Portraits by Augustus Washington, African American Daguerreo T Y P I S T

A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, African American Daguerreo t y p i s t Teacher’s Guide Author Christopher Janson Curator of the Exhibition Ann M. Shumard, Assistant Curator of Photographs Funding for this teacher packet was provided by The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, 3 African American Daguerreotypist Glossary Ab o l i t i o n i s m . Advocacy of the elimination of er n territories and that southerners had the right sl a v e r y. to have slaves who had escaped to the North ret u r ned. The southerners considered these American Colonization Society. Founded in slaves as prop e rt y . Calhoun threatened seces- 1816 by an influential group of white American sion—the southern states’ withdrawal from the politicians and philanthropists, including Francis union—if these demands were not met. Scott Key (attorney and author of “The St a r Calhoun died during the debate on these Spangled Banner”) and George Was h i n g t o n ’ s issues, and a group of senators, led by Stephen ne p h e w , the society sought to obtain govern- Douglas of Illinois and Henry Clay of ment funding for a plan to relocate free blacks to K e n t u c k y, pushed through legislation that a colony in Africa. became known as the Compromise of 1850. The main points of the compromise were: Br own, John (180 0 – 185 9 ). American aboliti o n - • Admission of California as a free state ist. Active in Kansas fighting for admission of • Or ganization of remaining western terri t o - that state as a free state in a series of violent ries without restriction on slavery sk i r mishes that gave the terri t o r y the name • An end to slave trade in the District of “Bleeding Kansas,” Brown believed in the use Co l u m b i a of violence when necessary as a means of end- • A strict federal fugitive slave law ing slavery. In 1859, Brown and twenty-one fol- • Assumption of Tex a s ’ s debt by the federal lowers captured the United States arsenal at go v e rn m e n t Harpers Ferry, Vir ginia (now West Vir ginia), in an attempt to launch an invasion and uprising Da g u e r reo t y p e . A one-of-a-kind image made of the South to liberate slaves. His group was di r ectly on a sheet of copper, plated with silver, defeated, and Brown was hanged after a trial, and then polished and exposed to iodine vapor, which gained national attention and made so that it is sensitive to light. The sensitized plate Br own a martyr for the abolition movement. is placed in a camera obscura, exposed, and then developed with mercu r y vapor, which creates a Co m p r omise of 1850. In the first half of the chemical reaction with the iodine and silver. nineteenth century, the United States Congres s Me rc u r y deposits form on the plate, the most was faced with a series of threats to the balance remaining where the plate received the most of power as western states began to apply for light, and the least (or none at all) in the shad- admission to the Union as either slave or free ows. Then the plate is washed with a solution states. The last of these major threats came that removes the rest of the light-sensitive mate- when California applied for admission as a free rial, so that only the image remains. Finally, it is state. Southern congressional leaders, headed by cleaned with water, dried, and mounted under South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, glass. The process was developed by Fren c h demanded that slavery be permitted in the west- ar tist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and scien- A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, 4 African American Daguerreotypist Glossary tist Nicéphore Niepce, and was announced to rights of citizenship for all blacks in America. the public in Paris in January 1839. Liberia. A country located on the Atlantic Douglass, Frederick (18 1 7 – 1 8 9 5 ). Am e r i c a n Ocean on the western coast of Africa. It was abolitionist, writer, and lecturer who escaped founded as a colony in 1821 through the fr om slavery in 1838 and traveled in the No rt h eff o r ts of the American Colonization Society and Europe speaking out against the institution and from 1822 to the 1860s was largely settled of slavery. He was the author of the Na r rative of by freed slaves from America. Established as a the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and editor co u n t r y in 1847, it is the oldest independent and cofounder of a prominent abolitionist news- republic in Africa. Today its population is paper called The North Star. roughly 1,911,000, and Monrovia is the capi- tal and largest city. Fugitive Slave Law. A key part of the Co m p r omise of 1850, this act obligated citi- Ma n u m i s s i o n . The freeing of a person from zens to help capture escaped slaves in the sl a v e r y or bondage. Emancipation. No r th. It rejected a fugitive slave’s right to a trial by jury, requiring cases to instead be Slave states. The fifteen states of the Union in ad m i n i s t e r ed by specially appointed commis- which slavery was legal in the years before the sioners who would be paid $5 if an accused Civil War: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware , fugitive were let go and $10 if he or she were Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, ret u r ned. The act made it easier for a slavehold- M a ryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nort h er to file for a claim, and appointed more feder- Ca r olina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Tex a s , al officials to help enforce the law. Any free and Virg i n i a . black man living in the North could be more easily accused of being a fugitive and ret u r ned to Un d e rg r ound Railroa d . A covert system, estab- sl a v e r y in the South on the slimmest of evidence. lished in the years before slavery was abolished Those most affected by the law, however, were in the United States, that helped slaves escape fo r mer slaves living in the North, many of to freedom in the north e r n states or Canada. whom fled to Canada. From 1850 to 1860, it is This network relied on secret supporters sprea d estimated that twenty thousand black people out along the pathway to freedom who would immigrated to Canada. aid the escaped slaves in passing from one safe house to another. These helpers or “conduc- Ga r rison, William Lloyd (18 0 5 – 1 8 7 9 ). A prom i - tors” were often free blacks or Quakers, who nent American abolitionist leader and founder usually operated at night. Usually the pathways and publisher of The Liberator, an antislavery to freedom took advantage of the terrain to ne w s p a p e r . Garrison called not only for a com- facilitate undetected travel, following natural plete, immediate end to slavery, but also for full boundaries such as rivers or mountain ranges. A Durable Memento: Portraits by Augustus Washington, 5 African American Daguerreotypist Who was Augustus Washington? Augustus Washington was one of the first black da g u e r reotypist and farme r , and in 1865 was photographers in the United States. He was chosen as Speaker of the House of bo r n in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1820 or 1821, Re p r esentatives of the Republic of Liberia. and he was educated as a young boy at private Washington continued to prosper financially schools alongside white students. He later stud- and politically, and in 1871 was elected a sena- ied at the Oneida Institute in New York, and to r . In August 1873 he founded a newspaper then taught at a school for black children in called the New Era. He died in Monrov i a , Br ooklyn, where he was also active in the Liberia, on June 7, 1875. African American community, working for abolition and acquiring voting rights for free blacks. He was one of the first African Americans to be accepted to Dart m o u t h College, where he studied for a year before having to drop out for financial reasons. In 1844, he took a teaching position in Hartf o rd , Connecticut. In 1846 he set up a successful business taking daguerreotypes, a skill he had le a r ned while at Dartmouth to help pay off his debts. He made hundreds of daguerreotypes of Ha rt f o r d citizens, both prominent and ordi - na r y, wealthy and middle class. He made three da g u e r reotypes of the radical abolitionist John Br own while Brown was living in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts. Only one of these plates is known to have survived, and it is now in the National Portrait Gallery collection. He also made a portrait of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison in the summer of 1853, while Garrison attended a convention in Ha rt f o r d.

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