forfeited by the British to the United States (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 92-104, 109, 112, 118-9, 180-4; Niles’s Register, LVI. 256; LVII. 128, 208).
The negrero Florida was protected from British cruisers by the fact that it was able to show them American papers (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 113-5).
The part-Spanish negrero Rebecca was condemned at Sierra Leone (HOUSE REPORTS, 27th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 283, pages 649-54, 675-84).
The negreros Asp, Laura, and Mary Ann Cassard, although they were foreign, were for protection sailing under the American flag (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 126-7, 209-18; HOUSE REPORTS, 27th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 283, page 688 ff).
The negrero Two Friends, of New Orleans, was equipped to sail under Spanish and Portuguese flags as well as under the American flag (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 120, 160-2, 305).
The negrero Euphrates, of Baltimore, although it was sailing under American papers, was seized by cruisers of the British navy as Spanish property. Prior to its seizure this vessel had been boarded fifteen times (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 41-4; A.H. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, pages 152-6).
The American negrero Ontario, for purposes of carrying a cargo of slaves, was temporarily “sold” to the Spanish (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 45-50).
The nationality of the negrero Mary, although it had originated in Philadelphia was disputed (HOUSE REPORTS, 27th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 283, pages 736-8; SENATE DOCUMENT, 29th Congress, 1st session VIII, No. 377, pages 19, 24-5). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA The American negreros Douglas and Iago were boarded by British cruisers — the United States would demand indemnity for this interference with our rights (HOUSE REPORTS, 27th Congress, 3d session, III, No. 283, pages 542-65, 731-55; SENATE DOCUMENT, 29th Congress, 1st session VIII, No. 377, pages 39-45, 107-12, 116-24, 160-1, 181-2). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
A mutiny was led by Joseph Cinqué,46 with the mutineers captured but, after trial in Connecticut, helped to return to Africa.
46. His African name was Sengbe Pieh. Try pronouncing it in Spanish instead of French: it sounds like sinke or thereabouts. According to J.W. Barber’s A HISTORY OF THE AMISTAD CAPTIVES (New Haven: E.L. and J.W. Barber, 1840) “Sing-gbe” was pronounced “Cin-gue,” I assume intending “Singuay,” and was “generally spelt Cinquez.” This contemporary book offered silhouette profiles of him, and of Grabeau and others, together with brief biographical accounts. The 1840 publication date and New Haven location may give this some authenticity. Yale professors, especially the linguist Josiah Willard Gibbs, learned something of the Mende language and had much conversation with Cinqué. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
What happened was as follows: 53 African natives had been kidnapped from an area now known as Sierra Leone, transported to Havana, Cuba aboard the slave ship Tecora,47 and illegally sold into the Spanish slave trade.
They had been sold at auction under the standard pretext, which nobody believed, that they were native-born Cuban slaves, to two “Spanish gentlemen.” These Spaniards were transporting the Africans and other cargo to another part of Cuba on board their schooner La Amistad when the Africans killed the captain48 and the cook and frightening the others of the crew overboard.
47. The tall ship Pilgrim now docked among the pleasure craft of opulent Dana Point CA and owned by the Orange County Marine Institute was recently be refitted for an undisclosed fee for a starring role in this Stephen Spielberg film AMISTAD, which also featured such human actors as Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman. In this film it bore the name Tecora and represented not the La Amistad but the slaver which had previously brought its cargo of 53 kidnap victims from Africa to Cuba. 48. Captain Ramón Ferrer of the La Amistad, killed during the rebellion of the captives, was the owner not merely of this little coastal schooner but also two or three seagoing vessels engaged in contraband transatlantic traffic, such as the steamship Vapor Principeño. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA The Spaniards, ordered to sail the vessel to Africa, by day sailed eastward and by night surreptitiously sailed westward, hoping to land back in Cuba or the southern United States and redeem their substantial investment. After 63 days at sea, however, the La Amistad was sighted in a dilapidated condition off Long Island by the US Navy and taken as a prize. The ship was towed to New London because in Connecticut slavery was still legal, and a lengthy court struggle began.
Early documents from the National Archives of the Northeast Region contain testimony and depositions relating to the first sightings of the La Amistad off of Long Island. Navy Lieutenant R.W. Meade testified on August 29, 1839, that “said schooner was manned by forty-five negroes some of whom had landed near said [Montauk] Point.... Also on board two Spanish Gentlemen who represented and were part owners of the cargo and of the Negroes on board who were slaves belonging to said Spanish Gentlemen....” The report enumerated the “large and valuable cargo” which the schooner was carrying at the time: “25 bags of beans, 25 boxes of raisons, 10 doz. morocco skins, 5 doz. calf skins, 11 boxes of crockery and glass, 30 pieces of muslin, 1 doz. shawls, gloves, fans, shirts ... and also 54 slaves to wit 51 male slaves and 3 young female slaves who are worth $25,000 and while on said voyage from Havana to Principe the said slaves rose upon the captain and crew of said schooner and killed and murdered the captain and one of said crew and two more of said crew escaped and got away from said schooner....” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
Abolitionists seized upon the case as a vehicle to publicly display the cruelties of slavery and the slave trade. The freedom of the Africans became entangled in the conflicting claims of the Spaniards who had brought the “human cargo” and the American officials who had salvaged the ship. The case captured national and international attention as it made its way through the lower courts to the US Supreme Court, where the cause of the prisoners was argued by former President John Quincy Adams. On March 9, 1841 the Supremes would rule that all of the Africans were legally free — that they had never been slaves because the African slave trade was illegal, and that they should be released and allowed to return to Africa. The Court also affirmed that “it was the ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression, and to apply force against ruinous injustice.”49
Three years after they were kidnapped, in January 1842, the 35 surviving Africans would finally return to their homeland where, allegedly, they would establish the mission colony “which formed the basis for the eventual independence of Sierra Leone from Great Britain.” The black artists Hale Woodruff and Jacob Lawrence helped keep the La Amistad legacy alive during the 1930s and 1940s. The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University
49. Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: [La Amistad Case.] HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 185 (correspondence); 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 191 (correspondence); 28 Cong. 1 sess. IV No. 83; HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 20; HOUSE REPORTS, 26 Cong. 2 sess. No. 51 (case of altered Ms.); 28 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 426 (Report of Committee); 29 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 753 (Report of Committee); SENATE DOCUMENT, 26 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 179 (correspondence); SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 29 (correspondence); 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 19; SENATE REPORTS, 31 Cong. 2 sess. No. 301 (Report of Committee); 32 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 158 (Report of Committee); 35 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 36 (Report of Committee). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Secretary of State John Forsyth pointed out50 that however unjust the slave trade may be considered by some to be, it was most definitely not contrary to the law of nations, and therefore most definitely not any of our beeswax: • ....It is true, by the treaty between Great Britain and Spain, the slave trade is prohibited to the subjects of each; but the parties to this treaty or agreement are the proper judges of any infraction of it, and they have created special tribunals to decide questions arising under the treaty; nor does it belong to any other nation to adjudicate upon it, or to enforce it.... In the case of the Antelope, (10 Wheaton, page 66), this subject was fully examined, and the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States establishes the following points: 1. That, however unjust and unnatural the slave trade may be, it is not contrary to the law of nations. 2. That having been sanctioned by the usage and consent of almost all civilized nations, it could not be pronounced illegal, except so far as each nation may have made it so by its own acts or laws; and these could only operate upon itself, its own subjects or citizens; and, of course, the trade would remain lawful to those whose Government had not forbidden it. 3. That the right of bringing in and adjudicating upon the case of a vessel charged with being engaged in the slave trade, even where the vessel belongs to a nation which has prohibited the trade, cannot exist. The courts of no country execute the penal laws of another.... • In the case now before me, the vessel is a Spanish vessel, belonging exclusively to Spaniards, navigated by Spaniards, and sailing under Spanish papers and flag, from one Spanish port to another. It therefore follows, unquestionably, that any offence committed on board is cognizable before the Spanish tribunals, and not elsewhere. • These two points being disposed of — 1st. That the Government of the United States is to consider these Negroes as the property of the individuals in whose behalf the Spanish minister has put up a claim; 2d. That the United States cannot proceed against them criminally; — the only remaining inquiry is, what is to be done with the vessel and cargo? the Negroes being part of the latter. • ...The claimants of these Negroes have violated none of our laws.... They have not come within our territories with the view or intention of violating the laws of the United States.... They have not introduced these Negroes into the United Sates for the purpose of sale, or holding them in servitude within the United States.... It therefore appears to me that this subject must be disposed of upon the principles of international law and the existing treaties between Spain and the United States.... • These Negroes are charged with an infraction of the Spanish laws; therefore, it is proper that they should be surrendered to the public functionaries of that Government, that if the laws of Spain have been violated, they may not escape punishment.... • These Negroes deny that they are slaves; if they should be delivered to the claimants, no opportunity may be afforded for the assertion of their right to freedom. For these reasons, it seems to me that a delivery to the Spanish minister is the only safe course for this Government to pursue.
50. “Africans Taken in the Amistad.” –US 26th Congress, 1st Session, House Executive Document #185. NY: Blair & Rives, 1840, pages 57-62 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA September 23, Monday: The judge for The U.S. v. The Libelants, etc., of the Schooner Amistad, Andrew T. Judson, held the captives over.51
Meanwhile, in African waters, the Butterfly from New Orleans, fitted as a negrero, was captured by a cruising British warship (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session No. 115, pages 191, 244-7; Niles’s Register, LVII. 223). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
51. At some point the Hartford Courant editorialized that since engaging in the international slave trade was a federal capital crime, there were no legal grounds for action against these Africans of the La Amistad who had merely been attempting to protect themselves as crime victims, and merely attempting to prevent the successful commission of such a capital crime: By the laws of the United States, the African slave trade is declared to be piracy and the persons engaged in it are liable to be punished as pirates. It would be very extraordinary then if these men, who had been stolen from their own country, and brought away for the purpose of being reduced to slavery, should be punished in the United States for using such means as they possessed to extricate themselves from the power and custody of men who gained that custody by the perpetration of a crime which by our laws would cost them their lives. It would be a singular case if both parties in the same transaction should be held guilty of a capital offense and suffer the same penalty of the law for their crimes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1840
Durgin Park’s restaurant opened in Boston, and Antoine’s Restaurant opened in New Orleans.
