GENERAL, THEN PRESIDENT, GEORGE WASHINGTON
“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God.” — George Washington
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
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Our Fearless Leaders
NAME BORN INAUGURATED EX OFFICIO DIED
GEORGE WASHINGTON 1789
1792
JOHN ADAMS 1796 JULY 4, 1826
THOMAS JEFFERSON APRIL 13, 1743 1800 DITTO
1804
JAMES MADISON 1808
1812
JAMES MONROE 1816
1820
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1824
ANDREW JACKSON 1828
1832
MARTIN VAN BUREN 1836
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON 1840
JAMES K. POLK 1844
ZACHARY TAYLOR 1848
FRANKLIN PEIRCE 1852
JAMES BUCHANAN 1856
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1860
1864 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1731 OLD STYLE / 1732 NEW STYLE
February 22, Tuesday (1731, Old Style): George Washington was born to Augustine and Mary Ball Washington at Wakefield Farm, Westmoreland County, Virginia.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
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1747
February 27, Friday (1746, Old Style): Young George Washington surveyed a turnip field.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
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1748
March 19, Saturday (1747, Old Style): Elias Hicks was born on the Hempstead Plain of Paumanok “Long Island,” on “nineteenth day of Third month.” (I wouldn’t myself have a clue whether that meant Saturday, March 19th in 1747 according to the Old Style for which New Year’s Day was March 25th, or Sunday, June 19th of the year 1748, but ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA indicates that it meant March 19th — and I suppose that settles the matter for some of us.) His grandfather Jacob Hicks, an Anglican churchwarden, had been influenced by an itinerant Quaker exhorter named Thomas Chalkley, and offered the Hicks family home as the place of worship for Friends residing in the area, and his father John Hicks (1711-1789) had become a member of the Westbury Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, three miles from the farm, “by convincement” a few years before. His mother Martha Smith Hicks (17??-1759) declined to join any religious grouping, and it is clear from her firmness in this regard that she knew there to be something irreducibly incompatible and incommensurable between the religious impulse and any social grouping whatever.1 As Elias, the 4th of her six sons, would put it when he preached, “The business of life is to turn inward.”
ELIAS HICKS
“Religion and righteousness are the same thing.”
1. Her son recorded that she “was never in strict fellowship with any religious society, but was a Woman of Strict Morality and generally beloved and respected by her Neighbors, and acquaintance, of every profession.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1749
At the age of 17, George Washington became a land surveyor for an Ohio company. CARTOGRAPHY
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
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1752
July: Upon the death of his half-brother Lawrence Washington, George Washington inherited rights to the Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia, inclusive of 18 slaves. (The ledgers and account books which he kept show that he then bought slaves when necessary and possible, to replenish this original 18. In the account books of Washington, the entries show that in 1754 he bought two males and a female; in 1756, two males, two females and a child, etc. In 1759, the year in which he was married, his wife Martha, brought him 39 “dower-Negroes.” He kept separate records of these Negroes all his life and mentions them as a separate unit in his will. Washington purchased his slaves in Alexandria from Mr. Piper and perhaps in the District in 1770 “went over to Colo. Thos. Moore’s Sale and purchased two Negroes. During Washington’s lifetime, the number of slaves would increase to 200.)
It would seem that during Washington’s youth, he would be rather casual in regard to the lives and fortunes of black slaves. For instance, Henry Wiencek reports in AN IMPERFECT GOD: GEORGE WASHINGTON, HIS SLAVES, AND THE CREATION OF AMERICA (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003) that at one point, the young man found it not to be beneath him, to participate in a lottery some of the prizes of which were slave children!
November 4, Saturday: La clemenza di Tito, a dramma per musica by Christoph Willibald Gluck to words of Metastasio, was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro San Carlo of Naples.
George Washington joined a whites-only, males-only club, Alexandria Masonic Lodge No. 22 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and took the 1st step into the mystique of Masonry. (ALERT: For a historian to refer in the 21st Century to a whites-only, males-only 18th-Century club as a whites-only, males-only club constitutes the egregious error which all proper historians decry as presentism.)2
2. The African Lodge of Freemasons, which would start up in 1776 in Boston under the leadership of Prince Hall, would also be segregated by race and gender (!) and yet would be considered clandestine by many Freemasons of the skin color of Washington — although this blacks-only, males-only club would receive a charter from the Grand Lodge in England. Among Freemasons, debates about the authenticity of Prince Hall Masonry would persist into the 20th century. Among the members of these Prince Hall Lodges would be Supreme Court Justice Marshall, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, Dr. Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, and Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit, and yet none of these luminaries would ever be allowed to set foot in a white Masonic lodge. (ALERT: To refer to a blacks-only, males-only club as “segregated” constitutes an egregious error which, unfortunately, as yet lacks a name.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1753
3 November: In MEN OF CONCORD it is recorded how Cato Ingraham dealt with a problem dog that had killed turkeys and cows, and bitten someone: The next that was heard of him, Black Cato, that lived at the Lee place, now Sam Wheeler’s, on the river, was waked up about midnight by a noise among the pigs, and, having got up, he took a club and went out to see what was the matter. ETC.
Cato worked as a day laborer and he and his wife Philis evidently during their old age would have a guest room in their home near Goose Pond which they made available to transients of color.
George Washington led an expedition west from Virginia to challenge French claims to the Allegheny River Valley.
3.“Cato, the slave of Duncan Ingraham who lived next to Daniel Bliss on what is now called Walden Street.” I don’t know whether this means that Cato and his wife lived alone at that location, or whether Squire Duncan Ingraham lived at that location and they had a cottage on his estate. Ingraham had been the captain of a seagoing vessel and it is said that he had engaged in the slave trade. It is also said that during the American revolution he had favored the British cause. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1754
Again conflict erupted in the Great Lake and Ohio Valley region between French and English — the French and Indian War (or Seven Years War, since it would not end formally until the Treaty of Paris in 1763).
Once again Major George Washington went to the region to defend English interests. At the Battle of Great Meadows (Fort Necessity) in Pennsylvania, his army of Virginians was defeated. The French renewed their HDT WHAT? INDEX
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assaults on Fort Number 4 in New Hampshire.
At a colonial congress in Albany attended by representatives of seven English colonies, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Commissioners appointed from Pennsylvania to that Colonial Congress, presented “Short Hints towards a Scheme for a General Union of the British Colonies on the Continent,” and a motion passed that it would be “absolutely necessary for their security and defense” that there be “union of all the colonies.” The term “president” was also introduced for the first time, a “president” here being merely a person who “presides” over an assembly of delegates and then keeps the ball rolling until the next assembly of delegates. This first step toward American independence was not at all intended in the spirit of separation from the British crown, but was intended merely as preparation by the English settlers for race warfare against the red people of the continent and their too-intimate French allies. (It may come as a surprise, to some, that the American union originated as a necessity of race war, while, to others, this may come as a revelation and an explanation. For instance, Thomas Hutchinson, always a friend of the white man and enemy of the colored man, and never an advocate of separation from the mother country, was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Albany Convention — and was, with Franklin, a member of the committee appointed to draw up a plan of union. READ THE FULL TEXT
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
April-May: During this April and May, George Washington would be leading Virginia forces against the French at Fort Duquesne in the upper valley of the Ohio River, and building Fort Necessity at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania.
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May 27, Monday: Major George Washington defeated a French scouting party.
July 4, Thursday: Major George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to the French.
October: George Washington resigned his commission when the Virginia colonial forces were reduced to the status of separate autonomous companies.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1755
Hercules, who would be one of George Washington’s personally owned slaves, was presumably born in approximately this year. He would grow up at Mount Vernon.
On Nantucket Island, Friend Benjamin Coffin was almost disowned by the Quakers for dragging his feet in regard to the manumission of his three slaves. He would manage to avoid disownment, but eventually the former governor of Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Hopkins, more recalcitrant, would indeed eventually be disowned for such continued slaveholding. (Looking up the inside of his nose: this Hopkins dude, later, would be a signer of our Declaration of Independence — which means that he apparently was willing to tolerate freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness at least for some of us at least some of the time.)
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task.” — André Gide, THE IMMORALIST translation Richard Howard NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
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April: George Washington was appointed volunteer aide de camp to British General Edward Braddock and marched with him and British regulars against the French at Fort Duquesne. In pursuit of formal military training, Washington copied many of Braddock’s general orders into one of his letterbooks.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
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July 9, Wednesday: A committee was chosen in Carlisle (“Old Carlisle,” the first, failed attempt, not the current Carlisle), to petition the General Court for a committee to select a spot for their meetinghouse.
The British were defeated by the French at Monongahela River and General Braddock was killed.
Despite defeat, volunteer aid-de-camp George Washington achieved recognition in official circles for bravery under fire.
This was the beginning of the “French and Indian” war, and with it a spasm of hatred for immigrants from France.
Phineas Lyman began construction of a fort at a sharp bend on Hudson’s River known as “The Great Carrying Place.” Ft. Lyman, later renamed Ft. Edward by Sir William Johnson, would become the major British staging area in the Northeast theatre of operations. Ft. Edward would also become, in 1757, the headquarters of an innovative group of Colonials known as Roger’s Rangers. At several times during the late 1750’s Ft. Edward HDT WHAT? INDEX
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would quarter upwards of 15,000 British regulars and provincials.
August: George Washington was appointed, with rank of colonel, commander of reorganized Virginia colonial forces. Responsible for defending a 350-mile frontier, he became frustrated by inadequate supplies and support from the colonial assembly and the royal governor, Robert Dinwiddie.
The French learned of Sir William Johnson’s planned attack on their outpost and quickly assembled an army of 3,500 led by Baron de Dieskau, to march south to meet this threat. Their army was composed largely of regulars and militia, but included some 700 native Americans. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1758
Running for his 1st elective office, a term in House of Burgesses from Frederick County in the Shenandoah Valley, Colonel George Washington gave out 160 gallons of rum, rum punch, wine, and beer, to court a total of 391 potential voters. Although this candidate was concerned that at two gallons of spirits per vote he was being “too sparing,” indeed it was adequate to secure him that election. He thus began 15 years service in Virginia House of Burgesses from Frederick County in the Shenandoah Valley (in 1765 and thereafter he would represent Fairfax County).
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
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November: George Washington commanded 700 men from four colonies as part of a force that defeated the French and finally captured Fort Duquesne. The British force was led by General John Forbes.
Shortly thereafter: George Washington resigned commission as commander of Virginia colonial forces to attend to Mount Vernon and private affairs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1759
George Washington harvested his 1st tobacco crop. The British market would be so underimpressed with its quality that by 1761, Washington’s plantation would be deeply in debt. From this year into the mid-1770s, he would be acquiring additional lands near Mount Vernon and in the valley of the Ohio River, diversifying his agricultural production to include wheat as well as tobacco, and reducing his debts to British tobacco merchants. He expanded and remodeled his wife’s house “The White House” at Mount Vernon, and began fifteen years service in Virginia House of Burgesses from Frederick County in the Shenandoah Valley (in 1765 and thereafter from Fairfax County).
January 6, Saturday: George Washington got married with Martha Dandridge Custis, widow of Daniel Parke Custis, and having gained 17,000 acres of farmland and 286 slaves from his new wife (these added to his own 30 slaves), transited from being an ordinary planter to being a substantially wealthy landowner.4 He assumed parental care of her four children, including John Parke (“Jacky,” four years of age) and Martha (“Patsy,” two years of age), as the couple began their honeymoon at the enlarged and remodeled Virginia plantation home which Martha had inherited from her previous husband (known then as “The White House”).5
4. Although George and Martha rarely themselves ate the infra dig American shad Alosa sapidissima –if they ate it at all– they did have the Potomac seined to obtain “a sufficiency for the use of my own people” (these being of course the unimportant people they owned, who needed to survive as cheaply as possible so their lives might prove of greater benefit to their important master and mistress). 5. There has never been hard evidence that George himself fathered any child — merely what one might term “attestations,” and in some cases such stories may be false, motivated merely by self-privileging. His wife Martha’s four were by her deceased husband Daniel Parke Custis. From an evidentiary standpoint, although both President Washington and President Jefferson were southern slavemasters with privileged sexual access to women of color, the legal cases to be brought are very different. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1761
Although by his marriage he had gained control over 17,000 acres of farmland and 286 slaves (this man had previously owned only 30 human beings), and although he had harvested and shipped his first cash crop, George Washington had gone deep into debt — because the British buyers had been unimpressed by the quality of his tobacco.
A Quaker counted a total of 1,027 Quaker families in Rhode Island, including Nantucket Island, and a total of 1,146 Quaker families living elsewhere in New England. Despite the continuing ownership of slaves by Quaker families, at this point those who traded in slaves were being disowned.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1763
May 25-28: George Washington rode horseback from Suffolk completely around the Great Dismal Swamp. Had he read Colonel Byrd’s description of the “Horrible Desert”?
Using a canoe, he inspected the route for a Dismal Swamp Canal, which must have been fun. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1766
A slave by the name of “Negro Tom” had attempted, unsuccessfully, to run away from his owner, a plantation master and miller named George Washington. –Well, maybe this wasn’t our founding father, but some other Virginian of coincidentally the same name?– This slavemaster engaged in the international slave trade by sending this recalcitrant slave off to the West Indies, to be traded fair and square on some escape-proof island. What did this Virginia slavemaster want in exchange for his troublesome human being? — He suggested a hogshead of “molasses, rum, limes, tamarinds, sweet meats, and good old spirits.”
(Was this unusual behavior for Washington? — Was it unusual, for our Founding Father to be equating in such a manner the life of a human being with a hogshead of sweetmeats and spirits? Unfortunately, it was not. For instance, according to Henry Wiencek’s AN IMPERFECT GOD: GEORGE WASHINGTON, HIS SLAVES, AND THE CREATION OF AMERICA, at one point in his life, in need of dental work, he would not be above having sound teeth yanked from the jaw of one of his slaves, without anesthesia, to be fashioned into a denture for SWEETS him to wear! –But probably it was not Negro Tom but someone else among his numerous slaves, who would WITHOUT supply these sound white teeth for the mouth of the white master.) SLAVERY During this year, in Rhode Island harbors, it has been estimated by Alexander Boyd Hawes, some 15 vessels were being fitted out for the international slave trade. If an average cargo of slaves was 109 –as we have estimated on the basis of a number of known cargos– then a total of more than 1,630 souls were transported during this year in Rhode Island bottoms alone. Examples from this year include the Rhode Island sloop Hope, carrying a cargo of 100 slaves, the brig Nelly, carrying a cargo of 130, and a sloop of unknown name carrying 60.
During this year, according to the 1822 revision of the PUBLIC LAWS OF RHODE ISLAND (page 441), we have an indication that the colony’s legislature enacted some sort of “restrictive measure” that had to do with the “Slave Trade.” However, neither the title or the text of this ever having been found — we have no clue as to its substance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1769
George Washington coined the term “corn row” for Indian maize as it was being planted, in rows, by the white people (Native Americans planted maize not in rows but in hills). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1770
George Washington inspected the proposed route for a James River and Kanawha Canal. He must have taken along with him a pic-nic lunch, for in this year he coined the term “Tinn can” for the device which we now universally, if inaccurately, refer to in such a manner. (In his era the container to which he was referring had indeed been a metal can which had received a molten wash of the metal tin — I don’t know whether both on the inside and the outside or on the inside only.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1772
George Washington again inspected the proposed route for a James River and Kanawha Canal.
Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Lee, and other leading men of the Virginia colony were desiring to “get rid of the great evil” represented by the presence of black people in America. “The interest of the country,” it was said in a discussion in the Virginia House of Burgesses –by “interest of the country” meaning of course not the interests of people in general but merely the interests of the white male propertied citizens of that colony– “manifestly requires the total expulsion of them” — by “them” meaning of course not merely slaves but black people in general. The governor of Virginia, Francis Fauquier, had in correspondence with the Board of Trade on June 2, 1760 mentioned that some “old settlers who have bred large quantities of slaves and who would make a monopoly of them by a duty which they hoped would amount to a prohibition” had proposed the difficulties be placed in the way of the importation of new Africans. The Virginia Assembly needed to address King George III of England on this because, in council on December 10, 1770, he had warned them not to interfere with the importation of slaves. They pleaded with him on April 1, 1772 to remove his restraints upon their efforts to stop the importation of slaves, which they referred to for some reason as “a very pernicious commerce” (we don’t know, they may have meant that it was damaging the lives of black people, or perhaps they may have meant that it was damaging the lives of white people). The monarch who “stood in the path of humanity and made himself the pillar of the colonial slave-trade” made no reply to this appeal of the Virginians (we don’t know, he may have desired to damage the lives of black people, or he may have simply desired that he and his friends continue to make inordinate profits on their participation in the international slave trade). The conduct of the King would cause the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence to contain a complaint that “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” (This embarrassing paragraph would of HDT WHAT? INDEX
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course need to be stricken from a succeeding draft the Declaration!6)7
George Washington was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses during this year while it drafted a petition to the English throne, labeling the importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa “a trade of great inhumanity” that would endanger the “very existence of your Majesty’s American
6. Although the sentences in question are confidently asserted to have been authored by Jefferson, and confidently asserted to have been stricken from the draft by others, I know of no evidence to support any such speculation. 7. For this and other such maps: http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html HDT WHAT? INDEX
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dominions.”
Maybe this did or maybe this didn’t reflect his personal viewpoint (we know that in this very year the guy was purchasing five additional slaves for labor on his plantations), but we know that a couple of years later he would be personally involved in the composition of the July 1774 “Fairfax Resolves,” one of which was that slaves not be imported into British colonies. He would be one of the signatories “declaring our most earnest Wishes to see an entire Stop forever put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.” One resolution to this conundrum would be simply that he was one of those who were in favor of slavery and also in favor of restricting fresh imports — because this would effectively protect the market value of slaves already here, and their saleable future progeny.8 INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Next to South Carolina, Virginia had probably the largest slave-trade. Her situation, however, differed considerably from that of her Southern neighbor. The climate, the staple tobacco crop, and the society of Virginia were favorable to a system of domestic slavery, but one which tended to develop into a patriarchal serfdom rather than into a slave-consuming industrial hierarchy. The labor required by the tobacco crop was less unhealthy than that connected with the rice crop, and the Virginians were, perhaps, on a somewhat higher moral plane than the Carolinians. There was consequently no such insatiable demand for slaves in the larger colony. On the other hand, the power of the Virginia executive was peculiarly strong, and it was not possible here to thwart the slave-trade policy of the home government as easily as elsewhere. Considering all these circumstances, it is somewhat difficult to determine just what was the attitude of the early Virginians toward the slave-trade. There is evidence, however, to show that 8. In this year, it has been estimated by Alexander Boyd Hawes, a record number of ships, 28, were sailing from Rhode Island for the coast of the continent of Africa to obtain fresh bodies for the international slave trade. If an average cargo of slaves was 109 – as we have estimated on the basis of a number of known cargos– then a total of well over 3,000 souls were being transported in Rhode Island bottoms alone. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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although they desired the slave-trade, the rate at which the Negroes were brought in soon alarmed them. In 1710 a duty of £5 was laid on Negroes, but Governor Spotswood “soon perceived that the laying so high a Duty on Negros was intended to discourage the importation,” and vetoed the measure.9 No further restrictive legislation was attempted for some years, but whether on account of the attitude of the governor or the desire of the inhabitants, is not clear. With 1723 begins a series of acts extending down to the Revolution, which, so far as their contents can be ascertained, seem to have been designed effectually to check the slave-trade. Some of these acts, like those of 1723 and 1727, were almost immediately disallowed.10 The Act of 1732 laid a duty of 5%, which was continued until 1769,11 and all other duties were in addition to this; so that by such cumulative duties the rate on slaves reached 25% in 1755,12 and 35% at the time of Braddock’s expedition.13 These acts were found “very burthensome,” “introductive of many frauds,” and “very inconvenient,”14 and were so far repealed that by 1761 the duty was only 15%. As now the Burgesses became more powerful, two or more bills proposing restrictive duties were passed, but disallowed.15 By 1772 the anti-slave-trade feeling had become considerably developed, and the Burgesses petitioned the king, declaring that “The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your Majesty’s American dominions.... Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty’s governors of this colony, which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce.”16 Nothing further appears to have been done before the war. When, in 1776, the delegates adopted a Frame of Government, it was charged in this document that the king had perverted his high office into a “detestable and insupportable tyranny, by ... prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he hath refused us permission to exclude by law.”17 Two years later, in 1778, an “Act to prevent the further importation of Slaves” stopped definitively the legal slave-trade to Virginia.18
9. LETTERS OF GOVERNOR SPOTSWOOD, in VA. HIST. SOC. COLL., New Ser., I. 52. 10. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IV. 118, 182. 11. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IV. 317, 394; V. 28, 160, 318; VI. 217, 353; VII. 281; VIII. 190, 336, 532. 12. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, V. 92; VI. 417, 419, 461, 466. 13. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VII. 69, 81. 14. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VII. 363, 383. 15. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, VIII. 237, 337. 16. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 1672-1865, in VA. HIST. SOC. COLL., New Ser., VI. 14; Tucker, BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES, I. Part II. App., 51. 17. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IX. 112. 18. Importation by sea or by land was prohibited, with a penalty of £1000 for illegal importation and £500 for buying or selling. The Negro was freed, if illegally brought in. This law was revised somewhat in 1785. Cf. Hening, STATUTES AT LARGE OF VIRGINIA, IX. 471; XII. 182. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June: Only a couple of two weeks after purchasing some fresh slaves to use on his estates, George Washington affixed his signature to a document drafted by the “Association for the Counteraction of Various Acts of Oppression on the Part of Great Britain.” The signers were pledging that “we will not import or bring into the Colony, or cause to be imported or brought into the Colony, either by sea or land, any slaves, or make sale of any upon commission, or purchase any slave or slaves that may be imported by others, after the 1st day of November next, unless the same have been twelve months upon this continent.” –This resolution may well have been intended as economic retaliation, with the blacks in question mere pawns in a white power struggle, as the document displays no moral disapproval of slaveholding, or of the domestic slave trade, or of the international slave trade. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1773
By this point George Washington had accumulated claims on more than 20,000 acres of land outside Virginia, land that had originally been set aside as rewards for the faithful service of his enlisted men. This might be considered to be merely a case of “Looking Out for Number One” — except that the process by which this VIP had diverted said land claims into his own pocket was a most questionable one.
Oney “Ona” Judge was born on Washington’s Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon. Her mother Betty was an enslaved black seamstress, and her father Andrew Judge an English tailor and indentured servant — she would be described late in life as “nearly white, much freckled.” Betty had been among the 285 enslaved Africans held by Daniel Parke Custis (1711-1757), Martha Washington’s 1st husband. Following Custis’s death these 285 were part of his estate held in trust for his children but his widow of course had her “widow’s thirds,” in the sense that although she could not sell nor manumit them without the concurrence of George, she owned the lifetime services of 95 of the 285. When she had remarried with George Washington in 1759, she had brought her “dower” slaves with her to Mount Vernon, including Betty and an infant Austin born in about 1758 and thus about 15 years older than his half-sister Ona, father unknown. Because Betty was a “dower” Ona also became a “dower” and would remain so along with any children she herself might bear (unless manumitted by George and Martha acting in concert, which was something that Martha was never ever going to go along with). Virginia law under the principle partus sequitur ventrem adopted in 1662 disregarded not merely skin color but also the legal standing of whoever happened to have been the father. Upon the completion of his indenture Andrew Judge would settle in Alexandria, Virginia some 11 miles from this plantation. Ona’s family on the plantation would come to include a younger sister Delphy born in about 1779, father also unknown.
June 19, Saturday: Martha (“Patsy”) Custis, George Washington’s stepdaughter, died of epilepsy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1774
George Washington once again inspected the route that had been proposed for a James River and Kanawha Canal.
July: In Alexandria, Virginia, George Washington co-authored, with George Mason, the Fairfax County Resolves, which protested the British “Intolerable Acts,” punitive legislation passed by the British in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. The Resolves called for non-importation of British goods, support for Boston, and the meeting of a Continental Congress. CONTINETAL CONGRESS
September 5, Monday: Captain James Cook’s ship Resolution dropped anchor at New Caledonia.
Pursuing Russian troops caught up to the forces of Pugachev south of Tsaritsyn (Volgograd). The surviving rebels scattered in flight (although Pugachev escaped, effectively this ended the rebellion).
The 1st Continental Congress began in Philadelphia (to October 26th). All the North American colonies except Georgia were represented. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was elected president. George Washington was a delegate.
The daily proceedings as intended for public dissemination would be kept by the office of its secretary, Charles Thomson, and printed contemporaneously. (A set of “Secret Journals” would be held from the American public until 1821.) CONTINETAL CONGRESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
October 11, Tuesday: The First Provincial Congress of 300 delegates and clerks from various points in Massachusetts assembled in Concord. The good news is, they were going to sit down and talk to one another for a week. The bad news was, what they were going to talk about was the killing of a whole bunch of English. The courthouse being too small to contain such ambitious plans, they held their meetings in the Parish Meeting House, dedicated to God. John Hancock, a Boston smuggler, was elected the President of this Congress. They created a Committee of Safety (Messrs. Hancock, Orne, Heath, White, Palmer, Watson, Devens, and Pigeon) and a Committee of Supplies (Messrs. Cheever, Lincoln, Lee, Gerry, and Gill), and began a militia of “minutemen” who pledged “to hold ourselves in readiness at a minute’s warning with arms and ammunition.” –No matter what you may have thought after seeing that famous statue, they were not termed minutemen because they were shorter than their flintlocks!
General Thomas Gage and his brother-in-law Major Stephen Kemble, the army’s Chief Intelligence Officer, had cut a cash deal with Dr. Benjamin Church, a member of the Provincial Congress and Committee of Safety who was maintaining an expensive mistress, to provide them with information as to the activities of the rebellious colonials (General George Washington would find out about Dr. Church by way of this mistress and the doctor would die in a shipwreck on his way to exile). While the Provincial Congress was meeting in Concord, although its members were sworn to secrecy, Dr. Church would be providing regular summaries of the proceedings to General Gage. Not only would the army have a secret surveillance system to monitor colonial activities, but also the Boston rebels under Dr. Joseph Warren would have an elaborate spy network to monitor the activities of the army. We suspect that the wife of the Royal Governor, Mistress Margaret Kemble Gage, since she was born in America, may have been more or less sympathetic with the rebels.
The Provincial Congress met here, Oct. 11th, which was an important event. The delegates from Concord were Capt. James Barrett, Mr. Samuel Whitney, and Mr. Ephraim Wood, jr.; from Bedford, Mr. Joseph Ballard, and John Reed, Esq.; from Acton, Messrs. Josiah Hayward, Francis Faulkner, and Ephraim Hapgood; and from Lincoln, Capt. Eleazer Brooks, Mr. Samuel Farrar, and Capt. Abijah Pierce. The whole number of members was 288; and it was in all respects a most important assembly. The Hon. John Hancock of Boston was chosen President and Mr. Benjamin Lincoln, HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Secretary. The meeting was first held in the old court-house, but that being too small to convene so large an assembly, it was adjourned to the meeting-house. The Rev. William Emerson, by invitation of the Congress, officiated as chaplain. Two sessions, one at nine and the other at three o’clock were held each day. The state of public affairs was taken into consideration, and an address to Gov. Gage agreed upon; but it was unavailing, and did not accomplish its intended object. After remaining in session till the 15th, the Congress adjourned to Cambridge,19 probably for a more easy communication with the capital.20
19. The records in the Secretary’s office give the following account of the different Congresses:— First Congress. Convened at Salem, October 7, 1774; adjourned the same day. Convened at Concord, Tuesday October 11; adjourned Saturday 15th, same month. Convened at Cambridge, Monday October 17th; adjourned Saturday 29th, same month Convened at Cambridge Wednesday, November 23d; dissolved Saturday, Dec. 10th. Second Congress. Convened at Cambridge, Wednesday Feb. 1, 1775; adjourned Thursd. 16th same month. Convened at Concord, Tuesday March 22; adjourned Saturday 15th, April. Convened at Concord, Saturday, April 22; adjourned same day. Convened at Watertown, Monday April 24; dissolved May 29th. Third Congress. Convened at Watertown, May 31, 1775; dissolved July 19th. 20. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1775
In spite of the fact that both slaves and free men served at Lexington and Concord, the colonists would become increasingly reluctant to have any blacks serving in their Army. The Council of War, under George Washington’s leadership, unanimously rejected the enlistment of slaves and, by a large majority, opposed their recruitment altogether. The Continental Congress decided that the revolutionary army would be a pure white- men-only segregated army. However, the British governor of Virginia, deciding against such a racist policy, extended an offer of freedom to all male slaves who joined his loyalist forces. The eager response of many slaves to Lord Dunmore’s invitation would gradually compel these pure-white colonists to reconsider their stand. Disregarding the instructions of the Continental Congress, therefore, our General Washington eventually would be forced to allow his recruiters to accept the enlistment of free black male Americans. Although many of these white Americans felt that the arming of their slaves was inconsistent with the principles for which their forces were fighting, the colonies with the exceptions of Georgia and South Carolina eventually would be recruiting slaves as well as freedmen. In most cases, such slaves would in fact be granted freedom at the end of their military service. During the war some 5,000 blacks would serve in the Continental Army, the vast majority of these blacks coming from the Northern colonies. “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 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
June 15, Thursday: While serving as delegate to the 2d Continental Congress, George Washington was appointed commander in chief of American armed forces. CONTINETAL CONGRESS
The Rhode Island General Assembly ordered the local Committee of Safety to fit out two ships to defend the colony’s shipping, and appointed a committee of three to obtain vessels. The new committee immediately chartered the sloop Katy, that had been one of John Brown of Providence’s “negreros,” and the sloop Washington. The General Assembly appointed Abraham Whipple, who had won a certain amount of local recognition in the burning of the armed schooner HMS Gaspee in 1772, as the commander of the larger ship, Katy, and as commodore of the two-ship fleet. At about 6PM, the Katy, Captain Abraham Whipple (for whom Whipple Street in Providence would be named), and the Washington, attacked a British patrol ship, the Diana, off Jamestown on Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay. When the powder chest of the British exploded, the crew beached their vessel just north of Jamestown and fled into the woods. The Americans seized the Diana and took it to Providence, Rhode Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
July: General George Washington, who in this month was in Cambridge, Massachusetts assuming command over the main American army besieging the British army of occupation of the port of Boston, ordered (and then the Continental Congress in Philadelphia confirmed) that no more Americans of color were to be allowed to participate in our revolution. We are not an equal opportunity employer as that might be unbearably offensive to our white Southron brothers!
CONTINENTAL CONGRESS However, those black Americans already enlisted might be suffered to remain in service to his Continental formations.21 There were already persons of color among the Minutemen of Massachusetts, and thus we saw some swarthy faces among the whites of the militia at the fights in Lexington and Concord: • Peter Salem, who had been the slave of the Belknaps in Framingham MA but had been manumitted expressly that he might enlist in the militia • Pompy or Pomp Blackman of Braintree • Cato Wood of Arlington • Prince of Brookline • Prince Estabrook, belonging to Benjamin Wellington of Lexington, one of those wounded on Lexington common
21. After some debate over whether the commander-in-chief had intended to exclude all blacks on the basis of race, or only slaves on the basis of status, the consensus became that he must of course have meant to exclude all blacks on the basis of race. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Here is the certificate provided to one such soldier of color, Juba Freeman of Connecticut:
July: In Concord, the Reverend William Emerson preached on the text of ISAIAH 19:20 “…for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a savior, and a great one, and he shall deliver them.”
According to this reverend, if any Minuteman should desire to regard his commanding officer in the field as his Savior, he was welcome to do so. If any successful CO desired to channel for God, this minister of the Lord’s gospel was at his beck and call.22
WALDO’S RELATIVES
In July, 1775, the town [Concord] was required to furnish “37 pairs of shirts, breeches, and stockings, and 75 coats.” In January, 1776, Concord provided 20 blankets, Bedford 12, Acton HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
10, and Lincoln 14. In November, 1777, and at several other times, the town [Concord] voted to provide for the families of those engaged in the continental army. 1,210 pounds was paid for this purpose before September 1779.23
22. Emerson, Amelia Forbes., ed. DIARIES AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM EMERSON (1743-1776), MINISTER OF THE CHURCH IN CONCORD / CHAPLAIN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. (New printing 1972). During the “French and Indian” war Colonel Washington had characterized the chaplains desired for his troops not in terms of religion but in terms of their usefulness to his command: “gentlemen of sober, serious and religious deportment, who would improve morale and discourage gambling, swearing, and drunkenness.” In this respect the Reverend Emerson of Concord was a very ordinary and unexceptionable fellow belligerent who was manifesting quite the conventional, and convenient, “God is on our side” confusion between might and righteousness.
It would come as a considerable shock and disappointment to this reverend when his Concord friend John Cuming, who had been appointed the Brigadier General in charge of a regiment of reinforcements for the Canadian expedition, would decline the adventure. “Col. Cum’g resig’d his com!!!! His wife utterly ag. his going.” 23. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
July 3, Monday: William Bartram crossed the Ocmulgee River.
In Cambridge, General George Washington reviewed his soldiers — and presumably he had enough sense not to stand in his wool uniform in the July sun:24
October 26, Thursday: People were trying to kill each other at Hampton, Virginia.
Phillis Wheatley wrote from Providence, Rhode Island to General George Washington at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Sir. I have taken the freedom to address your Excellency in the enclosed poem, and entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be Generalissimo of the Armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues, excite sensations not easy to suppress. Your generosity, therefore, I presume, will pardon the attempt. Wishing your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
engaged in, I am, Your Excellency’s most obedient and humble servant, Phillis Wheatley
Winter: Two British army deserters were brought before General George Washington at his headquarters and asserted that General William Howe was sending infected people out of the city “with design of spreading the Smallpox.” A few days later, when the small pox broke out among civilian Americans fleeing the city in apparent confirmation of this tale, the CinC decided that he “must now give some Credit” to the hypothesis that the British, in order to reduce their disaffected American cousins again to subjugation, were prepared to resort even to germ warfare. SMALL POX
24. We may take note that the initial written mention of such a spot of shade does not appear until the 1830s, and that would be more than half a century after the fact. There is reason therefore to suppose that the elm in question, one which would not be toppled until October 1923, may be approximately as authentic as Concord’s famous “whipping elm.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
December 13, Wednesday: Nathaniel Baker and Elizabeth Taylor of Concord filed their intention to marry (the ceremony would take place during February 1776).
The portrait painter Ralph Earl and the silversmith Amos Doolittle advertised for sale copies of a series of four engraved prints, in the New Haven newspaper at a price of six shillings the set, uncolored, “or eight shillings colored.” The engravings were of successive stages of the fighting in Lexington and Concord on April 19th, and were offered as “from original paintings taken on the spot.”
Note that these works of art bore no resemblance to what Brumidi would place on a wall of our nation’s capitol, HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Washington DC:
Friends Moses Brown and David Buffum rode from Smithfield, Rhode Island to Roxbury, where they met three other Quakers of their Smithfield monthly meeting and spent the night. Among them they were carrying gold coins and other currencies amounting to what today would be more than $4,000, money intended for poor relief. The next morning they would ride on into Cambridge to seek the permission of the siege commander, General George Washington, to cross military lines and enter the besieged city of Boston. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
December 14, Thursday: Friends Moses Brown, David Buffum, and others of the Smithfield, Rhode Island monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends rode from Roxbury to Cambridge, carrying with them poor relief for Quakers inside the besieged city of Boston in the form of gold coins and other currencies amounting to what today would be more than $4,000. In Cambridge they sought out the headquarters of the American siege commander, General George Washington, for a pass to cross the military lines and visit British General William Howe. The American commander indicated that first they would need to pitch their scheme to his logistics aide, Brigadier General Nathanael Greene (a birthright Quaker with a club foot who had renounced the faith and asked to be disowned, having become fascinated by the efficacy and necessity of warfare, who had been directly promoted from private to brigadier general by Washington during the previous June).
Brigadier General Greene invited the Quakers to have supper with him, and listened to their plan. He wound up giving their plan the green light, telling them that so long as they “meddled not in the dispute,” they would be able to expect “protection from both sides.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1776
George Washington began strengthening New-York’s fortifications early in the summer, fortifying Manhattan, Governor’s Island, Red Hook, and Brooklyn Heights, as well as areas of New Jersey.
During the American Revolution, the family of origin of Alexander Mackenzie (Alasdair MacCoinnich) emigrated from New-York to Montréal.
Early in the year, General George Washington received a poem from a young woman and wrote that “with a view of doing justice to her great poetical Genius, I had a great Mind to publish the Poem.” He invited her to visit his headquarters in Cambridge.
The poet was of course the now famous Phillis Wheatley, who was then an enslaved Bostonian. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Wheatley is known to have composed 46 poems. Her writing style, based upon that of Alexander Pope, has been characterized as a mixture of “accommodation and protest,” and her work shows her assimilation to the Puritanism of the Wheatley family. In writing of and to her the general made not a single reference to her race,
which is a remarkable omission not only by the standards of his day but also by those of our own. (In private correspondence during the 1780s and 1790s Washington would repeatedly express a devout hope that the state governments would legislate “a gradual Abolition of Slavery; It would prevent much future Mischief.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
This was the year in which General Washington would be entertained at the Black Horse Tavern in South Woburn, Massachusetts.
On this continent, freedom, freedom for the white planters of America such as Washington, freedom from England, was an issue. Freedom, however, for the black slaves from the white planters of America such as Washington, and freedom for the white bond-laborers from the white planters of America such as Washington, were not.
February 10, Saturday: George Washington wrote from Charleston, Massachusetts, “Without men, without arms, without ammunition, there is little to be done.
April 4, Thursday,: Harvard College, in transit from its exile in Concord back to Harvard Yard in Cambridge, conferred its 1st Doctor of Laws degree (Doctor utriusque Juris, tum Naturae et Gentium, tum Civilis), upon General George Washington (undeterred by the fact that the general was no longer at Craigie House, having decamped for Rhode Island). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
April 5, Friday: George Washington arrived in Providence, Rhode Island.
Commander in Chief of the Fleet of the United Colonies Esek Hopkins’s ships took the brig Bolton, and then a brigantine and a sloop out of New-York, as prizes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
June 12, Wednesday: The Virginia Convention adopted the Declaration of Rights as drafted by George Mason (1725-1792) and amended by Thomas Ludwell Lee (circa 1730-1778) and other delegates. READ THE FULL TEXT
Mason had written “That all men are born equally free and independant [sic], and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing [sic] and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” Thomas Jefferson would draw from Mason’s draft while working over an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. In 1789 it would be accessed not only by James Madison in drawing up the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution but also by the Marquis de Lafayette in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The president of Harvard College directed an open letter to the citizens of the town of Concord as his institution began its temporary relocation to interior safety and turned its campus in Cambridge over to temporary use by General George Washington’s revolutionary soldiers. Concord, June 12, 1776. At a meeting of the President, Professors, and Tutors of Harvard College, voted, that the following address of thanks be presented by the president to the Selectmen, the gentlemen of the Committee, and other gentlemen and inhabitants of the town of Concord, who have favored the college with their encouragement and assistance, in its removal to this town, by providing accommodations. Gentlemen, — The assistance you have afforded us in obtaining accommodations for this society here [Concord], when Cambridge was filled with the glorious army of freemen, which was assembled to hazard their lives in their country’s cause, and our removal from thence became necessary, demands our grateful acknowledgments. We have observed with pleasure the many tokens of your friendship to the college; and particularly to thank you for the use of your public buildings. We hope the scholars while here [Concord] have not dishonored themselves and the society by any incivilities or indecencies of behaviour, or that you will readily forgive any errors which may be attributed to the inadvertence of youth. May God reward you with all his blessings, grant us a quiet re- settlement in our ancient seat to which we are now returning, preserve America from slavery, and establish and continue religion, learning, peace, and the happiest government in these American colonies to the end of the world. SAMUEL LANGDON, President Per Order. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Karl Marx would express, in his THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE, 1848-1850, the sentiment that “The origin of states gets lost in a myth, in which one may believe, but which one may not discuss.” On the 1st page of Theodore W. Allen’s introduction to his 1st volume,25 this independent scholar asks our “indulgence for only one assumption, namely, that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves.” I find that remark remarkable indeed! When in our Declaration of Independence we said to ourselves “All men are created equal,” we were of course writing as lawyers and in a lawyerly manner.
We were purposing to level others, such as those overweening overbred British aristocrats, down to our own lay level, but meanwhile it was no part of our purpose to level others, such as our wives and slaves, up to our own exalted situation —we were doing this to benefit ourselves at the expense of others, and not doing this for the benefit of others. What we meant back there in Philadelphia several centuries ago, by such a trope as “All men are created equal,” was “We want, 1st, to sound almost as if we were saying that while some people may desire to be masters, all persons are born equally unwilling and unsuited to be slaves, and we want, 2dly, to sound as if we were struggling to express something like that without actually declaring anything like that — because it is essential that in this new nation of ours (based as it is upon human enslavement) we avoid any such issue. Our equality here is to be founded upon the inequality of others, and this grand-sounding trope ‘All men are created equal’ is being provided so that it can function as our cover story, enabling such viciousness to proceed unhindered.” As Edmund Burke expressed on February 16, 1788 during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for maladministration of the British rule in India, “There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the
25. Allen, Theodore W. THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE, VOLUME ONE: RACIAL OPPRESSION AND SOCIAL CONTROL. London: Verso, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
beginnings of all government.”
The African Association was founded in England to explore the interior of Africa.
