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WAR ERA WASHINGTON, D.C., 1830-1865 Tamika Y. Richeson

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WAR ERA WASHINGTON, D.C., 1830-1865 Tamika Y. Richeson CRIMES OF DISCONTENT: THE CONTOURS OF BLACK WOMEN’S LAW BREAKING IN CIVIL WAR ERA WASHINGTON, D.C., 1830-1865 Tamika Y. Richeson Charlottesville, Virginia Miami University of Ohio, B.A., 2007 Columbia University, M.A., 2008 University of Virginia, M.A., 2010 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty at the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia December 2014 Acknowledgements “Crimes of Discontent” would not be written had Rob Ellis not introduced me to the dusty stacks of the District of Columbia police precinct records at the National Archives. His kindness and patience with this “novice researcher” was critical to the concept of this dissertation. I have benefitted from numerous trips to the Library of Congress, the Library of Virginia, Maryland State Archives, and many efforts to make digitized collections available to students like myself. I have also received critical financial support from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Raven Society, and the Scholar’s Lab at the University of Virginia. I owe a particular debt to the Scholar’s Lab for introducing me to the cutting-edge world of the digital humanities and for their patience and support for my ongoing digital project Black Women and the Civil War. My research is a product of my passion for black women’s history. For igniting my interest in black studies I have Rodney Coates to thank, and for introducing me to the methodological possibilities of history I owe a huge debt to my late mentor Manning Marable. Thank you to faculty members in the Corcoran Department of History, Claudrena Harold, S. Max Edelson, and Corrine Field for taking a chance on a graduate student that needed a little time to work through her ideas. A very special thanks to Jessica Lowe for joining the team on such short notice during her sabbatical. Also, I’m deeply honored that Grace Hale, Gary Gallagher and Thavolia Glymph agreed to serve on my dissertation committee. I admire them more than they know and I’m a better historian because of their thoughtful critiques and undeniable support of my career. I remember reading Out of the House of Bondage in my first-year seminar and feeling affirmed in my efforts to prioritize the experiences of enslaved and free black women as critical subjects of intellectual inquiry. Thank you Thavolia for being both an inspiration and a thoughtful mentor. A special thanks to my circle of academic warriors which include Cecilia Marquez, Gillett Rosenblith, Cynthia Greenlee, Willa Hammit Brown, Emily Senefield, Lauren Turek, Lee Bowden, Noel Stringham, and James Ambuske. Thank you for your acceptance and support throughout my journey at the University of Virginia, I am incredibly grateful for you and look forward to reading your groundbreaking scholarship. To Tanya Nichols, who I met through the university’s mentoring institute, you have become more than a mentor. Every week, our T&T “hour of power” provided much needed intellectual and spiritual sustenance through the hills and valleys of finishing graduate school. You have truly become a sister, and I thank God for the incredible woman that you are. To my invaluable mentors, Terryne Murphy, Danell Perkins, Daisy Lovelace, Tim Lovelace, and Patrick Alexander, I can’t thank you enough for your mentoring, prayers, and encouragement during the lowest moments of this process. Daisy made it possible for me to stay enrolled at the university when I learned I was pregnant. While it seems a bit informal to mention this in my dissertation acknowledgements, this tremendous act of kindness made my progress possible. Daisy, “my sister from another mother,” your heart to do whatever you can for a friend has left an imprint on my life. A special thanks goes to JP and Shelita for always asking about my dissertation, always offering to help with childcare, and always listening in my moments of frustration and despair. You have bestowed upon me a true understanding of friendship and I am better because of it. ii This journey began with a young girl who performed poorly on just about every subject except for history and art. I have my father to thank for always encouraging me despite my pitfalls, and a mother who modeled an incredible degree of work ethic. My father made tremendous personal and financial sacrifices so that I could attend college. I don’t know if either of us knew that anything would come of it, but I hope he is proud. To my sister who mothered me through adolescence and now through my own motherhood adventures, I cannot express enough gratitude for her love and friendship (and countless physical therapy sessions for my back). To my in-laws who more appropriately should be regarded as parents, and my little brother