The Reverend Charles Henry Appleton Dall began 14 months of ministering on behalf of the Reverend William Greenleaf Eliot’s Unitarian Church of the Messiah in St. Louis, Missouri after the style of the Reverend Joseph Tuckerman’s ministry-at-large to the poor of Boston.
January: The Dumfriesshire, conveying Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. from Ireland, arrived at the port of New Orleans.
YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.
March: The British initiated a Vice Admiralty Court on St. Helena to render disposition in cases involving ship’s crews accused of engaging in slave trading along the west coast of Africa.
When the sailing papers of the negrero Sarah Ann of New Orleans, that had been captured by a naval patrol ship in the suppression of the international slave trade, were examined, they were found to be fraudulent (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, Number 115, pages 184-7).
Five negreros flying the Portuguese flag were arriving in New World waters during this month:
The Jacinto, master unknown, on one of its three known Middle Passage voyages, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 480 enslaved Africans, arrived at the port of Mariel, Cuba.
The Formiga, master Goncabro, on its one and only known Middle Passage, arrived at the port of Pernambuco, Brazil.
Louisiana “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
The Feliz, master unknown, on its second of two known Middle Passages, out of an unknown area of Africa with a cargo of 180 enslaved Africans, arrived at the port of Matanzas, Cuba.
The Feliz Animoso, master F.S. Lima, on its one and only known Middle Passage, out of Angola, arrived at the port of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Duque de Victoria, master A.J. Santos, on its second of two known Middle Passages, having sailed out of Angola during February 1840 with a cargo of 420 enslaved Africans, also arrived at the port of Rio de Janeiro. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;52 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.53 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”54 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.55 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”56 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have 52. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 53. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 54. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 55. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 56. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”57 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.58 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”59 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”60 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”61 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”62 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been
57. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 58. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 59. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 60. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 61. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 62. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”63 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.64 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”65 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”66 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;67 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”68 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”69 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”70 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave-holding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”71 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.72 Perhaps 350 Africans 63. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 64. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 65. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 66. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 67. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 68. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 69. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 70. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 71. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 72. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.73 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”74 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.75 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.76 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the 73. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 74. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 75. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 76. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.77 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,78 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international co- operation....79
July: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. left New Orleans after having worked for some half year as a clerk for a corn factor (trader in the corn market), a “storekeeper,” and a “nigger driver.” It has been alleged that he quit rather than whip slaves. He would take a position as tutor of the children of Dr. Peyton Robertson on a plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, and then begin a private “New English, Mathematical, and Classical School” in Nashville.
77. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 78. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 79. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1841
The first, and not the worst, in a long line of Jesus novels, William Ware’s JULIAN: OR SCENES IN JUDAEA:
• Nikos Kazantzakis, LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST • Walter Wangerin, JESUS, A NOVEL • D.H. Lawrence, THE MAN WHO DIED • Shusako Endo, A LIFE OF CHRIST • Anthony Burgess, MAN OF NAZARETH • Norman Mailer, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON • Gore Vidal, LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA • Jose Saramango, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST • Jim Croce, QUARANTINE (40 days in the wilderness) • Robert Graves, KING JESUS: A NOVEL • Anne Rice, CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT (seven years old, in Egypt) • Walter Wangerin Jr., JESUS: A NOVEL
In New Orleans, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother the Reverend Charles Beecher was working as a clerk and accumulating evidences of the nature of plantation life: the character Simon Legree in sister Harriet’s UNCLE 80 TOM’S CABIN would be based in part on his reports of the way slavery actually operated in the deep South.
François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand provided a Christian “spin” for the revolutionary motto LIBERTÉ ÉGALITÉ FRATERNITÉ, alleging in the concluding section for his autobiography that: Far from being at its term, the religion of the Liberator is now only just entering its third phase, the political period, liberty, equality, fraternity.
Adrien Rouquette published a collection of poems, LES SAVANES, POÉSIES AMÉRICAINES (Paris: J. Labitte & Nouvelle-Orléans: A. Moret). He so admired the romantic poetry of Chateaubriand that he dedicated a number of his pieces to him. The French critic Sainte-Beuve praised his work: I took great pleasure in your Savanes at smelling many youthful and sincere fragrances. It seemed to me that I was in a country that was friendly but that had not lost the charm of the unexpected. It is a great accomplishment, dear sir, for you to have experienced this vast wilderness and to have captured it
80. It has been suggested that the characterization of Uncle Tom himself is actually that of the first fictional Jesus in American literature, disregarding both William Ware’s novel and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s expressed intention to cast this figure as “The Martyr” rather than as “The Christ.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA in your heart. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Rouquette entered the Plattenville seminary in Assumption Parish near New Orleans. He would be ordained as a Catholic priest in 1845.
October: Some would blame a servile insurrection aboard the slave ship Creole while it was sailing out of Hampton VA destined for the slave auction blocks of New Orleans upon the leniency white people had exhibited toward rebellious black men during the La Amistad affair of 1839. One of the human beings in the cargo, Madison Washington, assisted by some 19 of the 138 other Virginia slaves in the cargo, managed to kill one of their white captors, and wound the captain and 1st mate of the vessel, and force the 2d mate to sail them to the Bahamas, sympathetic British territory. There was no such thing as slavery in Nassau and thus no reason to suspect these Americans of any crime. The Brits of course refused the demand of Secretary of State Daniel Webster that the mutineers be returned to the United States for punishment, instead allowing to them the freedom of their own recognizance, which they had achieved for themselves. There seemed to be no reason to hold them, any more than there would have been reason to hold white members of that slave ship’s crew. However, our consul interceded and the 19 active members of the group of escapees were detained.81 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
81. The upshot of this affair, in 1853, would be the determination that a naughty violation of protocols had obtained: an Anglo- American Commission would award an indemnity of $110,330 to the United States for the compensation of American citizens who had thus been deprived of their property by a meddlesome foreign power. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1842
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette journeyed from New Orleans to France for a 3rd time. His poetry would be so well received that he would be able to return to Louisiana as editor of “Le Propagateur Catholique.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA December: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 27 Cong. 3 sess. I. No. 2, p. 532.
Professor Richard Harlan relocated from Philadelphia to New Orleans to become vice president of the Louisiana state medical society. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1843
September 30, Wednesday: Richard Harlan died suddenly in New Orleans, Louisiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1844
The 3d edition of Moses Greenleaf’s MAP OF THE STATE OF MAINE WITH THE PROVINCE OF NEW BRUNSWICK (Portland: Shirley & Hyde), originally published in 1829. Henry Thoreau would consult this, and trustingly go to great pains to copy it, at a tavern in Mattawamkeag during September 1846.82
Bogus Interior Lakes, Early On Bogus Lakes, No Excuse
TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS
The negrero Enterprise of Boston was transferred in Brazil for purposes of engaging in the slave-trade (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 30th Congress, 1st session IV, Number 28, pages 79-90). W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The rigorous climate of New England, the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The significance of New England in the African slave- trade does not therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the carrying slave-trade and 82. He would be alarmed at the level of inaccuracy, of imagination, that he would discover. The latest detail map proved to be useless, or even harmful, as a basis for the planning of actual canoe portages!
(One can imagine that there would have been a good many excuses for cartographic surmise in the 17th Century –when obviously any interior detail on a map would of necessity have been derived from verbal reports of untrained travelers– but can there be any excuse for cartographic surmise in the 19th Century — when it might well be presumed by the viewer of such a map that this interior detail would have been based at least upon some preliminary survey of the topography?) HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA furnished slaves to the other colonies. An inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.
The negrero Uncas of New Orleans, since it was protected by United States papers, was allowed to clear despite its evident character (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 28th Congress, 2d session IX, Number 150, pages 106-14).
The negrero Sooy of Newport, Rhode Island was captured by the British sloop Racer after landing 600 slaves on the coast of Brazil and found to be sailing without papers (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 28th Congress, 2d session IV, Number 148, pages 4, 36-62).
The Cyrus, of New Orleans, suspected of being a negrero, was captured by the British cruiser Alert (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 28th Congress, 2d session IV, Number 148, pages 3-41).
During this year and the following one, 19 negreros from Beverly, Boston, Massachusetts, Baltimore, Maryland, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New-York, New York, Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Maine would be making 22 slave-collecting trips (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 30th Congress, 2d session VII, Number 61, pages 219-20).
Between 1844 and 1849, there would be a total of 93 negreros known to be active in the Brazilian trade (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 31st Congress, 2d session II, Number 6, pages 37-8). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Not only did the government thus negatively favor the slave-trade, but also many conscious, positive acts must be attributed to a spirit hostile to the proper enforcement of the slave-trade laws. In cases of doubt, when the law needed executive interpretation, the decision was usually in favor of the looser construction of the law; the trade from New Orleans to Mobile was, for instance, declared not to be coastwise trade, and consequently, to the joy of the Cuban smugglers, was left utterly free and unrestricted.83 After the conquest of Mexico, even vessels bound to California, by the way of Cape Horn, were allowed to clear coastwise, thus giving our flag to “the slave-pirates of the whole world.”84 Attorney- General Nelson declared that the selling to a slave-trader of an American vessel, to be delivered on the coast of Africa, was not aiding or abetting the slave-trade.85 So easy was it for slavers to sail that corruption among officials was hinted at. “There is certainly a want of proper vigilance at Havana,” wrote Commander Perry in 1844, “and perhaps at the ports of the United States;” and again, in the same year, “I cannot but think that the custom-house authorities in the United States are not sufficiently rigid in looking after vessels of suspicious character.”86 In the courts it was still next to impossible to secure the punishment of the most notorious slave-trader. In 1847 a consul writes: “The slave power in this city [i.e., Rio Janeiro] is 83. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, III. 512. 84. TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE AMERICAN AND FOREIGN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, May 7, 1850, page 149. 85. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, IV. 245. 86. SENATE DOC., 28th Congress, 2d session, IX. No. 150, pages 108, 132. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA extremely great, and a consul doing his duty needs to be supported kindly and effectually at home. In the case of the ‘Fame,’ where the vessel was diverted from the business intended by her owners and employed in the slave trade —both of which offences are punishable with death, if I rightly read the laws— I sent home the two mates charged with these offences, for trial, the first mate to Norfolk, the second mate to Philadelphia. What was done with the first mate I know not. In the case of the man sent to Philadelphia, Mr. Commissioner Kane states that a clear prima facie case is made out, and then holds him to bail in the sum of one thousand dollars, which would be paid by any slave trader in Rio, on the presentation of a draft. In all this there is little encouragement for exertion.”87 Again, the “Perry” in 1850 captured a slaver which was about to ship 1,800 slaves. The captain admitted his guilt, and was condemned in the United States District Court at New York. Nevertheless, he was admitted to bail of $5,000; this being afterward reduced to $3,000, he forfeited it and escaped. The mate was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.88 Also several slavers sent home to the United States by the British, with clear evidence of guilt, escaped condemnation through technicalities.89
87. HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 30th Congress, 2d session, VII. No. 61, page 18. 88. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, pages 286-90. 89. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1839-40, pages 913-4. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1845
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette was ordained as a Catholic priest and assigned to the Cathedral of Saint Louis in New Orleans. He would serve for 14 years, becoming Vicar General.