In the usage of the trope “peculiar institution” that is today ordinary or usual, this trope is deployed of course in oblique reference to the unmentionable crime of human chattel bondage. It is nowadays used in implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not to attack it but proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. What Allen, however, refers to by use of this trope “peculiar institution” is, instead, the invention of the so-called “white race” which has here been used to legitimate our local version of thus unmentionable crime, our local version of a solution to the problem of social control. It is for him this biologistic cover story, itself, which constitutes the quintessential “Peculiar Institution” we have been forced to construct. “Only by understanding what was peculiar about the Peculiar Institution can one know what is exceptionable about American Exceptionalism” (Volume I, page 1). In this he acknowledges that he is following a seed that had been planted by W.E.B. Du Bois in his BLACK RECONSTRUCTION. Allen’s 1st volume is made up of an elaborate parallelization of the Irish and Scottish experience under English colonialism, and the American antebellum experience: Every aspect of the Ulster Plantation policy aimed at destroying the tribal leadership and dispersing the tribe is matched by typical examples from Anglo-American colonial and United States policy toward the indigenous population, the “American Indians” — a policy we clearly recognize as racial oppression of “the red man.” I have been looking into an Irish mirror for insights into the nature of racial oppression and its implication for ruling-class social control in the United States. SCOTLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
June 15, Saturday: George Washington was offered the job of commander-in-chief of the American Army.
New Hampshire declared independence from Great Britain.
The New Jersey legislature ordered the arrest of royal governor William Franklin (illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin). They appointed new delegates to the Continental Congress and instructed them to vote in favor of independence.
June 16, Sunday: People were trying to kill each other at Chambly, Canada.
George Washington accepted the responsibilities of General and Commander-in-Chief.
June 27, Thursday: Thomas Hickey, one of George Washington’s guards, was hanged in New-York for plotting to kidnap Washington for the British, thus making himself be the 1st person to be executed by the US Army. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
July 3, Wednesday: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington assumed command of the main American army besieging British occupied Boston.
On this day and the following one, the 2d Continental Congress was revising the wording of its Declaration of Independency. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
July 9, Tuesday: A provincial congress in the Hudson Valley declares itself to be the legitimate legislature of New York State. New York voted to endorse the Declaration of Independence. Here is the first public reading aloud in Philadelphia, on this day, as imagined by Brumidi on a wall of our federal capitol:
The equestrian statue of King George III in New-York’s Bowling Green was toppled by citizens gathered to hear the reading of the Declaration there.
George Washington led an American Independence celebration in New-York, reading the Declaration of Independence to his troops and sending a copy of it to each of his generals.
Here is one of the earliest broadsides, printed in Salem:
John Beaton, a Scotsman who earned in Concord both a respectable estate as a merchant and a reputation for personal integrity, died at the age of 47 and left money for the support of the Town School and of the town poor. The town of Concord has also a fund of $833.33 given by John Cuming, Esq., for the benefit of the “private schools,” in the language of his Will, which has been distributed in all the districts but the centre one. Another donation now [1835] amounting to $744.92 was given by John Beaton, Esq., for the support of schools and the poor.26 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
July 14, Sunday: George Washington refused a letter from General Howe because it was addressed to George Washington, Esq. rather than to General Washington.
26. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
July 22, Monday: The Boston Gazette carried, in addition to its usual advertisements for slaves, the initial distributed printing of the Declaration of Independence, minus of course the incriminating personal signatures which were being collected in the strictest secrecy.
August: The regular army defeated the militia irregulars under George Washington on Paumanok Long Island. It was just as well that those incriminating signatures were being added to the Declaration of Independence document not in public but in the strictest secrecy!
August 25, Sunday: At the southwest corner of St. Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh, Scotland’s “New Town” (which now bears the address “21 Saint David Street”), David Hume died of bowel or liver cancer at the age of 65.
August 28, Wednesday: People were trying to kill each other at Jamaica (Brookland) on Long Island. The regular army finished defeating the militia irregulars under George Washington on that island. It was just as well that those incriminating signatures were being added to the Declaration of Independence document in the strictest secrecy!
September: The New York Convention requested that George Washington remove all public bells to New Jersey, to prevent the British from melting down the bronze to cast cannon.
George Washington wrote from Harlem Heights to General Hugh Mercer in New Jersey, directing him to set up an intelligence network to monitor the movements of Admiral Howe’s ships.
Congress authorized replacing the phrase “United Colonies” with “United States” in all American commissions.
Benedict Arnold called upon Congress to provide winter clothing, rum, and artillery. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
September: George Washington’s Council of War began to recommend evacuation of New-York. Congress authorized him to abandon the metropolis if necessary.
The 1st Boston epidemic of the small pox to be effectively muted by prior inoculation.
Unfortunately, there would be no inoculation against the contagion of fire. As General Washington and his advisers discussed the possibility of torching New-York to deny accommodation to the British, a fire that had started in one of that city’s many taverns was spreading — and before burning itself out would destroy fully a quarter of the city’s buildings. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
September 12, Thursday: George Washington decided to evacuate New-York, and began moving his troops north.
Concord budgeted for three months of the services at White Plains, New York of 23 local soldiers at £184 each, over and above an incentive advance of £8, and also sent 7 to serve at Dorchester under John Minott. 27 TABLE OF REVOLUTIONARY CAMPAIGNS
WHEN REQUIRED MEN TIME WHERE EMPLOYED BOUNTY AMOUNT
June 1776 19 12 months New York 10 190
June 25, 1776 48 6 months Ticonderoga 9 432
Dr. John Cuming was appointed Commander in this [the above] expedition, but declined. The whole consisted of five thousand men. One company, consisting of ninety-four men, was com- manded by Capt. Charles Miles, of Concord. Edmond Munroe, was Lieutenant; Matthew Hobbs, 2d Lieutenant; and Jonas Brown, Ensign. They were attached to Col. Jonathan Reed’s regiment. His muster-roll give sixty-one from Concord, (differing from the report from which the above is compiled); Weston, twenty-seven; Lexington, four; and two from Tyconterage [?]. Being ready to march, they were paraded on the common in Concord, with several other companies from the adjoining towns, and attended religious services in the meeting-house. Rev. William Emerson preached from Job v. 20, and afterwards went as Chaplain, sacrificed his life to his patriotism, and never returned. Another Company, commanded by Capt. Asahel Wheeler, whose Lieutenant was Samuel Hoar, of Lincoln. Samuel Osburn was 2d Lieutenant, and David Hosmer, Ensign.
September 12, 1776 23 3 months White Plains 8 184
This [the above] embraced one fifth of the Militia under fifty years of age, not in actual service. The drafts from this county formed one regiment, which was commanded by Eleazer Brooks, of Lincoln. Rev. Moses Adams, of Acton, was Chaplain; Dr. Joseph Hunt, Surgeon; and Samuel Hartwell, of Lincoln, Quarter-master. Concord furnished twenty-three men; Lexington, sixteen, Acton, fifteen; and Lincoln, twelve, which formed one company, whose officers were Simon Hunt, of Acton, Captain; Samuel Heald, of Concord, Lieutenant; Ebenezer White, 2d Lieutenant. They were in the battle of White Plains. A return after the battle gives forty-two fit for duty, seven sick, four wounded, two of whom, David Wheeler and Amos Buttrick, belonged to Con- cord. Thomas Darby, of Acton was killed. Col. Brooks’s Regiment behaved bravely on that occa- sion.
September 12, 1776 7 Dorchester
These [the above] were part of a company of eighty-nine men, taken from nearly every town in this county, commanded by John Minott, of Chelmsford, and attached to Col. Dykes’s Regiment. John Hartwell, of Lincoln, was Lieutenant. Acton furnished five; Lincoln, four; and Bedford, three.
November 21, 1776 34 3 months New York 10 340 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
WHEN REQUIRED MEN TIME WHERE EMPLOYED BOUNTY AMOUNT
This [the above] was one fourth of the Militia in Middlesex County, and formed one Regiment of six hundred and seventy men, commanded by Col. Samuel Thatcher, of Cambridge. Cyprian How, of Marlborough, was Lieutenant-Colonel; Joseph Bryant, of Stoneham, Major. Concord furnished thirty-four; Weston, eighteen; Lexington, fourteen; Acton, thirteen; Lincoln, thirteen, which composed one company. John Bridge, of Lexington, was Captain; Jacob Brown, of Con- cord, Lieutenant; and Josiah Stearns, of Weston, 2d Lieutenant; William Burrows, Orderly Ser- geant. They marched to New-York and New-Jersey before they returned, and were stationed at Woodbridge. Dissolved March 6th.
December 1, 1776 8 Boston
It appears from a roll of this company in the Secretary’s office, that Capt. John Hartwell was commander of it [the above]. Thirteen in this and six in other companies were from Lincoln. They were attached to Col. Dykes’s Regiment.
December 1776 6 Rhode Island
These [the above] were attached to the Artillery.
September 15, Sunday: The British landed at Kips Bay on the eastern shore of Manhattan Island. George Washington retreated to the vicinity known as Harlem Heights. New-York was occupied by the army under the leadership of General Howe.
September 16, Monday: People tried to kill each other at Harlem Plains, New-York. The troops under George Washington repulsed General Howe. This would delay the British advance.
October 23, Wednesday: George Washington evacuated Manhattan, marching toward White Plains, New York.
William Emerson Faulkner was born, a son of Francis Faulkner.
27. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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December 25, Christmas: Late in the night, General George Washington, General Henry Knox, and troops crossed the Delaware River in freezing winter weather to launch a surprise dawn attack on about a thousand British and Hessian mercenaries encamped at Trenton.28 Washington’s irregulars sneaking around was a grand victory for us and showed our bravery and determination, as soldiers who are fighting for a paycheck, such as these Hessian peasants, always fight real hard.29
<__ George Washington’s sword (in the above Leutze painting).
Colonel Loammi Baldwin took his 26th Continental regiment of foot soldiers “on the expedition to Trentown.”
28. There was a claim, in our early Republic, that these Hessian mercenaries had brought with them in the straw of their bedding a pesky fly. It was certainly true that during the late 18th Century, a fly in the family Cecidomyiidae, the Mayetiola destructor, began to decimate wheat crops in America. Whether appropriately named or not, this has become more destructive to wheat in the United States than any other insect pest, and has also impacted our rye and barley crops. This fly is also now found in Canada, Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and New Zealand.
29. In the famous Leutze painting, General Washington is depicted as standing up in a rowboat. This is imaginative, and was chosen by the painter over depicting Washington on horseback (the army ferried over the river not in rowboats, but in entirely unpicturesque high-sided barges). You will note a black soldier rowing the boat. The actual black person on the scene would have been Washington’s manservant (slave) who traveled with him, but the myth that has developed is that this is a depiction of an African who had been an African prince and his parents had sent him to America to go to college. This was an actual person who actually was in that army, but it is not known that he was ever close to Washington. Of course, immediately that his ship had anchored in an American port, this actual person had been clapped into chains and sold as a slave. Over the course of the revolution he would regain his freedom but he would never return to Africa with his hard-won education in our School of Hard Knocks. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In this regiment a company from Woburn MA was under the command of John Wood.
Just at this point the conscription practices of the Massachusetts General Court were being amended to exclude Quaker conscientious objectors who had been members of the religious society before April 19, 1775.
! OHNE MICH
Some Quakers, however, terming themselves “Free Quakers,” affiliated themselves with the armed conflict, and there are some records of Friends in the Boston Meeting being accused of an unspecified “misconduct” which was probably the bearing of arms on one side or the other of the insurrection. The sympathies of some Friends lay with the revolutionaries, and the sympathies of others lay with established authority. During HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the hostilities, for instance, one Boston merchant, Friend Daniel Silsbe or Silsbury, emigrated to London.
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS While General Washington was able to take advantage of the proclivity of these Hessian mercenary soldiers to make full use of alcoholic beverages during these Christmas celebrations, becoming not only dissolute but also unwatchful, a scanning of the ministerial diaries of the Reverend William Emerson of Concord –which he had been keeping since 1764– offers us not one single solitary mention of any Christmas celebration whatever.
October 28, Monday: People were trying to kill each other at White Plains, New York. Colonel Eleazer Brooks was in command of a regiment of the Middlesex militia. General Howe forced George Washington to withdraw to North Castle. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1777
Major Robert Donkin prepared a book MILITARY COLLECTIONS AND REMARKS, in which he commented in a footnote that British soldiers ought to “dip arrows in matter of small pox, and twang them at the American rebels, in order to inoculate them; this would sooner disband those stubborn, ignorant, enthusiastic savages, than any other compulsive measures. Such is their dread and fear of that disorder!” This passage would be physically removed, cut out of the page, of almost every copy of the major’s edition — and we don’t now know how that suppression of the remark had been effected, or at whose instigation.
In this same year, because of fear that his British opponents were about to attempt to spread the small pox among American fighters, General George Washington ordered that his entire Continental Army be immediately variolated.30
General George Washington’s Continental Army drove the British from the College of New-Jersey’s Nassau Hall. (That Army would however overwinter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania while government bigwigs occupied this fine edifice. Oneida, Tuscarora, and Delaware Indians helped Washington’s cold and starving troops during this winter encampment. Washington, who often quoted from Joseph Addison’s “Cato, a Tragedy,” had the play performed that winter in spite of Congressional hostility to stage performances. Contrary to popular impression, the winter of 1777/1778 would be a comparatively mild one, the really severe weather during the Revolutionary War being yet to arrive during the winter of 1779/1780 during which the revolutionary forces would be in winter camp at Morristown.) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY “CATO, A TRAGEDY”
30. General Washington had reported to John Hancock during the Siege of Boston in Winter 1775-1776 that two British deserters had arrived at his headquarters with a story that General William Howe was sending infected people out of the city “with design of spreading the Smallpox,” and that a few days later, apparently confirming this story, the small pox had broken out among civilian Americans fleeing the city. He had commented in that letter: “I must now give some Credit to it.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin came to America, bringing with him 17-year-old Pierre-Étienne Du Ponceau as secretary.
(It would appear that this Prussian was able to persuade General George Washington, with the genial assistance of Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, that back home he had been acting as a lieutenant general whereas actually he had been nothing more than a captain; in addition, this naturalized American citizen would not somehow acquire his title “Baron von Steuben” until well after the period of the Revolution and, since he would retire in upstate New York on his cut of the Loyalist spoils without ever revisiting Europe, his use of such a honorarium would never be tested.)
Upon the completion of the American Revolution, his secretary Du Ponceau would settle at Philadelphia, and there would spend the remainder of his life as a scholar.
October: Thomas Paine was appointed as Pennsylvania’s observer with Colonel George Washington’s army.
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 4, Saturday: People were trying to kill each other at Germantown, Pennsylvania. The American militias under Colonel George Washington, in defeat, would evacuate Philadelphia before the army marched into the city on October 14th. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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October 17, Friday: Moses Greenleaf Junior was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts to Lydia Parsons Greenleaf in the absence of Captain Moses Greenleaf, who was then in the Revolutionary army.31
In the Convention of Saratoga, New York, General Burgoyne handed over his sword to the American revolutionary forces under General Gates on the Hudson River, formally surrendering his forces to Gates.
31. Per Vital Records of Newburyport, Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849, in the list of births, on page 168 under family name Greenleaf: “Moses, s. Moses and Lydia, Oct. 17, 1777.”
The Reverend Jonathan Greenleaf (a younger brother of Moses Greenleaf) would be born on September 4, 1785 in Newburyport and would die in Brooklyn, New York on April 24, 1865. He would be licensed to preach in 1814, and would be pastor at Wells, Maine, in 1815-1828. He would then take charge of the Mariner’s Church, Boston, remove to New York in 1833, and edit the Sailor’s Magazine. He would also be secretary of the Seamen’s Friend Society, initially in Boston and then in New York, until 1841. He would in 1843 organize the Wallabout Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and would be its pastor until his death. Bowdoin College would in 1824 award him the degree of MA, and Princeton College would in 1863 award him the degree of DD. The reverend would publish SKETCHES OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF MAINE (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1821); HISTORY OF NEW YORK CHURCHES (New York, 1846); and GENEALOGY OF THE GREENLEAF FAMILY (1854). Professor Simon Greenleaf (another younger brother of Moses Greenleaf): would be born on December 5, 1783 in Newburyport and would die in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 6, 1853. He would remove with his father to Maine when a child, and in 1801 begin the study of law in New Gloucester, Maine, with Ezekiel Whitman, afterward chief justice of the state. In 1806 he would begin to practice in Standish, but in the same year would remove to Gray. He would go to Portland in 1818, and in 1820, after the admission of Maine to the Union, and the establishment of a Supreme Court, would become its reporter, holding the office till 1832. He would be appointed Royal Professor of Law in the Harvard Law School in 1833, and in 1846, on the death of Judge Story, would be transferred to the Dane professorship. He would resign in 1848. The professor would be for many years president of the Massachusetts Bible society. Harvard would in 1834 award him the degree of LLD. His works would be ORIGIN AND PRINCIPLES OF FREEMASONRY (Portland, 1820); FULL COLLECTION OF CASES, OVERRULED, DENIED, DOUBTED, OR LIMITED IN THEIR APPLICATION (1821; 3d ed., by E. Hammond, New York, 1840, afterward expanded to 3 vols.); REPORTS OF CASES IN THE SUPREME COURT OF MAINE, 1820-’31 (9 vols., Hallowell and Portland, 1822-1835; digest, Portland, 1835; revised ed., 8 vols., Boston, 1852); TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE (3 vols., 1842-1853; 14th ed., with large additions by Simon Greenleaf Croswell, 1883); EXAMINATION OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE FOUR EVANGELISTS, BY THE RULES OF EVIDENCE ADMINISTERED IN COURTS OF JUSTICE, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE TRIAL OF JESUS (1846; London, 1847); and an enlarged edition of William Cruise’s DIGEST OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND RESPECTING REAL PROPERTY, adapted to American practice (3 vols., 1849-1850). He would also publish his inaugural discourse on entering upon his professorship (Boston, 1834), and one on the life and character of Joseph Story (1845). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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William Dorrell was one of the 3,500 redcoats present at the surrender, a 6-footer at about the age of 25.
Quaker conscripts, a total of 14, were taken to Colonel George Washington’s winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and there muskets were tied onto their backs because they declined to hold them in their hands. They did not deviate from the peace testimony, but insisted and continued to insist that this whole thing about warfare, and about the spirit of war that inspired it, was a whole lot of foolishness, and eventually their tormenters gave up and these cowardly resistors were sent back home to resume their lives as productive citizens. THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
“Even of those great conflicts, in which hundreds of thousands have been engaged and tens of thousands have fallen, none has been more fruitful of results than this surrender of thirty-five hundred fighting-men at Saratoga. It not merely changed the relations of England and the feelings of Europe towards these insurgent colonies, but it has modified, for all times to come, the connection between every colony and every parent state.” —Lord Mahon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“Brilliant generalship in itself is a frightening thing — the very idea that the thought processes of a single brain of a Hannibal or a Scipio can play themselves out in the destruction of thousands of young men in an afternoon.” — Victor Davis Hanson, CARNAGE AND CULTURE: LANDMARK BATTLES IN THE RISE OF WESTERN POWER (NY: Doubleday, 2001) HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Of the four great powers that now principally rule the political destinies of the world, France and England are the only two whose influence can be dated back beyond the last century and a, half. The third great power, Russia, was a feeble mass of barbarism before the epoch of Peter the Great; and the very existence of the fourth great power, as an independent nation, commenced within the memory of living men. By the fourth great power of the world I mean the mighty commonwealth of the western continent, which now commands the admiration of mankind. That homage is sometimes reluctantly given, and accompanied with suspicion and ill will. But none can refuse it. All the physical essentials for national strength are undeniably to be found in the geographical position and amplitude of territory which the United States possess; in their almost inexhaustible tracts of fertile, but hitherto untouched, soil; in their stately forests, in their mountain-chains and their rivers, their beds of coal, and stores of metallic wealth; in their extensive sea-board along the waters of two oceans, and in their already numerous and rapidly increasing population. And, when we examine the character of this population, no one can look on the fearless energy, the sturdy determination, the aptitude for local self government, the versatile alacrity, and the unresting spirit of enterprise, which characterize the Anglo-Americans, without feeling that he here beholds the true moral elements of progressive might. Three quarters of a century have not yet passed away since the United States ceased to be mere dependencies of England. And even if we date their origin from the period, when the first permanent European settlements, out of which they grew, were made on the western coast of the North Atlantic, the increase of their strength is unparalleled, either in rapidity or extent. The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of Rome from humble beginnings to the greatest magnitude which the world had then ever witnessed. But the citizen of the United States is still more justly entitled to claim this praise. In two centuries and a half his country has acquired ampler dominion than the Roman gained in ten. And, even if we credit the legend of the band of shepherds and outlaws with which Romulus is said to have colonized the Seven Hills, we find not there so small a germ of future greatness, as we find in the group of a hundred and five ill-chosen and disunited emigrants who founded Jamestown in 1607, or in the scanty band of the Pilgrim Fathers, who, a few years later, moored their bark on the wild and rock- bound coast of the wilderness that was to become New England. The power of the United States is emphatically the “Imperium quo neque ab exordio ullum fere minus, neque incrementis tote orbe amplius humana potest memoria recordari.” - Eutropius. Nothing is more calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the rapidity with which the resources of the American Republic advance, than the difficulty which the historical inquirer finds in ascertaining their precise amount. If he consults the most HDT WHAT? INDEX
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recent works, and those written by the ablest investigators of the subject, he finds in them admiring comments on the change which the last few years, before those books were written, had made; but when he turns to apply the estimates in those books to the present moment, he finds them wholly inadequate. Before a book on the subject of the United States has lost its novelty, those states have outgrown the description which it contains. The celebrated work of the French statesman, De Tocqueville, appeared about fifteen years ago. In the passage which I am about to quote, it will be seen that he predicts the constant increase of the Anglo-American power, but he looks on the Rocky Mountains as their extreme western limit for many years to come. He had evidently no expectation of himself seeing that power dominant along the Pacific as well as along the Atlantic coast. He says: “The distance from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico extends from the 47th to the 30th degree of latitude, a distance of more than 1200 miles, as the bird flies. The frontier of the United States winds along the whole of this immense line; sometimes falling within its limits, but more frequently extending far beyond it into the waste. It has been calculated that the Whites advance every year a mean distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast boundary. Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with. The advancing column then halts for a while; its two extremities fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are reunited they proceed onwards. This gradual and continuous progress of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a Providential event: it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onwards by the hand of God. “Within this first line of conquering settlers towns are built, and vast estates founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi: and at the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts to nearly four millions. The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very center of the Union; but such are the changes which have taken place, that it now stands at one of the extremities; and the delegates of the most, remote Western States are already obliged to perform a journey as long as that from Vienna to Paris. “It must not, then, be imagined that the impulse of the British race in the New World can be arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and the hostilities which might ensue, the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it, may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the destinies to which that race is reserved. No power upon earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness, which offers resources to all industry and a refuge from all want. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Future events, of whatever nature they may be, will, not deprive the Americans of their climate or of their inland seas, or of their great rivers, or of their exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way. “Thus, in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at least is sure. At a period which may be said to be near (for we are speaking of the life of a nation), the Anglo-Americans will alone cover the immense space contained between the Polar regions and the Tropics, extending from the coast of the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean; the territory which will probably be occupied by the Anglo-Americans at some future time, may be computed to equal three quarters of Europe in extent. The climate of the Union is upon the whole preferable to that of Europe, and its natural advantages are not less great; it is therefore evident that its population will at some future time be proportionate to our own. Europe, divided as it is between so many different nations, and torn as it has been by incessant wars and the barbarous manners of the Middle Ages, has notwithstanding attained a population of 410 inhabitants to the square league. What cause can prevent the United States from having as numerous a population in time? “The time will therefore come when one hundred and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal in condition, the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same civilization, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same manners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain; and it is a fact new to the world, a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the imagination.” Let us turn from the French statesman writing in 1535, to an English statesman, who is justly regarded as the highest authority on all statistical subjects, and who described the United States only seven years ago, Macgregor tells us- “The States which, on the ratification of independence, formed the American Republican Union, were thirteen, viz.:- “Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“The foregoing thirteen states (the whole inhabited territory of which, with the exception of a few small settlements, was confined to the region extending between the Allegheny mountains and the Atlantic) were those which existed at the period when they became an acknowledged separate and independent federal sovereign power. The thirteen stripes of the standard or flag of the United States, continue to represent the original number. The stars have multiplied to twenty-six, [Fresh stars hare dawned since this was written.] according as the number of States have increased. “The territory of the thirteen original States of the Union, including Maine and Vermont, comprehended a superficies of 371,124 English square miles; that of the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 120,354; that of France, including Corsica, 214,910; that of the Austrian Empire, including Hungary and all the Imperial States; 257, 540 English square miles. “The present superficies of the twenty-six constitutional States of the Anglo-American Union, and the district of Columbia, and territories of Florida, include 1,029,025 square miles; to which if we add the northwest, or Wisconsin territory, east of the Mississippi, and bounded by Lake Superior on the north, and Michigan on the east, and occupying at least 100,000 square miles, and then add the great western region, not yet well-defined territories, but at the most limited calculation comprehending 700,000 square miles, the whole unbroken in its vast length and breadth by foreign nations, comprehends a portion of the earth’s surface equal to 1, 729,025 English, or 1,296,770 geographical square miles.” We may add that the population of the States, when they declared their independence, was about two millions and a half; it is now twenty-three millions. I have quoted Macgregor, not only on account of the clear and full view which he gives of the progress of America to the date when he wrote, but because his description may be contrasted with what the United States have become even since his book appeared. Only three years after the time when Macgregor thus wrote, the American President truly stated:— “Within less than four years the annexation of Texas to the Union has been consummated; all conflicting title to the Oregon territory, south of the 49th degree of north latitude, adjusted; and New Mexico and Upper California have been acquired by treaty. The area of these several territories contains 1,193,061 square miles, or 763,559,040 acres; while the area of the remaining twenty-nine States, and the territory not yet organized into States east of the Rocky Mountains, contains 2,059,513 square miles, or 1,318,126,058 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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acres. These estimates show that the territories recently acquired, and over which our exclusive jurisdiction and dominion have been extended, constitute a country more than half as large as all that which was held by the United States before their acquisition. If Oregon be excluded from the estimate, there will still remain within the limits of Texas, New Mexico, and California, 851,595 square miles, or 545,012,720 acres; being an addition equal to more than one-third of all the territory owned by the United States before their acquisition; and, including Oregon, nearly as great an extent of territory as the whole of Europe, Russia only excepted. The Mississippi, so lately the frontier of our country, is now only its center. With the addition of the late acquisitions, the United States are now estimated to be nearly as large as the whole of Europe. The extent of the sea-coast of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico is upwards of 400 miles; of the coast of Upper California, on the Pacific, of 970 miles; and of Oregon, including the Straits of Fuca, of 650 miles; making the whole extent of sea coast on the Pacific 1620 miles; and the whole extent on both the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, 2020 miles. The length of the coast on the Atlantic, from the northern limits of the United States, round the Capes of Florida to the Sabine on the eastern boundary of Texas, is estimated to be 3100 miles, so that the addition of seacoast, including Oregon, is very nearly two-thirds as great as all we possessed before; and, excluding Oregon, is an addition of 1370 miles; being nearly equal to one-half of the extent of coast which we possessed before these acquisitions. We have now three great maritime fronts— on the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific, making, in the whole, an extent of sea-coast exceeding 5000 miles. This is the extent of the seacoast of the United States, not including bays, sounds, and small irregularities of the main shore, and of the sea islands. If these be included, the length of the, shore line of coast, as estimated by the superintendent of the Coast Survey, in his report, would be 33,063 miles.” The importance of the power of the United States being then firmly planted along the Pacific applies not only to the New World, but to the Old. Opposite to San Francisco, on the coast of that ocean, lie the wealthy but decrepit empires of China and Japan. Numerous groups of islets stud the larger part of the intervening sea, and form convenient stepping-stones for the progress of commerce or ambition. The intercourse of traffic between these ancient Asiatic monarchies, and the young Anglo-American Republic, must be rapid and extensive. Any attempt of the Chinese or Japanese rulers to check it, will only accelerate an armed collision. The HDT WHAT? INDEX
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American will either buy or force his way. Between such populations as that of China and Japan on the one side, and that of the United States on the other — the former haughty, formal, and insolent, the latter bold, intrusive, and unscrupulous — causes of quarrel must, sooner or later, arise. The results of such a quarrel cannot be doubted. America will scarcely imitate the forbearance shown by England at the end of our late war with the Celestial Empire; and the conquests of China and Japan, by the fleets and armies of the United States, are events which many now living are likely to witness. Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion of the Old World, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over Central and Southern America, seems a matter of secondary importance. Well may we repeat De Tocqueville’s words, that the growing power of this commonwealth is, “Un fait entierement nouvcau dans le monde, et dont l’imagination elle-meme ne saurait saisir la portee.” [These remarks were written in May 1981, and now, in May 1853, a powerful squadron of American war-steamers has been sent to Japan, for the ostensible purpose of securing protection for the crews of American vessels shipwrecked on the Japanese coasts, but also evidently for important ulterior purposes.] An Englishman may look, and ought to look, on the growing grandeur of the Americans with no small degree of generous sympathy and satisfaction. They, like ourselves, are members of the great Anglo-Saxon nation, “whose race and language are now overrunning the world from one end of it to the other.” And whatever differences of form of government may exist between us and them; whatever reminiscences of the days when, though brethren, we strove together, may rankle in the minds of us, the defeated party; we should cherish the bonds of common nationality that still exist between us. We should remember, as the Athenians remembered of the Spartans at a season of jealousy and temptation, that our race is one, being of the same blood, speaking the same language, having an essential resemblance in our institutions and usage’s, and worshipping in the temples of the same God. All this may and should be borne in mind. And yet an Englishman can hardly watch the progress of America, without the regretful thought that America once was English, and that, but for the folly of our rulers, she might be English still. It is true that the commerce between the two countries has largely and beneficially increased; but this is no proof that the increase would not have been still greater, had the States remained integral portions of the same great empire. By giving a fair and just participation in political rights, these, “the fairest possessions” of the British crown, might have been preserved to it. “This ancient and most noble monarchy” [Lord Chatham] would not have been dismembered; nor should we see that which ought to be the right arm of our strength, now menacing HDT WHAT? INDEX
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us in every political crisis, as the most formidable rival of our commercial and maritime ascendancy. The war which rent away the North American colonies of England is, of all subjects in history, the most painful for an Englishman to dwell on. It was commenced and carried on by the British ministry in iniquity and folly, and it was concluded in disaster and shame. But the contemplation of it cannot be evaded by the historian, however much it may be abhorred. Nor can any military event be said to have exercised more important influence on the future fortunes of mankind, than the complete defeat of Burgoyne’s expedition in 1777; a defeat which rescued the revolted colonists from certain subjection; and which, by inducing the courts of France and Spain to attack England in their behalf, ensured the independence of the United States, and the formation of that transatlantic power which, not only America, but both Europe and Asia, now see and feel. Still, in proceeding to describe this “decisive battle of the world,” a very brief recapitulation of the earlier events of the war may be sufficient; nor shall I linger unnecessarily on a painful theme. The five northern colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont, usually classed together as the New England colonies, were the strongholds of the insurrection against the mother-country. The feeling of resistance was less vehement and general in the central settlement of New York; and still less so in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the other colonies of the south, although everywhere it was formidably active. Virginia should, perhaps, be particularized for the zeal which its leading men displayed in the American cause; but it was among the descendants of the stern Puritans that the spirit of Cromwell and Vane breathed in all its fervor; it was from the New Englanders that the first armed opposition to the British crown had been offered; and it was by them that the most stubborn determination to fight to the last, rather than waive a single right or privilege, had been displayed. In 1775, they had succeeded in forcing the British troops to evacuate Boston; and the events of 1716 had made New York (which the royalists captured in that year) the principal basis of operations for the armies of the mother-country. A glance at the map will show that the Hudson river, which falls into the Atlantic at New York, runs down from the north at the back of the New England States, forming an angle of about forty- five degrees with the line of the coast of the Atlantic, along which the New England states are situate. Northward of the Hudson, we see a small chain of lakes communicating with the Canadian frontier. It is necessary to attend closely to these geographical points, in order to under stand the plan of the operations which the English attempted in 1777, and which the battle of Saratoga defeated. The English had a considerable force in Canada, and in 1776 had completely repulsed an attack which the Americans had made upon that province. The British ministry resolved to avail HDT WHAT? INDEX
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themselves, in the next year, of the advantage which the occupation of Canada gave them, not merely for the purpose of defense, but for the purpose; of striking a vigorous and crushing blow against the revolted colonies. With this view, the army in Canada was largely reinforced. Seven thousand veteran troops were sent out from England, with a corps of artillery abundantly supplied, and led by select. and experienced officers. Large quantities of military stores were also furnished for the equipment of the Canadian volunteers, who were expected to join the expedition. It was intended that the force thus collected should march southward by the line of the lakes, and thence along the banks of the Hudson river. The British army in New York (or a large detachment of it) was to make a simultaneous movement northward, up the line of the Hudson, and the two expeditions were to unite at Albany, a town on that river. By these operations all communication between the northern colonies and those of the center and south would be cut off. An irresistible force would be concentrated, so as to crush all further opposition in New England; and when this was done, it was believed that the other colonies would speedily submit. The Americans had no troops in the field that seemed able to baffle these movements. Their principal army, under Washington, was occupied in watching over Pennsylvania and the south. At ally rate it was believed that, in order to oppose the plan intended for the new campaign, the insurgents must risk a pitched battle, in which the superiority of the royalists, in numbers, in discipline, and in equipment, seemed to promise to the latter a crowning victory. Without question the plan was ably formed; and had the success of the execution been equal to the ingenuity of the design, the re-conquest or submission of the thirteen United States must, in all human probability, have followed; and the independence which they proclaimed in 1776 would have been extinguished before it existed a second year. No European power had as yet. come forward to aid America. It is true that England was generally regarded with jealousy and ill-will, and was thought to have acquired, at the treaty of Paris, a preponderance of dominion which was perilous to the balance of power; but though many were willing to wound, none had yet ventured to strike; and America, if defeated in 1777, would have been suffered to fall unaided. In Lord Albemarle’s “Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham” is contained the following remarkable state paper, drawn up by King George III himself respecting the plan of Burgoyne’s expedition. The original is in the king’s own hand. “REMARKS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR FROM CANADA. “The outlines of the plan seem to be on a proper foundation. The rank and file of the army now in Canada (including the 1lth Regiment of British, M’Clean’s. corps, the Brunswick’s and Hanover), amount to 10,527; add the eleven additional companies and four hundred Hanover Chasseurs, the total will be 11,443. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“As sickness and other contingencies must be expected, I should think not above 7000 effectives can be spared over Lake Champlain; for it would be highly imprudent to run any risk in Canada. “The fixing the stations of those left in the province may not be quite right, though the plan proposed may be recommended. Indians must be employed, and this measure must be avowedly directed, and Carleton must be in the strongest manner directed that the Apollo shall be ready by that day, to receive Burgoyne. “The magazines must be formed with the greatest expedition, at Crown Point. “If possible, possession must be taken of Lake George, and nothing but an absolute impossibility of succeeding in this, can be an excuse for proceeding by South Bay and Skeenborough. “As Sir W. Home does not think of acting from Rhode Island into the Massachusetts, the force from Canada must join him in Albany. “The diversion on the Mohawk River ought at least to be strengthened by the addition of the four hundred Hanover Chasseurs. “The Ordnance ought to furnish a complete proportion of entrenching tools. “The provisions ought to be calculated for a third more than the effective soldiery, and the General ordered to avoid delivering these when the army can be subsisted by the country. Bourgoyne certainly greatly undervalues the German recruits. “The idea of carrying the army by sea to Sir W. Howe, would certainly require the leaving a much larger part of it in Canada, as in that case the rebel army would divide that province from the immense one under Sir W. Howe. I greatly dislike this last idea.” Burgoyne had gained celebrity by some bold and dashing exploits in Portugal during the last war, he was personally as brave an officer as ever headed British troops; he had considerable skill as a tactician; and his general intellectual abilities and acquirements were of a high order. He had several very able and experienced officers under him, among whom were Major-General Phillips and Brigadier-General Frazer. His regular troops amounted, exclusively of the corps of artillery, to about seven thousand two hundred men, rank and file. Nearly half of these were Germans. He had also an auxiliary force of from two to three thousand Canadians. He summoned the warriors of several tribes of the Red Indians near the western lakes to join his army. Much eloquence was poured forth, both in America and in England, in denouncing the use of these savage auxiliaries. Yet Burgoyne seems to have done no more than Montcalm, Wolfe, and other French, American, and English generals had done before him. But, in truth, the lawless ferocity of the Indians, their unskillfulness in regular action, and the utter impossibility HDT WHAT? INDEX
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of bringing them under any discipline, made their services of little or no value in times of difficulty: while the indignation which their outrages inspired, went far to rouse the whole population of the invaded districts into active hostilities against Burgoyne’s force.
Burgoyne assembled his troops and confederates hear the river Bouquet, on the west side of Lake Champlain. He then, on the 21st of June, 1777, gave his Red Allies a war-feast, and harangued them on the necessity of abstaining from their usual cruel practices against unarmed people and prisoners. At the same time he published a pompous manifesto to the Americans, in which he threatened the refractory with all the horrors of war, Indian as well as European. The army proceeded by water to Crown Point, a fortification which the Americans held at the northern extremity of the inlet by which the water from Lake George is conveyed to Lake Champlain. He landed here without opposition; but the reduction of Ticonderoga, a fortification about twelve miles to the south of Crown Point, was a more serious matter, and was supposed to be the critical part of the expedition. Ticonderoga commanded the passage along the lakes, and was considered to be the key to the route which Burgoyne wished to follow. The English had been repulsed in an attack on it in the war with the French in 1758 with severe loss. But Burgoyne now invested it with great skill; and the American General, St. Clair, who had only an ill equipped army of about three thousand men, evacuated it on the 5th of July. It seems evident that a different course would have caused the destruction or capture of his whole army; which, weak as it was, was the chief force then in the field for the protection of the New England states. When censured by some of his countrymen for abandoning Ticonderoga, St. Clair truly replied, “that he had lost a post, but saved a province.” Burgoyne’s troops pursued the retiring Americans, gained several advantages over them, and took a large HDT WHAT? INDEX
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part of their artillery and military stores.