Jonathan, thank you for the endless support and for your willingness to drive all the way from Cleveland so that I could have uninterrupted writing time. You were family long before I became your daughter-in-law. To my godmother Barbara, you are the sweet gem in my life that saw a glimmer of potential in the struggling high school sophomore, and I thank you. Familial support is priceless to me; you all are the driving force of everything I do. I owe the largest debt to my advisor, Elizabeth Varon. In its skeletal form, with all of its errors, you never gave up on the ideas offered in this dissertation. You are a true intellectual, and an amazing teacher and mentor. Your ability to take bare elements and lead a student into the process of creating substance has left me in awe. I can only hope, that one day I can be the kind of professor that you are. Thank you for your incredible generosity towards me. To my husband, Marques, thank you for your love and support. Your belief in me accomplished more than you realize, and your ability to help me articulate my ideas through the messiness of my thoughts made this project possible. Your unconditional love and intellectual prowess has never failed to inspire me. To my Nari—you are the reason why I never quit. The joy you bring, the laughter, the sweet hugs, and the thought that you might have to overcome an obstacle one day, made me push through to the finish line. You and daddy mean everything to me—this is for you both. iii Abbreviations AA Accessible Archives ES/WES The Evening Star, The Washington Evening Star daily newspaper HSW Historical Society of Washington, D.C. District of Columbia LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. MSA Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD NARA National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. NI The National Intelligencer NR The National Republican PSUA Pennsylvania State University Archives, Pennsylvania Civil War Newspaper Collection VHS Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Illustrations and Tables vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Revolving Escape: Race Law and Freedom 15 Chapter 2: Stolen: Self-Emancipation and Self-Making 60 Chapter 3:‘Her Struggles Were Almost Superhuman’ 96 Chapter 4: ‘Colored Nymphs’: Antebellum and Wartime Sex Commerce 128 Chapter 5: Untenable Freedom: Black Women and Wartime Emancipation 167 Epilogue 210 v Illustrations and Tables Slave Coffle in Washington, D.C 40 Mary and Emily Edmonson 79 Table 4.1 Register of Coloured Bawdy Houses 148 Secrets of the Prison House 174 View of the Interior of the Jail 179 vi INTRODUCTION Modern scholarship on race in nineteenth-century Washington, D.C. tells a tale of two cities: the nation’s capital as both a bastion of slavery, Southern in character, and a laboratory for freedom, a hub of antislavery activism and free black reform. The decision of Congress to establish the territory formerly occupied by Maryland and Virginia as the new capital was a concession to Southern slaveholders in the Compromise of 1790. At its inception, race-based law in the District of Columbia took shape from legal restrictions in the codes of the Chesapeake region. The diamond-shaped city remained closely tied to the neighboring slave states in both law and culture. During the American Civil War, Congress enacted a series of emancipation edicts, disrupting the slaveholding consensus of the Chesapeake region. The end of the war would not only mark the abolition of slavery and antebellum black codes, but the collapse of the Southern slaveholding legal regime that ran through the borders of Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.1 With the decline of the Chesapeake tobacco economy, the District became a key site of the domestic slave trade, and of the “hiring out” system of enslavement, as slaveholders leased excess labor by “hiring out” slaves in the District. Hiring out and the domestic trade helped to keep the value and price of slaves high, particularly in the aftermath of the abolition of the international slave trade. Slaves and free blacks also constituted the labor force employed to construct the buildings that, over time, transformed Washington from a swampy frontier into a respectable city. All the while, 1 An Act for Establishing the Temporary and Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States, Statutes at Large, 1st Congress, 2nd Session 1791, LOC; Howells State Trials, vol. 20, cols 1-6, 79-82, 1816. 1 during the city’s formative years, pro-slavery ideology rang out in the halls of Congress. Slaveholders dominated the city’s political landscape, and as Southern politicians who converged on the city each legislative season joined the residential slaveholding elite, slaveholders played an outsized role in its social life as well.2 At the same time, antislavery forces too converged on the District.
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