May 14, Wednesday: Convention between the United States of America and Saxony for the mutual abolition of the Droit d’Aubaine and Taxes on Emigration. READ THE FULL TEXT
The negrero Spitfire, of New Orleans, was captured on the coast of Africa. The captain of the vessel would be indicted in Boston (A.H. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, pages 240-1; Niles’s Register, LXVIII. 192, 224, 248-9). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1846
January 8, Thursday: In New Orleans, Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette made a speech commemorating the Battle of New Orleans. The speech would be published in Paris.90
Waldo Emerson lectured in Boston. This was the 5th lecture of his series, “Napoleon, or the Man of the World.” THE LIST OF LECTURES
90. Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette. DISCOURS PRONONCÉ A LA CATHÉDRALE DE SAINT-LOUIS (Nouvelle-Orlèans, 1846), a l’occasion de l’anniversaire du 8 janvier (Paris: Librairie de Sauvaignat, 1846) HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1848
Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette’s WILD FLOWERS – SACRED POETRY (New Orleans, Louisiana: T. O’Donnell). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Walt Whitman visited New Orleans and came to “possess to some extent a personal and saunterer’s knowledge of St. Charles street”: [NEXT SCREEN]
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NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
“Specimen Days”
THROUGH EIGHT YEARS In 1848, ’49, I was occupied as editor of the “daily Eagle” newspaper, in Brooklyn. The latter year went off on a leisurely journey and working expedition (my brother Jeff with me) through all the middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived awhile in New Orleans, and work’d there on the editorial staff of “daily Crescent” newspaper. After a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to, and by way of the great lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara Falls and lower Canada, finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson; traveling altogether probably 8000 miles this trip, to and fro. ’51, ’53, occupied in house-building in Brooklyn. (For a little of the first part of that time in printing a daily and weekly paper, “the Freeman.”) ’55, lost my dear father this year by death. Commenced putting LEAVES OF GRASS to press for good, at the job printing office of my friends, the brothers Rome, in Brooklyn, after many MS. doings and undoings — (I had great trouble in leaving out the stock “poetical” touches, but succeeded at last.) I am now (1856-’7) passing through my 37th year.
SAILING THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT Vast and starless, the pall of heaven Laps on the trailing pall below; And forward, forward, in solemn darkness, As if to the sea of the lost we go. Now drawn nigh the edge of the river, Weird-like creatures suddenly rise; Shapes that fade, dissolving outlines Baffle the gazer’s straining eyes. Towering upward and bending forward, Wild and wide their arms are thrown, Ready to pierce with forked fingers Him who touches their realm upon. Tide of youth, thus thickly planted, While in the eddies onward you swim, Thus on the shore stands a phantom army, Lining forever the channel’s rim. Steady, helmsman! you guide the immortal; Many a wreck is beneath you piled, Many a brave yet unwary sailor Over these waters has been beguiled. Nor is it the storm or the scowling midnight, Cold, or sickness, or fire’s dismay — Nor is it the reef, or treacherous quicksand, Will peril you most on your twisted way. But when there comes a voluptuous languor, Soft the sunshine, silent the air, Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness, Then, young pilot of life, beware. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1850
May 7, Tuesday: The steamer Creole, with Narciso López and about 650 men, left New Orleans, ostensibly headed for California by way of Chagres.91
Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a frequenter of a saloon-restaurant known as “Parker’s” in downtown Boston, there made an observation which he entered into his journal, which he would find useful in constructing “Old Moodie,” one of the characters in his THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE:
Walking the side-walk, in front of this grog shop of Parkers, (or, sometimes, in cold or rainy days, taking his station inside) there is generally to be observed an elderly ragamuffin, in a dingy and battered hat, an old surtout, and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and red-nose, a patch over one eye, and the other half-drowned in moisture; he leans in a slightly stooped posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody, but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness. He is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of life, but, falling into decay, (perhaps by dint of too frequent visits at Parker’s bar) he now haunts about the place, (as a ghost haunts the spot where he was murdered) to “collect his rents,” as Parker says — that is, to catch an occasional ninepence from some charitable acquaintance, or a glass of liquor at the bar. The word “ragamuffin,” which I have used above, does not accurately express the man; because there is a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability about him; and a sobriety, too, and kind of decency, in his groggy and red-nosed destitution.
91. By going to Chagres, López was expecting to evade the Neutrality law of 1818, which had interdicted military expeditions against powers at peace with the United States of America from being launched from the actual soil of the United States of America. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA One is left, by the general tone of the above, with an estimate that Nathaniel would not himself have been among the “charitable acquaintances” paying an occasional ninepence rent to such a person — but let us hope at the very least that he was not in the habit of fending off his character with an umbrella.
Old Moodie HE evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my T bachelor-apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly-man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street.… “Mr. Coverdale! — Mr. Coverdale!” said he, repeating my name twice, in order to make up for the hesitating and ineffectual way in which he uttered it — “I ask your pardon, sir — but I hear you are going to Blithedale tomorrow?” I knew the pale, elderly face, with the red-tipt nose, and the patch over one eye, and likewise saw something characteristic in the old fellow’s way of standing under the arch of a gate, only revealing enough of himself to make me recognize him as an acquaintance. He was a very shy personage, this Mr. Moodie; and the trait was the more singular, as his mode of getting his bread necessarily brought him into the stir and hubbub of the world, more than the generality of men. “Yes, Mr. Moodie,” I answered, wondering what interest he could take in the fact, “it is my intention to go to Blithedale tomorrow. Can I be of any service to you, before my departure?” “If you pleased, Mr. Coverdale,” said he, “you might do me a very great favor.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1851
September 1, Monday: On this day Narciso López was executed publicly at Havana. Before his death he shouted, most accurately, “My death will not change the destiny of Cuba!”
Of course, this filibuster might as well have shouted “My death is not going to affect the price of cigars!” or “Cuba remains an island!” or “Long live the Queen of Ethiopia!” He could have shouted just anything, as long as he did not attempt to deliver the sort of very lengthy political speech that might have fatigued his audience.
In New Orleans, former associates of López would form a secret society called “Order of the Lone Star.” The goal of the order would of course be, what else, to incorporate Cuba into the United States of America. With 50 chapters in 8 southern states and an estimated membership of 15,000-20,000, the order would develop a plan to invade the island during the summer of 1852 in conjunction with a revolt on the island itself, the “Conspiracy of Vuelta Abajo” organized in Pinar del Río by López’s wealthy brother-in-law Francisco de HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Frías.