The loss of the British in these engagements was trifling. The army moved southward along Lake George to Skenesborough; and thence, slowly, and with great difficulty, across a broken country, full of creeks and marshes, and clogged by the enemy with felled trees and other obstacles, to Fort Edward, on the Hudson river, the American troops continuing to retire before them. Burgoyne reached the left bank of the Hudson river on the 30th of July. Hitherto he had overcome every difficulty which the enemy and the nature of the country had placed in his way. His army was in excellent order and in the highest spirits; and the peril of the expedition seemed over, when they were once on the bank of the river which was to be the channel of communication between them and the British army in the south. But their feelings, and those of the English nation in general when their successes were announced, may best be learned from a contemporary writer. Burke, in the “Annual Register” for 1777, describes them thus:— “Such was the rapid torrent of success, which swept everything away before the northern army in its onset. It is not to be wondered at, if both officers and private men were highly elated with their good fortune, and deemed that and their prowess to be irresistible; if they regarded their enemy with the greatest contempt; considered their own toils to be nearly at an end; Albany to be already in their hands; and the reduction of the northern provinces to be rather a matter of some time, than an arduous task full of difficulty and danger. “At home, the joy and exultation was extreme; not only at court, but with all those who hoped or wished the unqualified subjugation, and unconditional submission of the colonies. The loss in reputation was greater to the Americans, and capable of more fatal consequences, than even that of ground, of posts, of artillery, or of HDT WHAT? INDEX
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men. All the contemptuous and most degrading charges which had been made by their enemies, of their wanting the resolution and abilities of men, even in their defense of whatever was dear to them, were now repeated and believed. Those who still regarded them as men, and who had not yet lost all affection to them as brethren, who also retained hopes that a happy reconciliation upon constitutional principles, without sacrificing the dignity or the just authority of government on the one side, or a dereliction of the rights of freemen on the other, was not even now impossible, notwithstanding their favorable dispositions in general, could not help feeling upon this occasion that the Americans sunk not a little in their estimation. It was not difficult to diffuse an opinion that the war in effect was over; and that any further resistance could serve only to render the terms of their submission the worse. Such were some of the immediate effects of the loss of those grand keys of North America, Ticonderoga and the lakes.” The astonishment and alarm which these events produced among the Americans were naturally great but in the midst of their disasters none of the colonists showed any disposition to submit. The local governments of the New England States, as well as the Congress, acted with vigor and firmness in their efforts to repel the enemy. General Gates was sent to take the command of the army at Saratoga; and Arnold, a favorite leader of the Americans, was dispatched by Washington to act under him, with reinforcements of troops and guns from the main American army. Burgoyne’s employment of the Indians now produced the worst possible effects. Though he labored hard to check the atrocities which they were accustomed to commit, he could not prevent the occurrence of many barbarous outrages, repugnant both to the feelings of humanity and to the laws of civilized warfare. The American commanders took care that the reports of these excesses should be circulated far and wide, well knowing that they would make the stern New Englanders not droop, but rage. Such was their effect; and though, when each man looked upon his wife, his children, his sisters, or his aged parents, the thought of the merciless Indian “thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child,” of “the cannibal savage torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles,” [Lord Chatham’s speech on the employment of Indians in the war.] might raise terror in the bravest breasts; this very terror produced a directly contrary effect to causing submission to the royal army. It was seen that the few friends of the royal cause, as well as its enemies, were liable to be the victims of the indiscriminate rage of the savages; [See in the “Annual Register” for 1777, page 117, the “Narrative of the Murder of Miss M’Crea, the daughter of an American loyalist.”] and thus “the inhabitants of the open and frontier countries had no choice of acting: they had no means of security left, but by abandoning their habitations and taking up arms. Every man saw HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the necessity of becoming a temporary soldier, not only for his own security, but for the protection and defense of those connections which are dearer than life itself. Thus an army was poured forth by the woods, mountains, and marshes, which in this part were thickly sown with plantations and villages. The Americans recalled their courage; and when their regular army seemed to be entirely wasted, the spirit of the country produced a much greater and more formidable force.” While resolute recruits, accustomed to the use of firearms, and all partially trained by service in the provincial militias, were thus flocking to the standard of Gates and Arnold at Saratoga; and while Burgoyne was engaged at Fort Edward in providing the means for the further advance of his army through the intricate and hostile country that still lay before him, two events occurred, in each of which the British sustained loss, and the Americans obtained advantage, the moral effects of which were even more important than the immediate result of the encounters. When Burgoyne left Canada, General St. Leger was detached from that province with a mixed force of about one thousand men, and some light field-pieces, across Lake Ontario against Fort Stanwix: which the Americans held. After capturing this, he was to march along the Mohawk river to its confluence with the Hudson, between Saratoga and Albany, where his force and that of Burgoyne were to unite. But, after some successes, St. Leger was obliged to retreat, and to abandon his tents and large quantities of stores to the garrison. At the very time that General Burgoyne heard of this disaster, he experienced one still more severe in the defeat of Colonel Baum with a large detachment of German troops at Benington, whither Burgoyne had sent them for the purpose of capturing some magazines of provisions, of which the British army stood greatly in seed. The Americans, augmented by continual accessions of strength, succeeded, after many attacks, in breaking this corps, which fled into the woods, and left its commander mortally wounded on the field: they then marched against a force of five hundred grenadiers and light infantry, which was advancing to Colonel Baum’s assistance, under Lieutenant-Colonel Breyman; who, after a gallant resistance, was obliged to retreat on the main army. The British loss in these two actions exceeded six hundred men: and a party of American loyalists, on their way to join the army, having attached themselves to Colonel Baum’s corps, were destroyed with it. Notwithstanding these reverses, which added greatly to the spirit and numbers of the American forces, Burgoyne determined to advance. It was impossible any longer to keep up his communications with Canada by way of the lakes, so as to supply his army on his southward march; but having by unremitting exertions collected provisions for thirty days, he crossed the Hudson by means of a bridge of rafts, and, marching a short distance along its western bank, he encamped on the 14th of September on the heights of SARATOGA, about sixteen miles from Albany. The Americans had fallen back from Saratoga, and were HDT WHAT? INDEX
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now strongly posted near Stillwater, about half way between Saratoga and Albany, and showed a determination to recede no farther. Meanwhile Lord Howe, with the bulk of the British army that had lain at New York, had sailed away to the Delaware, and there commenced a campaign against Washington, in which the English general took Philadelphia, and gained other showy, but unprofitable successes. But Sir Henry Clinton, a brave and skillful officer, was left with a considerable force at New York; and he undertook the task of moving up the Hudson to cooperate with Burgoyne. Clinton was obliged for this purpose to wait for reinforcements which had been promised from England, and these did not arrive till September. As soon as he received them, Clinton embarked about 3000 of his men on a flotilla, convoyed by some ships of war under Commander Hotham, and proceeded to force his way up the river, but it was long before he was able to open any communication with Burgoyne. The country between Burgoyne’s position at Saratoga and that of the Americans at Stillwater was rugged, and seamed with creeks and water-courses; but after great labor in making bridges and temporary causeways, the British army moved forward. About four miles from Saratoga, on the afternoon of the 19th of September, a sharp encounter took place between part of the English right wing, under Burgoyne himself, and a strong body of the enemy, under Gates and Arnold. The conflict lasted till sunset. The British remained masters of the field; but the loss on each side was nearly equal (from five hundred to six hundred men); and the spirits of the Americans were greatly raised by having withstood the best regular troops of the English army. Burgoyne now halted again, and strengthened his position by fieldwork’s and redoubts; and the Americans also improved their defenses. The two armies remained nearly within cannon-shot of each other for a considerable time, during which Burgoyne was anxiously looking for intelligence of the promised expedition from New York, which, according to the original plan, ought by this time to have been approaching Albany from the south. At last, a messenger from Clinton made his way, with great difficulty, to Burgoyne’s camp, and brought the information that Clinton was on his way up the Hudson to attack the American forts which barred the passage up that river to Albany. Burgoyne, in reply, on the 30th of September, urged Clinton to attack the forts as speedily as possible, stating that the effect of such an attack, or even the semblance of it, would be to move the American army front its position before his own troops. By another messenger, who reached Clinton on the 5th of October, Burgoyne informed his brother general that he had lost his communications with Canada, but had provisions which would last him till the 20th. Burgoyne described himself as strongly posted, and stated that though the Americans in front of him were strongly posted also, he made no doubt of being able to force them, and making his way to Albany; but that he doubted whether he could subsist there, as the country was drained of provisions. He wished Clinton to meet him HDT WHAT? INDEX
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there, and to keep open a communication with New York. Burgoyne had over-estimated his resources, and in the very beginning of October found difficulty and distress pressing him hard. The Indians and Canadians began to desert him; while, on the other hand, Gates’s army was continually reinforced by fresh bodies of the militia. An expeditionary force was detached by the Americans, which made a bold, though unsuccessful, attempt to retake Ticonderoga. And finding the number and spirit of the enemy to increase daily, and his own stores of provision to diminish, Burgoyne determined on attacking the Americans in front of him, and by dislodging them from their position, to gain the means of moving upon Albany, or at least of relieving his troops from the straitened position in which they were cooped up. Burgoyne’s force was now reduced to less than 6000 men. The right of his camp was on some high around n little to the west of the river; thence his entrenchment’s extended along the lower ground to the bank of the Hudson, the line of their front being nearly at a right angle with the course of the stream. The lines were fortified with redoubts and field-works, and on a height on the flank of the extreme right a strong redoubt was reaped, and entrenchment’s, in a horse-shoe form, thrown up. The Hessians, under Colonel Breyman, were stationed here, forming a flank defense to Burgoyne’s main army. The numerical force of the Americans was now greater than the British, even in regular troops, and the numbers of the militia and volunteers which had joined Gates and Arnold were greeter still. General Lincoln, with 2000 New England troops, had reached the American camp on the 29th of September. Gates gave him the command of the right wing, and took in person the command of the left wing, which was composed of two brigades under Generals Poor and Leonard, of Colonel Morgan’s rifle corps, and part of the fresh New England Militia. The whole of the American lines had been ably fortified under the direction of the celebrated Polish General, Kosciusko, who was now serving as a volunteer in Gates’s army. The right of the American position, that is to say, the part of it nearest to the river, was too strong to be assailed with any prospect of success: and Burgoyne therefore determined to endeavor to force their left. For this purpose he formed a column of 1500 regular troops, with two twelve- pounders, two howitzers, and six six-pounders. He headed this in person, having Generals Philips, Reidesel, and Fraser under him. The enemy’s force immediately in front of his lines was so strong that he dared not weaken the troops who guarded them, by detaching any more to strengthen his column of attack. It was on the 7th of October that Burgoyne led his column forward; and on the preceding day, the 6th, Clinton had successfully executed a brilliant enterprise against the two American forts which barred his progress up the Hudson. He had captured them both, with severe loss to the American forces opposed to him; he had destroyed the fleet which the Americans HDT WHAT? INDEX
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had been forming on the Hudson, under the protection of their forts; and the upward river was laid open to his squadron. He had also, with admirable skill and industry, collected in small vessels, such as could float within a few miles of Albany, provisions sufficient to supply Burgoyne’s army for six months. He was now only a hundred and fifty-six miles distant from Burgoyne; and a detachment of 1700 men actually advanced within forty miles of Albany. Unfortunately Burgoyne and Clinton were each ignorant of the other’s movements; but if Burgoyne had won his battle on the 7th, he must on advancing have soon learned the tidings of Clinton’s success, and Clinton would have heard of his. A junction would soon have been made of the two victorious armies, and the great objects of the campaign might yet have been accomplished. All depended on the fortune of the column with which Burgoyne, on the eventful 7th of October, 1777, advanced against the American position. There were brave men, both English and German, in its ranks; and in particular it comprised one of the best bodies of grenadiers in the British service. Burgoyne pushed forward some bodies of irregular troops to distract the enemy’s attention; and led his column to within three quarters of a mile from the left of Gates’s camp, and then deployed his men into line. The grenadiers under Major Ackland, and the artillery under Major Williams, were drawn up on the left; a corps of Germans, under General Reidesel, and some British troops under General Phillips, were in the center, and the English Light Infantry, and the 24th regiment, under Lord Balcarres and General Fraser, were on the right. But Gates did not wait to be attacked; and directly the British line was formed and began to advance, the American general, with admirable skill, caused General Poor’s brigade of New York and New Hampshire troops, and part of General Leonard’s brigade, to make a sudden and vehement rush against its left, and at the same time sent Colonel Morgan, with his rifle corps and other troops, amounting to 1500, to turn the right of the English. The grenadiers under Ackland sustained the charge of superior numbers nobly. But Gates sent, more Americans forward, and in a few minutes the action became general along the center, so as to prevent the Germans from detaching any help to the grenadiers. Morgan, with his riflemen, was now pressing Lord Balcarres and General Fraser hard, and fresh masses of the enemy were observed advancing from their extreme left, with the evident intention of forcing the British right, and cutting off its retreat. The English light infantry and the 24th now fell back, and formed an oblique second line, which enabled them to baffle this maneuver, and also to succor their comrades in the left wing, the gallant grenadiers, who were overpowered by superior numbers, and, but for this aid, must have been cut to pieces. The contest now was fiercely maintained on both sides. The English cannon were repeatedly taken and retaken; but when the grenadiers near them were forced back by the weight of superior HDT WHAT? INDEX
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numbers, one of the guns was permanently captured by the Americans, and turned upon the English. Major Williams and Major Ackland were both made prisoners, and in this part of the field the advantage of the Americans was decided. The British center still held its ground; but now it was that the American general Arnold appeared upon the scene, and did more for his countrymen than whole battalions could have effected. Arnold, when the decisive engagement of the 7th of October commenced, had been deprived of his command by Gates, in consequence of a quarrel between them about the action of the 19th of September. He had listened for a short time in the American camp to the thunder of the battle, in which he had no military right to take part, either as commander or as combatant. But his excited spirit could not long endure such a state of inaction. He called for his horse, a powerful brown charger, and springing on it, galloped furiously to where the fight seemed to be the thickest. Gates saw him, and sent an aide-de-camp to recall him; but Arnold spurred far in advance, and placed himself at the head of three regiments which had formerly been under him, and which welcomed their old commander with joyous cheers. He led them instantly upon the British center; and then galloping along the American line, he issued orders for a renewed and a closer attack, which were obeyed with alacrity, Arnold himself setting the example of the most daring personal bravery, and charging more than once, sword in hand, into the English ranks. On the British side the officers did their duty nobly; but General Frazer was the most eminent of them all restoring order wherever the line began to waver, and infusing fresh courage into his men by voice and example. Mounted on an iron-gray charger, and dressed in the full uniform of a general officer, he was conspicuous to foes as well as to friends. The American Colonel Morgan thought that the fate of the battle rested on this gallant man’s life, and calling several of his best marksmen round him, pointed Frazer out, and said: “That officer is General Frazer; I admire him, but he must die. Our victory depends on it. Take your stations in that clump of bushes, and do your duty.” Within five minutes, Frazer fell mortally wounded, and was carried to the British camp by two grenadiers. Just previously to his being struck by the fatal bullet, one rifle-ball had cut the crupper of his saddle, and another had passed through his horse’s mane close behind the ears. His aide-de-camp had noticed this, had said: “It is evident that you are marked out for particular aim; would it not be prudent for you to retire from this place?” Frazer replied: “My duty forbids me to fly from danger;” and the next moment he fell. Burgoyne’s whole force was now compelled to retreat towards their camp; the left and center were in complete disorder, but the light infantry and the 24th checked the fury of the assailants, and the remains of the column HDT WHAT? INDEX
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with great difficulty effected their return to their camp; leaving six of their cannons in the possession of the enemy, and great numbers of killed and wounded on the field; and especially a large proportion of the artillery men, who had stood to their guns until shot down or bayoneted beside them by the advancing Americans. Burgoyne’s column had been defeated, but the action was not yet over. The English had scarcely entered the camp when the Americans, pursuing their success, assaulted it in several places with remarkable impetuosity, rushing in upon the entrenchment’s and redoubts through a severe fire of grape-shot and musketry. Arnold especially, who on this day appeared maddened with the thirst of combat and carnage, urged on the attack against a part of the entrenchment’s which was occupied by the light infantry under Lord Balcarres. But the English received him with vigor and spirit. The struggle here was obstinate and sanguinary. At length, as it grew towards evening, Arnold, having forced all obstacles, entered the works with some of the most fearless of his followers. But in this critical moment of glory and danger, he received a painful wound in the same leg which had already been injured at the assault on Québec. To his bitter regret he was obliged to be carried back. His party still continued the attack, but the English also continued their obstinate resistance, and at last night fell, and the assailants withdrew from this quarter of the British entrenchment’s. But in another part the attack had been more successful. A body of the Americans, under Colonel Brooke, forced their way in through a part of the horse-shoe entrenchment’s on the extreme right, which was defended by the Hessian reserve under Colonel Breyman. The Germans resisted well, and Breyman died in defense of his post; but the Americans made good the ground which they had won, and captured baggage, tents, artillery, and a store of ammunition, which they were greatly in need of. They had by establishing themselves on this point, acquired the means of completely turning the right. flank of the British, and gaining their rear. To prevent this calamity, Burgoyne effected during the night an entire change of position. With great skill he removed his whole army to some heights near the river, a little northward of the former camp, and he there drew up his men, expecting to be attacked on the following day. But Gates was resolved not to risk the certain triumph which his success had already secured for him. He harassed the English with skirmishes, but attempted no regular attack. Meanwhile he detached bodies of troops on both sides of the Hudson to prevent the British from recrossing that river, and to bar their retreat. When night fell, it became absolutely necessary for Burgoyne to retire again, and, accordingly, the troops were marched through a stormy and rainy night towards Saratoga, abandoning their sick and wounded, and the greater part of their baggage, to the enemy. Before the rear-guard quitted the camp, the last sad honors were paid to the brave General Frazer, who expired on the day after HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the action. He had, almost with his last breath, expressed a wish to be buried in the redoubt which had formed the part of the British lines where he had been stationed, but which had now been abandoned by the English, and was within full range of the cannon which the advancing Americans were rapidly placing in position to bear upon Burgoyne’s force. Burgoyne resolved, nevertheless, to comply with the dying wish of his comrade; and the interment took place under circumstances the most affecting that have ever marked a soldier’s funeral. Still more interesting is the narrative of Lady Ackland’s passage from the British to the American camp, after the battle, to share the captivity and alleviate the sufferings of her husband, who had been severely wounded, and left in the enemy’s power. The American historian, Lossing, has described both these touching episodes of the campaign, in a spirit that does honor to the writer as well as to his subject. After narrating the death of General Frazer on the 8th of October, he says that “It was just at sunset, on that calm October evening. that the corpse of General Frazer was carried up the hill to the place of burial within the ‘great redoubt.’ It was attended only by the military members of his family and Mr. Brudenell, the chaplain; yet the eyes of hundreds of both armies followed the solemn procession, while the Americans, ignorant of its true character, kept up a constant cannonade upon the redoubt. The chaplain, unawed by the danger to which he was exposed, as the cannon-balls that struck the hill threw the loose soil over him, pronounced the impressive funeral service of the Church of England with an unfaltering voice. The growing darkness added solemnity to the scene. Suddenly the irregular firing ceased, and the solemn voice of a single cannon, at measured intervals, boomed along the valley, and awakened the responses of the hills. It was a minute gun fired by the Americans in honor of the gallant dead. The moment the information was given that the gathering at the redoubt was a funeral company, fulfilling, at imminent peril, the last- breathed wishes of the noble Frazer, orders were issued to withhold the cannonade with balls, and to render military homage to the fallen brave. “The case of Major Ackland and his heroic wife presents kindred features. He belonged to the grenadiers, and was an accomplished soldier. His wife accompanied him to Canada in 1776; and during the, whole campaign of that year, and until his return to England after the surrender of Burgoyne, in the autumn of 1777, endured all the hardships, dangers, and privations of an active campaign in an enemy’s country. At Chambly, on the Sorel, she attended him in illness, in a miserable hut; and when he was wounded in the battle of Hubbardton, Vermont, she hastened to him at Henesborough from Montreal, where she had been persuaded to remain, and resolved to follow the army hereafter. Just before crossing the Hudson, she and her husband had had a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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narrow escape from losing their lives in consequence of their tent accidentally taking fire. “During the terrible engagement of the 7th October, she heard all the tumult and dreadful thunder of the battle in which her husband was engaged; and when, on the morning of the 8th, the British fell back in confusion to their new position, she, with the other women, was obliged to take refuge among the dead and dying; for the tents were all struck, and hardly a shed was left standing. Her husband was wounded, and a Prisoner in the American camp. That gallant officer was shot through both legs. When Poor and Learned’s troops assaulted the grenadiers and artillery on the British left, on the afternoon of the 7th, Wilkinson, Gates’s adjutant- general, while pursuing the flying enemy when they abandoned their battery, heard a feeble voice exclaim ‘Protect me, sir, against that boy.’ He turned and saw a lad with a musket taking deliberate aim at a wounded British officer, lying in a corner of a low fence. Wilkinson ordered the boy to desist, and discovered the wounded man to be Major Ackland. He had him conveyed to the quarters of General Poor (now the residence of Mr. Neilson) on the heights, where every attention was paid to his wants. “When the intelligence that he was wounded and a prisoner reached his wife, she was greatly distressed, and, by the advice of her friend, Baroness Reidesel, resolved to visit the American camp, and implore the favor of a personal attendance upon her husband. On the 9th she sent a message to Burgoyne by Lord Petersham, his aide-de-camp, asking permission to depart. ‘Though I was ready to believe,’ says Burgoyne, ‘that patience and fortitude, in a supreme degree, were to be found, as well as every other virtue, under the most tender forms, I was astonished at this proposal. After so long an agitation of spirits, exhausted not only for want of rest, but absolutely want of food, drenched in rains for twelve hours together, that a woman should be capable of such an undertaking as delivering herself to an enemy, probably in the night, and uncertain of what hands she might fall into, appeared an effort above human nature. The assistance I was able to give was small indeed. I had not even a cup of wine to offer her. All I could furnish her with was an open boat, and a few lines, written upon dirty wet paper, to General Gates, recommending her to his protection.’ The following is a copy of the note sent by Burgoyne to General Gates — ‘Sir, — Lady Harriet Ackland, a lady of the first distinction of family, rank, and personal virtues, is under such concern on account of Major Ackland, her husband, wounded and a prisoner in your hands, that I cannot refuse her request to commit her to your HDT WHAT? INDEX
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protection. Whatever general impropriety there may be in persons of my situation and yours to solicit favors, I cannot see the uncommon perseverance in every female grace, and the exaltation of character of this lady, and her very hard fortune, without testifying that your attentions to her will lay me under obligations. I am, sir, your obedient servant, J. Burgoyne.’ She set out in an open boat upon the Hudson, accompanied by Mr. Brudenell, the chaplain, Sarah Pollard, her waiting- maid, and her husband’s valet, who had been severely wounded, while searching for his master upon the battle- field. It was about sunset when they started, and a violent storm of rain and wind, which had been increasing since the morning, rendered the voyage tedious and perilous in the extreme. It was long after dark when they reached the American out-posts; the sentinel heard their oars, and hailed them. Lady Harriet returned the answer herself. The clear, silvery tones of a woman’s voice amid the darkness, filled the soldier on duty with superstitious fear, and he called a comrade to accompany him to the river bank. The errand of the voyagers was made known, but the faithful guard, apprehensive of treachery, would not allow them to land until they sent for Major Dearborn. They were invited by that officer to his quarters, where every attention was paid to them, and Lady Harriet was comforted by the joyful tidings that her husband was safe. In the morning she experienced parental tenderness from General Gates, who sent her to her husband, at Poor’s quarters, under a suitable escort. There she remained until he was removed to Albany.” Burgoyne now took up his last position on the heights near Saratoga; and hemmed in by the enemy, who refused any encounter, and baffled in all his attempts at finding a path of escape, he there lingered until famine compelled him to capitulate. The fortitude of the British army during this melancholy period has been justly eulogized by many native historians, but I prefer quoting the testimony of a foreign writer, as free from all possibility of partiality. Botta says: “It exceeds the power of words to describe the pitiable condition to which the British army was now reduced. The troops were worn down by a series of toil, privation, sickness, and desperate fighting. They were abandoned by the Indians and Canadians; and the effective force of the whole army was now diminished by repeated and heavy losses, which had principally fallen on the best soldiers, and the most distinguished officers, from ten thousand combatants to less than one-half that number. Of this remnant, little more than three thousand were English. “In these circumstances, and thus weakened, they were HDT WHAT? INDEX
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invested by an army of four times their own number, whose position extended three parts of a circle round them; who refused to fight them, as knowing their weakness, and who, from the nature of the ground, could not be attacked in any part. In this helpless condition, obliged to be constantly under arms, while the enemy’s cannon played on every part of their camp, and even the American rifle-balls whistled in many parts of the lines, the troops of Burgoyne retained their customary firmness, and while sinking under a hard necessity, they showed themselves worthy of a better fate. They could not be reproached with an action or a word, which betrayed a want of temper or of fortitude.” At length the 13th of October arrived, and as no prospect of assistance appeared, and the provisions were nearly exhausted, Burgoyne, by the unanimous advice of a council of war, sent a messenger to the American camp to treat of a convention. General Gates in the first instance demanded that the royal army should surrender prisoners of war. He also proposed that the British should ground their arms. Burgoyne replied, “This article is inadmissible in every extremity; sooner than this army will consent to ground their arms in their encampment, they will rush on the enemy, determined to take no quarter.” After various messages, a convention for the surrender of the army was settled, which provided that “The troops under General Burgoyne were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the artillery of the entrenchment’s, to the verge of the river, where the arms and artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to be granted to the army under Lieutenant- General Burgoyne to Great Britain, upon condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest.” The articles of capitulation were settled on the 15th of October; and on that very evenings a messenger arrived from Clinton with an account of his successes, and with the tidings that part of his force had penetrated as far as Esopus, within fifty miles of Burgoyne’s camp. But it was too late. The public faith was pledged; and the army was, indeed, too debilitated by fatigue and hunger to resist an attack if made; and Gates certainly would have made it, if the convention had been broken off. Accordingly, on the 17th, the convention of Saratoga was carried into effect. By this convention 5790 men surrendered themselves as prisoners. The sick and wounded left in the camp when the British retreated to Saratoga, together with the numbers of the British, German, and Canadian troops, who were killed, wounded, or taken, and who had deserted in the preceding part of the expedition, were reckoned to be 4689. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The British sick and wounded who had fallen into the hands of the Americans after the battle of the 7th, were treated with exemplary humanity; and when the convention was executed, General Gates showed a noble delicacy of feeling. which deserves the highest degree of honor. Every circumstance was avoided which could give the appearance of triumph. The American troops remained within their lines until the British had piled their arms; and when this was done, the vanquished officers and soldiers were received with friendly kindness by their victors, and their immediate wants were promptly and liberally supplied. Discussions and disputes afterwards arose as to some of the terms of the convention; and the American Congress refused for a long time to carry into effect the article which provided for the return of Burgoyne’s men to Europe; but no blame was imputable to General Gates or his army, who showed themselves to be generous as they had proved themselves to be brave. Gates, after the victory, immediately dispatched Colonel Wilkinson to carry the happy tidings to Congress. On being introduced into the hall, he said, “The whole British army has laid down its arms at Saratoga; our own, full of vigor and courage, expect your order. It is for your wisdom to decide where the country may still have need for their service.” Honors and rewards were liberally voted by the Congress to their conquering general and his men, “and it would be difficult (says the Italian historian) to describe the transports of joy which the news of this event excited among the Americans. They began to flatter themselves with a, still more happy future. No one any longer felt any doubt about their achieving their independence. All hoped, and with good reason, that a success of this importance would at length determine France, and the other European powers that waited for her example, to declare themselves in favor of America. There could no longer be any question respecting the future; since there was no longer the risk of espousing the cause of a people too feeble to defend themselves.” The truth of this was soon displayed in the conduct of France. When the news arrived at Paris of the capture of Ticonderoga, and of the victorious march of Burgoyne towards Albany, events which seemed decisive in favor of the English, instructions had been immediately dispatched to Nantz, and the other ports of the kingdom, that no American privateers should be suffered to enter them, except from indispensable necessity, as to repair their vessels, to obtain provisions, or to escape the perils of the sea. The American commissioners at Paris, in their disgust and despair, had almost broken off all negotiations With the French government; and they even endeavored to open communications with the British ministry. But the British government, elated with the first successes of Burgoyne, refused to listen to any HDT WHAT? INDEX
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overtures for accommodation. But when the news of Saratoga reached Paris, the whole scene was changed. Franklin and his brother commissioners found all their difficulties with the French government vanish. The time seemed to have arrived for the House of Bourbon to take a full revenge for all its humiliations and losses in previous wars. In December a treaty was arranged, and formally signed in the February following, by which France acknowledged the Independent United States of America. This was, of course, tantamount to a declaration of war with England. Spain soon followed France; and before long Holland took the same course. Largely aided by French fleets and troops, the Americans vigorously maintained the war against the armies which England, in spite of her European foes, continued to send across the Atlantic. but the struggle was too unequal to be maintained by this country for many years: and when the treaties of 1783 restored peace to the world. the independence of the United States was reluctantly recognized by their ancient parent and recent enemy, England.
“A victory described in detail is indistinguishable from a defeat.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
Dec’r ye 19th, Friday: According to BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS (Groton, 1894), Ephraim Robbins of Grotton and Thankful Ball of Concord was joined in marriage by Eph’ Wood Esq.
Colonel George Washington settled his militias at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania for the winter.
GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1778
June 19, Friday: General George Washington’s troops finally marched away from Valley Forge, entering Philadelphia. General Benedict Arnold was appointed military governor.
While in Paris with her son Wolfgang Amadeus, Maria Anna Mozart took to bed suffering from what was probably an infection of the typhoid fever bacterium Salmonella typhimurium. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1779
March: In a letter to George Mason in Virginia which he expected to be shown to Thomas Jefferson, General George Washington complained that during the present “critical period” while the new nation was “verging ... fast to destruction,” Jefferson was at home at Monticello indulging in mere “idleness and dissipation.” Nevertheless Jefferson would remain at home enjoying himself, contributing nothing whatever to the war effort until after the British were quite gone from this area of the country. Even while serving as Virginia’s governor, Jefferson would inevitably resist all pressure to utilize the state militia, saying that he preferred to hold such forces in readiness to suppress any black servile insurrection. The only positive action that Jefferson ever would take during the war was fleeing. This occurred on June 3, 1781, when General Cornwallis dispatched a cavalry party made up of 250 infantry and dragoons under the leadership of Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and the raiding party went out to the Monticello plantation house to apprehend Jefferson. On that day Jefferson, after burning some sensitive papers and sending his favorite servant Martin Hemings off to hide some valuable items, mounted his favorite horse Caractacus and made his getaway. (In this gentleman’s autobiography, there would of course be no mention of such a flight, presumably for the very same reason that there would of course be no mention of Sally or the rugrats.)
If Tom could get away with it...
Of course, Tom can be excused for being a draft-dodger (like William Jefferson Clinton), as he had in this year more important fish that he needed get fried: A Bill Concerning Slaves Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no persons shall, henceforth, be slaves within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the first day of this present session of Assembly, and the descendants of the females of them. Negroes and mulattoes which shall hereafter be brought into this commonwealth and kept therein one whole year, together, or so long at different times as shall amount to one year, shall be free. But if they shall not depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter they shall be out of the protection of the laws. Those which shall come into this commonwealth of their own accord shall be out of the protection of the laws; save only such as being seafaring persons and navigating vessels hither, shall not leave the same while here more than twenty four hours together. It shall not be lawful for any person to emancipate a slave but by deed executed, proved and recorded as is required by law in the case of a conveyance of goods and chattels, on consideration not deemed valuable in law, or by last will and testament, and with the free consent of such slave, expressed in presence of HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the court of the county wherein he resides: And if such slave, so emancipated, shall not within one year thereafter, depart the commonwealth, he shall be out of the protection of the laws. All conditions, restrictions and limitations annexed to any act of emancipation shall be void from the time such emancipation is to take place. If any white woman shall have a child by a negro or mulatto, she and her child shall depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter. If they fail so to do, the woman shall be out of the protection of the laws, and the child shall be bound out by the Aldermen of the county, in like manner as poor orphans are by law directed to be, and within one year after its term of service expired shall depart the commonwealth, or on failure so to do, shall be out of the protection of the laws. Where any of the persons before described shall be disabled from departing the commonwealth by grievous sickness, the protection of the law shall be continued to him until such disability be removed: And if the county shall in the mean time, incur any expence in taking care of him, as of other county poor, the Aldermen shall be intitled to recover the same from his former master, if he had one, his heirs, executors and administrators. No negro or mulatto shall be a witness except in pleas of the commonwealth against negroes or mullatoes, or in civil pleas wherein negroes or mulattoes alone shall be parties. No slave shall go from the tenements of his master, or other person with whom he lives, without a pass, or some letter or token whereby it may appear that he is proceeding by authority from his master, employer, or overseer: If he does, it shall be lawful for any person to apprehend and carry him before a Justice of the Peace, to be by his order punished with stripes, or not, in his discretion. No slave shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms in possession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seize them. Riots, Routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches by a negro or mullato shall be punished with stripes at the discretion of a Justice of the Peace; and he who will may apprehend and carry him before such Justice. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A question has arisen as to what Tom meant, above, by the phrase “out of the protection of the laws.” When I opinioned that what it must have meant in practice on the ground was “may be killed without penalty,” a senior Jefferson scholar was just outraged. I was set straight in no uncertain terms. No, what it meant was, such a person “would not be entitled to receive any further Welfare payments.” Gosh, how could I have been so utterly wrong!
We notice above how the law that Tom wrote did not bear on his personal situation out at the Monticello plantation. He wrote that “If any white woman shall have a child by a negro or mulatto, she and her child shall depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter,” and that otherwise she would be placing herself “out of the protection of the laws” — meaning merely that such a miscegenator wouldn’t be entitled to Welfare or to Aid for Dependent Children, but he did not write that “If any white man [such as himself, for one fine example] shall have a child by a negro or mulatto [such as Tom’s slave girl Sally], he and his child [such as Thomas Jefferson Hemings] shall depart the commonwealth within one year thereafter,” and that otherwise he would be placing himself “out of the protection of the laws” — meaning merely that such a miscegenator wouldn’t be entitled to Welfare or to Aid for Dependent Children.
December: General George Washington ordered 1,400 Continentals to join the forces of General Benjamin Lincoln defending Charleston.
In Virginia, the sheriff went to the home of Friend Robert Hunnicutt of Blackwater monthly meeting on account of his “testimony against war” and consequent refusal to pay war taxes, and seized one of his slaves. The sheriff selected a 6-year-old to seize –not worth nearly as much as an adult– so he wouldn’t need to make change. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
(What was a Quaker doing, with black slaves? –Don’t ask.) THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1780
August 3, Friday: General George Washington put General Benedict Arnold in command of West Point.
Fall: When Congress suspended the runaway General Horatio Gates from command after his crushing defeat at Camden, South Carolina and General George Washington went to appoint a successor, he chose his clubfooted staff officer, Major General Nathanael Greene. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1781
During a visit by General George Washington to Newport, Rhode Island, a town meeting was held in the Touro Synagogue.
JUDAISM 1781. Gen. Washington visited Providence. His arrival was announced by a salute from the artillery. He was conducted to the house of Hon. Jabez Bowen (now Manufacturer’s Hotel,) and the town was illuminated at night. Next day he dined with the citizens in the Court House, and in the evening attended a splendid ball. A formal address was presented to him by a committee of the most distinguished citizens, to which he made a felicitous reply, and expressed much gratification at the respectful attentions he received.
General George Washington coined the term “ravine” for the sort of deep, narrow hollow that remains after a torrent. (He also, at some point in time, originated the name “Newton pippin” for an apple from a town on Long Island.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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March 1, Thursday: Maryland ratified the Articles of Confederation, the 13th and final state to do so, and so these articles became effective. READ THE FULL TEXT
Note that approximately a year and a half after Henry Thoreau would die, President Abraham Lincoln would take the train down from Washington DC and delivered a brief address at a ceremony dedicating the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania as a national cemetery, a brief that would become justly famous as his “Gettysburg Address,” in which he would state: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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It would take 87 years for America to start catching up to sentiment of the Declaration of Independence concerning all men being equal. A French philosopher, Professor Pierre Hadot, would term this Lincolnian re- interpretation of the Declaration to be (translating from his French) “certainly a misinterpretation, but a creative misinterpretation.” In point of fact, when the proposition “all men are created equal” had been penned,
it simply had not been leveling up that had been in anyone’s mind, but instead, it had only been leveling down that had been in anyone’s mind. What they meant by the concept of equality was that there was not inherently a class of noble men who were intrinsically more worthy than common men like themselves. They were merely dragging these noblemen down to the common level. There was no involvement of any such idea, as that women were worth as much as men, or that non-whites were worth as much as whites, etc. etc., because such ideas would have involved leveling up, they would have involved an effort to raise others to one’s own level. That would have been thinking outside the box — that thought was still unthinkable. So when, in the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln pretended that fourscore and seven years ago President Thomas Jefferson had been intending to level up as well as to level down, the interpretation by Professor Hadot would be that what he was doing was, he was slyly proposing to us that we indulge ourselves with a bit of “creative misinterpretation.” Henceforth we were going to act dumb, and pretend that we had meant what we should have meant, what a decent man would have meant, rather than the stunted thought which we had actually thought. (It is a good thing that President Lincoln was not delivering this Gettysburg Address as a brief before today’s United States Supreme Court! Nowadays the strict-constructionist justices in the majority on the United States Supreme Court would Bork this sort of creative misinterpretation, dismiss it instantly and HDT WHAT? INDEX
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totally.) One thing to bear in mind is that there was not just one Declaration of Independency, as we now pretend, but actually some seventy such documents. Declaring independency was, at that time, a common art form. Another thing to bear in mind is that the one Declaration of Independence, that we now pick out to remember alone, has nothing whatever to do with the present federal government of the United States of America. It is simply not a legal document, it is not any part of our body of law. It was not created by a duly- constituted representative body and did not bring our present government into effect. Instead, it brought into effect a short-lived confederacy which had its own presidents, under the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” of 1781, which then disintegrated upon the later enactment of another document, the United States Constitution, which ultimately brought the United States of America into existence as of 1887 under a first US president discontinuous from the previous series of presidents, former General George Washington. Actually, in order to make the one, of the seventy-odd, Declaration of Independency, that President Lincoln chose to emphasize at Gettysburg, have anything at all to do with the United States of America, it would be necessary for him to have considered General Washington not to be our 1st president, but to be actually our 17th president or something like that depending on how you count, with the previous presidents having been:
President of the First Continental Congress Peyton Randolph (September 5, 1774-October 21, 1774) Henry Middleton (October 22, 1774-October 26, 1774)
President of the Second Continental Congress Peyton Randolph (May 10, 1775-May 23, 1775) John Hancock (May 24, 1775-October 31, 1777) Henry Laurens (November 1, 1777-December 9, 1778) John Jay (December 10, 1778-September 27, 1779) Samuel Huntington (September 28, 1779-March 1, 1781) President of the United States in Congress Assembled Samuel Huntington (March 1, 1781[2]-July 9, 1781) Thomas McKean (July 10, 1781-November 4, 1781) John Hanson (November 5, 1781-November 3, 1782) Elias Boudinot (November 4, 1782-November 2, 1783) Thomas Mifflin (November 3, 1783-October 31, 1784) Richard Henry Lee (November 30, 1784-November 6, 1785) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
John Hancock (November 23, 1785-June 5, 1786) [due to his failing health, two others acted in his stead] David Ramsay (November 23, 1785-May 12, 1786) Nathaniel Gorham (May 15, 1786-June 5, 1786) Nathaniel Gorham (June 6, 1786-November 5, 1786) Arthur St. Clair (February 2, 1787-November 4, 1787) Cyrus Griffin (January 22, 1788-November 2, 1788)
We can’t have it both ways, folks. Either Georgibus was actually our 17th president rather than our 1st, or that Declaration of Independence someone had signed in 1775 has actually no direct connection of any sort with the federal government of the USA that would eventuate belatedly in 1787.
April: General George Washington endorsed a plan to build a prison on Pollopel Island in the Hudson (nothing would come of this).
British ships worked their way up the Potomac to Mt. Vernon and a substantial number of General Washington’s slaves fled to or were seized by these raiders (according to Fritz Hirschfeld in GEORGE WASHINGTON AND SLAVERY: A DOCUMENTARY PORTRAYAL, U of Missouri P, 1997). When Washington would bargain hard with Carleton at the close of this war, about the return of fugitives, he may well have had a personal stake as well as a national issue to pursue.
June 3, Sunday: In Virginia, General Cornwallis dispatched a cavalry party made up of 250 infantry and dragoons under the leadership of Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and the raiding party went out to Monticello to apprehend Thomas Jefferson. On being warned that the British were coming, Jefferson burned some sensitive papers and sent his favorite servant Martin Hemings off to hide some valuable items, and then mounted his favorite horse Caractacus and made his getaway. (This would be as close as Jefferson would get, to participating in the American Revolution. In his autobiography, he would make no reference to the events of this day. During this month, Patrick Henry and other Virginia legislators would be calling for an investigation of Jefferson’s wartime conduct, accusing him among other things of failing to post sentinels, disregarding General George Washington, ignoring offers to raise volunteer units, and generally mishandling the militia.)
August 21, Tuesday: George Washington led Clinton to fear that New-York would be attacked, but then moved toward Philadelphia and later to Virginia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
October 19, Friday: George Washington led combined French and American forces to decisive victory over British forces at Yorktown, Virginia. The British command at Yorktown surrendered 7,000 British soldiers to 16,000 Americans and French. The diary of Ebenezer Denny described the surrender of General Charles Cornwallis at the conclusion of this last significant military engagement of the Revolutionary War. John Trumbull would paint a famous “Surrender at Yorktown” scene, and Brumidi would do a famous relief of that scene — which actually hadn’t happened as neither Washington nor Cornwallis had seen fit personally to participate in this traditional little surrender ceremony.
October 24, Wednesday: People were trying to kill each other at Johnson Hall (Johnstown), New York. General George Washington desired to attack New-York but his French allies wanted to leave American waters.
A British relief force arrived off Cape Charles and, being informed of General Cornwallis’s surrender, returned to New-York.
November 5, Monday: John “Jacky” Parke, George Washington’s stepson, died of camp fever acquired at the battle of Yorktown.
John Hanson was elected the 1st “President of the United States in Congress assembled” (8 years before General Washington was elected). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1783
At the age of about 10 Oney “Ona” Judge was brought to the Mansion House at Mount Vernon, presumably to serve as a playmate or plaything for Martha Washington’s granddaughter Nelly Custis. (In her old age she would indicate that during her childhood and youth at the plantation she had obtained no education or religious instruction whatever.)
Inflation was so severe in the former American colonies of England, due to the debts of the war, that George Washington commented, with only a fair degree of exaggeration, that it took a wagonload of paper money going into town, to obtain a wagonload of supplies to take back to the plantation. The expression “not worth a Continental” began to be used.
In the midst of this inflation crisis, the Marquis de Lafayette wrote to Washington to suggest that they join together and “try the experiment to free the Negroes.” The French leader pointed out, sucking up, that “such an example as yours might render it a general practice.” The American leader responded the two men would be meeting again in person and would be able to chat about this proposal (when they would meet and chat in the following year, Washington’s answer would of course be no). SLAVERY EMANCIPATION
While on a trip through the Mohawk Valley west of Albany, New York, George Washington became persuaded that this would be a great pathway for a great canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
March 11, Tuesday: Samuel Ripley was born in Concord, elder brother of Daniel Bliss Ripley, son of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, D.D.
George Washington forbade meetings at Newburgh of the discontented officers who had not received their back pay.
March 12, Wednesday: The discontented officers reasserted the validity of their claims to their back pay. George Washington condemned the tone of the Newburgh Addresses.
March 15, Saturday: George Washington, recognizing the validity of their arguments, urged dissatisfied army officers to trust in Congress to see that they were paid.
March 30, Sunday: George Washington advised the Newburgh officers of Congress’s favorable decision.
October 8, Wednesday: George Washington asked Congress to limit the West Point garrison to 500 troops.
November: George Washington inspected lock construction on the Susquehanna and Schuylkill Canal, at Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania. CANALS
November 20, Thursday: George Washington announced the formal discharge of enlisted men at Newburgh.
November 24, Monday: George Washington met with General Carleton to finalize New-York evacuation plans.
December 4, Thursday: George Washington bad farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New-York.
The British evacuated Paumanok Long Island and Staten Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
December 23, Tuesday: George Washington submitted his resignation of his military commission to Congress at Annapolis.
December 24, Wednesday: George Washington arrived at Mount Vernon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1784
When George Washington’s dentist Jean Pierre Le Moyer needed teeth to insert into his dentures, George supplied him with the teeth of his slaves. He did pay his slaves for these healthy teeth pulled from their gums and in one of his account books for this year we find a entry in the amount of 122 shillings that he disbursed for 9 teeth from “Negroes.”