September 1, Monday: Mikania scandens with its purplish white flowers now covering the button bushes and willows by the side of the stream. Bidens Chrysanthemoides Large flowered Bidens edge of River– Various colorored Polygonums standing high among the bushes & weeds by river side–white & reddish–& red. Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has has been riddled by insects– Almost every shrub and tree has its gall–oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament–and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company–misery has company enough– Now at midsummer find me a perfect leaf–or fruit. The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome I found some a month ago a singular red–angular cased pulp 3 drooping with the old anthers surrounding it /4 inch in diam. –and now there is another kind a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid berries–turning from green to scarlet or bright brick color– Then there is the mottled fruit of the clustered Solomons seal–and also the greenish with blue meat fruit of the Convallaria Multiflora dangling from the axils of the leaves– I suspect that the common wild bean vine of the gardens must be the Polygonum Convolvulus or Black bindweed. though I do not find the 3 styles. Found a Utricularia on the North branch without leaves but slight sheathes 7 or 8 flowered upright 6 or 8 inches 1 high where the water had gone down rooted yellow.– with racemed pedicels about /2 inch long–no bladders nor inflated leaves. 7 Then there is the small floating marry gold or sun flower of the river–corolla spreading but little /8 inch– 5 petals 8 ribbed yellow obovate lanceolate blunt rounded /8 inch long tubular at base–stand at ang of 45× / Calyx double outer 5 leaves green & spreading inner 8 leaves close to petals & yellowish at tips. Calyx half as HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA long as corolla–florets more than half as long as corolla–5 stamens & one pistil in a yellow cup with 5 lanceolate segments– Compound flower–though stamens are not decidedly united by their anthers. Pistil rising above 1 1 stamens divided in two at top & curling over each way, Stem 3 to 5 feet long–hollow & cellular– /8 to /10 inch diameter upper or emersed 2 or 3 sets of leaves crosswise opposite lanceolate broad at base–fringe serrate– clasping sub-connate The rest immersed opposite–capillaceo–multipartite forming a dark cylindrical mass in shallow parts of rivers–covered with small fish ova or perchance bladders? HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1852
September 27, Monday,: Still at Lancy, Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” continued in his JOURNAL INTIME: “To-day I complete my thirty-first year.... The most beautiful poem there is, is life — life which discerns its own story in the making, in which inspiration and self-consciousness go together and help each other, life which knows itself to be the world in little, a repetition in miniature of the divine universal poem. Yes, be man; that is to say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of God, be what is greatest, most beautiful, most lofty in all the spheres of being, be infinite will and idea, a reproduction of the great whole. And be everything while being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God enter into thee as the air enters an empty space, reducing the ego to the mere vessel which contains the divine essence. Be humble, devout, silent, that so thou mayest hear within the depths of thyself the subtle and profound voice; be spiritual and pure, that so thou mayest have communion with the pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into the sanctuary of thy inmost consciousness; become once more point and atom, that so thou mayest free thyself from space, time, matter, temptation, dispersion, that thou mayest escape thy very organs themselves and thine own life. That is to say, die often, and examine thyself in the presence of this death, as a preparation for the last death. He who can without shuddering confront blindness, deafness, paralysis, disease, betrayal, poverty; he who can without terror appear before the sovereign justice, he alone can call himself prepared for partial or total death. How far am I from anything of the sort, how far is my heart from any such stoicism! But at least we can try to detach ourselves from all that can be taken away from us, to accept everything as a loan and a gift, and to cling only to the imperishable — this at any rate we can attempt. To believe in a good and fatherly God, who educates us, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, who punishes only when he must, and takes away only with regret; this thought, or rather this conviction, gives courage and security. Oh, what need we have of love, of tenderness, of affection, of kindness, and how vulnerable we are, we the sons of God, we, immortal and sovereign beings! Strong as the universe or feeble as the worm, according as we represent God or only ourselves, as we lean upon infinite being, or as we stand alone. The point of view of religion, of a religion at once active and moral, spiritual and profound, alone gives to life all the dignity and all the energy of which it is capable. Religion makes invulnerable and invincible. Earth can only be conquered in the name of heaven. All good things are given over and above to him who desires but righteousness. To be disinterested is to be strong, and the world is at the feet of him whom it cannot tempt. Why? Because spirit is lord of matter, and the world belongs to God. “Be of good cheer,” saith a heavenly voice, “I have overcome the world.” Lord, lend thy strength to those who are weak in the flesh, but willing in the spirit!” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
In Troy, New York, actor-playwright George L. Aiken premiered an unauthorized dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The book and/or the play would inspire sheet music: HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Although Stowe’s book was a wild best-seller (120 editions would be published in the US in 1852 alone), Herman Melville’s novel MOBY-DICK of the previous year would sell only about 50 copies during the author’s entire lifetime. However, eventually it would sell quite well as a comic book: HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA In the “Afterword” to UNCLE TOM’S CABIN Harriet Beecher Stowe defended her work: The writer has often been inquired of, by correspondents from different parts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to these inquiries she will give one general answer. The separate incidents that compose the narrative are, to a very great extent, authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own observation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself, or reported to her. The personal appearance of Eliza, the character ascribed to her, are sketches drawn from life. The incorruptible fidelity, piety and honesty, of Uncle Tom, had more than one development, to her personal knowledge. Some of the most deeply tragic and romantic, some of the most terrible incidents, have also their parallel in reality. The incident of the mother’s crossing the Ohio river on the ice is a well-known fact. The story of “old Prue,” in the second volume, was an incident that fell under the personal observation of a brother of the writer, then collecting-clerk to a large mercantile house, in New Orleans. From the same source was derived the character of the planter Legree. Of him her brother thus wrote, speaking of visiting his plantation, on a collecting tour; “He actually made me feel of his fist, which was like a blacksmith’s hammer, or a nodule of iron, telling me that it was ‘calloused with knocking down niggers.’ When I left the plantation, I drew a long breath, and felt as if I had escaped from an ogre’s den.” That the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had its parallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land, to testify. Let it be remembered that in all southern states it is a principle of jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit against a white, and it will be easy to see that such a case may occur, wherever there is a man whose passions outweigh his interests, and a slave who has manhood or principle enough to resist his will. There is, actually, nothing to protect the slave’s life, but the character of the master. Facts too shocking to be contemplated occasionally force their way to the public ear, and the comment that one often hears made on them is more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, “Very likely such cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of general practice.” If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master could now and then torture an apprentice to death, would it be received with equal composure? Would it be said, “These cases are rare, and no samples of general practice”? This injustice is an inherent one in the slave system, — it cannot exist without it. The public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls has acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the capture of the Pearl. We extract the following from the speech of Hon. Horace Mann, Sr., one of the legal counsel for the defendants in that case. He says: “In that company of seventy-six persons, who attempted, in 1848, to escape from the District of Columbia in the schooner HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Pearl, and whose officers I assisted in defending, there were several young and healthy girls, who had those peculiar attractions of form and feature which connoisseurs prize so highly. Elizabeth Russel was one of them. She immediately fell into the slave-trader’s fangs, and was doomed for the New Orleans market. The hearts of those that saw her were touched with pity for her fate. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem her; and some there were who offered to give, that would not have much left after the gift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable. She was despatched to New Orleans; but, when about half way there, God had mercy on her, and smote her with death. There were two girls named Edmundson in the same company. When about to be sent to the same market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead with the wretch who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his victims. He bantered her, telling what fine dresses and fine furniture they would have. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that may do very well in this life, but what will become of them in the next?’ They too were sent to New Orleans; but were afterwards redeemed, at an enormous ransom, and brought back.” Is it not plain, from this, that the histories of Emmeline and Cassy may have many counterparts? Justice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness of mind and generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as the following anecdote will show. A few years since, a young southern gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his personal attendant from a boy. The young man took advantage of this opportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection of a Quaker, who was quite noted in affairs of this kind. The owner was exceedingly indignant. He had always treated the slave with such indulgence, and his confidence in his affection was such, that he believed he must have been practised upon to induce him to revolt from him. He visited the Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of uncommon candor and fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and representations. It was a side of the subject which he never had heard, — never had thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that, if his slave would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be free, he would liberate him. An interview was forthwith procured, and Nathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any reason to complain of his treatment, in any respect. “No, Mas’r,” said Nathan; “you’ve always been good to me.” “Well, then, why do you want to leave me?” “Mas’r may die, and then who get me? —I’d rather be a free man.” After some deliberation, the young master replied, “Nathan, in your place, I think I should feel very much so, myself. You are free.” He immediately made him out free papers; deposited a sum of money in the hands of the Quaker, to be judiciously used in assisting him to start in life, and left a very sensible and kind letter of advice to the young man. That letter was for some time in the writer’s hands. The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the, South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks any person, who knows the world, are such characters common, anywhere? For many years of her life, the author avoided all reading upon HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA or allusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too painful to be inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would certainly live down. But, since the legislative act of 1850, when she heard, with perfect surprise and consternation, Christian and humane people actually recommending the remanding escaped fugitives into slavery, as a duty binding on good citizens, —when she heard, on all hands, from kind, compassionate and estimable people, in the free states of the North, deliberations and discussions as to what Christian duty could be on this head, —she could only think, These men and Christians cannot know what slavery is; if they did, such a question could never be open for discussion. And from this arose a desire to exhibit it in a living dramatic reality. She has endeavored to show it fairly, in its best and its worst phases. In its best aspect, she has, perhaps, been successful; but, oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that valley and shadow of death, that lies the other side? To you, generous, noble-minded men and women, of the South, — you, whose virtue, and magnanimity and purity of character, are the greater for the severer trial it has encountered, —to you is her appeal. Have you not, in your own secret souls, in your own private conversings, felt that there are woes and evils, in this accursed system, far beyond what are here shadowed, or can be shadowed? Can it be otherwise? Is man ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does not the slave system, by denying the slave all legal right of testimony, make every individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can anybody fall to make the inference what the practical result will be? If there is, as we admit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor, justice and humanity, is there not also another kind of public sentiment among the ruffian, the brutal and debased? And cannot the ruffian, the brutal, the debased, by slave law, own just as many slaves as the best and purest? Are the honorable, the just, the high-minded and compassionate, the majority anywhere in this world? The slave-trade is now, by American law, considered as piracy. But a slave-trade, as systematic as ever was carried on on the coast of Africa, is an inevitable attendant and result of American slavery. And its heart-break and its horrors, can they be told? The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish and despair that are, at this very moment, riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers whom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children; and themselves seeking in death a shelter from woes more dreaded than death. Nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be conceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly acting on our shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the shadow of the cross of Christ. And now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be trifled with, apologized for, and passed over in silence? [she addressed residents of various free states one by one, and then addressed mothers ...] By the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could neither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty cradle, that silent nursery, — I beseech you, pity HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA those mothers that are constantly made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in silence? Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom. If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South? Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves. But, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do, — they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy? Christian men and women of the North! still further, — you have another power; you can pray! Do you believe in prayer? or has it become an indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and sale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many cases, an impossibility, unless they have given them, from above, the courage and grace of martyrdom. But, still more. On the shores of our free states are emerging the poor, shattered, broken remnants of families, —men and women, escaped, by miraculous providences from the surges of slavery, —feeble in knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a system which confounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and morality. They come to seek a refuge among you; they come to seek education, knowledge, Christianity. What do you owe to these poor unfortunates, oh Christians? Does not every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon them? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses be shut upon them? Shall states arise and shake them out? Shall the church of Christ hear in silence the taunt that is thrown at them, and shrink away from the helpless hand that they stretch out; and, by her silence, encourage the cruelty that would chase them from our borders? If it must be so, it will be a mournful HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have reason to tremble, when it remembers that the fate of nations is in the hands of One who is very pitiful, and of tender compassion. Do you say, “We don’t want them here; let them go to Africa”? That the providence of God has provided a refuge in Africa, is, indeed, a great and noticeable fact; but that is no reason why the church of Christ should throw off that responsibility to this outcast race which her profession demands of her. To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half- barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises. Let the church of the north receive these poor sufferers in the spirit of Christ; receive them to the educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools, until they have attained to somewhat of a moral and intellectual maturity, and then assist them in their passage to those shores, where they may put in practice the lessons they have learned in America. There is a body of men at the north, comparatively small, who have been doing this; and, as the result, this country has already seen examples of men, formerly slaves, who have rapidly acquired property, reputation, and education. Talent has been developed, which, considering the circumstances, is certainly remarkable; and, for moral traits of honesty, kindness, tenderness of feeling, —for heroic efforts and self-denials, endured for the ransom of brethren and friends yet in slavery, —they have been remarkable to a degree that, considering the influence under which they were born, is surprising. The writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who formerly were slaves. They have been in her family as servants; and, in default of any other school to receive them, she has, in many cases, had them instructed in a family school, with her own children. She has also the testimony of missionaries, among the fugitives in Canada, in coincidence with her own experience; and her deductions, with regard to the capabilities of the race, are encouraging in the highest degree. The first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is for education. There is nothing that they are not willing to give or do to have their children instructed, and, so far as the writer has observed herself, or taken the testimony of teachers among them, they are remarkably intelligent and quick to learn. The results of schools, founded for them by benevolent individuals in Cincinnati, fully establish this. The author gives the following statement of facts, on the authority of Professor C.E. Stowe, then of Lane Seminary, Ohio, with regard to emancipated slaves, now resident in Cincinnati; given to show the capability of the race, even without any very particular assistance or encouragement. The initial letters alone are given. They are all residents of Cincinnati. B——. Furniture maker; twenty years in the city; worth ten thousand dollars, all his own earnings; a Baptist. [she described several other freed slaves, their industry and accomplishments, then suggested that the judgment of God insists on justice, ending with the following paragraph] A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, — but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!
September 27. ... When I could sit in a cold chamber muffled in a cloack each evening till Thank- giving time — warmed by my own thoughts — the world was not so much with me.
Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette’s LA THÉBAÏDE EN AMÉRIQUE, OU, APOLOGIE DE LA VIE SOLITAIRE ET CONTEMPLATIVE (Nouvelle Orleans: Imprimerie Méridier). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1853
January 7, Friday: Henry C. Wright reported in The Liberator that a medium had informed him, in a seance at an Ohio farmhouse, that his brother Chester had died of apoplexy on a certain date in a certain town. SPIRITUALISM
On this day in New Orleans, the rescuer of Solomon Northup was obtaining a pass by which the man could travel back into his Northern freedom:
State of Louisiana - City of New-Orleans: Recorder’s Office, Second District. To all to whom these presents shall come: - This is to certify that Henry B. Northup, Esquire, of the county of Washington, New-York, has produced before me due evidence of the freedom of Solomon, a mulatto man, aged about forty-two years, five feet, seven inches and six lines, woolly hair, and chestnut eyes, who is a native born of the State of New-York. That the said Northup, being about bringing the said Solomon to his native place, through the southern routes, the civil authorities are requested to let the aforesaid colored man Solomon pass unmolested, he demeaning well and properly. Given under my hand and the seal of the city of New-Orleans this 7th January, 1853. [L.S.] “TH. GENOIS, Recorder.
REVERSE UNDERGROUND RR
November 18, Friday: Edward Pinkney Williams, a merchant of New Orleans, died at the age of 34. Born in Maryland, he had been a Harvard classmate of Thoreau:
PALMER, Joseph. NECROLOGY OF ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 1851-52 TO 1862-63. Boston MA: J. Wilson and son, 1864, 544 pages:
1837. — EDWARD PINKNEY WILLIAMS died in New Orleans, 18 November, 1853, aged 34. He was born in Baltimore, 9 June, 1819; and was a merchant in New Orleans. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1854
The negrero Glamorgan, of New-York, was captured while about to embark nearly 700 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XV, Number 99, pages 59-60).
The negrero Grey Eagle, of Philadelphia, was captured off Cuba by a British cruiser (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XV, Number 99, pages 61-3).
The negrero Peerless, of New-York, landed 350 slaves in Cuba (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XV, Number 99, page 66).
The negrero Oregon, of New Orleans, was known to be trading to Cuba (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 34th Congress, 1st session XV, Number 99, pages 69-70). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;92 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.93 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”94 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.95 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather 92. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 93. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 94. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 95. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”96 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”97 As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing the traffic.98 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”99 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”100 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”101 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”102 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, 96. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. 97. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 98. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 99. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 100. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 101. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast.”103 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.104 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”105 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”106 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;107 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”108 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”109 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”110 Again, it is
102. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. 103. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 104. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 105. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 106. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 107. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 108. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 109. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 110. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave- holding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”111 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.112 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.113 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”114 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.115 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.116 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.117 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,118 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international co- operation....119
111. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 112. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 113. Cf. above, pages 126-7. 114. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 115. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: It was not altogether a mistaken judgment that led the constitutional fathers to consider the slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which his price cannot be reduced. That limit is not his physical well-being, for it may be, and in the Gulf States it was, cheaper to work him rapidly to death; the limit is simply the cost of procuring him and keeping him alive a profitable length of time. Only the moral sense of a community can keep helpless labor from sinking to this level; and when a community has once been debauched by slavery, its moral sense offers little resistance to economic demand. This was the case in the West Indies and Brazil; and although better moral stamina held the crisis back longer in the United States, yet even here the ethical standard of the South was not able to maintain itself against the demands of the cotton industry. When, after 1850, the price of slaves had risen to a monopoly height, the leaders of the plantation system, brought to the edge of bankruptcy by the crude and reckless farming necessary under a slave régime, and baffled, at least temporarily, in their quest of new rich land to exploit, began instinctively to feel that the only salvation of American slavery lay in the reopening of the African slave-trade. It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and words led to deeds. The movement first took definite form in the ever radical State of South Carolina. In 1854 a grand jury in the Williamsburg district declared, “as our unanimous opinion, that the Federal law abolishing the African Slave Trade is a public grievance. We hold this trade has been and would be, if re-established, a blessing to the American people, and a benefit to the African himself.”120 This attracted only local 116. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. 117. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 118. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA attention; but when, in 1856, the governor of the State, in his annual message, calmly argued at length for a reopening of the trade, and boldly declared that “if we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor we do not want,”121 such words struck even Southern ears like “a thunder clap in a calm day.”122 And yet it needed but a few years to show that South Carolina had merely been the first to put into words the inarticulate thought of a large minority, if not a majority, of the inhabitants of the Gulf States.
November 1, Wednesday: The personal library of Francis Sales was sold at auction (Harvard Library has an inventory of the volumes).
Henry Thoreau was being written to by Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette of New Orleans, appreciating WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and asking for a copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.
Mandeville, St. Tammany, La. 1.e Nov 1854 Mr Henry D. Thoreau. Monsieur—, 119. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. 120. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1854-5, page 1156. 121. Cluskey, POLITICAL TEXT-BOOK (14th edition), page 585. 122. De Bow’s Review, XXII. 223; quoted from Andrew Hunter of Virginia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA En lisant le numero dans Novembre de la Revue de Putnam, je fut frappé par la courte notice sur [n]otre ouvrage intitulé: Walden; or, Life in the Woods. J’ai eu le bonheur de le trouver chez in libraire de la Nouvelle Orléans, et je l’ai lu presque en entier. Avant meme de l’avoir fini, j’éprouve le besoin de vous exprimer ma sinceré et cordiale admiration. Votre livre m’a immensément intéressé; il m’a rappelé le “Voyage autour de ma chambre” du fam[eux] Xavier de Maistre; mais il est plus séri[eux] et plus philosophique. J’ose, Monsieur, vous prier de m’envoyer, si vous le pouvez (par la poste) un exemplaire de “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”: vous me feriez le plus grand plaisir. Je vous pria d’ac- cepter trois de mes ouvrages: Wild-Flowers—La Thébaéde en Amérique—et Un Discours—qui je vous envoie en memé temps que cette lettre.
Page 2 Mon adresse est: Revd. Adrian Rouquette, Mandeville, St. Tammany, Louisiana. Croyez, Monsieur, é tous les sentiments du respect et du sympathie avec lesquels je suis votre tout déviné Serviteur A Rouquette P.S. C’est par l’intermédiaire de Ticknor & Fields que je vous envoir cette lettre et les livres qui l’accompagnent.
November 11, Saturday: The Siberian Hunters, a romantic opera by Anton Rubinstein to words of Zherebtsov, was performed for the initial time, in the Weimar Hoftheater, directed by Franz Liszt.
A story by Louisa May Alcott appeared in Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette, “The Rival Prima Donnas” by “Flora Fairfield.”
Henry Thoreau received the package of 3 books, and letter in French, that had been posted by the Abbé Adrien- Emmanuel Rouquette in New Orleans on the 1st of the month. Total travel time from the Louisiana port to the Massachusetts port, plus pickup and delivery in Boston to the publishing firm of Ticknor, and forwarding to Concord, had been a remarkably short 10 days! The books in the package were, presumably:
• Rouquette’s LA THÉBIADE DE L’AMÉRIQUE • Rouquette’s WILD FLOWERS • Rouquette’s LES SAVAN ES, POESIES AMERICAINES HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA November 13, Monday: Henry Thoreau replied, with the requested copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, to the Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette.
TIMELINE OF A WEEK Revd Adrian Rouquette Concord Mass. Nov. 13th 1854. Dear Sir I have just received your letter and the 3 works which accompanied it — and I make haste to send you a copy of “A Week — on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers” —by the same mail with this— I thank you heartily for the interest which you express in my book “Walden” — and also for the gift of your works — Though I have not had time to preuse the your books I have looked far enough to last attentively—and I am glad not all those in ou to be convinced that there are more than knew the I supposed in your section of our union any more than in my own are broad country devoted to something alone The very locality assigned to some of your better—than trade poems—suggest poetry appeals to the muse in me especially I am particularly pleased to receive so cordial hearty a greeting from in French— which was the language of my pa- ternal Grandfather— I assure you — it is Altogether not a little affecting to be thus reminded of the breadth & the destiny of our common country— I am sir yrs sincerely Henr D Thoreau HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1855
The free blacks of New Orleans responded enthusiastically when the state’s slave manumission policy began to be liberalized. They would soon, however, have this initial enthusiasm driven out of them, for the Louisiana legislature –among other state legislatures– would begin reacting to the great servile-insurrection scare that would begin in 1856 because a presidential candidate considered to be pro-negro was being offered by the new Republican Party. The state’s white powers-that-be would in 1857 again sharply restrict the possibility of manumission. This rancid history would reach its low point in the election of 1860. Many industrious free blacks of the South would experience a white backlash in which they would be accused of subversive sympathies with the black slaves, in a bond supposedly arising out of their African-Americans kinship and out of a common experience of white prejudice.