“Venus” conceived a mulatto infant, West Ford, who would be suspected to be George’s only son. He would be cared for at the Mount Vernon plantation and by 1860 would become, manumitted, the 2d richest person of color of Fairfax County near Washington DC.
After the revolution Washington, reputedly this infant’s daddy-o, would be attempting to drain the Great Dismal Swamp in order to incorporate it into his plantation (however founding daddy-o he was, Faustus it seems he wasn’t to become). Along with others he organized a lumber company called “Adventurers for Draining the Dismal Swamp.” Discovering that Lake Drummond was the highest point in the swamp, they had many ditches dug through the swamp in hopes of draining this lake (several of the ditches remain today, such as the George Washington Ditch and the Jericho Ditch, but Washington’s intent that rice be grown in the swamp after it was timbered off would not succeed).
You know the anecdote that is told about William James, among others, the story in which the invariable punchline is “it’s turtles all the way down”? It is a tall tale about the underpinnings of the universe, in which this world is being supported upon the backs of four giant elephants, which elephants appear to be standing upon the back of one humongous turtle. So what’s that humongous turtle itself standing on? “Sorry, Mr. James, it’s turtles all the way down.”
Well, this seems to be about the right point to introduce material about a developing strain of American humor, so that when this dark humor shows up in Henry Thoreau’s WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, you will be prepared for it. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Anderson, John Q. “Some Migratory Anecdotes in American Folk Humor.” Mississippi Quarterly 25 (1977): 447-57: “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Anderson traces the migration of the hat-in-the-mud tale [as well as other tales] from north to south, east to west, as it passes back and forth between oral tradition and print. The tale begins as a joke about the deplorable conditions of rural roads. The earliest version cited is that of John Bernard, English comedian and theater manager, from a tour of the Southern United States in 1780. A gentleman walking in a swamp bends over to pick up a hat on the ground but hears a voice ordering him to stop. There is a man underneath the hat who announces that he is mounted on a horse, has ridden fifty miles since daybreak, and this is the first firm footing he’s come to. The tale travels widely throughout the “New West.” James K. Paulding borrows the tale in 1831 for a bragging speech by Colonel Nimrod Wildfire in “Lion of the West,” a play which capitalized on the popularity of Davy Crockett. In the mouth of Wildfire, the tale becomes an insider’s joke characterized by rough dialect and extravagant hyperbole — typical frontier tall talk. The punch line, like the speech itself, is exaggerated: there is a second driver and wagon underneath the driver and wagon that Wildfire uncovers. By the 1850’s, variants are so common that a correspondent to the Spirit of the Times can allude to “hats floating upon the surface of the bog” and expect his readers to catch the allusion. Although Anderson does not mention it, Henry Thoreau borrows the tale for his own idiosyncratic purposes in WALDEN. In Thoreau’s version, a traveler asks a boy if there is a solid bottom to the bog. The boy replies “yes,” but when the traveler enters the bog, his horse immediately sinks “up to the girths.” When the traveler complains, the boy explains that the bog does have a hard bottom, but that the traveler hasn’t got half way to it yet. Thoreau’s appropriation of the tale shares little in common with the previous or later uses of the tale that Anderson describes. It works less as a joke than as an exemplum, and in that sense it is characteristic of Thoreau’s tendency to use humor for very serious ends.
(Lane Stiles, Winter 1992) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
PEOPLE OF WALDEN: I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, in WALDEN the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. ______of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court- yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings, – not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,– not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me; –not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,– not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom every where. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought said or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, –a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.
AMIM, THE MAMELUKE BEY HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Since I am including here a WALDEN snip here mentions the springing of an arch, I will include also the following architectural drawing of the parts of an arch, that explains to us what it is to spring an arch:
To Spring an Arch is to Lay its Starting Stones
May 3: Anthony Benezet died. His grave is in the Friends’ Burial Ground of Philadelphia.
On this day the abolitionist Friend Moses Brown demanded an answer to the question, “Has General Washington freed his Negroes or has he not?” (There would be no response.)
The Los Angeles newsman and storyteller who has weighed in on this issue, Charles Rappleye, has responded to this factoid on page 234 of his recent SONS OF PROVIDENCE: THE BROWN BROTHERS, THE SLAVE TRADE, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006) by offering some factoids of his own. Unfortunately, Rappleye’s factoids, although part of the “conventional wisdom” familiar to all American newsmen and storytellers, happens to be demonstrably inaccurate: Considering the well-known history of Washington’s stony silence on the question of slavery, and that he finally manumitted his 123 slaves only upon his decease, Moses’ query seems wildly off base.32
32. Presumably the newsman meant to use the idiom “wildly off target,” as in “The ball struck the batter on the elbow.” A runner who is “off base” can be tagged out, and one can suppose there to be something like “widely off,” which is to say, far away from the white base bag that the runner is supposed to be touching with one shoe — but there seems to be no such thing as being “wildly” off base. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
First, George Washington was the Virginia slavemaster who had selected a healthy male slave and had that man held down, while a healthy tooth was yanked out of his jaw with pliers, in order to have a piece of ivory to fit into a gap in his personal denture. This is not the act of a man who is maintaining a stony silence on the topic of some people’s lives belonging not to themselves but to other more fortunate people. Second, Washington would manumitted precisely one slave upon his decease, a mulatto manservant he called “Billy” who referred to himself as “William Lee,” who since he had become old and crippled had anyway lost all cash value: And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha[v]e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, whic[h] shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a test[im]ony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War. Third, this ostensibly precise figure supplied by the newsman, “123 slaves,” is a figure that requires considerable elaboration. There were 317 slaves on the various Mount Vernon farms, 153 of whom as the dower property of his spouse Martha Washington would at her death pertain to the Custis heir-at-law, her grandson George Washington Parke Custis, and 40 of whom were the property of a neighbor, Penelope Manley French. Fourth, in accordance with the standard manner in which estates were then probated and are still now probated, all debts must always be discharged in full before any of the deceased’s bequests can be honored. There is no getting away from this. Fifth, in accordance with the manner in which estates were being probated at the turn of the 19th Century in Virginia, since the black beneficiaries counted as mere property, the entitlements of all white beneficiaries would need to be satisfied in full before any of the indicated manumissions could take place. At that time in that place, there was no getting away from this. Therefore, for George Washington to have set up an enforceable plan for the manumission of either 123 or 317 persons upon the eventual demise of his spouse Martha Washington, it would have been mandatory for him to have set up an escrow account and to have registered in that inviolate account moneys or properties at least equal in value to the lives of those 123 or 317 human beings. And this he did not even begin to do. Instead Washington expressed what amounted to good intentions in regard to the balance of the slaves over and above his crippled mulatto manservant William Lee. –And although there is ample extrapolative puffery, in fact we have no documentary record that any one of these 123 or 317 human beings became free upon the demise of the widowed Martha (the only documentary record we have is that Martha expressed considerable irritation upon hearing of the expectation these people had, that as soon as she was dead they would be set free):
[Ite]m[:] Upon the decease [of] my wife, it is my Will & desire th[at] all the Slaves which I hold in [my] own right, shall receive their free[dom]. To emancipate them during [her] life, would, tho’ earnestly wish[ed by] me, be attended with such insu[pera]ble difficulties on account of thei[r interm]ixture by Marriages with the [dow]er Negroes, as to excite the most pa[in]ful sensations, if not disagreeabl[e c]onsequences from the latter, while [both] descriptions are in the occupancy [of] the same Proprietor; it not being [in] my power, under the tenure by which [th]e Dower Negroes are held, to man[umi]t them. And HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
whereas among [thos]e who will recieve freedom ac[cor]ding to this devise, there may b[e so]me, who from old age or bodily infi[rm]ities, and others who on account of [the]ir infancy, that will be unable to [su]pport themselves; it is m[y Will and de]sire that all who [come under the first] & second descrip[tion shall be comfor]tably cloathed & [fed by my heirs while] they live; and that such of the latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable, or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the ag[e] of twenty five years; and in cases where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be ascertained, the judgment of the Court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate and final. The Negros thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses) to be taught to read & write; and to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of Orphan and other poor Children. and I do hereby expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth, of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the Survivors of them, to see that th[is cla]use respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm; seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the [u]ncertain provision to be made by individuals. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
In consideration of these pieces of information, does Friend Moses’s demanding interrogative, “Has General Washington freed his Negroes or has he not?” seem –to anyone other than this Charles Rappleye– to have been “off base” or “off target”? I would think not. It was an exceedingly pertinent issue, one that deserved not silence but the answer it did not ever receive, and even now is not receiving. As Friend Moses commented, if this general were to retain his slaves, such a fact would “indeed be a paradox to posterity.”
Should we put up with this sort of trade press book? I suppose we should, if the author is going to come to an important conclusion. But what conclusion does Rappleye draw from all the factoids he summons, true factoids mingled with a few false factoids? – Merely that this struggle between John and Moses, between vicious and greedy enslavers and generous and benign liberators, amounted to nothing but “sibling rivalry on a grand scale” (page 330). All this stuff we moderns think we believe about abolitionism being progressive and enslavement regressive is sheer irrelevance, for these black slaves and their anguish are mere stage props; what we have here is two white brothers “John and Mosie” taking center stage and chewing up the set scenery and relating to each other in the duke-it-out way that brothers relate to each other. “John was never going to cede to Moses the question of what was right and what was wrong.” Such an analysis being so simplistic as to be reductionist, the conclusion I would come to is that no, we should not put up with this sort of trade press book. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1785
Noah Webster, Jr. fulminated in defense of the western land claims of Connecticut, in a contest with Pennsylvania. The state lost this particular contest but would, eventually, win some “Western Reserve” lands. He declined an offer from George Washington that he tutor his stepchildren, explaining that writing was his “principal pleasure.” During this year and the following one he would be traveling extensively to further copyright legislation, while lecturing and selling copies of his publications to make money.
His travels would take him to New Haven, New-York, Baltimore, Virginia, and South Carolina. He would meet not only Washington but also Mrs. Aaron Burr, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin. While in New-York he perfected his scheme for a phonetic alphabet — Franklin in particular would be enthusiastic about this.
John Jay and Alexander Hamilton organized the New-York Manumission Society.
Jean-Antoine Houdon, commissioned by the legislature to execute a statue of George Washington, arrived at Mount Vernon; he made a life mask and painstaking measurements of Washington.
As you inspect the above piece of plaster, bear in mind please that it was probably in about this year that the mulatto slave West Ford was being born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Some speculate that he was the son of Washington with Venus, a daughter of a slave who had been one of George’s childhood playmates. The story is that during a visit by Washington to the plantation on which Venus was a slave during the previous year, this girl had been asked to serve as his bed companion.
Late in this year, Elkanah Watson purchasing a plantation in Edenton, North Carolina and four slaves, and engaged for a 2d time in a commercial enterprise with a merchant of Nantes, François Cossoul, who resided on the island of Haiti. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Returning to the US, Elkanah Watson met with George Washington to discuss a Potomac/Ohio River Canal. Washington was elected president of the Patowmack Canal Company. ELKANAH WATSON
Silas Deane drummed up support for a Lake Champlain/St. Lawrence Canal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1786
Back in France from Mount Vernon in Virginia, Jean-Antoine Houdon began work on his marble statue of George Washington. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Shays’ Rebellion, the post-Revolutionary clash between New England farmers and merchants that tested the precarious institutions of the new republic, threatened to plunge the “disunited states” into a civil war. The rebellion arose in Massachusetts in this year, spread to other former colonies, and would culminate in an abortive attack on a federal arsenal. Was the young nation to spin into civil war? The hostilities would wind down in 1787 with the election of a more popular governor, an economic upswing, and the creation of the Constitution of the United States in Philadelphia. Shays’ Rebellion troops, calling themselves “The Regulators,” passed through Ireland Parish (would eventually become Holyoke). The parish petitioned for separation from Chicopee Parish. In central Massachusetts, Shays’ Rebellion forcibly interrupted court systems. Princeton MA was one of the hotbeds of this dissension. Amidst the growing dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation, General George Washington corresponded with James Madison and others to consider how the federal government might be formally strengthened: I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country.... What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious. Massachusetts’s onetime Revolutionary agitator, Samuel Adams, was of similar opinion. It was OK for him to rebel against others but not OK for others to rebel against him: Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death. Thomas Jefferson, abroad, took a philosophical attitude. What’s a little bloodshed between brothers? A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. This was largely a class conflict between a merchant class that needed stability in order to profit from trans- Atlantic trade, as represented by Massachusetts’s two leading traders, James Bowdoin and John Hancock, who between them would hold the Governor’s office for the entire decade of 1780 to 1791, and hard-pressed agrarian producers who were constantly being threatened with foreclosure and high taxation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1787
For his contribution to calculations needed in the field of marine insurance, Sylvestre François Lacroix was the co-winner of the year’s Grand Prix of the French Académie des Sciences (he would, however, never receive this prize). When the Lycée failed for financial reasons, he again needed to move to the provinces. At the École d’Artillerie in Besançon he would be offering courses in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
Thaddeus Mason Harris graduated from Harvard College. Although through the influence of friends he was invited to become private secretary to General George Washington, an attack of the small pox would get in the way of his filling this position. For about a year he would make a study of theology while in charge of a classical school in Worcester. For a number of years he would be supplying articles for The Massachusetts magazine, or, Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment (Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews). NEW “HARVARD MEN”
Organization was begun following a paper given by Dr. Benjamin Rush at the home of Benjamin Franklin, entitled, “An Inquiry into the Effects of public punishment upon criminals and upon society.” Although the Quakers have always had a deep influence in Philadelphia, the organization would by no means be limited to Quakers. Dr. Rush for instance was a Unitarian, and Franklin wasn’t much of any religion. The President of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons for its first 40 years would be an Episcopal Bishop, William White.33
Since Franklin might be termed the grandfather of electroshock therapy on the basis of his early suggestion that persons suffering from insanity be shocked into sanity by the application of electricity, I will insert the following item here: in this year Dr. John Birch made the experiment of administering electroshock to a popular singer who was suffering from melancholia — after daily treatments for a month, he recorded, the singer was able to fulfil his engagements that summer “with his usual applause.”
Dr. Benjamin Rush was a member of the “Convention of Pennsylvania for the Adoption of the Federal Constitution.”
In this year Virginia was repealing its incorporation of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Fear of powerful and wealthy churches would induce the Virginia legislature to routinely refuse to incorporate any churches,
33. For those who wish to read more, there are two books by Dr. Negley Teeters of Temple University: THEY WERE IN PRISON, a history of the PA Prison Society, and THE CRADLE OF THE PENITENTIARY. Prior to this point, prison as punishment was not known. The motivation of the experiment was to create a substitute for corporal and capital punishment. This group promotes correctional reform and social justice to this day, although now it deems itself the Pennsylvania Prison Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
seminaries, or religious charities whatever. Such provisions for separation of church and state would make their way into the US federal constitution and would continue through a succession of Virginia constitutional revisions, into the 21st Century.
Franklin was again reelected President of Pennsylvania and went as delegate to the Philadelphia convention for the framing of a Federal Constitution. Here is an indication of the lifestyles of the people who attended this convention. Note that George Mason of Virginia, J. Rutledge of South Carolina, and George Washington of Virginia were three of the largest slaveholders in North America, and that in all, 17 delegates to this convention owned the lives of some 1,400 human beings: HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Franklin, who owned slaves and acted as a slave-trader in Philadelphia out of his print-shop, went to the constitutional convention in part as the official representative of the anti-slavery cause — and never once raised this vital issue. Fifty years later, when the sealed proceedings would be disclosed to the American public and it would be revealed that he had betrayed us in this fundamental respect, there would be the greatest outrage at his conduct, and a debate would begin which would be germane to the origin of our civil warfare, a debate as to whether the federal Constitution was a pact with Satan which ought to be dissolved. That is to say, the activities (or lack of activities, for he was possibly already on opium at the time) of Franklin at the constitutional convention would lead directly to the foundation of the Northern Disunionist faction. But he spent his valuable time at this important convention arguing for banal nonce items such as having several executives rather than one and one legislature rather than several. The more important stuff, that he was supposed to be talking about, was precisely what the guy wasn’t talking about. As a practical Pennsylvania politician he had found it was sometimes useful to ally with the local Quakers, if this helped him neutralize the Brit influence, and we may observe in the following quotation from his AUTOBIOGRAPHY not only this government’s general attitude toward people who have been pacified but also this “antislavery delegate” Franklin’s attitude toward people who have been negrofied: Ben Franklin’s “Autobiography”
One afternoon, in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. “Franklin,” says he, “you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like;” and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir’d the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn’d Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price.” “The governor,” says I, “has not yet blacked them enough.” He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip’d off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and plac’d it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir’d of the contest, and quitted the government.
We can get a glimpse, in the above, of how it would come to be that Dr. Franklin could go off to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as the designated representative of the civil rights people of his day — and then, precisely 50 years later, when the articles of secrecy the delegates had sworn to had expired, it would be discovered that this politician had betrayed the people he was supposed to be representing by uttering not one single word at any time during that convention in opposition to the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery.34 James Madison took very detailed minutes throughout the Convention, but they were subject to a secrecy READ MADISON’S NOTES
conspiracy to keep the electorate in the dark, with a sworn duration period of precisely 50 years, which was adhered to by all participants. Madison had turned over his notes on the Convention to George Washington, who kept them at Mt. Vernon, and Madison’s notes would not see the light of day until 1845. No member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would publish any account of the Convention’s important deliberations until two years after the death the last member of the Constitutional Convention, Madison, when the notes of Luther Martin of Maryland and of Robert Yates of New York would be published in 1838 as SECRET PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1787. NOTES OF ROBERT YATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
When Madison’s records were opened on schedule, there was the greatest outrage. We felt totally betrayed. A Northern disunion party of sorts originated, and would constitute one of the causes of the frictions leading eventually to the US Civil War. We found out, belatedly, suddenly, that our Franklin had gone to the convention in part as the representative of the anti-slavery position, and –old, terminally ill, possibly already under the influence of opium, desiring some peace in his time– he had simply sold us out. Our guy hadn’t even so much as raised the central issue of American slavery for discussion. We were so surprised, here we’ve got this slavemaster guy who used to keep the unwanted surplus slaves of his friends and business associates in a pen behind his print shop in Philadelphia, offering their bodies for sale to the highest bidder, and we trust him and we go and send him off to our constitutional convention to be our spokesperson against slavery — and we’re so surprised and we feel so betrayed fifty years after the fact! There’s now a book out that alleges that Ben more than any other human being was responsible for the American Revolutionary War. Per the book this was allegedly based upon his resentment at having been being fired as the colonial postmaster general, and publicly humiliated and scorned in Whitehall, on irrefutable charges having to do with the stealing of other people’s correspondence. Well, I don’t know about that issue — but, if I had to select out one American citizen who, more than any other, was responsible for the bloodshed of the US Civil War, I think I’d nominate Founding Father Benjamin Franklin for the honor. Well, maybe not. Anybody want to attempt to make a case for Nat Turner? Roger Taney?
Slavery is never directly mentioned in the US Constitution, although the document explicitly regard people coming into the nation from Africa to constitute cargo rather than to constitute prospective citizens. Also, Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. (Art. I, Sec. 2)
34. Yes, children, it was our trusted and revered Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, as much as any single American, who caused the bloodletting of our Civil War. Was the guy on drugs during this convention? —No, we don’t know for certain sure that he began his heavy use of opium before the year after this one. The only drug we can be quite certain he was on at this point, besides fatheadedness, was racism.
Son of so-and-so and so-and-so, this so-and-so helped us to gain our independence, instructed us in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.
Incidentally, in using the trope “peculiar institution” today we tend to make an implicit criticism of enslavement. Not so originally! In its initial usages, to refer to slavery as “peculiar” was not in any way to attack it but rather proclaim it to be defensible. “Peculiar,” in this archaic usage, indicated merely that the legitimacy of the system was based not upon any endorsement by a higher or more remote legal authority, but based instead upon the “peculiar conditions and history” of a particular district of the country and a particular society and a particular historically engendered set of customs and procedures and conventions. This trope went hand in hand with the Doctrine of States Rights, and went hand in hand with the persistence of the English common law. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
This is usually telegraphed by some comment such as “Our founding fathers believed that black people were 3 subhuman, and evaluated them as /5ths of a human being.” That would have been bad enough, but this section is open to another, more accurate, and more pejorist, interpretation. Consider the key words here, “Representatives ... shall be apportioned” in the light of the end of this paragraph, which assigns the number of representatives each state would have until the first census could be taken, and ask yourself the question “So, how many representatives does each state initially get in the US Congress? The formula that was used is that representation was proportional to population, except that only 60% of the slaves were counted. Representatives represent those who elect and re-elect them. Blacks, free white children, and free white women were not allowed to cast ballots. The proper critical question to ask of this passage would not be, Why 3 were slaves counted at only /5ths, when free white children and free white women were counted as whole units? The question would be, Why were they counted at all? Their inclusion in the census only served to inflate the representation of the free citizens of the slave-holding states. It certainly did nothing to promote the representation of the slaves in Congress. It could easily be demonstrated that the political interests of the free white men who were casting ballots had a significant amount of overlap in that period with the political interests of free white children and free white women, but it would be significantly harder to demonstrate a significant amount of overlap between the interests of slaveholders and the interests of their slaves. Of the actual voters in slave-holding states, how many held the same political opinions as the slaves? It might be a good guess that the answer is, close to zero. So why were these voters allowed extra representation, as if they could speak for 60% of the slaves? If we want to make a slogan of it, we shouldn’t 3 be saying that the founding fathers considered a slave to be /5ths of a person. We should be saying that they considered a slave a nonperson who increased someone else’s, the possessor’s, political worth by 60%. Bear in mind that what we are considering here is an era in which voting rights and property rights were still conceptually entangled — simply because in any event only men of property were entitled to cast a ballot.
3 3 Why /5ths? –Because on an average you can only get about /5ths as much work out of a slave, through a motivational system primarily consisting of punishments and the threat of punishment, that you can get out of a free person, through a motivational system primarily consisting of rewards and the prospect of rewards! 3 (Also, very practically, because both the North and the South were willing to compromise at /5ths whereas 5 the northern colonies would never have entered the Union had Southern slaves been weighed at /5ths and the 0 southern colonies would never have entered the Union had their slave property been weighed at /5ths.)
On the popular but quite incorrect interpretation of Art. 1 Sec. 2 of the US Constitution, whatever benefit 3 a population received from being counted, the slave population was to receive but /5ths of that benefit. On a more accurate interpretation, the slave population was to receive no positive benefit at all, or was to receive a negative benefit, from being thus counted, for you will notice that the benefit that accrues from 3 counting /5ths of the slave population is a benefit which is assigned to the free voting population of the same state, which is thus even more powerful — and even more capable of abusing those being held in captivity.
In a November 9, 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “The Electoral College, Unfair from Day One,” Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar would argue that intent of the Founding Fathers in creating the electoral college which was so perplexing us during the Bush/Gore presidential election, like their intent in creating the 3 /5ths rule, had been to protect America’s southern white men from the vicissitudes of majority rule: In 1787, as the Constitution was being drafted in Philadelphia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed direct election of the president. But James Madison of Virginia worried that such a system would hurt the South, which would have been outnumbered by the North in a direct election system. The creation of the Electoral College got around that: it was part of the deal that HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Southern states, in computing their share of electoral votes, could count slaves (albeit with a two-fifths discount), who of course were given none of the privileges of citizenship. Virginia emerged as the big winner, with more than a quarter of the electors needed to elect a president. A free state like Pennsylvania got fewer electoral votes even though it had approximately the same free population. The Constitution’s pro-Southern bias quickly became obvious. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800 against John Adams from Massachusetts in a race where the slavery skew of the Electoral College was the decisive margin of victory. The system’s gender bias was also obvious. In a direct presidential election, any state that chose to enfranchise its women would have automatically doubled its clout. Under the Electoral College, however, a state had no special incentive to expand suffrage — each got a fixed number of electoral votes, regardless of how many citizens were allowed to vote. With the assistance of abolitionist Quakers, in this year the newly freed slaves of the city of Philadelphia formed a Free African Society. The society was intended to enable mutual aid and nourish the development of a cadre of black leaders. The immediate cause of organization of this Free African Society was that in this year the St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia had segregated its colored members from its white communicants. Blacks to the back: African worshipers were sent to the church’s gallery. One Sunday as the African members knelt to pray outside of their segregated area they were actually tugged from their knees, so they understood that they needed to form this new society — and out of this came an Episcopalian group and a Methodist one. The leader of the Methodist group was Richard Allen, and from his group would derive in 1816 the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Pennsylvania enacted a gradual emancipation act providing that no child born in Pennsylvania after March 1, 1780 should be a slave. (It would still be possible to purchase and sell slaves in Pennsylvania after the passage of this act, and in fact we can find frequent sale ads in Pennsylvania newspapers as late as 1820. Pennsylvania slaves could not, however, any longer be legally sold out of the state. Anyone who was a slave prior to the passage of this Gradual Emancipation Act was still a slave for life, even if he or she had been a mere newborn infant as of February 1780. Slaveholders could still sell the time of young people born to slave mothers after 1780, subject to the ban on out-of-state sales, until they reached the manumission age of 28. Therefore, as late as the 1830 census, Pennsylvania still sported some 400 slaves. There were many conflicts over enforcing the law, including with slaveholders who attempted to transport pregnant slaves to Maryland so that a child would be born a slave rather than born merely a servant until the age of 28. Slaveholders initiated arguments about whether the grandchildren as well as the children of slaves would be bound to serve until age 28. “Sojourning” slaveholders from other states would raise issues of the status of slaves brought into Pennsylvania. “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 25, Friday-September: George Washington would be presiding at a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, during an intense July heat wave, after a child who had been given a charm died, authorities not having reacted, the woman who had in May been accused of sorcery would be stoned to death by her Philadelphia neighbors. WITCHCRAFT
June 10, Sunday: George Washington took a break from governmental proceedings and rode out “to see the Botanical Garden of Mr. Bartram, which though stored with many curious plants, shrubs and trees, many of which are exotics, was not laid off with much taste nor was it large.” BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1788
George Washington used the term “tow path” for what the British refer to as a towing-path, next to a canal.
Amidst growing dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation, General George Washington corresponded with James Madison and others to consider how the federal government might be formally strengthened.
An amendment to Pennsylvania’s manumission law closed loopholes, such as prohibiting a Pennsylvania slaveholder from transporting a pregnant woman out of the state so that her child would be born enslaved, and prohibiting a non-resident slaveholder such as George Washington from cheating by rotating his slaves in and out of the state to prevent them from establishing the 6-month Pennsylvania residency required to qualify for freedom. (This last point will become important to Oney Judge, this being the sneaky little thing he had played on her.)
If you have seen allegations concerning antisemitic remarks supposedly made by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, warning all Americans against the insidious influence of the Jews, please take into consideration that the primary authoritative source at present for the proceedings, Max Farrand (ed.) RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION, rev. ed., 4 volumes (New Haven and London, 1966, 1987) makes no reference to such antisemitic remarks by either the rural slaveholder Washington or the urban slaveholder Franklin. Washington’s tolerant attitude toward Jews is evidenced by a letter he would write to the leader of the Touro Synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island on August 17, 1790, in which he would say that the government of the US “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and requires only that those who live under the protection of the government “demean [which is to say, conduct] themselves as good citizens” (Edwin Gaustad, A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF AMERICA [NY, 1966], page 125). (Since this congregation of Jews was, among other things, investing in the international slave trade, here the definition of what constituted demeaning oneself as a good citizen was a quite lax one, involving merely the generation of profits.) As for Franklin’s attitude toward American Jews in 1787, in this very next year he contributed to a fund to help pay off the debt of the Jewish Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. The “text” of Franklin’s alleged remarks originated in a magazine Liberation on February 3, 1934 and then began to be reprinted by any number of Nazi and antisemitic groups. Charles A. Beard, in the Jewish Frontier for March 1935, demonstrated this to have been a fabrication. The matter was further investigated by Julian P. Boyd, in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXI (1937), 233-234, and he concurred that the text was an entire fabrication. For a more recent treatment, refer to Claude- Anne Lopez’s “Franklin, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Internet” as part of her MY LIFE WITH BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (Yale UP, 2000, pages 3-16). HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1789
At the age of about 16 Oney “Ona” Judge was made a body slave (attendant) to First Lady Martha Washington in the presidential households in New-York and then in 1790 in Philadelphia (the Washingtons brought to New-York not only Ona but also her older half-brother Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee, and then took to Philadelphia with the relocation of the national capital Ona, Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, “Postilion Joe” or Richardson, Hercules, and Richmond).
During this year 5 black male domestic servants would slip away from the John Brown mansion in Providence, Rhode Island and its associated workshops, going to Boston and attempting to merge into the free black community. Three of these 5 men, facing destitution, would soon return to slavery, promising their slavemaster that they would “behave better” in the future.
CONSTITUTION OF A SOCIETY FOR ABOLISHING THE SLAVE-TRADE. WITH SEVERAL ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURES OF THE STATES OF MASSACHUSETTS, CONNECTICUT AND RHODE-ISLAND, FOR THAT PURPOSE. Printed by John Carter. Providence, 1789. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
March 4, Thursday: At the 1st meeting of Congress, in New-York, the federal congress declared the United States Constitution to be in effect. The congress also adopted a “Resolution of the First Congress Submitting Twelve Amendments to the Constitution.” READ THE FULL TEXT
Conveniently, no laws in this city or state restricted slaveholding. In 1790, however, the national capital would need to transfer to Philadelphia for a decade while a permanent national capital city was under construction on the banks of the Potomac River. With the move, there would arise an uncertainty about whether Pennsylvania’s slavery laws would apply to officers of the federal government. By a strict interpretation of this Pennsylvania statute, only officers of the Congress could hold personal slaves there, but there were slaveholders among the officers of the Supreme Court, who were not members of the Congress, and the executive branch (which did not yet have a name), such as the President of the United States, George Washington. –How to bend this Pennsylvania statute so as to prevent the freeing of the personal slaves of these judges and administrators?
President Washington would argue privately that since his presence in Philadelphia was solely a consequence HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
of the city being the temporary seat of the federal government, this locale was for him a temporary work station at which he was on perpetual “per diem” or something, remaining a resident of Virginia not bound by this Pennsylvania law regarding slavery. The guy did know how to chop logic to his advantage! When his Attorney General, Edmund Randolph somehow misappreciated the Pennsylvania law, and his personal slaves were able to gain their freedom, he rushed to warn his President: you need to prevent your house slaves from establishing a continuous 6-month residency in Pennsylvania by rotating them out of the state. Atta boy, good little Attorney General! This was directly contrary to Pennsylvania’s 1788 amendment to its statute but the President (he was, after all, the father of his nation) would get away with it cold. He would continue to rotate his house slaves in and out of Pennsylvania throughout his presidency. He also made sure not to himself spend any 6 continuous months in Pennsylvania so that no-one could challenge his Virginia residency.
April 14, Tuesday: The secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson, arrived at Mount Vernon to inform George Washington of his election to the presidency, with John Adams as his vice-president. Washington accepted, and would be serving as President into 1797.
April 30, Thursday: George Washington was inaugurated in New-York, as good a place as any, and delivered his First Inaugural Address. He made nominations and appointments to fill new offices; he would work with Congress in formation of new departments; he would assist Congress in adoption of a laundry list of afterthoughts that would become our Bill of Rights.35
35. He had one tooth. It was a lower left bicuspid. In this year full porcelain dentures were beginning to cut into the market for individual teeth collected from battlefield corpses, but these cadaver teeth would still be used for half a century as replacements for individual teeth. Although Gorgeous George owned a number of sets of false teeth, it is not true that any of them were carved of wood. Some were of hippopotamus ivory and some were recycled human teeth. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Prexy Veep
1789-1797 George Washington No party John Adams 1789-1797
1797- 1801 John Adams Federalist Thomas Jefferson 1797- 1801
1801-1809 Thomas Jefferson Democratic- Aaron Burr 1801-1805 Republican George Clinton 1805-1809
1809-1817 James Madison Democratic- George Clinton 1809-1812 Republican [No “Veep”] April 1812-March 1813 Elbridge Gerry 1813-1814 [No “Veep”] November 1814-March 1817
1817-1825 James Monroe Democratic- Daniel D. Tompkins 1817-1825 Republican
1825-1829 John Quincy Adams Democratic- John Caldwell Calhoun 1825-1829 Republican
1829-1837 Andrew Jackson Democrat John Caldwell Calhoun 1829-1832 [No “Veep”] December 1832-March 1833 Martin Van Buren 1833-1837
1837-1841 Martin Van Buren Democrat Richard M. Johnson 1837-1841
1841 William Henry Harrison Whig John Tyler 1841
1841-1845 John Tyler Whig [No “Veep”] 1841-1845
1845-1849 James Knox Polk Democrat George M. Dallas 1845-1849
1849-1850 Zachary Taylor Whig Millard Fillmore 1849-1850
1850-1853 Millard Fillmore Whig [No “Veep”] 1850-1853
1853-1857 Franklin Pierce Democrat William R. King 1853 [No “Veep”] April 1853-March 1857
1857-1861 James Buchanan Democrat John C. Breckinridge 1857-1861
1861-1865 Abraham Lincoln Republican Hannibal Hamlin 1861-1865 Andrew Johnson 1865
1865-1869 Andrew Johnson Democrat / [No “Veep”] 1865-1869 National Union HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
October: George Washington, on his tour, visited the plant nursery of William Prince at Flushing on Long Island and was disappointed: “these gardens, except in the number of young fruit trees, did not answer my expectations. The shrubs were trifling, and the flowers not numerous.” BOTANIZING
October 30, Friday: George Washington, on his tour, was escorted into Ipswich where he received a short address, dined at the inn then kept by Mrs. Homan, reviewed a regiment mustered to do him honor, was visited by many, and departed for Newbury through lines of a multitude comprising both sexes of all ages, who had assembled to give him, with deep emotions of gratitude, a welcome and a parting look. Seldom was respect more heartily and deservedly rendered than it was on this occasion, they said, which was over in three hours.
November 4, Wednesday: George Washington visited Haverhill as part of his “triumphant circuit” through New England. On his return to New-York, Washington would choose Harrod’s Tavern on Main Street to spend his night, and report that he was impressed with the town as “the pleasantest village he had past through ... it has commercial advantages and beauty of location.” After this high praise from the father of their nation, the locals would designate their main meeting square in the center of town as “Washington Square.”
The Unitarian Richard Price preached, to the Revolution Society in London, “A Discourse on the Love of Our Country,” asserting that the American and French Revolutions were examples of Biblical prophecy fulfilled — and that meant the Millennium was at hand! HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
November 26, Thursday: This was the day which had been set aside as a national day of thanksgiving, by President George Washington, in regard to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.
The original beacon pole on Beacon Hill fell on this day (Charles Bulfinch would propose that it be replaced by a Doric column). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1790
At some point during the first part of this year, President George Washington paid another visit to Newport and its synagogue (it was not then known as the “Touro Synagogue”). He sat with the synagogue’s President (Parnas) in the place of honor on the raised platform at the side, inside a rail and separate from the congregation. While there, a Jewish inventor named Jacob Isaacs presented the President with a bottle of water which he represented to be drinking water converted by a special secret process from sea water. Sampling this bottle of water, the President expressed himself highly satisfied with the result.36
The primary purpose of the great white father, however, in visiting Rhode Island at this point, was to lean on local politicians to get the federal Constitution ratified: 1790. A State convention at Newport, in May, voted, to adopt the Federal Constitution; and this State came into the Union, the last of the original thirteen; and the event was commemorated by great public demonstrations of joy. The population of the town was 6380. President Washington again visited this town [Providence], with several distinguished public men in his suite. His arrival was announced by a discharge of artillery and the ringing of bells. A procession of citizens was formed, and he was conducted to the Golden Ball Inn, kept by Henry Rice, now the Mansion House. He was complimented by a public dinner, at which three hundred citizens attended. A very respectful and cordial address was made to him by a Committee appointed by the town, to which he suitably replied, and departed in the evening.
36. The first record of anyone trying a desalting process is actually to be found in Pentateuch. When Moses and the people of Israel came upon the waters of Marah, which were bitter, “the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast unto the waters, the waters were made sweet.” The earliest interest in desalination processes arose from the danger of dying of thirst on the open sea. The US would become involved in 1791 when a technical report would be presented by President George Washington’s Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, describing the results of a simple distillation process. Jefferson as head of the Board of Arts would call in a panel of chemists to test the submitted device and, when it could not be made to function as expected, he would deny the application for patent. Later, when desalination of small quantities of water would become feasible, information on the procedure to be followed would be printed on the back of all the papers on board American vessels so that a source of fresh water might be obtained in an emergency. Then, in a later timeframe, conversion units would begin to be manufactured so that steam ships would not need to fill cargo bays with casks of fresh water with which to refill their boilers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
In a French memoir of this year we find the following benevolently exploitative racial sentiment: It is perhaps not impossible to civilize the Negro, to bring him to principles and make a man out of him: there would be more to gain than to buy and sell him.
At about this time, a French captain of a sailing vessel, in reaction to news from Paris that some supporters of free mulatto slavemasters had organized a Société des Amis des Noirs, proclaimed himself to be “l’Ami des Hommes.” What this captain meant by his self-descriptive phrase we may infer as we peruse his ship’s manifest of cargo: slaves from Africa destined for the cane plantations of the French Caribbean. The man was captain of a negrero engaged in the international slave trade. The events that shook up Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France or in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were “unthinkable” facts in the framework of Western thought. Pierre Bourdieu defines the unthinkable as that for which one has no adequate instruments to conceptualize. He writes: “In the unthinkable of an epoch, there is all that one cannot think for want of ethical or political inclinations that predispose to take it in account or in consideration, but also that which one cannot think for want of instruments of thought such as problematics, concepts, methods, techniques.” The unthinkable is that which one cannot conceive within the range of possible alternatives, that which perverts all answers because it defies the terms under which the questions were phrased. In that sense, the Haitian Revolution was unthinkable in its time: it challenged the very framework within which proponents and opponents had examined race, colonialism, and slavery in the Americas.
Bear in mind that there was a peculiarity in the situation of the USA and of Haiti at this time. As has been commented on a number of times, “Americans had recently been rebels, were noted in the world as such, and knew it.” The USA, a democracy in a world still dominated by blood aristocrats, a republic in an era still ruled by absolute monarchs, was being considered an outlaw nation, a pariah state. Haiti, a nation 90% enslaved, by way of extreme contrast was being considered a model of perfect appropriateness and decorum!
In this year the free men of color in Haiti protested that they were “a class of men born French, but degraded by cruel and vile prejudices and laws.”
A Frenchman of this Saint-Domingue colony, where some 90% of the population was enslaved, wrote home HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
to reassure his wife and, perhaps, to reassure himself: “There is no movement among our Negroes.... They don’t even think of it. They are very tranquil and obedient. A revolt among them is impossible.”
This nation’s revolt against French rule gave George Washington a chance to put our own nation’s money where its heart was. The federal administration loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars to the French planters, to help them put down this revolt among their black charges.
Why did we behave in this manner? Well, bear in mind that the officially registered commerce of Haiti with France alone –leaving out of consideration all the trade with all the other countries and leaving out of consideration all smuggling– was equal to the total trade of the USA with all of the world. Haiti was one big deal. The US needed some 500 ships just for its trade with this one island, and that number was on the rise toward 600 and more! Before Thomas Jefferson imposed his embargo against all American shipping to the new black republic, the US had been this island’s most important trading partner. Commerce with this island was foundational to the economic prosperity of the New England and the Middle Atlantic states. This island received at least a tenth of all American exports. Only Great Britain itself received a greater percentage of our foreign commerce. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
President George Washington set duties on cannabis (hemp) to encourage a domestic industry. Thomas Jefferson termed this plant “a necessity,” and urged planters to grow it in preference to tobacco.
Here is a snuffbox that was crafted in approximately this year:
The logo reads “NATURE ET VERITE.” The image is that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. On the base of the box is a view of Rousseau’s island tomb surrounded by tall trees, inscribed “TOMBEAU DE JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU ... MORT A L’AGE DE 66 ENTERRE 4 JUILLET 1778.”
January 8, Friday: President George Washington’s First Annual Message to Congress.
April 20, Tuesday: President George Washington began a tour of Paumanok Long Island, dining with a Mr. Barre of New Utrecht.
March 21, Sunday: Thomas Jefferson arrived in New-York and reported to President George Washington to be made Secretary of State.
Canal engineer David Bates Douglass was born in Pompton, New Jersey to Deacon Nathaniel Douglass and Sarah Bates of Newark. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
April 21, Wednesday: Walton Felch was born.
President George Washington stopped at Hempstead to feed and water his horses, probably at Simmonson’s Inn, then continued on to Copaigue, stopping for dinner at the Zebulon Ketchem House. He spent the night at Squire Isaac Thompson’s home (Sagtikos Manor) in West Bay Shore.
April 22, Thursday: President George Washington rested at Samuel Green’s home in West Sayville. He continued on to Patchogue where he dined at Hart’s Tavern, before going on to spend the night at Austin Roe’s tavern in Setauket.
April 23, Friday: President George Washington tended to his horse at the Smithtown tavern of the widow Blydenburgh, dined at the Huntington home of the widow Platt, and stopped for the night at Daniel Young’s Cove Neck Road home in Oyster Bay.
April 24, Saturday: About this time, outbreaks of cholera were sweeping New-York and Quakers were occupied in raising funds to relieve intense suffering in that metropolis. On this day President George Washington, completing his tour of Paumanok Long Island, breakfasting with the miller Hendrick Onderdonck at Roslyn and touring his host’s grist and paper mills. He stopped for his midday meal at Flushing, visiting the Friends meetinghouse there, and continued on to Brooklyn, where he caught the ferry to Manhattan Island.