From the arithmetic workbook of Sarah M. Durand, a student of Stamford Academy in Stamford, Connecticut: A ship sailed from Lisbon for New Orleans with a crew of 30 men 1/2 of whom were blacks. Being becalmed on the passage for a long time, provisions began to fail, and the Captain being satisfied that if their numbers were not greatly diminished, all would perish of hunger before they could reach any friendly port. He therefore proposed to the sailors, that they should cast lots, that every 9th man should be cast overboard, till half the crew was thus destroyed. To this they all agreed. He then placed them on the deck, and the lots were cast. To the astonishment of all, every 9th man was found to be a Negro. Consequently, the whites were all saved, and the blacks were destroyed. Can you tell me how he placed them? RACISM Miscellaneous Manuscript 74850 at the Connecticut Historical Society includes an illustration of the positioning of the dead black and surviving white sailors. To this piece of pretty calculated racism, we can add the sociological question, is there any way to determine whether the cunning ship captain was a white man?
And, another sociological question: is there any way to determine whether the teacher of this arithmetic class at the Stamford Academy in 1855 was a white man, or whether this Sarah Durand was a white student?
This is a version of counting-out game known as “the Josephus problem.” It bears such a name because of the account written in the 1st Century by Flavius Josephus. Josephus asserted in The Jewish War (Book 3, Chapter 8, paragraph 7) that he and 40 comrade soldiers had been trapped in a cave at Yodfat, the entrance to which had been blocked by Roman soldiers. Choosing death rather than capture, they formed a circle and began the slaughter using a step of three. The third soldier was to be executed by the sixth, then the sixth was to be executed by the ninth, and so on. Josephus and one other man were alive at the end of this and, unable to proceed due to the absence of anyone to kill them, clambered over the pile of bleeding corpses and surrendered to the soldiers blocking the mouth of the cave. Children play a version of this to decide who is going to be “it,” by counting fists according to the rhyme “One Potato, Two Potato.”
One potato, two potato Three potato, four, Five potato, six potato, Seven potato, more, One big bad spud. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Writing under a pseudonym “Mucius,” Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette analyzed LA QUESTION AMERICAINE. (Nouvelle-Orleans, 1855).
Judah Touro, youngest son of Rabbi Isaac Touro, had relocated to New Orleans in his early twenties and had accumulated a considerable fortune there in the Deep South as a merchant/trader. At the time of his death his estate totaled nearly $1,000,000, most of which was designated in his will to charitable organizations, orphanages, religious institutions, and towards good works in various cities including the place of his birth, Newport, Rhode Island. His bequest would provide a public park, and preserve the historic Old Stone Mill.
In Providence, the Quakers were not doing nearly so well. The Yearly Meeting School was forced to send its young scholars home and shut its doors due to bills that could not be paid. To correct this situation, steps needed to be taken to reduce the debt from more than $8,000 to about $3,000 — steps such as re-engaging the principals Joseph and Gertrude W. Cartland on a contract system. After five months the school was able to re- open its doors. This crisis would lead to some easement of school regulations. In addition, in the future there were to be graduation ceremonies during which the graduating scholars were to be handed diplomas.123 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA 18??: Abbé Adrien Rouquette became Vicar General at to the Cathedral of Saint Louis in New Orleans.
123. This matter referred to above, the re-engagement of the school’s principals on “a contract system” in 1855, deserves some comment. As a historian, to do a good job, I should be able to establish the crossover point, at which the school transited from being a religious school, a school offering a religious education to young members of a religion — to being the sort of hoighty-toighty Ivy League preparatory academy for all and sundry families of the Providence rising classes which as we are all profoundly aware, it has by now become. For the first five years or so of my investigation of the records of this school, I had been presuming that probably I was going to discover this crossover point at which Quakerism became mere lip service to Quakerism to have been reached just prior to the middle of the 20th Century, as this institution made its transition from being a boarding school attracting Quaker youth from all over New England, into being a day school catering to the middleclass families of Providence’s toney East Side (plus, incidentally, whatever few Quaker youth happened to reside within daily commuting distance who could afford the high fees or could secure a scholarship). When I discovered, in the records of the school, however, these records of incentive compensation for its headmasters, this caused me to recognize that the crossover into disingenuity may have already been well in the past, by that late point at which the boarding-school aspect of the school’s function had disintegrated beyond repair. Incentive compensation is utterly incompatible with charter — one simply cannot allow a person to run an institution and divert half its annual surplus into his own pocket, and anticipate that that person will behave in any manner other than to maximize the income flowing into his own pocket. This is the sort of situation which is described, in economics, and described quite properly, as “moral hazard.” At this point, the school’s charter to provide an environment guarded from the lay world in which a Quaker education might best be conveyed to Quaker youth, was inevitably abandoned — abandoned because the headmaster’s incentive compensation was henceforth to be based not upon fulfilling that charge, but instead upon implementing a contrary agenda of puffing up the school’s enrollment and the school’s charges and the school’s cash flow, while holding down expenditures, in such manner as to maximize a flow into his own pocket. Under such a “contract system” the eventual result, that after a period of evolutionary adjustment and accommodation this Quaker school would be effectively a lay school, and that this Quaker endowment would no longer be being used for Quaker education, should have been anticipatable. For it has always been well understood that:
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. — MATTHEW 6:24 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1857
In this year, according to SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49 (pages 14-21, 70-1, etc.), there were at least 20 negreros from New-York, New Orleans, and other US ports.
The negreros William Clark and Jupiter, of New Orleans, Eliza Jane, of New-York, Jos. H. Record, of Newport, Rhode Island, and Onward, of Boston were captured by British cruisers (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, pages 13, 25-6, 69, etc).
The negrero James Buchanan escaped capture because it was under American colors, while carrying 300 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, page 38).
The negrero James Titers, of New Orleans, was carrying 1,200 slaves when it was captured by a British cruiser (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session XII, Number 49, pages 31-4, 40-1).
Four New Orleans negreros were operating along the African coast (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, page 30).
The negrero Cortes, of New-York, was captured (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 27-8).
The negrero Charles, of Boston, was captured by British cruisers while carrying 400 slaves (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 9, 13, 36, 69, etc).
The Adams Gray and W.D. Miller of New Orleans were fully equipped as negreros (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, pages 3-5, 13).
Between this year and the following one, such American vessels as the Charlotte, of New-York, the Charles, of Maryland, etc., were reported to be negreros (SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 35th Congress, 1st session, XII, Number 49, passim). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
Slavery had been brought to an end in Rhode Island in 1843 and in Connecticut in 1848. In this year it was ended in New Hampshire as well and the North was poised and positioned to become self-righteous in contradistinction to the recalcitrant South. In analyzing the transition known as “gradual emancipation” in New England, Joanne Pope Melish has specified in considerable detail how the stigma of status, “slave,” gradually evolved into the stigma of being, “black”: Throughout New England the mapping of dependency from the category “slave” onto the category “person of color” was achieved by a range of practices that insisted upon a slavelike status for persons of color in freedom. Actually she has analyzed this in considerable critical detail: The meaning of “free” as it had developed in the ideology of the abolition movement was a category that existed paradoxically in two apparently contradictory semantic domains: “absence” and “availability.” The language of abolition framed the possible meanings of “free person of color” as a category to include a state of being for whites along with people of color: “free” always included the state of being “free of slavery,” which HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA included a presumption of freedom from slaves themselves –that is, the promise of the ultimate absence of the humans occupying that category– as a desirable status for white.... In whites’ minds, formally and conceptually, free people of color had no place at all, even though they were physically still present as day or contract laborers. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: A somewhat more sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln’s administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving, until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825, until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States. Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the Act of 1819;124 but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.125 Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the House, February 15, 1819: “Our laws are already highly penal against their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last year.”126 In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.127 Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: “We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of iniquity.”128 The following year, 1820, brought some significant statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South Carolina: “Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God’s express will; but our Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven; which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of their country.”129 As late as May he saw little 124. Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent: OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819 (HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, page 57); but no action was taken there. 125. Cf. Kendall’s Report, August, 1830: SENATE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session, I. No. 1, pages 211-8; also see below, Chapter X. 126. Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819, page 18; published in Boston, 1849. 127. Jay, INQUIRY INTO AMERICAN COLONIZATION (1838), page 59, note. 128. Quoted in Friends’ FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (ed. 1841), pages 7-8. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA hope of suppressing the traffic.130 Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: “It is notorious that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves.”131 Plumer of New Hampshire stated that “of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, ‘an officer who would perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with derision and contempt;’ ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands.”132 In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as those “of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the officers of government.”133 Another committee, in 1822, after a careful examination of the subject, declare that they “find it impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under the flags of other nations.” They then state the suspicious circumstance that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, “the trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other nations.” They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in March, 1820, and remained a “few weeks;” that since then four others had in two years made five visits in all; but “since the middle of last November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders for that service.”134 The United States African agent, Ayres, reported in 1823: “I was informed by an American officer who had been on the coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning, lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves. It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer being on the
129. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 270-1. 130. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 698. 131. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1207. 132. ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 16th Congress 1st session, page 1433. 133. Referring particularly to the case of the slaver “Plattsburg.” Cf. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 10. 134. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, page 2. The President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British reports: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1822, Vol. XXII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, III. page 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun, the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being abducted. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA coast.”135 Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven American slavers taken.136 Such measures gradually changed the character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers, although their real character was often well known. More stringent clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In 1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares that, in spite of United States laws, “American vessels, American subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade, though under other colours and in disguise.”137 The United States ship “Cyane” at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding: “Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them.”138 The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;139 the trade was said to be carried on “to an extent that almost staggers belief.”140 Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in slave-trading. The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to assure collectors, in 1819, that “it is against public policy to dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the Slave trade.”141 One district attorney writes: “It appears to be almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state.”142 Again, it is asserted that “when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave- holding states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for them.”143 In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and hide them in the woods; then his partner would “rob” him, and so all trace be lost.144 Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this figure is apparent.145 A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821, brought reports of
135. Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 31. 136. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 5-6. The slavers were the “Ramirez,” “Endymion,” “Esperanza,” “Plattsburg,” “Science,” “Alexander,” “Eugene,” “Mathilde,” “Daphne,” “Eliza,” and “La Pensée.” In these 573 Africans were taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size of the ships, etc. (cf. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), pages 33-41). They nevertheless acted with great zeal. 137. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, page 76. The names and description of a dozen or more American slavers are given: PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1821, Vol. XXIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 18-21. 138. HOUSE REPORTS, 17th Congress 1st session, II. No. 92, pages 15-20. 139. HOUSE DOCUMENT, 18th Congress 1st session, VI. No. 119, page 13. 140. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1823, Vol. XVIII., SLAVE TRADE, Further Papers, A, pages 10-11. 141. OPINIONS OF ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, V. 717. 142. R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August, 1821; reprinted in FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 47. 143. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 144. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 43. 145. Cf. above, pages 126-7. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA only a few well-known cases, like that of the “General Ramirez;” the marshal of Louisiana had “no information.”146 There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some extent.147 Finally, it must be noted that during all this time scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers, caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.148 In certain cases there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and slaves to one of her prizes, the “Antelope,” which was eventually captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there came an innocent petition to Congress to cancel this bond.149 A bill to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,150 and in consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia. 146. FRIENDS’ VIEW OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE (1824), page 42. 147. A few accounts of captures here and there would make the matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have reached many hundreds per year. 148. Cf. editorial in Niles’s Register, XXII. 114. Cf. also the following instances of pardons: — PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham, convicted for “carrying on an illegal slave-trade” (pardoned twice). PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 146, 148-9. PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, 15 vessels arrived at New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes. Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted. (Note: “Several other pardons of this nature were granted.”) PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 179. Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for importing a slave. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 184-5. Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 194, 235, 240. May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, I. 248. PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for bringing slaves into New Orleans. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 15. Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was then pardoned. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 22. July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for introducing slaves into Alabama. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 63. Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner “Mary,” convicted of importing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 66. PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship was forfeited for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 140. Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted for introducing slaves. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 158. Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for slave-trading. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 161. The four following cases are similar to that of Winston: — Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 162. March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 192. Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 215. PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. PARDONS AND REMISSIONS, IV. 225, 270, 301, 393, 440. The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly loaned me. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820 Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international co- operation....151
149. See SENATE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 60, 66, 340, 341, 343, 348, 352, 355; HOUSE JOURNAL, 20th Congress 1st session, pages 59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688, 692. 150. STATUTES AT LARGE, VI. 376. 151. Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: SENATE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, pages 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress 1st session, page 332; 15th Congress 2d session, pages 303, 305, 316; 16th Congress 1st session, page 150. Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the table in 1821: HOUSE JOURNAL, 16th Congress 1st session, pages 196, 200, 227; 16th Congress 2d session, page 238. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1858
August 14, Saturday: The following advertisement appeared:
The New Orleans Bee encouraged the extension of slavery through the annexation of Cuba: There is no earthly use in seeking to plant slavery in Northern territory; climactic influences are against us there, and slavery will not flourish where white labor can compete with it successfully. But southward we have almost a boundless field of enterprise lying before us. There is Cuba.... Slave labor there already gives rich returns, and annexation to the Union would introduce superior American management in that island and raise the productivity of the individual slave laborers... Let the people of the South cease an unavailing effort to force slavery into ungenial climes, and strive to plant it where it would naturally tend....
August 14: P.M.–To the one-arched bridge. Hardhacks are probably a little past prime. Stopped by the culvert opposite the centaurea, to look at the sagittaria leaves. Perhaps this plant is in its prime (?). Its leaves vary remarkably in form. I see, in a thick patch six or eight feet in diameter, leaves nearly a foot long of this form:
and others, as long or longer, of this form:
with all the various intermediate ones. The very narrow ones, perhaps, around the edge of the patch, being also of a darker green, are not distinguished at first, but mistaken for grass. Suggesting to C. an Indian name for one of our localities, he thought it had too many syllables for a place so near the middle of the town, — as if the more distant and less frequented place might have a longer name, less understood and less alive in its syllables. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly and I see the goldfinch [American Goldfinch Carduleis tristis] upon it. Carduelis. Often when I watch one go off, he flies at first one way, rising and falling, as if skiing close over unseen billows, but directly makes a great circuit as if he had changed his mind, and disappears in the opposite direction, or is seen to be joined there by his mate. We walked a little way down the bank this side the Assabet bridge. The broad-leaved panic grass, with its hairy sheaths or collars, attracts the eye now there by its perfectly fresh broad leaf. We see from time to time many bubbles rising from the sandy bottom, where it is two or more feet deep, which I suspect to come from clams there letting off air. I think I see the clams, and it is often noticed there. I see a pickerel nearly a foot long in the deep pool under the wooden bridge this side the stone one, where it has been landlocked how long?
There is brought me this afternoon Thalictrum Cornuti, of which the club-shaped filaments (and sepals?) and seed-vessels are a bright purple and quite showy. To speak from recollection, the birds which I have chanced to hear of late are (running over the whole list):–
The squealing notes of young hawks. Occasionally a red-wing’s tchuck. The link of bobolinks. The chickadee and phebe note of the chickadees, five or six together occasionally. The fine note of the cherry-bird, pretty often. The twitter of the kingbird, pretty often. The wood pewee, with its young, peculiarly common and prominent. Only the peep of the robin. The pine warbler, occasionally. The bay-wing [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus], pretty often. The seringo, pretty often. The song sparrow, often. The field sparrow, often. The goldfinch, a prevailing note, with variations into a fine song. The ground-robin, once of late. The flicker’s cackle, once of late. The nighthawk, as usual. I have not been out early nor late, nor attended particularly to the birds. The more characteristic notes would appear to be the wood pewee’s [Eastern Wood-Pewee Contopus virens] and the goldfinch’s [American Goldfinch Carduleis tristis], with the squeal of young hawks. These might be called the pewee-days. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1859
After 14 year of service as a priest at the Cathedral of Saint Louis in New Orleans, and rising to the position
of Vicar General, Abbé Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette suddenly severed his connections and removed himself HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA to the banks of Bayou La Combe, where for 29 years he would function as a missionary among the Choctaw
tribespeople, attached to the Catholic Seminary of New Orleans in the function of chaplain, performing his religious duties in a tiny chapel about the size and shape of Thoreau’s shanty.
(The resemblance to our famous shanty, and the similar escape to a life of simplicity and devotion, might seem merely a coincidence — but note, the Abbé had written to Henry Thoreau expressing his appreciation, and he did have a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and a copy of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA MERRIMACK RIVERS, in his personal library!)
REPLICA OF SHANTY HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1860
SIX SPEECHES WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF HON. ELI THAYER (Boston: Brown and Taggard).
Oregon requested that Representative Eli Thayer of Massachusetts be its representative at the National Republican Convention.
The initial swampland recovery act of 1849 had “benefited” only Louisiana and so, in 1850, it had been extended by our federal congress to include fifteen other states. At this point this misguided agrarian endeavor (read “pork barrel”) was extended again, to encompass the new states of Oregon and Minnesota. “In our efforts to cushion ourselves against smaller, more frequent climate stresses, we have consistently made ourselves more vulnerable to rare but larger catastrophes. The whole course of civilisation ... may be seen as a process of trading up on the scale of vulnerability.” — Brian Fagan, THE LONG SUMMER: HOW CLIMATE CHANGED CIVILISATION. Granta, 2004 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Here is New Orleans as mapped in this year:
Adrien Rouquette’s LES PRÉLUDES DE L’ANTONIADE (PRELUDES TO THE ANTONIADE) included such poems as HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA “La Louisiane et la Nouvelle-Orléans” (“Louisiana and New Orleans”).
Also, his L’ANTONIADE, OU LA SOLITUDE AVEC DIEU (TROIS ÂGES) POÈME ÉRÉMITIQUE (Nouvelle-Orleans: Impr. de L. Marchand, 1860).