June 1, Tuesday: In Providence, Rhode Island there was a “drunken frolick through the streets” in celebration of the new Constitution, and in the evening “the India ship warren was Illuminated with lanterns & rockets were thrown from the great bridge.” READ THE FULL TEXT
During this month George Washington would give his support to a plan by which the new federal government would be assuming and funding the Revolutionary War debts of the several states. Congress would be choosing Philadelphia as the interim capital for the United States but, to assuage Virginia, which was the foremost opponent of this assumption of debt, the federal Congress would select a site on the Potomac River in Virginia for its permanent capital, to be occupied in ten years time.
July 16, Friday: George Washington signed the bill he had supported in June, by which the new federal government would assume and fund the Revolutionary War debts of the several states. Congress established the District of Columbia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Summer: William Wordsworth and Robert Jones were on a walking tour of France and the Alps. They landed at Calais just before the 1st anniversary of the July 14th liberation of the Bastille. As they sailed on the Rhone, they joined with a group of joyous delegates who were returning from the Federation fète in Paris. At this point the French revolution was still all sweetness and light and at this point Bill Wordsworth did not yet look like this:
Bill boy was still all sweetness and light. The American experiment was still all sweetness and light, as well. In the course of this hot season, George Washington would be eating his way through some $200.00 worth of ice cream brought down specially for him carefully packed in ice, from New-York.
We don’t have any comparable figure for Thomas Jefferson simply because he had his slaves make up the stuff for him locally, so in his case there aren’t such extant invoices. –But note that Jefferson wasn’t living low on the hog, either.
August 15, Sunday: President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson left New-York heading for Rhode Island.
Mercy Baker and Sukey Baker, twins, were born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 6th and 7th children of Jacob Baker, Jr. and Hannah Ball Baker. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
August 17, Tuesday: Il genio poetico appagato, a cantata by Giovanni Paisiello to words of Pagliuca was performed for the initial time, in San Ferdinando, Naples.
President George Washington had received a communication from Moses Seixas, warden (shamash) of the Touro Synagogue which he had visited in 1781, in Newport, Rhode Island, rejoicing in the religious liberty afforded by the United States.37 In reply the president sent the famous letter “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I.” which since has been taken as the classical expression of religious liberty in America. In this response Washington politely observed “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean [which is to say, conduct] themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support” (Edwin Gaustad, A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF AMERICA. NY, 1966, page 125 — this letter is preserved at the B’ai B’righ Building in Washington DC).
RHODE ISLAND RELIGION Note: If you have seen allegations concerning anti-Semitic remarks supposedly made by this politician general and by the politician printer Benjamin Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, warning all Americans against the insidious influence of the Jews, please take into consideration that the
37.It was Moses Seixas who officiated at the Covenant of Circumcision (B’rith Milah), removing the foreskin of the male infant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
primary authoritative source at present for the proceedings at this convention, Max Farrand (ed.) RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION (Revised Edition, 4 volumes, New Haven and London, l966; l987) makes no reference to any such remarks by either individual. ANTISEMITISM
As for Franklin’s attitude toward American Jews in 1787, in the very next year he contributed to a fund to help pay off the debt of the Jewish Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. The “text” of Franklin’s alleged remarks originated in a magazine Liberation on February 3, 1934 and then began to be reprinted by any number of Nazi and anti-Semitic groups. Charles A. Beard, in the Jewish Frontier for March 1935, demonstrated that this had to have been a fabrication. The matter was further investigated by Julian P. Boyd in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXI (l937), 233-234, who has concurred that the text was an entire fabrication. JUDAISM
August 18, Wednesday: After a very rough crossing of the Narragansett Bay, at about four in the afternoon, honored with a federal salute of thirteen cannons, “General George Washenton President of the United States landed at the lower end of the town [of Providence, Rhode Island] & walked up in grand procession to Mr Dagget’s tavern.” (According to the journal of Congressman Smith, this grand procession included three “negro scrapers” who were making “a horrible noise.”)
After dining that evening, President George Washington strolled uphill to the College of Rhode Island, which had been gayly illuminated by the students. READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT
November: President George Washington and Mistress Martha Washington brought eight of their domestic slaves to work in the President’s House in Philadelphia. Since the slave ledgers they kept at Mount Vernon generally failed to list the births or deaths of slaves, such information being of no particular importance, the ages we have assigned are approximate: • MOLL - 51, single, maid to Martha Washington and probably nanny to her grandchildren. • HERCULES (“Herculas,” “Uncle Harkless”) - late 30s, widower with three children (two at Mount Vernon), principal cook, reportedly one of the finest chefs in the country. • RICHMOND - 13, Hercules’ son, scullion (kitchen worker). • AUSTIN - early 30s, married with wife and five children at Mount Vernon, probably waiter for the family meals and part-time stable worker. • ONEY JUDGE - 16, single, half-sister to Austin, maid and body servant to Mrs. Washington. • GILES - early 30s, probably single, stable worker. • PARIS - 18, single, stable worker. • CHRISTOPHER SHEELS - 15, body servant to Washington, nephew of BILLY LEE, Washington’s previous body servant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Although George Washington is generally credited with “freeing his slaves in his will,” not one of these eight would ever receive a manumission document. Most of the slaves at Mount Vernon and the Washingtons’ other plantations, and in the President’s House in Philadelphia, actually were “dower” slaves, owned not by the Washingtons but by the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband. She had the use of them during her lifetime, and then, after her death in 1802 –upon her wish since she did not at all sympathize with their known desire to be free, a desire that to her had always been incomprehensible and preposterous– all approximately 150 of these dower slaves would pass into the ownership of her grandchildren. The slaves in the President’s House in Philadelphia slept in three distinct areas. We suppose that Hercules, Richmond, and Christopher slept in a room in the attic of the main house, while Moll and Oney slept with Mrs. Washington’s grandchildren in two rooms over the kitchen and Giles, Paris, and Austin slept in a room Washington had had created between the smokehouse and the stable, behind the kitchen. Within a year, George Washington would decide that Richmond was lazy, and that the teenage Paris had become insubordinate, and that Giles, so seriously injured that he could no longer ride a horse, had become useless, and the three would be sent back to Mount Vernon to labor under supervision. The total number of slaves the Washingtons had in Philadelphia was down from eight to five.
December 8, Wednesday: President George Washington’s 2d Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
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 1799 he would be authoring an exotic novel, LES NATCHEZ, that would not see publication until 1826.38
Colonel Timothy Pickering, Canandaigua lawyer Thomas Morris, the Reverend Kirkland, Horatio Jones, and Jasper Parrish negotiated with native headmen Red Jacket, Cornplanter, and Good Peter (the Indian preacher) and local tribes at New Town point (Elmira, New York). Nearly 500 Senecas encamped at Friend’s Landing on Seneca Lake. At the request of Good Peter, “Universal Friend” Jemimah Wilkinson made an appearance. Her topic was “Have We Not All One Father?” Good Peter’s sermon following her sermon, “Universal Friend” requested that his words be interpreted. Good Peter declined to provide this interpretation, commenting succinctly “if she is Christ, she knows what I said.”
Following this conference, a delegation of Seneca headmen set out to visit President George Washington at the nation’s capital, Philadelphia.
Noting “the great advantages which had resulted to Boston from the bank established there,” Moses Brown and John Brown helped a group of wealthy merchants found, and John served as the chief executive officer, and Moses served as a director of, the first bank in Rhode Island, incorporated in Providence and named the “Providence.” (During June 1865 this institution would be reorganized as a national bank and renamed the “Providence National Bank.”)
Four guys –Samuel Slater, and a woodworker, and an elderly black employee of the merchant Moses Brown, and the ironmaster David Wilkinson of Slater Mill in Pawtucket (meaning “waterfall”) near North Providence,– bankrolled by a 5th guy, said Friend Moses, and using the water power of the Blackstone River, with children working his “spinning jennies” in the production of yarn made of cotton from slave plantations, were at this point able to begin the farming out the large quantities of manufactured yarn to local women who were to work in their homes for piecework wages, weaving this yarn into cloth on consignment. The English thread-spinning technology had been duplicated entirely from Slater’s memory.
38. 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
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
This mill would begin to operate satisfactorily as soon as they had made a correction in the slope of the carder teeth he had specified.
(Obviously, our Bill of Rights was arriving, in this former colony that had been the very last to ratify the Constitution, not one instant too soon. :-) HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Water power would replace at least for the most part the brute labor that had been being provided by animal and human treadmills:
(The treadmill illustrated above was one in use for punishment at the Brixton House of Correction in 1821. Prisoners walked the treadmill for ten minutes and then had a five minute breather. Talking was forbidden. Although the treadmill at Coldbath Fields prison drove a flour-mill, in other prisons the power produced was not utilized. Of course, in factories the treadmill was not for punishment and the power was always utilized.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Mr. Samuel Slater was able to get his hands on eight children between the ages of 7 and 12 as his first work crew in his factory at Slater Mills, to tend his water-powered carding and spinning machines — machines which were utterly lacking in any safety guards over their power belts and pulleys. Clearly, the only families which would put their children to this sort of dangerous labor were families which were desperate to get food on their table and shelter over their heads. Get this, such children might otherwise be destitute and victimizable! Slater made no agreements that these children, who should have been in school, would be trained as apprentices in any craft: they were not indentured to learn a lifetime skill, but were to be mere low-wage machine fodder without a future, in his dark Satanic mill. You can visit this mill today. It’s right off the freeway but now it is deceptively lovely and lonely and silent there. There is nothing whatever about the place which might cause child abuse to spring to one’s mind.
Get ready, here comes the unholy alliance of “the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom”! By 1810 the United States would boast 87 such cotton mills, able to provide employment for 4,000 workers, some 3,500 of whom would be women and children who might otherwise be destitute and victimizable.39
We owe so much to technology and the profit motive! (Don’t let Adam Smith’s invisible hand slap you in the face. :-)
White imitation slaves are infinitely superior to black real ones, because there’s never any agitation to emancipate the imitation white ones — if they get old or sick or get caught in the machinery and injure themselves, you can just tell them to get lost!
By 1796 there would be three forges, a tanning mill, three snuff mills, an oil mill, a clothiers works, three fulling mills and two nail mills, at this falls on the Pawtucket River, all being run by water power rather than muscle power. Human workers were being allowed to use their brains rather than their brawn — isn’t that superior?
May: President George Washington was on his Southern Tour when the 1st six-month deadline approached, at which he needed to shuffle his house slaves out of the state of Pennsylvania for awhile to avoid their becoming free. He had brought Giles and Paris out of Pennsylvania with him in April. Therefore it was Austin and Richmond whom he sent back to Mount Vernon prior to the deadline to prevent them from obtaining freedom. Of course, they would have been given no idea what was going on, for them it was all “do as you are told.” Martha Washington took Oney Judge and Christopher Sheels to Trenton, New Jersey for two days to interrupt their Pennsylvania residency. Moll and Hercules wound up remaining in Pennsylvania for a couple days beyond the deadline before journeying back to Mount Vernon with the First Lady but, as nobody told them what was going down, they were unable to take advantage of this slip-up.
39. As Friend Moses Brown, Rhode Island’s premiere industrialist, had pointed out,
“As the manufactory of the mill yarn is done by children from 8 to 14 years old it is a near total saving of labor to the country.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
A proposal would be considered in the Pennsylvania legislature to amend its Gradual Abolition Act to exempt the personal slaves of all federal officers whether or not their owners were members of the legislative branch of the government, but as you may imagine this ran into some heated opposition from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Eventually the US Supreme Court would need to rule that Pennsylvania’s 1788 amendment to its Gradual Abolition Act was contrary to the federal constitution, in that it deprived citizens of their property without due process.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, William Godwin was planning AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON GENERAL VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS. It’s just as well that he didn’t know about any of this crap that was going down in our land of the free and home of the brave! GODWIN’S POLITICAL WRITINGS
May 2, Monday: President George Washington arrived in Charleston for a week’s visit. His itinerary would include lodging at the Daniel Heyward House (87 Church St.), a reception at the Old Exchange, and a social evening at McCrady’s Longroom (153 East Bay). A good time would be had by all.
Summer: President George Washington traveled through the Southern states.
October 25, Tuesday: President George Washington’s 3d Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1792
George Washington put in two substantial orders to the nursery of John Bartram, son of the 1st John Bartram.
Sagoyewatha “Red Jacket” visited Philadelphia to meet, along with 49 other Iroquois leaders, with officials of the US government. General George Washington presented him with a tomahawk, a peace pipe, and an oval silver medal.
October 13, Saturday: George Washington was absent when the Masonic ceremony was held for the laying of the cornerstone for the Executive Mansion in the District of Columbia, later to be called the White House (most of the rest of the work of construction there would be done by black slaves).
November 6, Sunday: President George Washington’s 4th Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1793
January 9, Wednesday: Above Philadelphia, our 1st successful balloon flight, by Jean-Pierre-Francois Blanchard, was witnessed by George Washington.
February 13, Wednesday: The electoral votes were counted and George Washington was unanimously re-elected to the presidency; John Adams elected vice-president.
March 4, Monday: French troops entered Geertruidenberg in Holland after its garrison of 950 surrendered.
President George Washington’s 2d Inaugural Address, in the Senate chamber of the Congress Hall of Philadelphia, amounting to 133 words: Fellow Citizens: I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America. Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.
September 18, Wednesday: President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the US Capitol.
Here is the Reverend J. Henry C. Helmuth’s notation for this day per his SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA FOR THE REFLECTING CHRISTIAN: “Went to the widow Wegman whose son has been sick since yesterday. Went to Morgan’s, his wife is sick, but better. Buried Eisenbrey. Visited a sick person in the Front— between Wirestr. and Ardbuckle Row. Was asked to come to Roler’s house, but the sick person was already dead. Visited Kraft’s, the daughter is dying. Spent a lot of time with the old Herzmann, who also lay down and wanted to write down his will. Visited Stucker’s, he had a heart attack and is dying. Buried the young Weissmann and Katto. Preached about how important and blessed it is to live with Jesus. Met D. Rush who is feeling well and confident. Felt bad myself. Lord, your will may be done!” PHILADELPHIA YELLOW FEVER HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
September 19, Thursday: Here is the Reverend J. Henry C. Helmuth’s notation for this day per his SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA FOR THE REFLECTING CHRISTIAN: “Visited Mrs. Strubelin — Stacker’s — Krafft and daughter. Smelled the breath of death for the first time since all this hardship began, was scared.” PHILADELPHIA YELLOW FEVER
November: President George Washington traveled to Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania to inspect lock construction on the Susquehanna and Schuylkill (Union) Canal. CANALS
December 3, Tuesday: President George Washington’s 5th Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1794
The Springfield armory was created by act of Congress, on a site originally recommended by George Washington not only for its abundant water power, but also for its strategic blocking of a main New England route for an invading army, and for the fact that the Connecticut River was shallow enough by this point that seagoing vessels would never be able to bombard it.
FIREARMS
Friend Moses Brown and Friend Samuel Rodman presented to President George Washington and Vice- President John Adams a memorial in opposition to the international slave trade. The federal Congress passed an act prohibiting the trans-Atlantic trade. (When officials of the Newport customs district would begin to enforce this law in the subsidiary port of Bristol, this would interfere with the nefarious activities of Rhode Island slavetraders James DeWolf and Shearjashub Bourne. The slavetraders would lobby the government for the establishment of Bristol as a separate customs district and no longer subject to these out-of-control officials of the Newport customs district — who were actually daring to enforce this new law.) 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 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
many.
The DeWolf Crest HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
George Washington recommended Harpers Ferry as the site for a new federal armory and arsenal. (The primary considerations in such a decision, of course, were transport, ease of defense, and power.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Under the leadership of the mulatto François Dominique Toussaint Louverture, 51, Jean Jacques Dessalines,
36, and Henri Christophe, 27, some 500,000 black and mulatto Haitian slaves rose against the 40,000 whites of the French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti) on Hispaniola, and then defeated a Spanish/English force sent to re-impose slavery upon the island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
November 4, Tuesday: Russian forces demolished all Polish resistance in the “Massacre at Praga” in which somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 Polish civilians were slaughtered. Maastricht surrendered to the French.
Giovanni Paisiello’s dramma per musica Didone abbandonata to words of Metastasio was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro San Carlo of Naples.
Upon the fall of Robespierre, in response to a belated appeal by American minister to France James Monroe, Thomas Paine was released from French prison — but he would go back to America harboring an enormous grudge against President George Washington for having previously neglected to intercede in France at a diplomatic level on his behalf, when he had the status of an American citizen being endangered by a foreign government.40
The understanding of Colonel Timothy Pickering, commissioner to the Native Americans, was that he had succeeded in soothed Indian feelings over the issues of Presque Isle and land along the Niagara River in upstate New York.
November 19, Wednesday: President George Washington’s Sixth Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union.
The 1st US/Canada boundary commission was created by Jay’s Treaty This treaty required withdrawal of British troops from US soil. READ THE FULL TEXT
40. Because he would go public with his complaint about the unfaithful conduct of the “father of our country,” who was because the ceremonial head of the nation was immune to all possibility of censure, Paine would be roundly excoriated and contemned by the American news media, for the remainder of his life, as a “dirty little atheist” –he was not, nor had he ever been, an atheist– and in fact he would be shot at in his own home in the countryside, from which danger and exposure he would need to flee to the anonymity of a city-flat hideout in New-York. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
December: Austin, one of George Washington’s slaves at the President’s House in Philadelphia, was allowed to return from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon to spend Christmas with his family, but while on this trip back home, he died. The total number of slaves the Washingtons had in Philadelphia was down from eight to four. There is documentation of escape attempts by three of the remaining four. Since Hercules was owned by Washington, he might have been freed in his will, but since Hercules’s late wife had been a dower slave, his children also were dower slaves, and thus would have remained enslaved. Richmond was implicated in a theft of cash for what may have been a planned attempt by the father and son to run away. Following Washington’s presidency Hercules did manage to escape at the last possible moment, somewhere between Philadelphia and Chester on the final trip back to Mount Vernon. Oney “Ona” Judge fled with help from other people of color in Philadelphia, as the Washingtons were preparing to sojourn in Virginia between sessions of Congress. Her mistress Martha had let her know that she was to be given as a wedding present, to the First Lady’s granddaughter. Judge would recall in an 1845 interview: “Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.”
Henry Wiencek reports in AN IMPERFECT GOD: GEORGE WASHINGTON, HIS SLAVES, AND THE CREATION OF AMERICA (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003) that Washington who could not tell a lie concocted a fiction that she had been stolen from him by a Frenchman, in order to legitimate use of illegal means in his search to recover her and force her return to his household (evidently this fiction was concocted on the basis of a popular novel that Martha had just been reading). When this fugitive from injustice was tracked down in New Hampshire, she attempted to negotiate with her white master to return if she too could be freed in his will — but of course the father of our nation refused to bargain about such a thing. Christopher seems to have known how to read and write after a fashion, since Washington discovered notes in which he was outlining his plot to escape from Mount Vernon. Ona is the only one of the eight whose whereabouts would be traceable after Mrs. Washington’s death. She would settle in New Hampshire, have a family and live a long life, and would be interviewed by abolitionist newspapers in the 19th century. Hercules would never be found or heard from again. The fate of the rest, of Hercules’ children, and of those of the late Austin (all dower slaves) is not known. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1795
In the Virginia colony of the North American seaboard, a white planter named George Washington was advertising for the capture of one of his slaves, who had escaped from his plantation. The planter stipulated for some reason, however, that this advertisement should not appear north of Virginia.
The Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker died in Virginia.
NATHANIEL WHITAKER, son of David Whitaker, was graduated [at Harvard College] in 1730. After being some time employed as a minister at Norwich in Connecticut, he went to England in 1765 or 1766, accompanied by Sampson Occum, the first Indian educated by the Rev. Mr. Wheelock, afterwards President of Dartmouth College, to solicit donations for the support of Mr. Wheelock’s school “for the education of Indian youth, to be missionaries and school-masters for the natives of America.” He was installed July 28, 1769, over the 3d Church in Salem. In 1774 his meeting- house was burnt, and a division in his society took place. He and his friends erected a new house, and called it the Tabernacle Church in 1776; but, difficulties having arisen, he was dismissed in 1783, and installed at Canaan, Maine, September 10, 1784. He was again dismissed in 1789, and removed to Virginia, where he died.41
41. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
In his Message to Congress of this year, George Washington delivered some thoughts on race relations in America:
It is necessary that we should not lose sight of an important truth which continually receives new confirmations, namely, that the provisions heretofore made with a view to the protection of the Indians from the violences of the lawless part of our frontier inhabitants are insufficient. It is demonstrated that these violences can now be perpetrated with impunity, and it can need no argument to prove that, unless the murdering of Indians can be restrained by bringing the murderers to condign punishment, all the exertions of the Government to prevent destructive retaliations by the Indians will prove fruitless and all our present agreeable prospects illusory. The frequent destruction of innocent women and children, who are chiefly the victims of retaliation, must continue to shock humanity.
I had to read this a couple of times before it sank it, what this privileged white father was saying to other privileged white fathers from the bully pulpit. The thing that enabled me to break the racial code was realizing that the only relationship that Washington was envisioning, between a white female and a non-white male, was rape and slaughter. Washington was saying, without saying, that unprivileged white men were going out on “village raids,” and raping and slaughtering non-white people, just as had happened near Walden Pond in 1676, and that privileged white men needed to protect white women by forcing unprivileged white men to discontinue this practice. Yet, we notice, Washington offered no effective plan to achieve this race-oriented objective by this class-oriented means, he merely offered that for reasons of race relations the American white upper class needed to bring more firmly under control the American white lower class.
“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
George Washington posed for the Gilbert Stuart portrait now on our dollar bill.
March 3, Tuesday: Congress approved and George Washington thereafter signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, opening the Mississippi River to American navigation and setting the boundary between the United States of America and the Spanish colony of Florida at the 31st parallel. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
August 18, Tuesday: George Washington signed Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain, which forced the British to evacuate western forts as stipulated in the Paris peace treaty of 1783. This treaty would stabilize American-British relations until the War of 1812.
December 8, Tuesday: President George Washington’s 7th Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1796
Jean-Antoine Houdon’s white marble statue of George Washington was placed in the rotunda of the Virginia capitol building, Richmond. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
George Washington coined the term “administration” for the executive branch of the government during his years of service as President: “In reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error.” READ THE FULL TEXT
The dentist Jean Pierre Le Moyer pulled George Washington’s last tooth. When he needed teeth for his dentures, George had been supplying his dentist with the teeth of his slaves. He did pay his slaves for these healthy teeth pulled from their gums and in one of his 1784 account books we find a entry in the amount of 122 shillings that he had disbursed for 9 teeth from “Negroes.”
As the Washingtons were sitting in the dining room of their home on High Street in Philadelphia chewing away happily at their supper, Martha Washington’s personal slave, a woman named Oney Judge known familiarly as “Ona,” with the aid of Philadelphia’s free black community, was seizing this opportunity and stealing herself away to the freedom of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
(But Martha was so nice, such a sweet lady, why would anyone ever want to run away from her? Ona left no Farewell Address To Our Nation explaining her conduct, but she did comment later, while living in old age and poverty in New Hampshire, to the effect that a moment of freedom was better than a lifetime of enslavement — something like that or more or less in that vein.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
May 21, Saturday: Oney “Ona” Judge escaped from the home of the President of the United States of America in Philadelphia.
(The site from which Ona made her escape, on High Street, now houses our Liberty Bell! You will discover no commemorative plaque at this locale, noticing and commenting upon such an intimate relationship between our American slavery and our American liberty and our American sense of irony.)
(Speaking of commemorative plaques, you will notice also, of course, that although at least 2,400 racist lynchings have been documented in the United States of America, as yet in point of fact there are precious few roadside markers commemorating such events, the very 1st such roadside marker having been dedicated only in 1999 on US Highway 78 near Monroe, Georgia — and this sign is entirely undecipherable and unalarming unless you actually get out of your car and walk right up to it and put on your reading glasses! We are such a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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very selective people.)
May 24, Tuesday: George Washington took out an advertisement in The Pennsylvania Gazette about his slave Oney “Ona” Judge who had recently escaped from the President’s House in Philadelphia. She had “no provocation” for doing this (being enslaved isn’t provocation). We’ll pay you $10 if you will help this light mulatto girl return to her home here with us:42 Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy hair. She is of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed, about 20 years of age. She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently recollected to be described — As there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her design is; but as she may attempt to escape by water, all masters of vessels are cautioned against admitting her into them, although it is probable she will attempt to pass for a free woman, and has, it is said, wherewithal to pay her passage. Ten dollars will be paid to any person who will bring her home, if taken in the city, or on board any vessel in the harbour; — and a reasonable additional sum if apprehended at, and brought from a greater distance, and
42. We are at liberty to imagine on the basis of this advertisement, that such circumstances were not considered at the time to be even the least little bit embarrassing. Hmmm. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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in proportion to the distance. FREDERICK KITT, Steward. May 23 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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June 3, Friday: Captain John Bowles was in the business of sailing his sloop Nancy back and forth between Portsmouth and the federal capital in Philadelphia, bringing leather products such as harnesses, bridles, and saddles to be sold in the stores of New Hampshire. On this day his sloop arrived back in New Hampshire and he was advertising his cargo and announcing an intention to sail again on June 25th (he made these circuits monthly). We don’t know that Oney Judge arrived with him on this late May circuit or whether she would remain in hiding until the Washingtons left town and then sail north on his late June circuit or his July circuit. Captain Bowles must have been aware he was helping a fugitive slave but we are not sure he was informed she belonged to somebody as connected and determined as American Commander-in-Chief George Washington (since harbouring and abetting runaways was considered in the same category as horse theft, if caught out a plagiarist might well meet the same fate).
Summer: Summer 1796: Seemingly having arrived at safe haven in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the escaped mulatto Oney “Ona” Judge was recognized on the streets of Portsmouth by Elizabeth Langdon, teenage daughter of Senator John Langdon and a friend of Ona’s obligate white childhood “playmate” during her childhood in slavery, Nelly Custis.43
July 20, Wednesday: Thomas Paine’s initial over-the-top letter to President George Washington, describing how he had been left to rot, an American citizen, in a French prison. (The American people would never forgive Paine for this offense against the august dignity of their fatherly leader.)
Mungo Park reached Ségou (which is presently in Mali) on the Niger, which he would follow downstream for 80 miles to Silla. Eventually he would arrive at Kamalia in Mandingo country, where he would lie for seven months dangerously ill with fever.
September 19, Monday: George Washington arranged publication of his farewell address (although this was in the form of an oration, actually it was never delivered by voice), which appeared in the Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser on September 19, the day of his departure from that city for Mount Vernon. READ THE FULL TEXT
Richard Harlan was born in Philadelphia, son of a farmer and merchant.
October-December: George Washington was in Washington, District of Columbia –the new federal city– taking care of business.
43. Amazing, isn’t it, how like real life the childhood game of “hide-and-seek” can become! HDT WHAT? INDEX
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November: Richmond, son of Hercules the Washington family’s slave cook in Philadelphia, was implicated in the theft of some cash at Mount Vernon. President Washington inferred from this that Hercules and Richmond were plotting an escape from enslavement. Therefore, when Washington would return after Christmas with his staff of personal servants from the new seat of federal government in the District of Columbia to the existing seat of federal government in Philadelphia, he would leave his cook behind, assigning him and his son as farm laborers.
7th of Twelfth Month: At the Peel Meeting, Friend Luke Howard and Friend Mariabella44 Eliot were wedded according to the manner of the Religious Society of Friends. He was 24, she 27. The couple’s first child, Mary, who would become an invalid and would die during the spring of 1816, would be born during Eleventh Month, 1797. Their second child, Robert, would be born in 1801. Their third child, Elizabeth, would be born during First Month, 1803. Their fourth child, Rachel, would be born during Seventh Month, 1804. Their fifth child, John Eliot, would be born in 1807. An infant Mariabella would die of whooping cough at eighteen months. Their youngest, Joseph, would be born in 1811.
President George Washington’s 8th Annual Message to Congress.
44. Because Mariabella had a cousin who also was named Mariabella, the cousin was customarily referred to as “Maria” while she was customarily referred to as “Bella.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1797
January: In New Hampshire, Oney Judge met and got married with Jack Staines, a free black sailor. Their marriage
was listed in the town records of Greenland and published in the local newspaper. In the 7 years before the husband’s death this union would produce 3 children: • Eliza Staines (born 1798, died February 14, 1832, New Hampshire, no known offspring) • Will Staines (born 1801, death date & location unknown, no known offspring) • Nancy Staines (born 1802, died February 11, 1833, New Hampshire, no known offspring) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The minutes of Rahway and Plainfield Monthly Meeting show that in the next month the case of the older mulatto worshiper Cynthia Miers was resumed, and in the following month she was received into membership. Friend John Hunt, who served on the committee, wrote of the decision as having been held back 20 years though there had never been anything to prevent her acceptance other than the color of her skin.45 There was that felt which raised the testimony in this respect, over all opposition, although the spirit of prejudice which had been imbibed on account of colour, had kept it back above twenty years within which time, [many or] divers black and mulatto people have requested to have a right among Friends, but till now have been [rejected and] put by, on account of their colour.
Among those who spoke in favor of admission were two foreign Quakers, Martha Routh of England and Jean de Marsillac of France. Friend Martha described the event as follows: At this season the further consideration of admitting black people into membership with friends, was revived; and a large committee was appointed wherein concerned women friends were admitted. Their weighty deliberations felt to me evidently owned of Truth; the result whereof was, that no distinction of colour should be an objection when such as requested to be joined to us, appeared to be convinced of the principle we profess. This being spread before the Yearly Meeting was united in, without a dissenting voice. Here is a Silhouette of Public Friend Martha Routh (1743-1817), as she appeared when she was visiting the New World:
Friend Stephen Grellet of France, later to become well known, was 23 years of age and attending annual
45. The data elements for this series on the acceptability of persons of mixed race as Quakers are from Henry Cadbury’s “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends” in The Journal of Negro History, Volume 21 (1936), pages 151-213. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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meeting for the first time, having just joined the Society. He wrote in his characteristic evangelical language: The Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion that any people of colour, becoming convinced of our principles, and making application to be received as members of our society, ought to be treated as white persons, without any distinction on account of colour, seeing that there is none with God, who has made all nations of the earth of one blood and that Jesus Christ has died for all, and is the saviour of all who believe in Him, of whatever colour or nation they may be.
Evidently there had been other cases of applicants of color and evidently these also had been delayed for many years. Not very many Negro members were immediately accepted on the basis of this Yearly Meeting ruling once it was embodied in the Book of Discipline. For nearly a century, rather than being generally distributed, this had been a mere manuscript kept by one member of each Monthly Meeting; in this year, however, arrangements were made for printing it, and so in the first printed form of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Discipline the outcome of the decision on Cynthia Myers came to be embodied in a paragraph under “Convinced Persons” ending “The said meetings are at liberty to receive such (persons) into membership, without respect to nation or color.” This paragraph would remain in the Discipline not only until the separation of 1828 but in each branch of Friends in every edition for nearly a century longer, and would then mysteriously disappear. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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February 22, WednesdayAs the slave cook Hercules escaped from the kitchen at Mount Vernon to Philadelphia, he was obliged by these straited circumstances to leave behind his 6-year-old daughter (since her mother Alice was a dower slave of Martha Washington, even when her father would be made free by virtue of George Washington’s will, she would still remain a dower slave of Martha –and indeed would remain enslaved for her entire life– and she would need to struggle to maintain her love for an absent father who had been obliged to abandon her to this life).
Kitchen slaves of course will always sneak enough to adequately nourish themselves, but at Mount Vernon the other slaves were being allowed merely one peck of Indian maize per week per adult for their sustenance, plus a half of a peck per week for each of their children. In addition each of these slaves were receiving 20 small salt herring per month. They were being permitted to supplement their diets by keeping small personal gardens but were not being permitted to keep fowl or pigs.
Their only taste of meat during the year would arrive at harvest time. But we’re very sure that had these slaves applied themselves harder, or worked smarter — we want to believe that George and Martha, such fine folks, would have been very willing to allow them more food, or nicer food!
March 4, Saturday: George Washington retired after 8 years of service as President and John Adams delivered his Inaugural Address. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1798
Eliza Staines was born to Jack and Oney Judge Staines in New Hampshire.
Frederick Kitt, house steward to the Washingtons at Mount Vernon, informed the white family that their escaped cook Hercules was living in Philadelphia.
July: In wake of the XYZ affair and deteriorating relations with the new government of France, George Washington came out of retirement to accept a nominal position as Commander In Chief of the American armies preparing for the impending conflict. War, however, would be averted by the Adams administration.
September: Burwell Bassett Jr., a nephew of George and Martha Washington, traveled to New Hampshire on business and tried to convince Oney Judge Staines to return with him. By this point, she was married to the free seaman Jack Staines who was away at sea, and was the mother of the infant Eliza. She of course refused to return to Virginia with him. Bassett was Senator Langdon’s houseguest, and in the course of a dinner revealed his plan to kidnap her and return her securely to her enslavement at Mount Vernon. (I have no idea whether Burwell’s plan contemplated his kidnapping also her newborn Eliza Staines, who would likewise under existing law have been born as Martha’s dower property — but wouldn’t it have been unthinkably cruel to tear this newborn infant from its mother’s breast and abandon it in New Hampshire to starve?) This time Langdon helped Ona, secretly sending word for her to immediately go into hiding. Bassett was obliged to return to Virginia without her. Although George and Martha Washington could have used the federal courts to recover Staines — the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act which he had signed into law required a legal process to return an escaped slave over state lines and any such court case would be part of the public record and would attract unwelcome attention.
With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth issued LYRICAL BALLADS. Coleridge’s contributions included “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Nightingale.”
The publication may function for us to illustrate the nature of our culture’s myth of sole authorship, for it appeared without any author’s name attached to it. Within this volume several references of the prefatory Advertisement were to monolithic constructs such as “the author,” “his expressions,” “his personal observation,” “his friends,” and to “the author’s own person,” yet the volume included poems bearing the titles “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Tintern Abbey” which we now routinely ascribe to different British poets. There would be subsequent editions, in 1800, in 1802, and in 1805, in which the prefatory materials HDT WHAT? INDEX
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would mention “the assistance of a Friend,” but the title page would be extended only to mention “By W. Wordsworth” and the name “S.T. Coleridge” would nowhere appear. Only in 1817 would Coleridge obtain credit for his “The Ancient Mariner” and “The Nightingale” and other poems. Why was this? —For two overlapping reasons, neither of which has to do with Wordsworth wanting to take undue credit for another’s productions. First, in a very important respect the affiliation between these two poets and their writerly collaboration was so intense that in a very important manner a number of these poems actually were co- authored, and, second, the myth of solitary genius which was prevalent in those days, a myth inherited from the legitimation myth current for sacred scripture, and the myth of undivided authorial authority which was prevalent in those days, a myth inherited from the legitimation myth current for kingship or sole-leader status (Führerprinzip), were so overwhelming, that they simply had to be deferred to as the default understanding
This famous book, which included Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” introduced Romanticism into England. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In this month the boy friends, and Dorothy Wordsworth, went together to Germany to learn of Herr Professor Immanuel Kant’s Transcendental idealism. Coleridge would prepare himself in Germany to argue, for the benefit of his friends in England, that as soon as we knew enough about universal science, and the manner in which attractive and repulsive forces created a web of interactions throughout nature, both our ideas about matter and our ideas about deity would be seen as subsumed within one simple explanatory structure, as “different modes, or degrees in perfection, of a common substratum.” This would impress almost everyone. Coleridge, in Germany in this year and the next, would be studying under Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the professor of natural history who had in the 1770s classified the human races into 28 varieties and attributed the differences between these varieties to varying sorts of degeneration or deterioration on account of influences of gender, of geography, or both gender and geography, from a uniform originary white male standard. However, while Herr Professor Blumenbach had thus laid the groundwork for the Nazi racial thinking which would come later by coined the term “Caucasian,” the term “Aryanism” had not yet come into being and he presumed Semites to be a portion of his honorable white race.46 As [Martin] Bernal has argued in one of the most interesting parts of [BLACK ATHENA: THE AFROASIATIC ROOTS OF CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION. VOLUME I, THE FABRICATION OF ANCIENT GREECE 1785-1985 (London: Free Association Books, 1987, page 220)], the curious and disturbing fact is that the rise of professional scholarship and the transmutation of knowledge into the different forms of academic disciplines, decisively established at the University of Göttingen (founded in 1734) and then in the new university of Berlin and elsewhere, was intimately bound up with the development of racial theory and the ordering of knowledge on a racial basis. As [Edward W.] Said observes, “What gave writers like [Joseph Ernest] Renan and [Matthew] Arnold the right to generalities about race was the official character of their formed cultural literacy” [ORIENTALISM: WESTERN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ORIENT (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, page 227)]. The blunt fact that has even now not been faced is that modern racism was an academic creation. What we are dealing with here is the dominance of racial theory so widespread that it worked as an ideology, permeating both consciously and implicitly the fabric of almost all areas of thinking of its time. This racialization of knowledge demonstrates that the university’s claim to project knowledge in itself outside political control or judgement cannot be trusted and, in the past at least, has not been as objective as it has claimed; the university’s amnesia about its own relation to race is a sign of its fear of the loss of legitimation.
46. Refer to THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL TREATISES OF JOHANN FRIEDRICH BLUMENBACH [1775-1795], edited and translated by T. Bendyshe and published by the Anthropological Society in London in 1865. Young, Robert J.C. COLONIAL DESIRE: HYBRIDITY IN THEORY, CULTURE AND RACE (London: Routledge, 1995, page 64). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1799
Up to this point 6 out of every 7 immigrants to the New World had come not from Europe but from Africa. On their 8,000-acre estate in Virginia, George and Martha Washington between them owned 314 of these new Americans!
September 1, Sunday: At this point the slavemaster George Washington had been informed of Oney Judge Staines’s hidey-hole in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for he wrote Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to have her captured and returned to enslavement by ship. At Wolcott’s request Joseph Whipple, Portsmouth’s collector of customs, would interview this escaped mulatto and report back to him. The kidnap/capture plan would need to be abandoned, Whipple warned, because should news of such an abduction leak out there would be an instant riot on the docks by all the local supporters of the abolition of the American institution of life servitude. Bad publicity for the father of his nation! Although Whipple refused to remove this escapee against her will, he relayed to Wolcott that she was offering to return voluntarily to the household of her slavemasters — if they would merely pledge to free her upon their deaths rather than make her the property of their grand- daughter Nelly Custis, her childhood playmate. ... a thirst for compleat freedom ... had been her only motive for absconding. — Joseph Whipple to Oliver Wolcott, October 4, 1796
An indignant Georgibus would himself find the time in his busy schedule to respond to Whipple: I regret that the attempt you made to restore the Girl (Oney Judge as she called herself while with us, and who, without the least provocation absconded from her Mistress) should have been attended with so little Success. To enter into such a compromise with her, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissible, for reasons that must strike at first view: for however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference [of freedom]; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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December 14, Saturday: During his lifetime George Washington had suffered intermittently from an ailment that he himself had termed consumption (we now know “consumption” as pulmonary tuberculosis). On this day he died of a throat infection (referred to at the time as quinsy) after making a tour of Mount Vernon on horseback during severe winter weather, and after being bled several times by his physician.
“For 2400 years patients have believed that doctors were doing them good; for 2300 years they were wrong.”
— David Wootton, BAD MEDICINE: DOCTORS DOING HARM SINCE HIPPOCRATES, Oxford, June 2006
No ministers were called to his deathbed and no prayers were offered. Although he had provided in his will that upon the death of his wife Martha the family’s slaves were to be manumitted, and although this will instructed his executors to set up a special fund for the support of aged and infirm former slaves (lucky slaves, to be the property of a truly swell guy :-) — there has been no evidence as yet uncovered that the executors of his will actually ever did any of this. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Famous Last Words:
“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853
1794 George Jacques Danton he had been convicted of not having “Show my head to the people. made adequate use of the guillotine It is worth seeing.”
1798 Giovanni Casanova having spent his life collecting sequen- “I have lived as a philosopher and died tially and in tandem 132 pubic scalps as a Christian.”
1799 George Washington fearing being buried alive (a common “’Tis well.” fear for that period), he was being heartily reassured by his physician
1806 Charles Dickinson he was dueling with Andrew Jackson “Why have you put out the lights?”
1809 Thomas Paine his physician asked whether he wished “I have no wish to believe on that subject.” to believe Jesus to be the son of God ... other famous last words ... HDT WHAT? INDEX
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December 17, Tuesday: News of the death of former president George Washington, three days earlier, reached New- York.
December 18, Wednesday: The body of George Washington was placed in the family tomb at Mount Vernon (in 1831 all remains in this structure would be transferred to the inner vault of a new such tomb; it seems possible that the remains of West Ford, reputed to be Washington’s only son, would be placed after his death in 1863 not in the slave graveyard on the plantation but in the emptied old family tomb).
In his 1799 will George Washington had directed that his 124 slaves be manumitted, although this action would not be carried out until January 1, 1801 and the 153 or so “dower” slaves at Mount Vernon would remain enslaved.
December 29, Sunday: Because the French closed the port of Genoa, Antonio Paganini found himself without work and relocated to the port city of Livorno — taking his son Nicolò with him.