Also, his PROÈMES PATRIOTIQUES. SUITE DE L’ANTONIADE. POÈME ÉRÉMITIQUE (New Orleans: L. Marchand, 1860). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1861
It would be the civil war years which would produce, paradoxically, for the Tudor Company which stripped the winter ice from the ponds of New England, the quite temporary prosperity which would enable Frederic Tudor, when he would die at the age of eighty, to leave behind him a million-dollar fortune. For these would be the years of the frenzied boom in bulk cotton from India, a boom produced by the North’s blockade of Southern ports and a consequently greater demand for this Indian cotton. The British in India would not only have plenty of cash with which to procure ice, but also, this the ice could travel virtually for free, for it would be mere ballast in the ships which would travel to India to obtain this cotton. Samuel Eliot Morison would comment “Mr. Tudor and his ice came just in time to preserve Boston’s East India commerce from ruin.”152 This blockade also cut off the supply of Tudor’s northern ice to the ports of New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, etc., and what this meant was that the hospitals there would have to turn to artificial ice produced by the ammonia-absorption machine patented by Ferdinand Carré. Thus this temporary boom for pond ice was presaging a permanent defeat by manufactured ice. COOLNESS
152. Professor Morison was the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work. He taught the young Harvard men while attired in riding breeches. He refused to teach the Radcliffe girls because girls are so frivolous. He believed so passionately that the writing of history was an art that, when interrupted at his desk by the barking of a dog, he shot the dog. After WWII he taught while attired in an Admiral’s uniform. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1862
June 20, Friday: According to a report that would appear in the New-York Tribune on the following day, a delegation of Progressive Friends called upon President Abraham Lincoln to present a memorial praying him to decree the emancipation (general manumission) of the slaves, which had been adopted at their annual meeting in the Religious Society of Friends. Members of the delegation were: Friend Thomas Garrett, Friend Alice Eliza Hambleton, Friend Oliver Johnson, Friend Dinah Mendenhall, Friend William Barnard, and Friend Eliza Agnew: The President was reported to have said that, as he had not been furnished with a copy of the memorial in advance, he could not be expected to make any extended remarks. It was a relief to be assured that the deputation were not applicants for office, for his chief trouble was from that class of persons. The next most troublesome subject was Slavery. He agreed with the memorialists, that Slavery was wrong, but in regard to the ways and means of its removal, his views probably differed from theirs.153 The quotation in the memorial, from his Springfield speech, was incomplete. It should have embraced another sentence, in which he indicated his views as to the effect upon Slavery itself of the resistance to its extension. The sentiments contained in that passage were deliberately uttered, and he held them now. If a decree of emancipation could abolish Slavery, John Brown would have done the work effectually. Such a decree surely could not be more binding upon the South than the Constitution, and that cannot be enforced in that part of the country now. Would a proclamation of freedom be any more effective? Friend Oliver Johnson was reported to have replied as follows: “True, Mr. President, the Constitution cannot now be enforced at the South, but you do not on that account intermit the effort to enforce it, and the memorialists are solemnly convinced that the abolition of Slavery is indispensable to your success.” The President was reported to have further said that he felt the magnitude of the task before him, and hoped to be rightly directed in the very trying circumstances by which he was surrounded. Wm. Barnard was reported to have addressed the President in a few words, expressing sympathy for him in all his embarrassments, and an earnest desire that he might, under divine guidance, be led to free the slaves and thus save the nation from destruction. In that case, nations yet unborn would rise up to call him blessed and, better still, he would secure the blessing of God. The President was reported to have responded very impressively, saying that he was deeply sensible of his need of Divine assistance. He had sometime thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God’s hands of accomplishing a great work and he certainly was not unwilling to be. Perhaps, however, God’s way of accomplishing the end which the memorialists have in view may be different from theirs. It would be his earnest endeavor, with a firm reliance upon the Divine arm, and seeking light from above, to do his duty in the place to which he had been called. US CIVIL WAR
Frederick Palmer wrote from New Orleans to his sister in Connecticut: Good Morning Sister, ... A little boy about Franks age came in last night with a pair of handcuffs around his leg where his [owner] fastened him to keep from running away. They suffer very much. Do you pity them poor creatures? Do you ever think of them? How beautiful Montville must look ... I will imagine you preparing to sit down to write me a letter which I do not believe you are doing. Do not be afraid to write me all the news. Do you miss me at home? Do the neighbors ever inquire for me? 153. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward the prospect of an Emancipation Proclamation was that this would be, if it would be anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never would a man be more reluctant to come to the aid of his fellow. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA July: This is what New Orleans looked like in roughly this early war period:
The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s new book THE GOLDEN HOUR, an elaboration on his “The Golden Hour” sermon, amounted to a 178-pages missive to President Abraham Lincoln proposing that he utilize his war powers to decree an end to enslavement in these United States of America.154 THE GOLDEN HOUR
Albeit Conway was becoming somewhat less sanguine about Lincoln becoming the Graceful Emancipator at this point, than he had before, nevertheless the Reverend still was gracelessly holding out to people locked in mortal combat the utterly preposterous and counterfactual illusion that if the southern slaves were set free by proclamation at long range, then the Southern resistance would of necessity collapse — and all this killing
154. Among the many books offered by Ticknor and Fields at the back of this volume, Henry D. Thoreau’s WALDEN appeared as 1 volume, 16 mo. for $1.00 and A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS as 1 volume, 12 mo. for $1.25. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA would of necessity be suddenly over.
Conway was going around declaring stupid stuff like that if the announcement were made, those darkies would beat their African tom-toms and the good news would get all the way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans before it even could arrive by telegraph wire. Along the way Conway attempted to deploy the memory of Henry Thoreau in a most intriguing manner: The naturalist Thoreau used to amuse us much by thrusting his hand into the Concord River, and drawing out at will a fine fish, which would lie quietly in his hand: when we thrust in ours, the fish would scamper out of reach. It seemed like a miracle, until he explained to us that his power to take up the fish depended upon his knowledge of the color and location of the fish’s eggs. The fish will protect its spawn; and when Thoreau placed his hand underneath that, the fish, in order to protect it, would swim immediately over it, and the fingers had only to close for it to be caught. Slavery is the spawn out of which the armed forces of treason and rebellion in the South have been hatched; and by an inviolable instinct they will rush, at any cost, to protect Slavery. You have only, Sir, to take Slavery in your grasp, then close your fingers around the rebellion. FAKE NEWS This is enough to remind one of what certain of our irritated and frustrated professional warmongers would be saying during the Vietnam War: that once we had firmly grabbed them by their gonads their hearts and minds would of necessity follow. Waldo Emerson was really buying into this sort of Fantasy Island stuff about the efficacy of warfare. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA The Atlantic Monthly, however, reported sad news, that the authenticity of the story of Winkelried and his “sheaf of Austrian spears,” a necessary part of the story of William Tell, had been cast into the shadow of doubt, owing to the fact 1.) that somebody had noticed that said events had gone unmentioned in contemporary documents and chronicles, and owing to the fact 2.) that somebody had noticed that the Halbsuter poem recounting said events actually had plagiarized a previous poem which had made no mention of such events, and owing to the fact that 3.) somebody had notice that actually this Halbsuter poet had not been a citizen of the fair commune of Lucerne.
Nothing is safe from the debunkers!
This stuff about Tell was presumably of great interest to the American audience, because during Thoreau’s lifetime some 40,000 Swiss had emigrated to America, out of a population of about 2,500,000. (People still play around with this legend. For instance, on January 16, 2001, at a circus performance in Paris, HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA Mme Cathy Jamet has been shot in the face by a crossbow arrow fired by her husband M Alain Jamet.)
During this month Sgt. Brown, the real or original subject of the song “John Brown’s Body,” a shortie, drowned while attempting to ford the Rappahannock with his unit. JULIA WARD HOWE HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1865
Osborn Perry Anderson mustered out of the US Army in Washington DC at the close of the Civil War. He became a member of the National Equal Rights League founded by the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, and John Mercer Langston among others, an organization that eventually would be superseded by the “NAACP.”
Caleb G. Forshey removed to New Orleans and resumed work as a civil engineer and surveyor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1868
November 8, Sunday: While visiting his sister Ottilie and her husband Hermann Brockhaus in Leipzig, Richard Wagner made the acquaintance of a young philology student, Friedrich Nietzsche. They discovered that they shared an interest in Arthur Schopenhauer.
Over the previous month a race war has taken place in Louisiana. Ku Klux Klan members had searched the countryside looking for blacks, and for white Republicans. An estimated 1,723 people had been slaughtered. RACISM US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1871
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette’s LE VINGT-CINQUIÈME ANNIVERSAIRE DU PONTIFICAT DE PIO NONO, 17 JUIN (New Orleans LA: Imprimerie du Propagateur catholique), a poem which he signed as “Chahta-Ima, missionnaire catholique parmi les indiens.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1879
Writing under his pseudonym “Chahta-Ima,” which in Choctaw means “one of us,” Adrien Rouquette published a short novel in response to François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s ATALA, entitled LA NOUVELLE ATALA; OU, LA FILLE DE L’ESPRIT; LEGENDE INDIENNE (THE NEW ATALA, OR DAUGHTER OF THE SPIRIT; AN INDIAN LEGEND) (Nouvelle-Orleans: Imprimerie du Propagateur Catholique, 1879). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1880
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette defended the Creoles against George W. Cable’s GRANDISSIMES in his CRITICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN ABOO AND CABOO ON A NEW BOOK, OR A GRANDISSIME ASCENSION (Mingo City [New Orleans]: Great publishing house of Sam Slick Allspice). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1883
Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette met and became friends with Lafcadio Hearn while he was on his way (more or less) from Cincinnati to Japan.
DATE: Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette became temporarily insane. HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1887
July 15, Friday: Adrien-Emmanuel Rouquette had become again lucid for a few days. He died while hard at work on a dictionary of the Choctaw language. It may well be that he was buried beneath this tree:
In this year W.T. Francis prepared sheet music in honor of Rouquette, “Zozo Mokeur,” Paroles de Chatah- Imah (New Orleans: L.Grunewald). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1893
May 27, Saturday: The corpse of Jefferson Davis was extracted from its vault in New Orleans’s Metairie Cemetery. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
When the body had lain in state, 3 years earlier, it had been honored not for having been the President of the Confederate States of America but merely as what Jefferson Davis had been pre-secession: an officer of the federal army of the United States of America. The copper casket had been placed in a tomb of the Army of Northern Virginia. At this point, however, the casket was being conveyed in a brass-trimmed oak coffin atop a black crepe-trimmed catafalque drawn by 4 black horses to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad funeral car that would carry it from Louisiana to be put on display in the rotunda of the state capital building in Raleigh, North Carolina and then be conveyed onward toward the former capital of the Confederate States of America, Richmond, Virginia.
May 28, Sunday: A funeral train left New Orleans conveying the corpse of Jefferson Davis, with daughter Margaret Davis Hayes and her husband Addison Hayes on board along with daughter Winnie Davis. The train was brought to a sentimental stop at “Beauvoir” before it continued eastward. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
May 29, Monday: The funeral train conveying the corpse of Jefferson Davis made stops in Beauvoir, Mobile, and Montgomery in Alabama. Appropriate formal honors were rendered at the state capital. Then the train continued into Georgia and appropriate formal honors were rendered at the state capital of Atlanta. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
May 30, Tuesday: The funeral train conveying the corpse of Jefferson Davis continued into North Carolina and made stops in Charlotte, Greensboro, and Durham (the train being late on the Tuesday the 30th, plans for an appropriate ceremony were disrupted), before appropriate formal honors were rendered at the capital building in Raleigh. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
May 31, Wednesday: At 3AM the funeral train conveying the corpse of Jefferson Davis arrived at the former capital of the Confederate States of America, Richmond, Virginia. The widow Varina Davis met her daughters Margaret Davis Hayes and Winnie Davis. At 3PM a procession began toward Hollywood Cemetery with the remains atop a remodeled artillery caisson, and this was witnessed by 75,000 persons. As a 21-gun salute was being fired, this corpse was re-interred. DIGGING UP THE DEAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1913
S.B. Elder (ed.), LIFE OF THE ABBÉ ADRIEN ROUQUETTE “CHAHTA-IMA” (New Orleans: Bienville Assembly, Knights of Columbus). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1942
Eleanor Van Trump Glenn’s CALENDAR OF THE ROUQUETTE MATERIAL IN THE ARCHDIOCESAN ARCHIVES OF New Orleans (Masters thesis, Tulane University, 1942).
ADRIEN ROUQUETTE HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA
1947
Dagmar-Renshaw Lebreton’s CHAHTA-IMA, THE LIFE OF ADRIEN ROUQUETTE (Baton Rouge LA: Louisiana State UP). HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: April 24, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
NEW ORLEANS LOUISIANA the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with