Across the new American nation, sermons on this Sunday morning consisted of commemorations of founding father George Washington (those that succeeded in being the most grandly fulsome would be published). For instance, the Reverend John T. Kirkland, minister of the New South Church in Boston and eventual president of Harvard College (that is, until forced to resign), orated:
The virtues of our departed friend were crowned by piety. He is HDT WHAT? INDEX
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known to have been habitually devout. To Christian institutions he gave the countenance of his example; and no one could express, more fully, his sense of the Providence of God, and the dependence of man. “When I contemplate” said he “the interposition of Providence as it was visibly manifested in guiding us through the revolution, in preparing us for the reception of a general government, and in conciliating the good will of the people of America to one another after its adoption – I feel myself oppressed and almost overwhelmed with a sense of the divine munificence: I feel that nothing is due to my personal agency in all these complicated and wonderful events, except what can simply be attributed to the exertions of an honest zeal for the good of my country.”
Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s namesake son Erasmus Darwin drowned himself (or so it seemed) in the River Derwent at the foot of his garden at the age of 40. When Dr. Darwin saw the corpse he asked his other children not to view it. Mrs Darwin and I intend to lie in Breadsal church by his side. Charles Robert Darwin would observe that prior to the suicide there had been some behavioral changes, such as indecision and lethargy, indicative of a temporary insanity: The immediate cause of his death was the attempt to settle some accounts. His confidential clerk told one of Dr. Darwin’s stepsons that Mr. Darwin had been working for two nights, and when urged in the evening of December 29th to take some rest and food, he answered with a most distressed expression, holding his head, “I cannot, for I promised if I’m alive that the accounts should be sent in to-morrow.” Early in the night of the same day he could bear his misery no longer, and seems to have rushed out of the house and, leaving his hat on the bank, to have thrown himself into the water. He was probably conscious of some mental change, for he purchased, six weeks before his death, some land near Lincoln, and the small estate of the Priory, near Derby; and he intended, at the early age of forty, to retire from business, so as to spend the rest of his days in quiet; or, as my grandfather, who could not have foreseen what all this foreboded, expressed it (in a letter to my father, November 28th, 1799), “to sleep away the remainder of his life.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1800
The Reverend Abiel Holmes’s THE COUNSEL OF WASHINGTON, RECOMMENDED IN A DISCOURSE.
The Scottish Rite of Freemasons was formed in Charleston, South Carolina. The Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris’s THE FRATERNAL TRIBUTE OF RESPECT PAID TO THE MASONIC CHARACTER OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (Charlestown: Printed by Samuel Etheridge). Also, his BEAUTIES OF NATURE DELINEATED, OR, PHILOSOPHICAL AND PIOUS CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE WORKS OF NATURE, AND THE SEASONS OF THE YEAR SELECTED FROM STURM’S REFLECTIONS, BY THE REV. THADDEUS M. HARRIS (Charlestown: Printed and sold by Samuel Etheridge). Also, his A DISCOURSE, DELIVERED AT DORCHESTER (Charlestown: Printed by Samuel Etheridge).
January 7, Tuesday: Millard Fillmore, who would become 13th President (1850-1853) of the United States of America, was born.
In Providence, Rhode Island, the death of George Washington on December 14, 1799 was being “solemnized with a great display of funeral ceremonies.” 1800. The death of Washington was solemnized with a great display of funeral ceremonies, on the 7th of January, which day was intensely cold. The bells tolled through the day; a vast procession was formed, consisting of the military corps, the incorporated societies, municipal officers, and youths in all the schools, with appropriate badges, and a long train of citizens and strangers. Minute guns were fired while the procession was in motion. Col. George R. Burrill delivered an eloquent eulogy in the Baptist meeting-house. The interior of the house was shrouded in black drapery. The mournful retinue again formed, and proceeded to St. John’s Church, where, after an address from the Rector, Rev. Mr. Clark, the bier was deposited under the church. Throughout the day, a solemn gloom pervaded the whole town. In George Washington, greatness and goodness were combined: this whole people were his beneficiaries; and now, they mourned his death with feelings of awakened gratitude, with an unfeigned and heart-felt sorrow, like that of affectionate children, who mourn the death of a beloved and venerated parent. The General Assembly passed an act for the establishment of Free Schools. It had been long urged in the newspapers of this town, but the Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers were the immediate operatives in this good work, and a reference of their memorial to the Legislature produced a favorable report. This town was immediately divided into four districts, and four schools were established therein, and the masters first appointed were John Dexter, Moses Noyes, Royal Farnum and Rev. James Wilson. The schools were permanently continued by the town, notwithstanding the State law was repealed in 1803, and in 1819 the fourth district on the West side was divided, and a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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fifth district established. The salaries of the preceptors was $500 each, of the ushers $250. The General Assembly in 1828 passed a new act to establish public schools; and this town then ordered primary schools in each district, to contain the youngest children, and to be kept by females; and a school for colored children was opened the same year.
January 11, Saturday: Paul Revere, Dr. John Warren, and Dr. Josiah Bartlett wrote on behalf of their Grand Lodge of the Masons to Martha Washington for a lock of her dead husband’s hair. They would preserve this in an urn fashioned of gold by Revere.
January 12, Sunday or 13, Monday: “Parson” Mason Locke Weems wrote to his publisher, Matthew Carey, in Philadelphia, a few weeks after the death of George Washington: Washington, you know, is gone! Millions are gaping to read something about him. I am very nearly primd & cockd for ’em. 6 months ago I set myself to collect anecdotes of him. You know I live conveniently for that work. My plan! I give his history, sufficiently minute — I accompany him from his start, thro the French & Indian & British or Revolutionary wars, to the Presidents chair, to the throne in the hearts of 5,000000 of People. He would prepare for publication an 80-page patriotic pamphlet, initially titled A HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH, VIRTUES AND EXPLOITS, OF GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON (also, THE LIFE AND MEMORABLE ACTIONS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, GENERAL AND COMMANDER OF THE ARMIES OF AMERICA). This bio of the founding father who would not make himself our king would become one of the first great best-sellers in American literature — yet this soi-disant “Parson” would persist in referring to himself as a “ragged Mother Carey’s chicken.” This initial telling did not contain the story of the cherry tree about which little Georgie couldn’t lie, a confabulation which would not appear until the 5th edition. (One wonders how many American liars that ingenious fable has interrupted, or enabled, over the years!)
Weems would continue with seriously flawed short biographies of Benjamin Franklin,47 General Francis Marion, and Friend William Penn.
February 9, Sunday: Napoléon Bonaparte ordained ten days of mourning in the French army, following news of the death of George Washington.
47. Incidentally, our best evidence that Franklin did not pun to John Hancock, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, that if they did not hang together they would assuredly hang separately, is the fact that in the collection of mostly spurious anecdotes presented by Mason Locke Weems, this particularly specious anecdote had not yet made its appearance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 5, Tuesday: According to the newspaper, a young lad who used to be named Billy, one of the Mount Vernon house servants, a bright mulatto with dark blue eyes who had been given the name Marcus, had absented himself without leave, and it was suspected that he was going to try to pass himself off as one of the slaves of the recently deceased George Washington, who was about to be set free in accordance with the general’s famous will. However, Billy had not been one of the husband’s slaves but one of Mistress Martha Washington’s slaves and would be therefore a slave for life — and hence and any such story he might tell to that effect, would be a self-serving lie.
Shame on this lad for trying to steal from a widow!
September: The Monthly Magazine and American Review reacted to “Parson” Mason Locke Weems’s new popular inexpensive biography of Founding Father George Washington with derision, deeming it to constitute: eighty pages of as entertaining and edifying matter as can be found in the annals of fanaticism and absurdity. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1801
January 1, Thursday: The Dutch East India Company was dissolved and the Netherlands East Indies became a Dutch colony.
In his Palermo observatory, Giuseppe Piazzi became the 1st person to discover an asteroid. He would name this object Ceres (Ceres had been the Roman goddess associated with Sicily).
Although on this day the 124 personal slaves of the deceased George Washington were formally and collectively manumitted, in all likelihood the escaped cook Hercules, by this time living covertly in New-York, would never learn that he had thus become free, and would never qualify for his own personal freedom document.
The Act of Union of Great Britain (England + Scotland) and Ireland came into force, with the 3-cross Union Jack hoisted on the Tower of London to the firing of guns as the official flag of that United Kingdom. Hereafter, the nation would be styled The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the 3-cross Union Jack its symbol. George III assumed the title King of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Parliament was abolished — theoretically, but of course only theoretically, two islands were to form one nation. For instance, due to this union, it began to be a flaming question in British politics whether any Catholic would ever be allowed to hold any government office.
The 1st census put the population of England and Wales at 9,168,000, of Britain at nearly 11,000,000 (75% rural) — the Irish population meanwhile was at 5,000,000. London, population 864,000. Paris, population 547,000.
December 15, Tuesday: We know from a letter by Martha Washington that she had learned that the escaped cook Hercules, who had on January 1st become legally free by the terms of her late husband’s will, was living in New-York. (We don’t know that she did anything to let Hercules know that he had become a free man, and we don’t know that she passed along any information about his relatives who were still enslaved at Mount Vernon — such as Hercules’s daughter by his wife Alice.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1802
Along the Roanoke River in Virginia, slave boatmen plotted servile insurrection.
The mulatto slave West Ford, whom some consider to be the only son of George Washington, was brought to Mount Vernon with his new owner, Bushrod Washington. At Mount Vernon, West would be befriended by Washington’s old valet, the crippled mulatto William Lee whom Washington had manumitted in his last will and testament, and would wind up as the caretaker of Washington’s original tomb. Refer to http:// www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm.
Nancy Staines was born to Jack and Oney Judge Staines in New Hampshire.
May 22, Saturday: Martha Dandridge Custis Washington died. Upon her death her “dower” slaves reverted to the Custis Estate and would be divvied up among the Custis heirs, her grandchildren. Oney Judge Staines would thus remain a “dower” all her life and legally her children also, property of the Custis Estate. The fact that their father, Jack Staines, was a free man, was an irrelevancy under slavery law in which the condition of the children followed the condition of their mother. Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed such property rights of slaveholders. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 — passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by Washington — established the legal mechanism by which a slaveholder could recover his property. The Act made it a federal crime to assist an escaped slave or to interfere with his capture, and allowed slave-catchers into every U.S. state and territory. Following Washington’s 1799 death, Ona probably felt reasonably secure in New Hampshire, as no one else in his family was likely to mount an effort to take her, but legally she and her children would remain fugitives until their deaths (her daughters would predecease her by more than a decade, and it is not known what became of her son).
September 24, Friday: John Barnes of Georgetown wrote to Thomas Jefferson at Monticello that the “uprising of Negroes in Washington has subsided.” SERVILE INSURRECTION
October 30, Saturday: Thomas Paine arrived back in America, landing aboard an American warship in the port of Baltimore. His friends had taken good care of his property and he was still considered very wealthy. People had forgotten his work as a revolutionist and because of his AGE OF REASON he came to be regarded as an atheist, and nevertheless President Thomas Jefferson (who had personally arranged the free passage aboard that warship) would invite Paine to the White House. Paine would live in seclusion in his cottage in New Rochelle NY,48 concentrating on his writings against the Federalists (such as several attacks upon the deceased George Washington) and against religious superstitions.
48. The cottage is now occupied by the Huguenot and New Rochelle Historical Association, and the Thomas Paine National Historical Association has a museum nearby at which if you should for some reason want to, you can view Paine’s wallets, his glasses, his watch, and his gloves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1804
On the mulatto slave West Ford’s 21st birthday, he was given manumission papers and a sketch was made of his appearance. Refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm. GEORGE WASHINGTON
In Tidewater Virginia, Robert Carter III, the great emancipator who had begun to free his roughly 500 slaves in 1791, at this point died, and the process of manumission of all slaves on all his plantations was brought to completion. “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
In Rhode Island the main point of white concern in regard to manumission was, ever and always, who was going to pay for the maintenance of the manumitted black slave, should that slave turn out to have been granted his walk-away papers on account of age or illness, or other incapacity to make himself useful to his white owner. The governing impulse was that the black people existed only for the benefit of the white people, and most definitely not ever vice versa: The support provisions of the 1784 emancipation law allowed slave owners to escape any further financial responsibility for slaves under forty years of age whom they manumitted, which threatened to leave too many “old” slaves in their thirties to the support of the towns. A 1785 revision [“An Act repealing Part of the Act respecting the Manumission of Slaves,” RI General Assembly, October 1785], reiterated in 1798 [“An Act relative to Slaves, and to their Manumission and Support: part of the revision of the Public Laws of the State of Rhode-island and Providence Plantations,” RI General Assembly, January 1798], lowered the age of eligibility for unencumbered emancipation to thirty. Apparently some town councils, faced with rising costs for pauper support, refused to allow slave owners to manumit even eligible slaves, leading to the passage of an 1804 act providing for an appeal procedure by slave owners “aggrieved” by recalcitrant councils [“An Act in Amendment of the Act, entitled, ‘An Act relative to Slaves, and their Manumission and Support,’” RI General Assembly, March 1804]. In other words, an HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
aging slave population that would not be replenished either by birth into slavery or by importation, which had been outlawed in Rhode Island in 1774, presented an increasing financial liability, and many slave owners sought to manumit their slaves before they would be obligated to support them in their old age. The large number of manumissions may have led the slaves themselves to interpret these provisions as the “General Emancipation” act that Brown describes. Undoubtedly most slaves saw freedom under any circumstances as good news — though not all did, as Brown wryly observes, noting that a few “declared their masters had been eating their flesh and now they were going to stick to them and suck their bones.” At the first federal census in 1790, there were 427 free people of color and 48 slaves living in the city of Providence, a city of about 6,400. By 1810, four years before William Brown was born, the number of free people of color had risen to 865, just about 8.6 percent of the population of about 10,000, and the number of slaves had fallen to 6. Yet there were still 5 slaves in Rhode Island and 1 in the city of Providence in 1840, according to the Fifth Federal Census, and it was only the new state Constitution of November 1842 that finally abolished slavery entirely in Rhode Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1805
When George Washington’s dentist, John Greenwood, returned from Europe he brought with him a keg of human teeth to be implanted in American mouths. (These teeth for implanting used to come from cadavers, from poor people selling their perfect teeth, and, even before Waterloo, from battlefields.) THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
September 30, Monday: Earlier in this month Jame Hubbard, a black slave in Thomas Jefferson’s plantation nail factory, had attempted to file a personal declaration of independence — but had soon been recaptured.49
Clearly, by this point in time the proponents of this Jefferson slaveholding plantation master as a national politician were exaggerating the uniqueness and importance of his role in the creation of the Declaration of Independence for the Continental Congress, for John Adams, who had served on that drafting committee, had
begun wondering: “Was there ever a coup de theatre that had so great effect as Jefferson’s penmanship of the Declaration of Independence?”50 From Adams’s point of view Jefferson’s role had been a mere scribal one and had not come anywhere close to sole authorship. In his biography of George Washington which began to be released volume by volume during this year, while discussing the proceedings at the Continental Congress, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall buried in a footnote a tepid recognition that in regard to the Declaration “the draft reported by the committee has been generally attributed to Mr. Jefferson.”51
49. During Jefferson’s florut as an adult slaveholder, more than 40 such escapes from his hilltop plantation Monticello would be attempted! 50. This was in a letter to Benjamin Rush which appears in Schultz, John A. and Douglass Adair, eds., THE SPUR OF FAME: DIALOGUES OF JOHN ADAMS AND BENJAMIN RUSH, 1805-1813 (San Marino CA: 1966), page 43 51. Marshall, John. THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. Philadelphia PA, 1805-1807, Volume II, footnote to page 377 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Christmas Eve: An odd-jobs man, disgruntled over something or other and well aware that Thomas Paine was generally condemned as “that atheist who had criticized President George Washington,” took a shot at him through a window of his rural cottage — and like Lee Harvey Oswald trying to pot-shot the ex-general, narrowly missed.
This “atheist” accusation would be one that would persist. For instance, Theodore Roosevelt, in an adversarial conversation with John L. Lewis, would term Paine a dirty little atheist.
Dirty Little Atheist
The fact is, however, that Paine was no more an atheist than he was dirty or little.52 Had President Roosevelt known anything about Paine, he would not have made such a judgment. Had Franklin Delano Roosevelt, however, known anything about Thoreau, had he understood anything about the “fear of fear” sound byte that he lifted from Waldo Emerson’s ill-considered gloss of Thoreau’s JOURNAL, he might well have termed Thoreau a dirty little atheist. He would have been right about one of the three epithets at least: Thoreau was indeed of smaller than average stature, for an American. Now, you may wonder how it was that Thomas Paine acquired the reputation he acquired, as an atheist, since he was the son not only of an Anglican mother but also
52.Consult Robin McKown’s THOMAS PAINE, published in 1962. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
of a Quaker father,
My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceedingly good moral education.
and since as a Deist he could repeatedly and loudly proclaim his belief in God:
I believe in one God and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.... My own mind is my own church.
The answer is that this came about in the public reaction of 1794-1796 to his THE AGE OF REASON, which he wrote while in prison in Luxembourg — imprisoned because he had urged the French to reason with their king, Louis XIV, rather than merely off with his head. He had sided with the Girondists, the party of moderation at that time, and had been excused for this by the more extreme French politicians on the grounds that, a known Quaker, he must be considered to be opposed in principle to any use of violence — but then he had passed utterly out of bounds even for a non-violenter, by trying to intercede for their king. (During the revolution of the American colonies of England, also, he had tried to persuade Americans to attempt to reason with their British monarch, at a time when it was not really in anyone’s agenda to be reasonable.)
It is true that Thomas Paine never joined the Quakers, and that in fact he criticized the Quakers. As a Deist, he said that
The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part, thereof, is that professed by the quakers; but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system.
Now, this sounds very Thoreauvian. Thoreau never charged the Quakers with contracting themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system, but he might well have had he thought it, and might well have said it had the occasion presented itself. Also, it is true that Paine did not really think that Quakerism was a bona fide part of that nasty thing, Christianity:
The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1806
A new edition, the 5th, of “Parson” Mason Locke Weems’s patriotic bio of George Washington, grown to a fullsize book and retitled THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, WITH CURIOUS ANECDOTES LAUDABLE TO HIMSELF AND EXEMPLARY TO HIS COUNTRYMEN, contained the 1st recounting of the story of the cherry tree about which little Georgie couldn’t lie. (One wonders how many American liars this ingenious fable has interrupted, or enabled, over the years!) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1807
In accordance with Quaker practice, the Hopkins family in Anne Arundel County, Maryland manumitted the slaves on its tobacco plantation “Whitehall.” This meant considerable sacrifice — such as no funds for the higher education of their son Johns Hopkins.
Following Oney Judge’s escape, her younger sister Delphy had been substituted as the wedding present to Martha Washington’s granddaughter Eliza Custis. In this year Eliza Custis Law and her husband manumitted Delphy and her children. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1809
The 9th edition of “Parson” Mason Locke Weems’s THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, WITH CURIOUS ANECDOTES LAUDABLE TO HIMSELF AND EXEMPLARY TO HIS COUNTRYMEN, which had grown to 228 pages, continued to include the fabulation about the hatchet and the cherry tree, but distanced it by presenting it as a story told about young George Washington by an “old lady”: “When George,” said she, “was about six years old, he was made the wealthy master of a hatchet! of which, like most little boys, he was immoderately fond, and was constantly going about chopping every thing that came in his way. One day, in the garden, where he often amused himself hacking his mother’s pea-sticks, he unluckily tried the edge of his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry-tree, which he barked so terribly, that I don’t believe the tree ever got the better of it. The next morning the old gentleman finding out what had befallen his tree, which, by the by, was a great favorite, came into the house, and with much warmth asked for the mischievous author, declaring at the same time, that he would not have taken five guineas for his tree. Nobody could tell him anything about it. Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance. George, said his father, do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry-tree yonder in the garden? This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself: and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of an all- conquering truth, he bravely cried out, “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” — “Run to my arms,; glad I am, George, that you killed my tree; for you have paid me for it a thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son, is worth more than a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits of purest gold.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1815
February 22, Wednesday: Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft gave birth to a daughter, two months premature.
A large concert was given in Boston with massed choirs and instrumentalists, to celebrate George Washington’s birthday and the Treaty of Ghent. The event would inspire the founding of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society. The American sailors being held in the prison complex on the Devonshire moor near Plymouth, England marched in their yard in celebration of this birthday (it may have been upon this occasion that the impromptu black band from #4 performed “Yankee Doodle” to the annoyance of watching British officials). IMPRESSMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th 22nd of 2nd M / The Mail this eveng Brot the Treaty of peace & the Presidents Proclamation which puts to rest all doubt & question that peace is really concluded between England & America. This is an Era of the World very remarkable. all Christian Powers are now at Peace - no War exists between any of them & May this state long continue & prove a forerunner of that great Day long ago predicted even to the Nations of the Earth shall learn the Art of War no MORE. — The Bells have rung HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
all day & in the evening many houses were illuminated. I am thankful the Nation is at peace & as thankful that the mode of rejoicing practiced by the people is over 5th day 23rd of 2nd M 1815 / The morng being very cold the travelling bad & my H being quite unwell I got into a Sleigh with David Williams & His daughter Mary & rode to Portsmouth to attend the Monthly Meeting & in going I have seldom suffered more with the cold. The travelling being hard & our Horse dull made us late at Meeting - We met our Friends Jonathon Chase & D Brayton & Jonathon & Hannah Dennis were concerned in lively testimonys — We had much buisness in the last meeting but were favord to get along with it to pretty good satisfaction & in good season. — We dined at Uncle S Thurstons in company with Jonathon & Daniel who have nearly accomplished their visit to the families of Friends in this Monthly Meeting We took our leave of them & rode home much more comfortably than we rode out the weather having moderated & the road become Smoother. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1825
On his triumphal tour of the United States of America, Lafayette visited the state house in Raleigh, North Carolina. There he inspected the Antonio Canova statue of George Washington that had been commissioned in 1818 (remarking that it more closely resembled him than Washington).
Antonio Canova’s Roman-clad statue of Washington would be destroyed by fire in 1831. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
February 22, Tuesday: Der Holzdieb, a singspiel by Heinrich August Marschner to words of Kind, was performed for the initial time, in Dresden Hoftheater.
“The Triumphs of Liberty,” the prize ode to the memory of former president George Washington authored by schoolmaster Ebenezer Bailey, was recited by Mr. Finn at the Boston Theatre and would be printed in Boston by Cummings, Hilliard, & Company. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
The Triumphs of Liberty. SPIRIT of freedom, hail ! — Whether thy steps are in the sunny vale, Where peace and happiness reside With innocence and thee, or glide To caverns deep and vestal fountains, ’Mid the stern solitude of mountains, Where airy voices still prolong From cliff to cliff thy jocund song, — We woo thy presence: Thou wilt smile upon The full heart’s tribute to thy favorite Son, Who held communion with thee, and unfurl’d In light thy sacred charter to the world.
We feel thy influence, Power divine, Whose angel smile can make the desert shine; For thou hast left thy mountain’s brow, And art with men no stranger now. Where’er thy joyous train is seen Disporting with the merry hours, Nature laughs out, in brighter green, And wreathes her brow with fairy flowers: — Pleasure waves her rosy wand, — Plenty opens wide her hand, — On Rapture’s wings, To heaven the choral anthem springs, — And all around, above, below, Exult and mingle, as they glow, In such harmonious ecstacies as play’d, When earth was new, in Eden’s light and shade. But not in peaceful scenes alone Thy steps appear, — thy power is known. Hark ! — the trump ! — Its thrilling sound Echoes on every wind, And man awakes, for ages bound In leaden lethargy of mind: He wakes to life ! — earth’s teeming plains Rejoice in his control; He wakes to strength ! — and bursts the chains Whose rust was in his soul ; He wakes to liberty ! — and walks abroad All disenthrall’d, the image of his God. See, on the Andes’ fronts of snow The battle-fires of Freedom glow Where triumph hails the children of the sun, Beneath the banner of their Washington. Go on, victorious Bolivar! Oh ! fail not — faint not — in the war Waged for the liberty of nations ! Go on, resistless as the earthquake’s shock, When all your everlasting mountains rock Upon their deep foundations. And Greece, — the golden clime of light and song, Where infant genius first awoke To arts and arms and godlike story, — Wept for her fallen sons in bondage long: She weeps no more ; — Those sons have broke Their fetters, — spurn the slavish yoke, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
And emulate their fathers’ glory. The Crescent wanes before the car Of liberty’s ascending Star, And Freedom’s banners wave upon The ruins of the Parthenon. The clash of arms rings in the air, As erst it rung at Marathon; — Let songs of triumph echo there! Be free ! ye Greeks, or, failing, die In the last trench of liberty. Ye hail the name of Washington ; pursue The path of glory he has mark’d for you. But should your recreant limbs submit once more To hug the soil your fathers ruled before Like gods on earth, — if o’er their hallow’d graves Again their craven sons shall creep as slaves, When shall another Byron sing and bleed For you ! — oh, when for you another Webster plead! Ye christian kings and potentates, Whose sacrilegious leagues have twined Oppression’s links around your States, Say, do ye idly hope to bind The fearless heart and thinking mind? When ye can hush the tempest of the deep, Make the volcano in its cavern sleep, Or stop the hymning spheres, ye may control, With sceptred hand, the mighty march of soul. But what are ye? and whence your power Above the prostrate world to tower, And lord it all alone ? What god — what fiend — has e’er decreed, That one shall reign, while millions bleed To prop the tyrant’s throne? Gaze on the ocean, ye would sway : — If from its tranquil breast, the day Shine out in beams as bright and fair As if the heavens were resting there, Ye, in its mirror surface, may See that ye are but men; But should the angry storm-winds pour Its chainless surges to the shore, Like Canute, ye may then, A fearful lesson learn, ye ne’er would know, — The weakness of a tyrant’s power, — how low His pride is brought, when, like that troubled sea, Men rise in chainless might, determined to be free. And they will rise who lowly kneel, Crush’d by oppression’s iron heel, They yet will rise, — in such a change as sweeps The face of nature, when the lightning leaps From the dark cloud of night, While heaven’s eternal pillars reel afar, As o’er them rolls the Thunderer’s flaming car, — And in the majesty and might That freedom gives, my country, follow thee, In thy career of strength and glorious liberty. Immortal Washington ! to thee they pour A grateful tribute on thy natal hour, Who strike the lyre to liberty, and twine Wreathes for her triumphs, — for they all are thine, HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Woo’d by thy virtues to the haunts of men, From mountain precipice and rugged glen, She bade thee vindicate the rights of man, And in her peerless march, ’t was thine to lead the van. Though no imperial Mausoleum rise, To point the stranger where the hero lies, He sleeps in glory. To his humble tomb, — The shrine of freedom, — pious pilgrims come, To pay the heart-felt homage, and to share The sacred influence that reposes there. Say, ye blest spirits of the good and brave, Were tears of holier feeling ever shed On the proud marble of the regal dead, Than gush’d at Vernon’s rude and lonely grave, When from your starry thrones, ye saw the Son He loved and honor’d, weep for Washington ! As fade the rainbow hues of day, Earth’s gorgeous pageants pass away : Its temples, arches, monuments, must fall ; For Time’s oblivious hand is on them all. The proudest kings will end their toil, To slumber with the humble dead, — Earth’s conquerors mingle with the soil, That groan’d beneath their iron tread, And all the trophies of their power and guilt, Sink to oblivion with the blood they spilt. But still the everlasting voice of fame Shall swell, in anthems to the Patriot’s name, Who toil’d — who lived — to bless mankind, and hurl’d Oppression from the throne, Where long she sway’d, remorseless and alone, Her scorpion sceptre o’er a shrinking world. And though no sculptured marble guards his dust, Nor mouldering urn receives the hallow’d trust, For him a prouder mausoleum towers, That Time but strengthens with his storms and showers, — The land he saved, the empire of the Free, — Thy broad and steadfast throne, TRIUMPHANT LIBERTY ! HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1827
July 4, Wednesday: This 4th of July was quite a celebration of American freedom — this was the final full day of slavery in the state of New York!
The steamboat Chautauqua went into service, with John T. Wills as captain.
On South Mountain near Boonsboro, Maryland there is a monument believed to be the 1st erected to the memory of George Washington — and believed also to have been dedicated on this day.
George Washington Parke Custis’s “The Indian Prophecy: A National Drama in Two Acts” had its Philadelphia premiere at the Chestnut Street Theater.
The Ohio and Erie Canal opened in Cleveland as Governor Allen Trimble arrived there on the lead boat, State of Ohio.
Fall: The Reverend Waldo Emerson was preaching in various Unitarian churches in various Massachusetts towns. He would be serving as what was known as a “supply” preacher into 1829. He would be delivering his supply, which amounted to about 26 different sermons in all, almost 200 times. In November he would substitute for his cousin, the Reverend Orville Dewey, at the New Bedford First Congregational Church (Unitarian) make up largely of Hicksite Quakers. He would note that Mary Rotch, one of the prominent members of this group of attenders, had during the rite of the Last Supper quietly absented herself from the church service.53
53. The most prominent precedent for this sort of religious nonobservance was of course the Deist father of our nation, George Washington. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1829
November 25, Wednesday: In Baltimore, a monument to George Washington was completed.
At the conclusion of his final concert in München the conductor Johann Hartmann Stuntz pressed a crown of laurels on the head of Nicolò Paganini — whereupon the virtuoso burst into tears.
Something about Sam Patch appeared in the Massachusetts Spy: His last jump at Genesee Falls, N.Y.
November 26, Thursday: The Reverend Lyman Beecher preached a sermon on the topic of atheism, which would eventuate in a book “dedicated to the working men of America,” LECTURES ON POLITICAL ATHEISM.
Bushrod Washington died, bequeathing 160 acres to the manumitted mulatto slave West Ford who is suspected to be the only son of George Washington, with a slave woman named Venus. John Augustine Washington III inherited Mount Vernon, and West Ford –although he had become a free man– would continue to work at Mount Vernon as an overseer (West’s mother Venus would decease before he would become financially able to purchase her manumission). Refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm.
Josiah Haynes, Jr. got married with 25-year-old widow Mary Hayward.
On this day or the previous one, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25 (?) of 11 M / Today was our Moy [Monthly] Meeting held in Providence - Wm Almy largely & very pertinently engaged in testimony - The committee from the Quarterly Meeting attended on account of the recent failures in trade, Which has lately occured in society & particularly in This Moy [Monthly] Meeting — They gave suitable service & were helpful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1831
Noah Webster’s THE ELEMENTARY PRIMER. He became a member of a committee to raise funds for relief of sufferers from a devastating fire that had occurred on May 29th, Sunday, 1831 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, destroying its State House.
Because of this devastating fire in Fayetteville, general contractor Thomas Bragg was hired to fireproof the wooden roof of the State Capitol Building in Raleigh using sheets of zinc soldered together and held down by nails with soldered heads — and his workmen accidentally set that structure aflame. Antonio Canova’s Roman-clad George Washington of 1818, in the rotunda, was beheaded (never mind, this statue had always looked more like Lafayette than like Washington). HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1832
The US Congress commissioned Horatio Greenough to do a larger-than-life statue of George Washington, prince of our national liberty, for its rotunda — of course, at that time nobody had the slightest inkling that the sculptor, off there in Rome messing around with his 20 tons of Carrera marble, would be depicting the big daddy of this country attired but in sandals and a short sheet, exposed from the waist up.54
It’s obviously intended to represent a white guy.
February 22, Wednesday: Antonio de Saavedra y Frigola, Conde de Alcudia replaced Francisco Tadeo Calomarde Arria as First Secretary of State of Spain.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 22 of 2 M / We rode to Smithfield & attended Moy [Monthly] Meeting - Wm Almy very satisfactorily engaged in testimony. -there was but little buisness & the Meeting did not last long. — HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
It was a pleasant day & a pleasant ride. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Ground was broken for Indiana’s Wabash and Erie Canal, to connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie.
There was a dinner party in Washington DC on this, the centennial birthday of George Washington. When the cloth was removed after the banquet, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts had the honor of calling for the official toast:55 I rise, Gentlemen, to propose to you the name of that great man, in commemoration of whose birth, and in honor of whose character and services, we are here assembled. I am sure that I express a sentiment common to every one present, when I say that there is something more than ordinarily solemn and affecting in this occasion. We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country’s friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people’s confidence, a whole people’s love, and the whole world’s respect. That name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and 54. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster would have served to remind us constantly of what in 1841 John Quincy Adams needed to point out to the several justices of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad: The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the body politic are decently concealed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will for ever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty. We perform this grateful duty, Gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place, so cherished and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name. All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly influenced by associations. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression, of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth’s surface. Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them. But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature, if we did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too elevated or too refined to glow with fervor in the commendation or the love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry, as to care nothing for Homer or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to Tully and Chatham; or such a devotee to the arts, in such an ecstasy with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard the masterpieces of Raphael and Michael Angelo with coldness or contempt. We may be assured, Gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself, loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling, made to-day, from the North to the South, and from the East to the West, proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful hearts and a freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his Country. And it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to themselves the bright model of 55. Edwin P. Whipple’s THE GREAT SPEECHES AND ORATIONS OF DANIEL WEBSTER WITH AN ESSAY ON DANIEL WEBSTER AS A MASTER OF ENGLISH STYLE (Boston: Little, Brown, 1879). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Washington’s example, and study to be what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision; as the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations, overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze of a thousand lights. Gentlemen, we are at a point of a century from the birth of Washington; and what a century it has been! During its course, the human mind has seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing for human intelligence and human freedom more than had been done in fives or tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theatre on which a great part of that change has been wrought, and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders; and of both he is the chief. If the poetical prediction, uttered a few years before his birth, be true; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the grandest exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made on this theatre of the Western world; if it be true that, “The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day, Time’s noblest offspring is the last”;— how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened, how could its intense interest be adequately sustained, but by the introduction of just such a character as our Washington? Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was struck out in his own country, which has since kindled into a flame, and shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth, the world has changed in science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in the improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased speed round the old circles of thought and action; but it has assumed a new character; it has raised itself from beneath governments to a participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual men; and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established, on foundations never HDT WHAT? INDEX
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hereafter to be shaken, its competency to govern itself. It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington, that, having been intrusted, in revolutionary times, with the supreme military command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the first government in which an attempt was to be made on a large scale to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written constitution and of a pure representative principle. A government was to be established, without a throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges; and this government, instead of being a democracy, existing and acting within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast country, of different climates, interests, and habits, and of various communions of our common Christian faith. The experiment certainly was entirely new. A popular government of this extent, it was evident, could be framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct itself to political renown and glory. By the benignity of Providence, this experiment, so full of interest to us and to our posterity for ever, so full of interest, indeed, to the world in its present generation and in all its generations to come, was suffered to commence under the guidance of Washington. Destined for this high career, he was fitted for it by wisdom, by virtue, by patriotism, by discretion, by whatever can inspire confidence in man toward man. In entering on the untried scenes, early disappointment and the premature extinction of all hope of success would have been certain, had it not been that there did exist throughout the country, in a most extraordinary degree, an unwavering trust in him who stood at the helm. I remarked, Gentlemen, that the whole world was and is interested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the career which this government is running is among the most attractive objects to the civilized world? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment that love of liberty and that understanding of its true principles which are flying over the whole earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really and truly of American origin? At the period of the birth of Washington, there existed in Europe no political liberty in large communities, except in the provinces of Holland, and except that England herself had set a great example, so far as it went, by her glorious Revolution of 1688. Everywhere else, despotic power was predominant, and the feudal or military principle held the mass of mankind in hopeless bondage. One half of Europe was crushed beneath the Bourbon sceptre, and no conception of political liberty, no hope even of religious toleration, existed among that nation which was America’s first ally. The king was the state, the king was HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the country, the king was all. There was one king, with power not derived from his people, and too high to be questioned; and the rest were all subjects, with no political right but obedience. All above was intangible power, all below quiet subjection. A recent occurrence in the French Chambers shows us how public opinion on these subjects is changed. A minister had spoken of the “king’s subjects.” “There are no subjects,” exclaimed hundreds of voices at once, “in a country where the people make the king!” Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty is to show, in our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a willing, but something of a fearful admiration. Its deep and awful anxiety is to learn whether free states may be stable, as well as free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth established, illustrated, and brought into practice in the country of Washington. Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great Western Sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world? There is no danger of our overrating or overstating the important part which we are now acting in human affairs. It should not flatter our personal self-respect, but it should reanimate our patriotic virtues, and inspire us with a deeper and more solemn sense, both of our privileges and of our duties. We cannot wish better for our country, nor for the world, than that the same spirit which influenced Washington may influence all who succeed him; and that the same blessing from above, which attended his efforts, may also attend theirs. The principles of Washington’s administration are not left doubtful. They are to be found in the Constitution itself, in the great measures recommended and approved by him, in his speeches to Congress, and in that most interesting paper, his Farewell Address to the People of the United States. The success of the government under his administration is the highest proof HDT WHAT? INDEX
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of the soundness of these principles. And, after an experience of thirty-five years, what is there which an enemy could condemn? What is there which either his friends, or the friends of the country, could wish to have been otherwise? I speak, of course, of great measures and leading principles. In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. He stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he told the country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that honesty is the best policy. One of the most striking things ever said of him is, that “he changed mankind’s ideas of political greatness.”56 To commanding talents, and to success, the common elements of such greatness, he added a disregard of self, a spotlessness of motive, a steady submission to every public and private duty, which threw far into the shade the whole crowd of vulgar great. The object of his regard was the whole country. No part of it was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His love of glory, so far as that may be supposed to have influenced him at all, spurned every thing short of general approbation. It would have been nothing to him, that his partisans or his favorites outnumbered, or outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, those of other leaders. He had no favorites; he rejected all partisanship; and, acting honestly for the universal good, he deserved, what he has so richly enjoyed, the universal love. His principle it was to act right, and to trust the people for support; his principle it was not to follow the lead of sinister and selfish ends, nor to rely on the little arts of party delusion to obtain public sanction for such a course. Born for his country and for the world, he did not give up to party what was meant for mankind. The consequence is, that his fame is as durable as his principles, as lasting as truth and virtue themselves. While the hundreds whom party excitement, and temporary circumstances, and casual combinations, have raised into transient notoriety, sink again, like thin bubbles, bursting and dissolving into the great ocean, Washington’s fame is like the rock which bounds that ocean, and at whose feet its billows are destined to break harmlessly for ever. The maxims upon which Washington conducted our foreign relations were few and simple. The first was an entire and indisputable impartiality towards foreign states. He adhered to this rule of public conduct, against very strong inducements to depart from it, and when the popularity of the moment seemed to favor such a departure. In the next place, he maintained true dignity and unsullied honor in all communications with foreign states. It was among the high duties devolved upon him, to introduce our new government into the circle of civilized states and powerful nations. Not arrogant or assuming, with no unbecoming or supercilious bearing, he yet exacted for it from all others entire and punctilious respect. He demanded, and he obtained at once, a standing of perfect equality for his country in the society of nations; nor was there a prince or potentate of his 56. See Works of Fisher Ames, pp. 122, 123. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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day, whose personal character carried with it, into the intercourse of other states, a greater degree of respect and veneration. He regarded other nations only as they stood in political relations to us. With their internal affairs, their political parties and dissensions, he scrupulously abstained from all interference; and, on the other hand, he repelled with spirit all such interference by others with us or our concerns. His sternest rebuke, the most indignant measure of his whole administration, was aimed against such an attempted interference. He felt it as an attempt to wound the national honor, and resented it accordingly. The reiterated admonitions in his Farewell Address show his deep fears that foreign influence would insinuate itself into our counsels through the channels of domestic dissension, and obtain a sympathy with our own temporary parties. Against all such dangers, he most earnestly entreats the country to guard itself. He appeals to its patriotism, to its self-respect, to its own honor, to every consideration connected with its welfare and happiness, to resist, at the very beginning, all tendencies towards such connection of foreign interests with our own affairs. With a tone of earnestness nowhere else found, even in his last affectionate farewell advice to his countrymen, he says, “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” Lastly, on the subject of foreign relations, Washington never forgot that we had interests peculiar to ourselves. The primary political concerns of Europe, he saw, did not affect us. We had nothing to do with her balance of power, her family compacts, or her successions to thrones. We were placed in a condition favorable to neutrality during European wars, and to the enjoyment of all the great advantages of that relation. “Why, then,” he asks us, “why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?” Indeed, Gentlemen, Washington’s Farewell Address is full of truths important at all times, and particularly deserving consideration at the present. With a sagacity which brought the future before him, and made it like the present, he saw and pointed out the dangers that even at this moment most imminently threaten us. I hardly know how a greater service of that kind could now be done to the community, than by a renewed and wide diffusion of that admirable paper, and an earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and consider it. Its political maxims are invaluable; its exhortations to love of country and to brotherly affection among citizens, touching; and the solemnity with which it urges the observance of moral HDT WHAT? INDEX
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duties, and impresses the power of religious obligation, gives to it the highest character of truly disinterested, sincere, parental advice. The domestic policy of Washington found its pole-star in the avowed objects of the Constitution itself. He sought so to administer that Constitution, as to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. These were objects interesting, in the highest degree, to the whole country, and his policy embraced the whole country. Among his earliest and most important duties was the organization of the government itself, the choice of his confidential advisers, and the various appointments to office. This duty, so important and delicate, when a whole government was to be organized, and all its offices for the first time filled, was yet not difficult to him; for he had no sinister ends to accomplish, no clamorous partisans to gratify, no pledges to redeem, no object to be regarded but simply the public good. It was a plain, straightforward matter, a mere honest choice of men for the public service. His own singleness of purpose, his disinterested patriotism, were evinced by the selection of his first Cabinet, and by the manner in which he filled the seats of justice, and other places of high trust. He sought for men fit for offices; not for offices which might suit men. Above personal considerations, above local considerations, above party considerations, he felt that he could only discharge the sacred trust which the country had placed in his hands, by a diligent inquiry after real merit, and a conscientious preference of virtue and talent. The whole country was the field of his selection. He explored that whole field, looking only for whatever it contained most worthy and distinguished. He was, indeed, most successful, and he deserved success for the purity of his motives, the liberality of his sentiments, and his enlarged and manly policy. Washington’s administration established the national credit, made provision for the public debt, and for that patriotic army whose interests and welfare were always so dear to him; and, by laws wisely framed, and of admirable effect, raised the commerce and navigation of the country, almost at once, from depression and ruin to a state of prosperity. Nor were his eyes open to these interests alone. He viewed with equal concern its agriculture and manufactures, and, so far as they came within the regular exercise of the powers of this government, they experienced regard and favor. It should not be omitted, even in this slight reference to the general measures and general principles of the first President, that he saw and felt the full value and importance of the judicial department of the government. An upright and able administration of the laws he held to be alike indispensable to private happiness and public liberty. The temple of justice, in his opinion, was a sacred place, and he would profane and pollute HDT WHAT? INDEX
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it who should call any to minister in it, not spotless in character, not incorruptible in integrity, not competent by talent and learning, not a fit object of unhesitating trust. Among other admonitions, Washington has left us, in his last communication to his country, an exhortation against the excesses of party spirit. A fire not to be quenched, he yet conjures us not to fan and feed the flame. Undoubtedly, Gentlemen, it is the greatest danger of our system and of our time. Undoubtedly, if that system should be overthrown, it will be the work of excessive party spirit, acting on the government, which is dangerous enough, or acting in the government, which is a thousand times more dangerous; for government then becomes nothing but organized party, and, in the strange vicissitudes of human affairs, it may come at last, perhaps, to exhibit the singular paradox of government itself being in opposition to its own powers, at war with the very elements of its own existence. Such cases are hopeless. As men may be protected against murder, but cannot be guarded against suicide, so government may be shielded from the assaults of external foes, but nothing can save it when it chooses to lay violent hands on itself. Finally, Gentlemen, there was in the breast of Washington one sentiment so deeply felt, so constantly uppermost, that no proper occasion escaped without its utterance. From the letter which he signed in behalf of the Convention when the Constitution was sent out to the people, to the moment when he put his hand to that last paper in which he addressed his countrymen, the Union,—the Union was the great object of his thoughts. In that first letter he tells them that, to him and his brethren of the Convention, union appears to be the greatest interest of every true American; and in that last paper he conjures them to regard that unity of government which constitutes them one people as the very palladium of their prosperity and safety, and the security of liberty itself. He regarded the union of these States less as one of our blessings, than as the great treasure-house which contained them all. Here, in his judgment, was the great magazine of all our means of prosperity; here, as he thought, and as every true American still thinks, are deposited all our animating prospects, all our solid hopes for future greatness. He has taught us to maintain this union, not by seeking to enlarge the powers of the government, on the one hand, nor by surrendering them, on the other; but by an administration of them at once firm and moderate, pursuing objects truly national, and carried on in a spirit of justice and equity. The extreme solicitude for the preservation of the Union, at all times manifested by him, shows not only the opinion he entertained of its importance, but his clear perception of those causes which were likely to spring up to endanger it, and which, if once they should overthrow the present system, would leave little hope of any future beneficial reunion. Of all the presumptions indulged by presumptuous man, that is one of the rashest which looks for repeated and favorable opportunities for HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the deliberate establishment of a united government over distinct and widely extended communities. Such a thing has happened once in human affairs, and but once; the event stands out as a prominent exception to all ordinary history; and unless we suppose ourselves running into an age of miracles, we may not expect its repetition. Washington, therefore, could regard, and did regard, nothing as of paramount political interest, but the integrity of the Union itself. With a united government, well administered, he saw that we had nothing to fear; and without it, nothing to hope. The sentiment is just, and its momentous truth should solemnly impress the whole country. If we might regard our country as personated in the spirit of Washington, if we might consider him as representing her, in her past renown, her present prosperity, and her future career, and as in that character demanding of us all to account for our conduct, as political men or as private citizens, how should he answer him who has ventured to talk of disunion and dismemberment? Or how should he answer him who dwells perpetually on local interests, and fans every kindling flame of local prejudice? How should he answer him who would array State against State, interest against interest, and party against party, careless of the continuance of that unity of government which constitutes us one people? The political prosperity which this country has attained, and which it now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the instrumentality of the present government. While this agent continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of prosperity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest. But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new possessions. It would leave the country, not only bereft of its prosperity and happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness. Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual HDT WHAT? INDEX
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security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty. But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gracious Being who has hitherto held our country as in the hollow of his hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust to the influence of Washington’s example. Let us hope that that fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career. Full of these gratifying anticipations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the Capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country! Gentlemen, I propose— “THE MEMORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1833
A scheme was initiated, to erect a great stone phallus in honor of our nation’s founding father George Washington, at an appropriate location in our nation’s capital. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1835
Doctor John White Webster, who started as a lecturer at Harvard College for only $800 per year (merely twice as much as a skilled laborer could make) and had an earning potential of only $1,200 as a full professor of chemistry in the Medical College (merely three times as much as a skilled laborer could make), was forced to sell the grand home he had acquired on Concord Avenue in Cambridge, and relocate his wife and beauteous daughters to less expensive digs at 22 Garden Street, near the Washington Elm where founding father of our nation General George Washington had mustered his troops on Cambridge Common.
During Henry Thoreau’s early college years a well-to-do free black family in Boston purchased the pewdeed to a pew in the Park Street Church. To make sure these black parishioners understood how white Christians felt about them, the white Christians nailed shut the door to their pew, and then, capitulating to popular sentiment, the trustees of this house of worship revoked this deed. Hearing of these events, another Boston Protestant church inserted a clause on their pewdeed documentary form — that pews were transferable only to “respectable white persons.”
July 8, Wednesday: It had been the tradition to ring the Liberty Bell annually, on the 4th of July. This year, it was tolled in addition during the funeral of Chief Justice of the United States of America John Marshall,57 and during this tolling, for a second time, it cracked. (Years later it would crack again while being rung in celebration of the birthday of another slavemaster, General and then President George Washington, and would be retired from service. Attempts to rivet our Liberty have to this point been unsuccessful although there is an urban legend that has been making the rounds, to the effect that finally we have outlawed human slavery here.)
At Harvard College, David Henry Thoreau was back for his Junior year of studies, and here are the records of the “Institute of 1770” in which he was participating: Business.
57. The slavemaster John Marshall had, to the end of his life, tried to prevent the Supreme Court of the United States of America from ever coming to grips with the issue of human slavery. Those of his colleagues who seemed likely to be tempted to intercede in this area, he had visited privately to discourage. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 10, Monday: At Niblo’s Garden in New-York Phineas Taylor Barnum started to exhibit blind and paralyzed black slave Joyce Heth under the pretense that it had been she who had nursed our illustrious founding father George Washington.
Dr. Reuben Crandall was arrested after Harry King, a Georgetown, Virginia man, called on him in his office while he was unpacking some crates and boxes of stuff. The young man sighted “a pamphlet on anti-slavery BOTANIZING lying on the table.” There were several such papers lying around, which the botanist had been using to press his plant specimens. He asked if he might have one to read, and “Dr. Crandall told him he might.” For this, Dr. Crandall would be held in the local lockup for almost nine months awaiting trial for his life for the treason of incitement to servile insurrection (the same statute, written by Thomas Jefferson, under which Captain John Brown would be tried and hanged) — and while living under these conditions he would acquire the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“consumption,” or pulmonary tuberculosis, that would destroy him.
Francis Scott Key, the District of Columbia’s DA, would attempt to persuade the judge to impose the death penalty upon Prudence Crandall’s younger brother.
Dr. Crandall had been charged with promulgating a false doctrine that the black American had equal rights with the white, with casting reflections on the chivalry of the south, and with intent to cause unrest among HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Negroes.58 It was suggested that he had himself authored publications urging immediate emancipation of slaves. Clearly this Un-American agitator deserved to be dead. A crowd of white Navy Yard workers therefore went to the Washington County Jail where he was being held, to agitate for his lynching, and along the way a free black tavernkeeper, Beverly Snow, made some sort of derogatory remark about their wives. The crowd began by thoroughly trashing Snow’s tavern, and then over two days and three nights of rioting, it smashed the windows of Negro churches, the Negro school, and various homes.
Drastic legislation would follow this “Snow Riot” in DC — legislation further restricting the rights of free Negroes to assemble.59
As part of the legal process, Dr. Crandall would be interrogated about his attitudes toward people of other races. There was a concern that he might share to some degree in the radical attitudes of his notorious elder sister Prudence. He assured his captors that “he would break up the school if he could, but his sister was a very obstinate girl.” He informed them that he had another sister, younger, who was sharing in his older sister’s attitudes, but that he had been hoping “that he could, in all events, get her away” from this bad influence.
58. THE TRIAL OF REUBEN CRANDALL, M.D., CHARGED WITH PUBLISHING AND CIRCULATING SEDITIOUS AND INCENDIARY PAPERS, &C. IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WITH THE INTENT OF EXCITING SERVILE INSURRECTION . . . BY A MEMBER OF THE BAR. Washington DC, Printed for the Proprietors, 1836. (This 48-page pamphlet alleged that “The Trial of Crandall presents the first case of a man charged with endeavoring to excite insurrection among slaves and the free colored population that was ever brought before a judicial tribunal.”) 59. Provine, Dorothy Sproles. THE FREE NEGRO IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 1800-1860. Thesis Louisiana State University Department of History, 1959, 1963 HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
September 5, Saturday: A blind and paralyzed black slave, Joyce Heth, was placed on exhibit in Boston’s Concert Hall by Phineas Taylor Barnum under the pretense that it had been she who had nursed our illustrious founding father George Washington.60
Penny Magazine:
http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/220.htm
60. It seemed to startle no one in Boston, that this person was the personal property of P.T. Barnum. Had his claim been truthful, Ms. Heth would have at this point been in the 162d year of her age. To demonstrate the truthfulness of his claim, he would on February 25, 1836 be submitting her corpse to the indignity of a public autopsy in the City Saloon of New-York, admission price 50¢. When at the conclusion of the autopsy the surgeon David L. Rogers would announce that in his estimation Ms. Heth hadn’t been more than 80 at death, Barnum would counter that the corpse wasn’t her, that she was still alive, that in fact at that moment she was on tour in Europe. Later, he would acknowledge that this had indeed been the deceased Ms. Heth, while asserting that subsequent to this autopsy he had provided the remains a decent burial (we of course must believe him, him being a white man and all that). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1836
February 19, Friday: Joseph Fieschi, Pierre Morey, and Theodore Pepin were guillotined for their part in the attempted assassination of King Louis-Philippe of France during the previous July. Hours before his head was to be removed Pepin revealed his membership in a hitherto unknown radical republican group, the “Societe des Familles.” HEADCHOPPING
Joyce Heth, the elderly slave woman Phineas Taylor Barnum had been exhibiting under a pretense that she had been our illustrious founding father George Washington’s wet-nurse, died.
Prime Minister Mendizabal ordered closure of all monasteries and convents in Spain.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 19th of 2 M 1836 / I have had this morning to look a little over my past life & to commemorate the goodness & many mercies of Kind Providence towards me — I hope I shall never distrust his power nor despair of his goodness & mercy - for many times when it looked as if all resources were coming to an end, something has opened, whereby I was enabled to look a little ways a head - I am now writing of temporal prospects, for tho’ at this time I have nothing to elate, but rather to depress my feelings -yet as way has always singularly opened I can but feel a faith in the Power of God who has so wonderfully opened the way for me to live comfortably & even respectably among men — & even if I should be brought to more narrow limits - may I endure the privation as becomes a Man & a Christian - he knows what is best for us, & deals kindly even with his rebellious Sons - but I know it will not do - it is not safe to presume on his mercy, & yet continue in rebellion & disobedience - he requires a cheerful a willing & yet as pure offering & that of the Whole heart My heart is humbled under a Sense of the many Mercies I have received while I write this - much much more presenting to view than I have mind to relate at this time — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
February 25, Thursday: Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert sailed for Santa Barbara, California.
AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Thursday, Feb. 25th. Set sail for Santa Barbara, where we arrived on Sunday, the 28th.
Samuel Colt received a US patent for a “revolver,” eventually to be colloquially referred to as a “sixshooter” (although some of them were capable only of five shots).
By arrangement of Phineas Taylor Barnum (her owner), the body of Joyce Heth, the elderly slave woman he been exhibiting under a pretense that she had been our illustrious founding father George Washington’s wet- nurse was subjected to public autopsy. The autopsy was performed by a surgeon hired for the occasion, Dr. David L. Rogers, in the presence of 1,500 spectators who had paid 50¢ admission each, in New-York’s City Saloon (drinks not on the house). When this hired surgeon proclaimed that Barnum’s age claim for this woman had been fraudulent, that she was nowhere near 161 years old at the time of her death, the hoaxer proclaimed that the body autopsied had not been that of Joyce Heth, that in fact she was still alive and well on tour in Europe.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25 of 2nd M / With my young friend Thomas Nichols rode to Portsmouth & attended Monthly Meeting - It was a most Violent windy day, clouds & very uncomfortable riding being very cold & a part of the way muddy & heavy traveling — The First Meeting was silent & small & not a time of much life to me. — In the last we had but little buisness & the Meeting was not detained long. — We went with Henry & Thomas Gould to Josiah Chases & dined & got home before sunset. — I have of late felt my mind engaged to write our friend Robert Comfort of Wheatland State of NYork who attended our last Yearly Meeting, he was a true & honest friend & one with whom I felt much unity & Sympathy I have also in the course of the Week written to my friends Thos Evans of Philada. - It is a time of great streight in society, & it becomes necessary for those who can to commune together. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1838
The notes of Luther Martin of Maryland and of Robert Yates of New York in regard to the secret deliberations of the Continental Congress in the creation of the federal Constitution were published as SECRET PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1787. This was the very first breach of the silence about the manner in which those important decisions had been made that had been tolerated. (The notes kept by James Madison, and turned over to George Washington for safekeeping at Mount Vernon, would not see the light until 1845, two years after his death as the last surviving delegate.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1839
Salma Hale’s AN ORATION ON THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON.
The July Monarchy was threatened by Mathieu Molé, who had formed an intermediate government in France. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot and the leaders of the left centre and the left, Thiers and Odilon Barrot, worked together to stop Molé, Victory was secured at the expense of principle and Professor Guizot’s attack on the government gave rise to a crisis and a republican insurrection. None of the three leaders of that alliance were able to secure the ministerial office.
The Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard College’s LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (this would be translated into French and would receive an introduction in French in that edition by Professor Guizot — which introduction would then be backtranslated and published in English, and this backtranslation would find a place in the personal library of Henry Thoreau). SPARKS ON G. WASHINGTON GUIZOT ON G. WASHINGTON
Volume X of the Reverend Professor Sparks’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. X
He was appointed McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, the first professor of secular history, in which post he would author not merely the above hagiography of Washington, but a hagiography of Franklin as well, not to mention one of Gouverneur Morris — assiduously omitting any events which might be the occasion of “international ill will.”
This tenth volume encompassed four contributions:
•LIFE OF ROBERT FULTON by James Renwick, LL.D. LIFE OF ROBERT FULTON
•LIFE OF JOSEPH WARREN by Alexander H. Everett, LL.D. LIFE OF JOSEPH WARREN HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
•LIFE OF HENRY HUDSON by Henry R. Cleveland LIFE OF HENRY HUDSON
•LIFE OF FATHER MARQUETTE by Jared Sparks LIFE OF FATHER MARQUETTE HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1840
Victor Cousin became minister of public instruction in the new French government formed by prime minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot.
Election of Alexis de Tocqueville to the Académie française.
Professor Guizot offered an introduction, in French, to an edition of the Reverend Jared Sparks’s LIFE OF WASHINGTON, and of selected portions of President Washington’s writings, which appeared in this year in Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Horatio Greenough’s larger-than-life statue of George Washington, prince of our national liberty, clad in sandals and toga, with bare upper torso, which had been intended for the rotunda of the US capital building, found itself housed instead at the Smithsonian Institution. Nobody had had the slightest inkling that the sculptor, off there in Rome messing around with his 20 tons of Carrera marble, had been depicting the big daddy of this country attired but in sandals and a short sheet, exposed from the waist up.61
It’s obviously intended to represent a white guy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
December 25, Christmas: The newlywed Clara Schumann created, as a Christmas present for her husband Robert Schumann, the compositions Am Strande on a translation of a Burns poem, and Volkslied and Ihr Bildnis on two texts by Heinrich Heine.
Henry Thoreau incorporated some thoughts on George Washington that obviously derive from a perusal of François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF WASHINGTON IN THE REVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which had been published in this year by J. Munroe and
61. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster would have served to remind us constantly of what in 1841 John Quincy Adams needed to point out to the several justices of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad: The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the body politic are decently concealed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Company in Boston, a volume which we have found in his personal library:
GUIZOT ON G. WASHINGTON
Dec 25th 1840. The character of Washington has, after all, been undervalued, because not valued correctly. He was a proper Puritan hero. It is his erectness and persistency which attract me. A few simple deeds with a dignified silence for background, and that is all. He never fluctuated, nor lingered, nor stooped, nor swerved, but was nobly silent and assured. He was not the darling of the people, as no man of integrity can ever be, but was as much respected as loved. His instructions to his steward, his refusal of a crown, his interview with his officers at the termination of the war, his thoughts after his retirement, as expressed in a letter to La Fayette, his remarks to another correspondent on his being chosen president, his last words to Congress, and the unparalleled respect which his most distinguished contemporaries, as Fox and Erskine, expressed for him, are refreshing to read in these unheroic days. His behavior in the field and in council and his dignified and contented withdrawal to private life were great. He could advance and he could withdraw. But we are not sorry he is dead. The thought there is in a sentence is its solid part, which will wear to the latest times. When the above would be published by H.G.O. Blake in his “Winter” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
volume of extracts from Thoreau’s journal in 1887, H.G.O. BLAKE’S “WINTER”
it would be redacted by the suppression of the final two sentences! The general remark about thoughts and sentences would be elided and one can understand the appropriateness of such an elision, since that sentence is a standalone entity that has nothing whatever to do with the topic of the day’s entry. However, the shattering remark about the memory of DWM George Washington, “But we are not sorry he is dead,” which concluded Thoreau’s story about the memory of Washington and tied a knot in its tale, was very much on topic — and it also was elided by Blake. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than Blake considered that the general American public could be able to bear!
For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died.
We may well note that Professor Guizot was the exact person to assist Thoreau in this manner, for as prime minister of France during the most intense revolutionary period of Europe in 1848, the Year of Anarchy, political opposition groups had been masking their meetings by a pretense of the celebration of the birthday of George Washington. These continental oppositionists in fact had no interest whatever in our DWM (they probably didn’t even know when his birthday was) but this was their conceit, this was their pretense — they were assembling “to celebrate Washington’s birthday.” They were not sorry he had died –they were not glad he had lived –they were merely using him as their convenient cover story. Thoreau picked up on this and attempted to tell us about it (but then his friend H.G.O. Blake wouldn’t let that happen). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1841
December 1, Wednesday: Manlius Stimson Clarke got married with Frances Cordis Lemist of Roxbury (the couple would produce a son and two daughters prior to the husband’s untimely demise).
Horatio Greenough’s larger-than-life statue of George Washington, prince of our national liberty, attired but in sandals and a short sheet, with bare upper torso, was wrestled into place, all 20 Carrera marble tons of it, on the shored-up floor of the Capitol’s rotunda. –But nobody had told the sculptor that where they were going to put it, it was dark like a bat cave even in the middle of the day –so his half-naked excellency would barely be seen!62
It’s obviously intended to represent a white guy.
In Afghanistan, an effort was made to take possession of the Bala Hissar, but Major Ewart’s command repulsed the swarms of locals with considerable slaughter. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1842
February: Horatio Greenough had his statue of George Washington pulled a few yards off-center in the Capital rotunda and got it up on a temporary wooden pedestal in order to obtain for it a slightly better lighting.
62. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster would have served to remind us constantly of what in this year John Quincy Adams had needed to point out to the several justices of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad: The words slave and slavery are studiously excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the body politic are decently concealed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1843
Early in the year, Horatio Greenough and Waldo Emerson spent several hours of an evening at the Rotunda in Washington DC as the sculptor fussed with various illumination schemes for his occluded half-naked statue of George Washington. In the process they accidentally set a wooden crate on fire to the considerable danger of the entire Capital.
The royal commission on the employment of children in mines and manufactures, of which Richard Henry Horne had been a part, completed its work and issued its report. During this year his epic poem ORION would go on sale at the price of one farthing,63 and would be widely consumed (Horne attempting to require that no more than one copy might be vended at such a price to any one person). A total of four printings would be offered at that price and then three printings would be offered at increased prices, before the end of the year.64
63. The farthing coin of that era was copper and weighed between 4.5 and 4.9 grams. It was 22 mm. in diameter and would purchase then what a copper/nickel ten-pence coin will today (18¢ in USA).
64. The author also attempted to insist that his poem not be vended to anyone who mispronounced the title, “uh-rahy-uhn.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
(On the rare book market, this paperback now draws about $600.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
January 10, Tuesday: On this day and the following one, Horatio Greenough and Waldo Emerson, in Washington DC, were lobbying members of the US Congress to kindly get the sculptor’s half-naked statue of George Washington repositioned to the West front of the Capital building, where although it would be exposed to the elements, at least it would be visible to the public. Waldo spent several hours of an evening at the Rotunda while they fussed with various illumination schemes for the occluded masterwork — in the process accidentally setting a wooden crate on fire to the considerable danger of the entire Capital building.
“I make-a da rules!”
February: The Congress ordered that Horatio Greenough’s statue of a semi-nude President General George Washington be moved to the East front of the Capital building. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts attempted to present to the US House of Representatives a Great Petition in the shape of a waterwheel, demanding that the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts be forever separated from any connection with human enslavement. When permission to present this petition was not obtained, he left the petition on display on his desk on the floor. It would remain there, on display, for the remainder of the session.
Winter: A “Carpenter Gothic” shack was constructed over Horatio Greenough’s semi-naked statue of George Washington to protect its Carrera marble from the District of Columbia winter weather — or maybe it was because our founding daddy appeared to be shivering (although this shack would be reinstalled every winter, by 1854 the stone belt would weather to the point of dropping off the stone sword). HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1845
Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington in the District of Columbia was moved to a little floral island in the middle of East Capitol Street.
This being two years subsequent to the death of James Madison (he being the last surviving delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787), the notes that he had kept in regard to the secret deliberations of the Convention, that he had turned over to George Washington for safekeeping at Mount Vernon, were finally published.
May 22, Thursday: Brigham Young “got married with” Mary Elizabeth Rollins, his 5th for the year.
An interview by the Reverend T.H. Adams with Oney Judge Staines was published in The Granite Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper of Concord, New Hampshire. She described the Washingtons, their attempts to capture her, her opinions on slavery, her pride in having learned to read, and her strong religious faith. When asked whether she was sorry that she left the Washingtons, since she labored so much harder after her escape than before, she said: “No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.” There is now living in the borders of the town of Greenland, N.H., a runaway slave of Gen. Washington, at present supported by the County of Rockingham. Her name at the time of her elopement was ONA MARIA JUDGE. She is not able to give the year of her escape, but says that she came from Philadelphia just after the close of Washington’s second term of the Presidency, which must fix it somewhere in the [early?] part of the year 1797. Being a waiting maid of Mrs. Washington, she was not exposed to any peculiar hardships. If asked why she did not remain in his service, she gives two reasons, first, that she wanted to be free; secondly that she understood that after the decease of her master and mistress, she was to become the property of a grand-daughter of theirs, by name of Custis, and that she was determined never to be her slave. Being asked how she escaped, she replied substantially as follows, “Whilst they were packing up to go to HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.” She came on board a ship commanded by CAPT. JOHN BOLLES, and bound to Portsmouth, N.H. In relating it, she added, “I never told his name till after he died, a few years since, lest they should punish him for bringing me away. …” Washington made two attempts to recover her. First, he sent a man by the name of Bassett to persuade her to return; but she resisted all the argument he employed for this end. He told her they would set her free when she arrived at Mount Vernon, to which she replied, “I am free now and choose to remain so.” Finding all attempts to seduce her to slavery again in this manner useless, Bassett was sent once more by Washington, with orders to bring her and her infant child by force. The messenger, being acquainted with Gov. [then Senator John] Langdon, then of Portsmouth, took up lodgings with him, and disclosed to him the object of his mission. The good old Governor. (to his honor be it spoken), must have possessed something of the spirit of modern anti- slavery. He entertained Bassett very handsomely, and in the meantime sent word to Mrs. Staines, to leave town before twelve o’clock at night, which she did, retired to a place of concealment, and escaped the clutches of the oppressor. Shortly after this, Washington died, and, said she, “they never troubled me any more after he was gone. … The facts here related are known through this region, and may be relied on as substantially correct. Probably they were not for years given to the public, through fear of her recapture; but this reason no longer exists, since she is too old and infirm to be of sufficient value to repay the expense of search. Though a house servant, she had no education, nor any valuable religious instruction; says she never heard Washington pray, and does not believe that he was accustomed to. “Mrs. Washington used to read prayers, but I don’t call that praying.[”] Since her escape she has learned to read, trusts she has been made “wise unto salvation,” and is, I think, connected with a church in Portsmouth. When asked if she is not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since, than before, her reply is, “No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.[”] Never shall I forget the fire that kindled in her age- HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
bedimmed eye, or the smile that played upon her withered countenance, as I spake of the Redeemer in whom there is neither “bond nor free,” bowed with her at the mercy seat and commended her to Him “who heareth prayer” and who regards “the poor and needy when they cry,” I felt that were it mine to choose, I would not exchange her possessions, “rich in faith,” and sustained, while tottering over the grave, by “a hope full of immortality,” for tall the glory and renown of him whose slave she was. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1846
A railing and four lamp-posts had been added to the little floral island on which Horatio Greenough’s naked statue of the slavemaster George Washington sat, in the middle of East Capitol Street in Washington DC. Over the sculptor’s strenuous objection, “impertinent” dwarf cypresses and rosebushes were positioned so as to “obstruct the view of the inscription.”
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s VOICES OF FREEDOM. During this year, also, he wrote his short poem “New Hampshire” in honor of the Granite State’s bold unique stand against slavery. The final couplet, often quoted, is a stirring call to arms against human bondage with New Hampshire of course leading the way: God bless New Hampshire! for her granite peaks Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks. The long-bound vassal of the exulting South For very shame her self-forged chain has broken; Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth And in the clear tones of her old time spoken! Oh, all undreamed of, all unhoped for changes! The tyrant’s ally proves his sternest foe; To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges, New Hampshire thunders an indignant No! Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart, Look upward to those Northern mountains cold, Flouted by freedom’s victor-flag unrolled, And gather strength to bear a manlier part! All is not lost. The angel of God’s blessing Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight; Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing Unlooked for allies, striking for the right! Courage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true; What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do? HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
We need to pay attention to the fact that the Granite State reality was considerably less glorious than as he depicted. New Hampshire’s early track record in opposing discrimination, if it deserved a poem, deserved no gold metal. Why would Whittier have gone so overboard? The answer is politics: he was backing Senator John P. Hale of Dover NH. Hale eventually even would be running for President as the candidate of the Free Soil Party, which would advocate the creation of no new slave states. Well, but Hale and his “Hale men” would not oppose slavery as such, but only its spread by way of the annexation of Texas. Hale first made headlines as a NH legislator when he defied the “Gag Rule” created by another New Hampshire legislator and openly discussed the topic of slavery. Hale debated against soon-to-be-President Franklin Pierce, another New Hampshire man. By talking about slavery Hale made himself not only a magnet for Whittier’s praise but also a target — one of his southern colleagues on the floor of the US Senate would issue a death threat.
After the election of 1856, in which the Free Soil Party would make enormous gains, and presaging its ultimate victory in the election of 1860, Whittier would write:
A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FRÉMONT CLUBS. BENEATH thy skies, November! Thy skies of cloud and rain, Around our blazing camp-fires We close our ranks again. Then sound again the bugles, Call the muster-roll anew; ...
Some verses by Friend John were published during this year in the Boston Chronotype, in reference to a letter that supposedly had been written by the chairman of the “Central Clique” at Concord NH to the Honorable M.N., Jr. of Pittsfield in the District of Columbia, telling that the abolitionist, John P. Hale, had been elected to the US Senate:
A LETTER. ’TIS over, Moses! All is lost! I hear the bells a-ringing; Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host I hear the Free-Wills65 singing. We’re routed, Moses, horse and foot, If there be truth in figures, With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit, And Hale, and all the “niggers.”
Alack! alas! this month or more We’ve felt a sad foreboding; Our very dreams the burden bore Of central cliques exploding; Before our eyes a furnace shone, Where heads of dough were roasting, 65. The New Hampshire Legislature had refused to grant incorporation papers to the Free-Will Baptists in Dover NH, because their newspaper and their leading preachers were abolitionist in sentiment. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
And one we took to be your own The traitor Hale was toasting! Our Belknap brother66 heard with awe The Congo minstrels playing; At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt saw The ghost of Storrs a-praying;67 And Carroll’s woods were sad to see, With black-winged crows a-darting; And Black Snout looked on Ossipee, New-glossed with Day and Martin. We thought the “Old Man of the Notch” His face seemed changing wholly — His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat; His misty hair looked woolly; And Coös teamsters, shrieking, fled From the metamorphosed figure. “Look there!” they said, “the Old Stone Head Himself is turning nigger!” The schoolhouse68 out of Canaan hauled gone but not forgotten Seemed turning on its track again, And like a great swamp-turtle crawled To Canaan village back again, Shook off the mud and settled flat Upon its underpinning; A nigger on its ridge-pole sat, From ear to ear a-grinning. Gray H—d heard o’ nights the sound Of rail-cars onward faring; Right over Democratic ground The iron horse came tearing. A flag waved o’er that spectral train, As high as Pittsfield steeple; Its emblem was a broken chain; Its motto: “To the people!” I dreamed that Charley took his bed, With Hale for his physician; His daily dose an old “unread And unreferred” petition.69 There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat, As near as near could be, man; They leeched him with the “Democrat;” They blistered with the “Freeman.” Ah! grisly portents! What avail Your terrors of forewarning? We wake to find the nightmare Hale Astride our breasts at morning! From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream Our foes their throats are trying; 66. The senator who edited the Belknap Gazette was offended at what he termed “niggers” and “nigger parties.” 67. Reuben Leavitt was the justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn by the Honorable M.N. Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff had served the writ on Storrs while the elder was praying. 68. When the academy at Canaan NH had accepted one or two pupils of color, some racist Democrats had played a little joke by hooking up teams of horses or oxen and dragging the building into an adjoining swamp. 69. The gag-law introduced in the House by Mr. Atherton ordered that “Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery shall be laid on the table without reading, debate or reference.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
The very factory-spindles seem To mock us while they’re flying. The hills have bonfires; in our streets Flags flout us in our faces; The newsboys, peddling off their sheets, Are hoarse with our disgraces. In vain we turn, for gibing wit And shoutings follow after, As if old Kearsarge had split His granite sides with laughter! What boots it that we pelted out The anti-slavery women,70 And bravely strewed their hall about With tattered lace and trimming? Was it for such a sad reverse Our mobs became peacemakers, And kept their tar and wooden horse For Englishmen and Quakers? For this did shifty Atherton Make gag rules for the Great House? Wiped we for this our feet upon Petitions in our State House? Plied we for this our axe of doom, No stubborn traitor sparing, Who scoffed at our opinion loom, And took to homespun wearing? Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan These crooked providences, Deducing from the wisest plan The saddest consequences! Strange that, in trampling as was meet The nigger-men’s petition, We sprung a mine beneath our feet Which opened up perdition. How goodly, Moses, was the game In which we’ve long been actors, Supplying freedom with the name And slavery with the practice! Our smooth words fed the people’s mouth, Their ears our party rattle; We kept them headed to the South, As drovers do their cattle. But now our game of politics The world at large is learning; And men grown gray in all our tricks State’s evidence are turning. Votes and preambles subtly spun They cram with meanings louder, And load the Democratic gun With abolition powder. The ides of June! Woe worth the day When, turning all things over, The traitor Hale shall make his hay From Democratic clover! 70. At the first meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Concord NH, the building was pelted with stones and brickbats. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Who then shall take him in the law, Who punish crime so flagrant? Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw, A writ against that “vagrant”? Alas! no hope is left us here, And one can only pine for The envied place of overseer Of slaves in Carolina! Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink, And see what pay he’s giving! We’re practised long enough, we think, To know the art of driving. And for the faithful rank and file, Who know their proper stations, Perhaps it may be worth their while To try the rice plantations. Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff, To see us southward scamper; The slaves, we know, are “better off Than laborers in New Hampshire!” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Branded Hand”:
WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray, And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day; With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain! Is the tyrant’s brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim To make God’s truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame? When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn, How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn! They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt! They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown, Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown! Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces never yet Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set; And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand, Shall tell with pride the story of their father’s branded hand! As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian wars The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars, The pallor of the prison, and the shackle’s crimson span, So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man. He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer’s grave, Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding slave; He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod, Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God! For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o’er him swung, From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung, And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine, Broke the bondman’s heart for bread, poured the bondman’s blood for wine; While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt; Thou beheld’st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim, And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him! In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below, Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know; God’s stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can, That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man! That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed, In the depth of God’s great goodness may find mercy in his need; But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod, And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!. Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave! Its branded palm shall prophesy, “Salvation to the Slave!” Hold up its fire-wrought language, that who so reads may feel His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air; Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there! Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore, In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before! And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign, When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand, In the van of Freedom’s onset, the coming of that hand?
The Pine Tree, by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1846) Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected by the Whig Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield, Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered field. Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board, Answering England’s royal missive with a firm, “Thus saith the Lord!” Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array! What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day. Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries; Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise? Would ye barter man for cotton? That your gains may sum up higher, Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire? Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right a dream? Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam? O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in Boston town Smote the Province House with terror, struck the crest of Andros down! For another strong-voiced Adams in the city’s streets to cry, “Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet on Mammon’s lie! Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton’s latest pound, But in Heaven’s name keep your honor, keep the heart o’ the Bay State sound!” Where’s the man for Massachusetts! Where’s the voice to speak her free? Where’s the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea? Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb in her despair? Has she none to break the silence? Has she none to do and dare? O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rushed shield, And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner’s tattered field!
To a Southern Statesman, by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1846) John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests of slavery were involved.
IS this thy voice whose treble notes of fear Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear, Actæon-like, the bay of thine own hounds, Spurning the leash, and leaping o’er their bounds? Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand, With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack, To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land, Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back, These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery’s track? Where’s now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o’ the Senate flung, O’er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan, Like Satan’s triumph at the fall of man? How stood’st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting, And pointing to the lurid heaven afar, Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting, Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star! The Fates are just; they give us but our own; Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown. There is an Eastern story, not unknown, Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill Called demons up his water-jars to fill; Defty and silently, they did his will, But, when the task was done, kept pouring still. In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought, Faster and faster were the buckets brought, Higher and higher rose the flood around, Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned! So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, For God still overrules man’s schemes, and takes Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be, That the roused spirits of Democracy May leave to freer States the same wide door Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in, From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin, Of the stormed city and the ghastly plain, Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain, The myriad-handed pioneer may pour, And the wild West with the roused North combine And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
At Washington, by John Greenleaf Whittier. Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light. On its roofs and steeples shed, Shadows weaving with the sunlight From the gray sky overhead, Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread. Through this broad street, restless ever, Ebbs and flows a human tide, Wave on wave a living river; Wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide. Underneath yon dome, whose coping Springs above them, vast and tall, Grave men in the dust are groping. For the largess, base and small, Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter Honor’s wealth for party’s place; Step by step on Freedom’s charter Leaving footprints of disgrace; For to-day’s poor pittance turning from the great hope of their race. Yet, where festal lamps are throwing Glory round the dancer’s hair, HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Gold-tressed, like an angel’s, flowing Backward on the sunset air; And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure sweet and rare: There to-night shall woman’s glances, Star-like, welcome give to them; Fawning fools with shy advances Seek to touch their garments’ hem, With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which God and Truth condemn. From this glittering lie my vision Takes a broader, sadder range, Full before me have arisen Other pictures dark and strange; From the parlor to the prison must the scene and witness change. Hark! the heavy gate is swinging On its hinges, harsh and slow; One pale prison lamp is flinging On a fearful group below Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe’er it does not show. Pitying God! Is that a woman On whose wrist the shackles clash? Is that shriek she utters human, Underneath the stinging lash? Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad procession flash? Still the dance goes gayly onward! What is it to Wealth and Pride That without the stars are looking On a scene which earth should hide? That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking on Potomac’s tide! Vainly to that mean Ambition Which, upon a rival’s fall, Winds above its old condition, With a reptile’s slimy crawl, Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in anguish call. Vainly to the child of Fashion, Giving to ideal woe Graceful luxury of compassion, Shall the stricken mourner go; Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hollow show! Nay, my words are all too sweeping: In this crowded human mart, Feeling is not dead, but sleeping; Man’s strong will and woman’s heart, In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear their generous part. And from yonder sunny valleys, Southward in the distance lost, Freedom yet shall summon allies Worthier than the North can boast, With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at severer cost. Now, the soul alone is willing. Faint the heart and weak the knee; And as yet no lip is thrilling With the mighty words, “Be Free!” Tarrieth long the land’s Good Angel, but his advent is to be! HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Meanwhile, turning from the revel To the prison-cell my sight, For intenser hate of evil, For a keener sense of right, Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the Slaves, to-night! “To thy duty now and ever! Dream no more of rest or stay: Give to Freedom’s great endeavor All thou art and hast to-day:” Thus, above the city’s murmur, saith a Voice, or seems to say. Ye with heart and vision gifted To discern and love the right, Whose worn faces have been lifted To the slowly-growing light, Where from Freedom’s sunrise drifted slowly back the murk of night! Ye who through long years of trial Still have held your purpose fast, While a lengthening shade the dial From the westering sunshine cast, And of hope each hour’s denial seemed an echo of the last! O my brothers! O my sisters! Would to God that ye were near, Gazing with me down the vistas Of a sorrow strange and drear; Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice I seem to hear! With the storm above us driving, With the false earth mined below, Who shall marvel if thus striving We have counted friend as foe; Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for blow. Well it may be that our natures Have grown sterner and more hard, And the freshness of their features Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred, And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and rudely jarred. Be it so. It should not swerve us From a purpose true and brave; Dearer Freedom’s rugged service Than the pastime of the slave; Better is the storm above it than the quiet of the grave. Let us then, uniting, bury All our idle feuds in dust, And to future conflicts carry Mutual faith and common trust; Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is most just. From the eternal shadow rounding All our sun and starlight here, Voices of our lost ones sounding Bid us be of heart and cheer, Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on the inward ear. Know we not our dead are looking Downward with a sad surprise, All our strife of words rebuking With their mild and loving eyes? HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud their blessed skies? Let us draw their mantles o’er us, Which have fallen in our way; Let us do the work before us, Cheerly, bravely, while we may, Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is not day!
The Freed Islands, by John Greenleaf Whittier. Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 1846.
A FEW brief years have passed away Since Britain drove her million slaves Beneath the tropic’s fiery ray: God willed their freedom; and to-day Life blooms above those island graves! He spoke! across the Carib Sea, We heard the clash of breaking chains, And felt the heart-throb of the free, The first, strong pulse of liberty Which thrilled along the bondman’s veins. Though long delayed, and far, and slow, The Briton’s triumph shall be ours: Wears slavery here a prouder brow Than that which twelve short years ago Scowled darkly from her island bowers? Mighty alike for good or ill With mother-land, we fully share The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel, The tireless energy of will, The power to do, the pride to dare. What she has done can we not do? Our hour and men are both at hand; The blast which Freedom’s angel blew O’er her green islands, echoes through Each valley of our forest land. Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn The death of slavery. When it falls, Look to your vassals in their turn, Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn, Your prisons and your palace walls! O kingly mockers! scoffing show What deeds in Freedom’s name we do; Yet know that every taunt ye throw Across the waters, goads our slow Progression towards the right and true.
Not always shall your outraged poor, Appalled by democratic crime, Grind as their fathers ground before; The hour which sees our prison door Swing wide shall be their triumph time. On then, my brothers! every blow Ye deal is felt the wide earth through; HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Whatever here uplifts the low Or humbles Freedom’s hateful foe, Blesses the Old World through the New. Take heart! The promised hour draws near; I hear the downward beat of wings, And Freedom’s trumpet sounding clear: “Joy to the people! woe and fear To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!”
Lines From a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend, by John Greenleaf Whittier. A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire, A faith which doubt can never dim, A heart of love, a lip of fire, O Freedom’s God! be Thou to him! Speak through him words of power and fear, As through Thy prophet bards of old, And let a scornful people hear Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled. For lying lips Thy blessing seek, And hands of blood are raised to Thee, And on Thy children, crushed and weak, The oppressor plants his kneeling knee. Let then, O God! Thy servant dare Thy truth in all its power to tell, Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear The Bible from the grasp of hell! From hollow rite and narrow span Of law and sect by Thee released, Oh, teach him that the Christian man Is holier than the Jewish priest. Chase back the shadows, gray and old, Of the dead ages, from his way, And let his hopeful eyes behold The dawn of Thy millennial day; That day when lettered limb and mind Shall know the truth which maketh free, And he alone who loves his kind Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!
February 22, Sunday: To ring the Liberty Bell in celebration of the birthday of founding father George Washington, a 23-inch long jagged gash was carved into the metal that would prevent the edges of its hairline fissure from rubbing together.
February 22: Jean Lapin sat at my door today 3 paces from me at first trembling with fear –yet unwilling to move –-a poor wee thing lean & bony –with ragged ears –and sharp nose –scant tail & slender paws– It looked as if nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods –the earth stood on its last legs– Is nature too unsound at last I took two steps –and lo away he scud with elastic spring over the snowy crust in to the bushes a free creature of the forest –still wild & fleet –and such then was his nature –and his motion asserted its vigor and dignity.– Its large eye looked at first young –and diseased –almost dropsical unhealthy. But it HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
bound free the venison straitening its body and its limbs –into graceful length. and soon put the forest between me & itself. —— Emerson does not consider things in respect to their essential utility but an important partial & relative one –as works of art perhaps His probes pass one side of their centre of gravity. His exaggeration is of a part not of the whole {MS torn} HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1847
On one night during this year an “irreverent heathen” clambered into the lap of Horatio Greenough’s George Washington statue sitting in the middle of its little floral island in the middle of East Capitol Street in the District of Columbia, and positioned a large cigar between its thin pale marble lips.
January 1, Thursday: Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was breveted as a lieutenant-colonel “for valuable and highly distinguished services, particularly on the boundary line between the United States and the provinces of Canada and New Brunswick.” CARTOGRAPHY
The Reverend Benjamin Chase interviewed Oney Judge Staines for The Liberator. She described the Washingtons, their attempts to capture her, her opinions on slavery, her pride in having learned to read, and her strong religious faith. When asked whether she was sorry that she left the Washingtons, since she labored so much harder after her escape than before, she said: “No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.” I have recently made a visit to one of Gen. Washington’s, or rather Mrs. Washington’s slaves. It is a woman, nearly white, very much freckled, and probably, (for she does not know her age,) more than eighty. She now resides with a colored woman by the name of Nancy Jack … at what is called the Bay side in Greenland, in New-Hampshire, and is maintained as a pauper by the county of Rockingham. She says that she was a chambermaid for Mrs. Washington; that she was a large girl at the time of the revolutionary war; that when Washington was elected President, she was taken to Philadelphia, and that, although well enough used as to work and living, she did not want to be a slave always, and she supposed if she went back to Virginia, she would never have a chance of escape. She took a passage in a vessel to Portsmouth, N.H. and there married a man by the name of Staines, and had three children, who, with her husband, are all dead. After she was married, and had one child, while her husband was gone to sea, Gen. Washington sent on a man by the name of Bassett [Burwell Bassett, Jr., Washington’s nephew], to prevail on her to go back. He saw her, and used all the persuasion he could, but she utterly refused to go with him. He returned, and then came again, with orders to take her by force, and carry her back. He put up with the late Gov. [John] Langdon, and made known his business, and the Governor gave her notice that she must leave Portsmouth that night, or she would be carried back. She went to a stable, and hired a boy, with a horse and carriage, to carry her to Mr. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Jack’s [John Jack, a free black], at Greenland, where she now resides, a distance of eight miles, and remained there until her husband returned from sea, and Bassett did not find her. She says that she never received the least mental or moral instruction, of any kind, while she remained in Washington’s family. But, after she came to Portsmouth, she learned to read; and when Elias Smith first preached in Portsmouth, she professes to have been converted to Christianity. She, and the woman with whom she lives, (who is nearly of her age,) appear to be, and have the reputation of being imbued with the real spirit of Christianity. She says that the stories told of Washington’s piety and prayers, so far as she ever saw or heard while she was his slave, have no foundation. Card-playing and wine- drinking were the business at his parties, and he had more of such company Sundays than on any other day. I do not mention this as showing, in my estimation, his anti-Christian character, so much as the bare fact of being a slaveholder, and not a hundredth part so much as trying to kidnap this woman; but, in the minds of the community, it will weigh infinitely more. Great names bear more weight with the multitude, than the eternal principles of God’s government. So good a man as Washington is enough to sanctify war and slavery; but where is the evidence of his goodness? This woman is yet a slave. If Washington could have got her and her child, they were constitutionally his; and if Mrs. Washington’s heirs were now to claim her, and take her before Judge Woodbury, and prove their title, he would be bound, upon his oath, to deliver her up to them. Again — Langdon was guilty of a moral violation of the Constitution, in giving this woman notice of the agent being after her. It was frustrating the design, the intent of the Constitution, and he was equally guilty, morally, as those who would overthrow it. Mrs. Staines was given verbally, if not legally, by Mrs. Washington, to Eliza Custis, her grand-daughter. These women live in rather an obscure place, and in a poor, cold house, and speak well of their neighbors, and are probably treated with as much kindness and sympathy as people are generally in their circumstances; but not with half so much as it is the duty and interest of people, in better outward circumstances, to treat them. I greatly enjoyed my visit to them, and should rather have the benediction they pronounced upon me at parting, than the benediction of all the D.D.’s in Christendom. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
July: The US Post Office issued an adhesive brown 5¢ postage stamp bearing the head of Benj. Franklin and an adhesive black 10¢ stamp bearing the head of Geo. Washington. Letter postage was 5¢ per ounce. If the postal patron lacked a Franklin, half a Washington pasted onto the envelope would serve quite nicely. (At least we know where we stand!)
Thus it was that an invention of a retired Brit schoolteacher named Rowland Hill (1795-1879) in use in England since 1840 and in Switzerland and Brazil since 1843, began to be used as well in the USA! 1 50 Letters of minimum weight were 12 /2 cents (that’d be like $12. today, don’t forget, which explains why people in that era often wrote on tissue paper and often wrote both crosswise and lengthwise on this tissue
paper, covering the paper twice with their words, and then often also wrote on the inside of the envelope) but heavy letters and parcels were considerably more expensive because the primary cost to the US Post Office at these low volumes was not in piece-by-piece sorting but in haulage. Previously, postal fees might be paid either by the sender or by the recipient, and in fact one individual who had been nominated to be President of the United States did not even find out about his nomination, because when the official letter came from the HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
political convention it had borne postage due he had advised the mail deliverer as to his policy of long standing, not to accept any but prepaid letters. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1848
The cornerstone was laid for a Washington Monument, a Washington DC obelisk in honor of our 1st president, a Virginia slavemaster. –I’ll give you just one guess in regard to this heavy-duty construction project, as to precisely who it was who would be designated to do all the heavy lifting! GEORGE WASHINGTON
Planning for this erection had begun in 1833. During this year in which this monument to this Virginia slavemaster was beginning to be erected, the General Assembly of Virginia was revising the state’s treason statute which required death by hanging, to cover any slave who advised or conspired to rebel, or any free person who advised or conspired with a slave to rebel. Refer to VIRGINIA ACTS OF ASSEMBLY 1848, chapter 120, title II, chapter 12, section 5, and also to title II, chapter 2, section 5. This would be entered into the Virginia code of law in the following year, 1849, in VIRGINIA CODE, chapter 200, section 4, volume II, at 753, and in chapter 190, section 4, volume II, at 722. (This had been the charge leveled against Dr. Reuben Crandall in 1835, seeking his death by hanging for incidentally allowing another white man to peruse a pamphlet on antislavery. It would be the charge leveled against Captain John Brown in 1859, seeking his death by hanging for the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.) SERVILE INSURRECTION HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Edward Hicks attempted to capture General George Washington in the process of attempting his crossing of the Delaware river, and managed a depiction of a pretty porcelain horsie:
January: Friedrich Engels visited Heinrich Heine and wrote “... Heine ist am Kaputtgehen. Vor vierzehn Tagen war ich bei ihm, da lag er im Bett und hatte einen Nervenanfall gehabt. Gestern war er auf, aber höchst elend. Er kann keine drei Schritte mehr gehen, er schleicht an den Mauern sich stützend von Fauteuil bis ans Bett und vice versa. Dazu Lärm in seinem Hause, der ihn verrückt macht.” Since 1844, the poet had suffered not only financial reversals and but also a general physical deterioration. According to some suppositions this may have been either congenital neuropathy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). From this year until his death he would lie paralyzed, partly blind, and heavily sedated on what he termed his “mattress grave” — but in this condition he would author one of his finest collection of verse, ROMANZERO.
The French Prime Minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot refused permission for opposition political groups to stage political meetings in celebration of the birthday of George Washington (these had been being termed the “Paris Banquets”). HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Martin Johnson Heade was in Rome. (Probably, he then went on to Paris.) Thomas Hicks, his former associate under Edward Hicks, was also in Rome at this point. It was presumably in this year that Heade painted his surviving genre picture, “The Roman Newsboys,” as the torn posters on the wall behind the two newsboys reflect the political unrest of this year (one poster has to do with Vincenzo Gioberti of the Risorgimento movement, and the name of Pope Pius IX is scrawled in several locations), while the leaflets being handed out are antigovernmental in nature. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
February 25, Friday: Oney Judge Staines died in Greenland, New Hampshire. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1849
August 23, Thursday: Edward Hicks died, having been known for his entire life primarily as a Quaker minister rather than as any sort of artist.
During this year he had struggled for one last time to portray General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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He also painted yet another surreal bucolic landscape — but this one without any obvious symbolic freight: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1850
The Reverend Joel Hawes’s LESSONS FOR THE YOUNG AND THE OLD: FROM THE EXAMPLES OF WASHINGTON AND JAY (Brown & Parsons).
A 2d drawing of the manumitted slave West Ford was made, by the reporter Benson Lossing who was interviewing him about his slave life at Mount Vernon. Refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm. GEORGE WASHINGTON
William James Hubard settled in Virginia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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He would become interested in making a bronze casting of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s marble statue of George Washington, in the rotunda of the Virginia capitol building in Richmond.
From 1853 to 1860 he would be devoting most of his time and finances to this project. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Here is Hubard’s creation:71
71. He cast a number of these bronzes for St. Louis, Missouri, Columbia, South Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina, Lexington, Virginia, and New-York, New York. His plaster copy is in the rotunda of the Capitol building in Washington DC. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1851
A Catskill farmer, Mark Carr, brought two ox-sleds of evergreen trees into New-York and managed to vend them all.
The Reverend Heinrich Christian Schwan, a recent immigrant from Hanover, Germany to Cleveland, Ohio (by way of Brazil in South America), set up a lighted and decorated Christmas tree in his Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church. When someone denounced this as heathen idolatry he took it down (in the Christmas season of 1852 his church would be able to erect a similar display without serious objection).
Escapism was obviously going to do well. The books of escapist reading were going to just fly off the bookstore shelves. Therefore Susan B. Warner published a first fiction entitled THE WIDE WIDE WORLD, using the nom de plume “Elizabeth Wetherell” so as not to interfere with her haute social standing. This American novel would be exceeded in popularity during its time only by UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, which was being issued concurrently. The following commentary is from Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN, OR, MEG, JO, BETH AND AMY, issued in 1868:
Jo spent the morning on the river with Laurie and the afternoon reading and crying over THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD, up in the apple tree.
THE ALCOTT FAMILY
In this novel, we may well note, a copy of “Parson” Mason Locke Weems’s LIFE AND MEMORABLE ACTIONS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON is given as a Christmas present. GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1852
Using the pen name “Agricola,” William Elliott had expressed his ideas in favor of race slavery and in opposition to disunion in a series of letters to newspapers, and these were collected and published as THE LETTERS OF AGRICOLA.
From a lithograph published by Nathaniel Currier in this year, we can see that the intimate connection between our nation’s Founding Fathers and the peculiar institution of race slavery had not been nearly so problematic in this antebellum year, as it has become in more recent times. Here is President George Washington, captured in the act of doing his white-masterly stuff at Mount Vernon: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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By way of a medium at a seance with the supernatural, in this year the spirit of the deceased Nathaniel Peabody Rogers would be made to offer to William Lloyd Garrison the revealed truth that immediatism was wrong. To force a slavemaster to free his slaves would be to make that slavemaster become the slave of the enforcing power. But such a course of action would not be to eliminate slavery, rather it would be to perpetuate it. The spirit of Rogers professed that it had learned during its afterlife that those who are enslaved must wait until the slavemasters have themselves persuaded themselves freely, of the iniquity of their being slavemasters — and have freely and voluntarily granted to them their uncoerced manumission. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1853
September 17, Saturday: The great monument to George Washington in the national capital, conceived in 1833 and begun in 1848, had by this year risen about a hundred or a hundred fifty feet into the heavens (this wasn’t being accomplished by rocket science, but by slaves). William James Hubard put out a circular “Relative to HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Houdon’s Statue of Washington.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1854
Although every winter a “Carpenter Gothic” shack was being placed over Horatio Greenough’s statue of naked daddy George Washington to protect its Carrara marble from the District of Columbia weather, at this point the exposed statue had weathered enough that the stone belt fell off the stone sword.72
72. Nowadays what we do is, since such statue stone is largely composed of calcium carbonates we apply a thin wash of aminoethlaminopropylsilane (AEAPS), to seep into the microscopic cracks in the statue and bind to the calcium carbonate, and then we apply a “sol-gel” chemical that is similar to glass and, although it will not bond to calcium carbonate, will bond to this AEAPS layer. This doesn’t stop all deterioration but it does extend the shelflife of figures such as Washington by an order of magnitude. (It is of course one heck of a lot easier to take negative local steps such as this than it is to clean the pollution and the greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere of the planet!) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1859
March 15, Tuesday: In his cottage Sunnyside, his “snuggery,” in Tarrytown, New York, surrounded by his servants, Washington Irving lay down his pen after completing the 5th and final volume of the biography of his namesake, who had patted him on the head while he was a frail bairn, General/President George Washington.
Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Rome studio of Harriet Goodhue Hosmer and viewed her “Zenobia in Chains.” He pronounced that he “had seldom or never been more impressed by a piece of modern sculpture.”
March 15. Rainy day and southerly wind. I come home in the evening through a very heavy rain after two brilliant rainbows at sunset, the first of the year.
September 16, Thursday: Henry Thoreau surveyed some land on Bedford Road near P.J. Sexton and J.B. Moore (this would not be Jacob Bailey Moore of New Hampshire because he had died in San Francisco in 1853), for Waldo Emerson. His fee was $2.00.
View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm
(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)
View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/385.htm
September 16. Another and severer frost, which cut off all our vines, etc., lespedeza, corn, etc. P. M.–By the roadside, forty or fifty rods east of the South Acton station, I find the Aster Novæ-Angliæ, apparently past prime. I must call it a plant of this vicinity, then. I thought it “in prime or a little past” at Salem, September 21, 1858. I will venture to put it with the A. puniceus. Young Nealy says that there are blue-winged teal about now. Others are out after ducks. Nealy says he shot the first golden plover he has seen, this morning. [Does he know it??]73 How unpromising are promising men! Hardly any disgust me so much. I have no faith in them. They make gratuitous promises, and they break them gratuitously. When an Irishwoman tells me that she wouldn’t tell a lie for her life (because I appear to doubt her), it seems HDT WHAT? INDEX
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to me that she has already told a lie. She holds herself and the truth very cheap to say that so easily. What troubles men lay up for want of a little energy and precision! A man who steps quickly to his mark leaves a great deal of filth behind. There’s many a well-meaning fellow who thinks he has a hard time of it who will not put his shoulder to the wheel, being spell-bound, – who sits about, as if he were hatching his good intentions, and every now and then his friends get up a subscription for him, and he is cursed with the praise of being “a clever fellow.” It would really be worth his while to go straight to his master the devil, if he would only shake him up when he got there. Men who have not learned the value of time, or of anything else; for whom an infant school and a birchen rod is still and forever necessary. A man who is not prompt affects me as a creature covered with slime, crawling through mud and lying dormant a great part of the year. Think of the numbers –men and women– who want and will have and do have (how do they get it?!) what they will not earn! The non-producers. How many of these bloodsuckers there are fastened to every helpful man or woman in this world! They constitute this world. It is a world full of snivelling prayers, – whose very religion is a prayer! As if beggars were admirable, were respectable, to anybody! Again and again I am surprised to observe what an interval there is, in what is called civilized life, between the shell and the inhabitant of the shell, – what a disproportion there is between the life of man and his conveniences and luxuries. The house is neatly painted, has many apartments. You are shown into the sitting-room, where is a carpet and couch and mirror and splendidly bound Bible, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, photographs of the whole family even, on the mantelpiece. One could live here more deliciously and improve his divine gifts better than in a cave surely. In the bright and costly saloon man will not be starving or freezing or contending with vermin surely, but he will be meditating a divine song or a heroic deed, or perfuming the atmosphere by the very breath of his natural and healthy existence. As the parlor is preferable to the cave, so will the life of its occupant be more godlike than that of the dweller in the cave. I called at such a house this afternoon, the house of one who in Europe would be called an operative. The woman was not in the third heavens, but in the third kitchen, as near the wood-shed or to outdoors and to the cave as she could instinctively get, for there she belonged, – a coarse scullion or wench, not one whit superior, but in fact inferior, to the squaw in a wigwam, – and the master of the house, where was he? He was drunk somewhere, on some mow or behind some stack, and I could not see him. He had been having a spree. If he had been as sober as he may be to-morrow, it would have been essentially the same; for refinement is not in him, it is only in his house, – in the appliances which he did not invent. So is it in the Fifth Avenue and all over the civilized world. There is nothing but confusion in our New England life. The hogs are in the parlor. This man and his wife –and how many like them!– should have sucked their claws in some hole in a rock, or lurked like gypsies in the outbuildings of some diviner race. They’ve got into the wrong boxes; they rained down into these houses by mistake, as it is said to rain toads sometimes. They wear these advantages helter-skelter and without appreciating them, or to satisfy a vulgar taste, just as savages wear the dress of civilized men, just as that Indian chief walked the streets of New Orleans clad in nothing but a gaudy military coat which his Great Father had given him. Some philanthropists trust that the houses will civilize the inhabitants at last. The mass of men, just like savages, strive always after the outside, the clothes and finery of 73. This “Young Nealy” (Edward Nealy or Neally or Nealey), would eventually be buried beneath an Indian grindstone which he would allege he and Thoreau had found together. There seems, however, to be a lack of evidence as to said grindstone: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Zenobia in Chains
civilized life, the blue beads and tinsel and centre-tables. It is a wonder that any load ever gets moved, men are so prone to put the cart before the horse. We do everything according to the fashion, just as the Flatheads flatten the heads of their children. We conform ourselves in a myriad ways and with infinite pains to the fashions of our time. We mourn for our lost relatives according to fashion, and as some nations hire professed mourners to howl, so we hire stone-masons to hammer and blast by the month and so express our grief. Or if a public character dies, we get up a regular wake with eating and drinking till midnight. Grasshoppers have been very abundant in dry fields for two or three weeks. Sophia walked through the Depot Field a fortnight ago, and when she got home picked fifty or sixty from her skirts, – for she wore hoops and crinoline. Would not this be a good way to clear a field of them, – to send a bevy of fashionably dressed ladies HDT WHAT? INDEX
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across a field and leave them to clean their skirts when they get home? It would supplant anything at the patent office, and the motive power is cheap. I am invited to take some party of ladies or gentlemen on an excursion, –to walk or sail, or the like,– but by all kinds of evasions I omit it, and am thought to be rude and unaccommodating therefore. They do not consider that the wood-path and the boat are my studio, where I maintain a sacred solitude and cannot admit promiscuous company. I will see them occasionally in an evening or at the table, however. They do not think of taking a child away from its school to go a-huckleberrying with them. Why should not I, then, have my school and school hours to be respected? Ask me for a certain number of dollars if you will, but do not ask me for my afternoons. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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At about this point in time (which is to say, mid-month), Martin Robison Delany was sailing along the coast of Africa toward Lagos. He would be spending five weeks there.
At about this point in time, also, the handsome John E. Cook was reconnoitering Harpers Ferry on behalf of Captain John Brown’s guerrillas, when he hailed the debonair local plantation owner and slavemaster Lewis W. Washington on the street: “I believe you have a great many interesting relics at your house; could I have permission to see them if I should walk out someday?”
Cook was of course aware, as everyone was aware, that this Washington was a descendant of the General/ President George Washington as well as a special assistant to Henry A. Wise, the Governor of Virginia. When Cook would visit the Washington plantation a few days later, he would be especially fascinated by the neato pistol presented to General Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette after the Revolution, enough so as to inquire whether it shot well, and by the neato ceremonial sword which had been presented to General HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Washington by none other than Frederick the Great of Prussia.
<__ George Washington’s sword (in the famous Leutze painting).
October 16, Sunday-October 18, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau was working on his natural history materials. ROSS/ADAMS COMMENTARY
The raid by the John Brown forces on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry VA involved 5 blacks and 13 whites. Of the five blacks, two died during the raid, John Copeland and Shields Green were captured and would hang, and one managed to escape. That is to say, back from the West, Captain John Brown committed the treason of attempting to free men and women from their rightful masters, by seizing the weapons at the Harpers Ferry federal arsenal, and of course the owners of these men and women, who had a perfect right to resist being deprived of the use of their property, of course resisted being deprived of the use of their property, and therefore of course there were deaths during his raid on this place where the government to which he owed loyalty was manufacturing weapons of murder. Although Brown did not effectively free the slaves of the sovereign state of Virginia –except of course that he freed those who listened to him and took up pikes and were gunned down– he was able effectively to sacrifice the lives of other people to his own enthusiasms. That has to count as a personal “win” of sorts! For instance, the first to be killed by the raiders at Harpers Ferry was Hayward Shepard, a free black who happened to be in harm’s way because he was serving as the baggage handler between the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad terminal and the Winchester & Harpers Ferry Railroad Terminal. (The old man failed to respond appropriately to the raiders’ orders.) There were 16 whites and 5 nonwhites with Brown in the raid, and of these 10 were killed outright, 5 were captured for trial and hanged, and 7 escaped, of which 2 were later captured and tried and hanged. Although the US government did effectively save the contents of their arsenal from the insurrectionaries, shortly thereafter these weapons were seized by the insurrectionary Governor of Virginia, Wise, who had as perfect a right to them, and he distributed HDT WHAT? INDEX
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these weapons to Confederate troops.
[NOTE: There was every reason to believe that if Governor Wise of Virginia could get his hands on Frederick HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Douglass, the black leader would hang alongside the white leader.
Douglass was at the moment in Philadelphia. The telegraph operator there would seek out Douglass and warn him, so that he would have three full hours in which to effect his escape — before the telegram ordering his arrest needed to be handed over to the local sheriff. Douglass, in fleeing went first to familiar haunts, the Hoboken NJ lodgings of Ottilie Assing, and only from there to Rochester and then to Ontario, and England.
On the dock in Rochester, embarking for Ontario, William Parker would press into Douglass’s hand what was purported to be the pistol dropped by Gorsuch when he had been shot dead in Christiana (actually, it seems that the man had been unarmed with anything more deadly than a curiously foolish moral courage).]
This sort of situation has been described many times, and you will forgive me if I here repeat one of the early HDT WHAT? INDEX
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descriptions of this sort of situation:
More weapons, more murder. –Lao Tzu HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Harpers Ferry from Brown’s overlook in Maryland
Brown’s Sharps carbine, his “Henry Ward Beecher’s Bible,” was captured with him after the Harpers Ferry HDT WHAT? INDEX
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skirmish, along with that famous George Washington sword he had just stolen from
<__ George Washington’s sword (in the famous Leutze painting).
a plantation, and to which he had as much right as its current owner (or, for that matter, its original owner).
After they would take Captain John Brown’s Sharps rifle away from him at Harpers Ferry, they would allow this little boy to pose with it. Grow up, son, and be a Christian like us: kill people, own slaves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Although Charles Plummer Tidd opposed the attack on Harpers Ferry, he nevertheless took part both in the
raid on the planter Washington’s home and on the federal arsenal itself. He and John Brown’s son Owen Brown escaped, and made their way on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania.
(Tidd would visit Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada and take part in the planning for the rescue of Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett while the Mason Commission of the Congress was presuming that he had been killed in the fighting at Harpers Ferry. On July 19, 1861 he would be able to enlist under the name “Charles Plummer” and would become a 1st Sergeant of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers. On February 8, 1862 he would die of fever aboard the transport Northerner during the battle of Roanoke Island, a battle he had particularly wished to take part in because ex-Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the nemesis of the Harpers Ferry raiders, was in command of the Confederates. Charles Plummer Tidd’s grave is #40 in the National Cemetery in New Berne NC.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Owen Brown was 35 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid. He escaped on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. It was due largely to his psychological grit, and physical endurance despite a withered arm, that the little group of survivors of which he was the leader did reach safety. He and Charles Plummer Tidd would find work and safety under assumed names, on an oil well crew in Crawford County PA. After the civil war he would grow grapes for some time in Ohio in association with two of his brothers, before migrating to California. He would be the only one of the five escaped raiders not to participate in the civil war, and would be the last of the raiders when he died on January 9, 1891 near Pasadena at his mountain home “Brown’s Peak.” He never married. A marble monument now marks his mountain grave.
Oliver Brown, the youngest of John Brown’s sons to reach adulthood, was shot dead at the age of 20 while serving as a sentinel at the river bridge. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Perhaps this white corpse is meant to be Oliver Brown, usefully lying dead in the foreground of a contemporary news illustration? (This wouldn’t have been a depiction of Dangerfield Newby, also shot down at the bridge, since he was a very tall man with a splendid physique and since his mulatto body was abused by the attackers, who among other things snipped off its ears as trophies before they herded some hogs to root on it.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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John E. Cook was sent out by Captain Brown to collect weapons, and instead climbed into a tree and observed the fight.
When John Brown sent his son Watson BrownWATSON BROWN out to negotiate, he was gunned down by the citizens of Harpers Ferry.
(He would manage to crawl back to the shelter of the engine house and live on, groaning, his head cradled in Edwin Coppoc’s lap, for a considerable period. He would expire on October 18, 1859. His widow Isabella M. Thompson Brown would remarry with his brother Salmon Brown.)
John Henry Kagi became trapped along with John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the three men made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah HDT WHAT? INDEX
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River, they came under a crossfire and Kagi was the first killed, his body being left to float in the river.
A monument would be erected by the citizens of Oberlin, Ohio in honor of their three free citizens of color who had died in the raid or been hanged, John Anderson Copeland, Jr., Lewis Sheridan Leary, and Shields Green (the 8-foot marble monument would be moved to Vine Street Park in 1971).
Captain John Brown sent William Thompson out from the engine house to negotiate under flag of truce, and the mob of citizens placed him under arrest, took him to the local hotel barroom, discussed what to do, dragged him into the street, executed him by shooting him in the head, and dumped his body into the Potomac River.74
74. An interesting fact about this case is that it just about got a young lady into serious trouble. According to a letter of explanation she would provide to the local paper, Miss C.C. Fouke was the daughter of the tavernkeeper at Harpers Ferry, operating at the local hotel. The story had gone around, after the fact, that on the 2d day of the raid in her father’s saloon in the hotel she had thrown her body in front of this Brown conspirator William Thompson while the mob was debating whether or not to off him. Rather than be classed with Pocahontas or with Florence Nightingale, Miss Fouke attempted to explain the rationale for her conduct to the public at large. She had indeed thrown her body between the mob and the captive, she freely confessed, but she had done so, she needed to point out, “without touching him,” and she insisted also that her action was not motivated by any concern that this man was about to be shot in the head, but rather because her sister-in-law was resting in the next room and should not be disturbed as she was ailing — and/or out of a conviction that the man before being offed should be tried by a court of law. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Thompson’s brother Dauphin Adolphus Thompson also was shot dead during the raid.
Dauphin
William HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson was pinned against the wall by a bayonet-thrust of one of the Marines.
“One of the prisoners described Anderson as turning completely over against the wall in his dying agony. He lived a short time, stretched on the brick walk without, where he was subjected to savage brutalities, being kicked in body and face, while one brute of an armed farmer spat a huge quid of tobacco from his vile jaws into the mouth of the dying man, which he first forced open.”
In the engine house at Harpers Ferry, Edwin Coppoc surrendered with Captain John Brown.
(He would be tried by a jury of his white male peers immediately after the conclusion of the trial of Captain Brown. He would be sentenced to death on November 2, 1859. From prison before his hanging, he would write to his adoptive mother, of a nonresistant-abolitionist Quaker farm family, that he was
“sorry to say that I was ever induced to raise a gun.”
He would be hung with John E. Cook on December 16, 1859. The body would be buried in Winona after a funeral attended by the entire town. Later the body would be reburied in Salem OH.)
You will remember that in July 1854, when Moncure Daniel Conway graduated from Harvard Theological School and was ordained, his classmate William H. Leeman of Hallowell ME had not HDT WHAT? INDEX
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graduated with him. This fellow had drunk some illicit alcohol Conway had smuggled onto campus and then refilled Conway’s illicit bottles with water, and so student Conway had turned him in to the college administration. Leaman had been refused graduation on grounds of moral turpitude, and warned not to make any attempt to preach. At this point he reappears, or his mutilated body reappears — salvaged from the Potomac River after being used for target practice and thrown into the common pit at Harpers Ferry at midnight.75
Barclay Coppoc escaped from Harpers Ferry.
“We were together eight days before [John E. Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [John Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated and I went on through with the box to Ohio on the cars.” (Osborn Perry Anderson, Barclay Coppoc, and Francis Jackson Meriam would travel separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Barclay would go from there to Iowa, with Virginia agents in close pursuit. He would be back in Kansas in 1860, helping to run off some Missouri slaves, and would nearly lose his life in a second undertaking of this kind. On July 24, 1861 he would become a 1st Lieutenant in Colonel Montgomery’s regiment, the 3d Kansas Infantry. Eventually he would be killed by the fall of a train into the 75. See pages 87-8 and 240-1 of d’Entremont, where this account of Leaman was put together for the first time. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Platte river from a trestle forty feet high, the supports of which had been burned away by Confederates.)
Francis Jackson Meriam was not killed or captured in the raid on Harpers Ferry because he had been left at the Kennedy farmhouse, in one of his fits of despair.
He was a great drag on the other escapees as they hiked through the woods as he needed to stop and rest every HDT WHAT? INDEX
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mile or so.
To the great relief of the others, Meriam boarded a train in the town of Shippensburg heading for Philadelphia. Eventually Thoreau would put him on a train headed for Canada.
By a week after the execution of John Brown, our nation would be teetering on the edge of civil war. The disruption, however, was not directly related to John Brown’s raid upon the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, but had to do instead with Helperism and its attitude of antislavery racism. The struggle was over the Speakership in the new US House of Representatives. Neither of the primary parties had the requisite 119 votes to win this position, and so a decision would be reachable only after there had been some considerable defection on one side or the other, from party discipline. The Republicans had proposed Representative John Sherman for this important position, and the Democrats were countering that no one who had endorsed Helperism, a concoction of recommended murder and treason, could possibly be considered for such a vital and influential role. If Representative Sherman got the job, the Southern states would be forced to withdraw their representatives from the halls of the US federal government. In endorsing Hinton Rowan Helper’s book during the spring of this year, the South’s attitude was, Sherman had endorsed treason and murder.
By the 2d day of the debate over the speakership, a linkage was being suggested between Helper’s ideas and John Brown’s actions. The illegality of the actions was coming to be considered to have been a direct expression of this strange belief system, according to which there was a “higher law” to which humans owed their primary obedience. The idea that there was a law higher than human law was considered an utterly presumptuous and iniquitous doctrine. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
October 16. Sunday. P.M.– Paddle to Puffer’s and thence walk to Ledum Swamp and Conant’s Wood. A cold, clear, Novemberish day. The wind goes down and we do not sail. The button-bushes are just bare, and the black willows partly so, and the mikania all fairly gray now. I see the button-bush balls reflected on each side, and each wool-grass head and recurved withered sedge or rush is also doubled by the reflection. The Scirpus lacustris is generally brown, the Juncus militaris greener. It is rather too cool to sit still in the boat unless in a sunny and sheltered place. I have not been on the river for some time, and it is the more novel to me this cool day. When I get to Willow Bay I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores. To me this is an important and suggestive sight, as, perchance, in some countries new haystacks in the yards; as to the Esquimaux the erection of winter houses. I remember this phenomenon annually for thirty years. A more constant phenomenon here than the new haystacks in the yard, for they were erected here probably before man dwelt here and may still be erected here when man has departed. For thirty years I have annually observed, about this time or earlier, the freshly erected winter lodges of the musquash along the riverside, reminding us that, if we have no gypsies, we have a more indigenous race of furry, quadrupedal men maintaining their ground in our midst still. This may not be an annual phenomenon to you. It may not be in the Greenwich almanac or ephemeris, but it has an important place in my Kalendar. So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia and flags. There will be some reference to it, by way of parable or otherwise, in my New Testament. Surely, it is a defect in our Bible that it is not truly ours, but a Hebrew Bible. The most pertinent illustrations for us are to be drawn, not from Egypt or Babylonia, but from New England. Talk about learning our letters and being literate! Why, the roots of letters are things. Natural objects and phenomena are the original symbols or types which express our thoughts and feelings, and yet American scholars, having little or no root in the soil, commonly strive with all their might to confine themselves to the imported symbols alone. All the true growth and experience, the living speech, they would fain reject as “Americanisms.” It is the old error, which the church, the state, the school ever commit, choosing darkness rather than light, holding fast to the old and to tradition. A more intimate knowledge, a deeper experience, will surely originate a word. When I really know that our river pursues a serpentine course to the Merrimack, shall I continue to describe it by referring to some other river no older than itself which is like it, and call it a meander? It is no more meandering than the Meander is musketaquidding. As well sing of the nightingale here as the Meander. What if there were a tariff on words, on language, for the encouragement of home manufactures? Have we not the genius to coin our own? Let the schoolmaster distinguish the true from the counterfeit. They go on publishing the “chronological cycles” and “movable festivals of the Church” and the like from mere habit, but how insignificant are these compared with the annual phenomena of your life, which fall within your experience! The signs of the zodiac are not nearly of that significance to me that the sight of a dead sucker in the spring is. That is the occasion for an immovable festival in my church. Another kind of Lent then begins in my thoughts than you wot of. I am satisfied then to live on fish alone for a season. Men attach a false importance to celestial phenomena as compared with terrestrial, as if it were more respectable and elevating to watch your neighbors than to mind your own affairs. The nodes of the stars are not the knots HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
we have to untie. The phenomena of our year are one thing, those of the almanac another. For October, for
instance, instead of making the sun enter the sign of the scorpion, I would much sooner make him enter a musquash-house. Astronomy is a fashionable study, patronized by princes, but not fungi. “Royal Astronomer.” The snapping turtle, too, must find a place among the constellations, though it may have to supplant some doubtful characters already there. If there is no place for him overhead, he can serve us bravely underneath, supporting the earth. This clear, cold, Novemberish light is inspiriting. Some twigs which are bare and weeds begin to glitter with hoary light. The very edge or outline of a tawny or russet hill has this hoary light on it. Your thoughts sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs. From the shore you look back at the silver-plated river. Every rain exposes new arrowheads. We stop at Clamshell and dabble for a moment in the relics of a departed race. Where we landed in front of Puffer’s, found a jug which the haymakers had left in the bushes. Hid our boat there in a clump of willows, and though the ends stuck out, being a pale green and whitish, they were not visible or distinguishable at a little distance. Passed through the sandy potato-field at Witherell’s cellar-hole. Potatoes not dug; looking late and neglected now; the very vines almost vanished on some sandier hills. When we emerged from the pleasant footpath through the birches into Witherell Glade, looking along it toward the westering sun, the glittering white tufts of the Andropogon scoparius, lit up by the sun, were affectingly fair and cheering to behold. It was already a cheerful Novemberish scene. A narrow glade stretching east and west between a dense birch wood, now half bare, and a ruddy oak wood on the upper side, a ground covered with tawny stubble and fine withered grass and cistuses. Looking westward along it, your eye fell on these lit tufts of andropogon [Vide Nov. 8th.], their glowing half raised a foot or more above the ground, a lighter and more brilliant whiteness than the downiest cloud presents (though seen on one side they are grayish) [Vide (by chance) same date, or October 16th, 1858]. Even the lespedezas stand like frost-covered wands, and now hoary goldenrods and some bright-red blackberry vines amid the tawny grass are in harmony with the rest; and if you sharpen and rightly intend your eye you see the gleaming lines of gossamer (stretching from stubble to stubble over the whole surface) which you are breaking. How cheerful these cold but bright white waving tufts! They reflect all the sun’s light without a particle of his heat, or yellow rays. A thousand such tufts now catch up the sun and send to us its light but not heat. His heat is being steadily withdrawn from us. Light without heat is getting to be the prevailing phenomenon of the day now. We economize all the warmth we get now. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
The frost of the 11th, which stiffened the ground, made new havoc with vegetation, as I perceive. Many plants have ceased to bloom, no doubt. Many Diplopappus linariifolius are gone to seed, and yellowish globes. Such are the stages in the year’s decline. The flowers are at the mercy of the frosts. Places where erechthites grows, more or less bare, in sprout-lands, look quite black and white (black withered leaves and white down) and wintry. At Ledum Swamp, feeling to find the Vaccinium Oxycoccus berries, I am struck with the coldness of the wet sphagnum, as if I put my hands into a moss in Labrador, – a sort of winter lingering the summer through there. To my surprise, now at 3.30 P.M., some of the sphagnum in the shade is still stiff with frost, and when I break it I see the glistening spiculae. This is the most startling evidence of winter as yet. For only on the morning of the 11th was there any stiffening of the ground elsewhere. Also in the high sedgy sprout-land south of this swamp, I see hoary or frost-like patches of sedge amid the rest, where all is dry; as if in such places (the lowest) the frost had completely bleached the grass so that it now looks like frost. I think that that is the case. It is remarkable how, when a wood has been cut (perhaps where the soil was light) and frosts for a long while prevent a new wood from springing up there, that fine sedge (Carex Pennsylvanica?) will densely cover the ground amid the stumps and dead sprouts. It is the most hardy and native of grasses there. This is the grass of the sprout-lands and woods. It wants only the sun and a reasonably dry soil. Then there are the grasses and sedges of the meadows, but the cultivated fields and the pastures are commonly clothed with introduced grasses. The nesaea is all withered, also the woodwardia The ledum and Andromeda Polifolia leaves have fallen. The Kalmia glauca is still falling. The spruce, also, has fallen. The ledum smells like a bee, – that peculiar scent they have. C., too, perceives it. See a hairy woodpecker on a burnt pitch pine. He distinctly rests on his tail constantly. With what vigor he taps and bores the bark, making it fly far and wide, and then darts off with a sharp whistle! I remark how still it is to-day, really Sabbath-like. This day, at least, we do not hear the rattle of cars nor the whistle. I cannot realize that the country was often as still as this twenty years ago. Returning, the river is perfectly still and smooth. The broad, shallow water on each side, bathing the withered grass, looks as if it were ready to put on its veil of ice at any moment. It seems positively to invite the access of frost. I seem to hear already the creaking, shivering sound of ice there, broken by the undulations my boat makes. So near are we to winter. Then, nearer home, I hear two or three song sparrows on the button-bushes sing as in spring, – that memorable tinkle, – as if it would be last as it was first. The few blackish leaves of pontederia rising above the water now resemble ducks at a distance, and so help to conceal them now that they are returning. The weeds are dressed in their frost jackets, naked down to their close-fitting downy or flannel shirts. Like athletes they challenge the winter, these bare twigs. This cold refines and condenses us. Our spirits are strong, like that pint of cider in the middle of a frozen barrel. The cool, placid, silver-plated waters at even coolly await the frost. The musquash is steadily adding to his winter lodge. There is no need of supposing a peculiar instinct telling him how high to build his cabin. He has had a longer experience in this river-valley than we. Evergreens, I should say, fall early, both the coniferous and the broad-leaved. That election-cake fungus which is still growing (as for some months) appears to be a Boletus. I love to get out of cultivated fields where I walk on an imported sod, on English grass, and walk in the fine sedge of woodland hollows, on an American sward. In the former case my thoughts are heavy and lumpish, as if I fed on turnips. In the other I nibble groundnuts. Your hands begin to be cool, rowing, now. At many a place in sprout-lands, where the sedge is peculiarly flat and white or hoary, I put down my hand to feel if there is frost on it. It must be the trace of frost. Since the frost of the 11th, the grass and stubble has received another coat of tawny. That andropogon bright feathery top may be put with the clematis seed and tail. Only this cold, clear sky can light them up thus. The farmer begins to calculate how much longer he can safely leave his potatoes out. Each ball of the button-bush reflected in the silvery water by the riverside appears to me as distinct and important as a star in the heavens viewed through “optic glass.” This, too, deserves its Kepler and Galileo. As nature generally, on the advent of frost, puts on a russet and tawny dress, so is not man clad more in harmony with nature in the fall in a tawny suit or the different hues of Vermont gray? I would fain see him glitter like a sweet-fern twig between me and the sun. A few green yellow lily pads lie on the surface waiting to be frozen in. All the Lycopodium complanatum I see to-day has shed its pollen. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1860
By this point the manumitted mulatto West Ford, reputed to be the only son of George Washington, had made himself the 2d richest person of color in Fairfax County near Washington DC. Isn’t America wonderful!
Hinton Rowan Helper’s THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT, which had been published in 1857 in Baltimore, was republished in New-York (it having been found to be quite impossible to publish such material any longer out of Baltimore) with factual corrections as to the US economy (as if mere facts had anything to do with anything, in this contest of racial attitudes and orientations), and with (temporary) suppression of some of the more extreme of the pending consequences of this racist abolitionist attitude. This new 1860 edition was being published under the title COMPENDIUM OF THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH. BY HINTON ROWAN HELPER OF NORTH CAROLINA.76 The cost of publication was 16 cents the copy, and the book was expected to sell at 25 cents the copy. (Most copies would be distributed at cost.)
HINTON ROWAN HELPER
The book expanded upon what we now have come to regard as a pleasant conceit –the idea that oppression actually is unprofitable to the oppressor– and favorably quoting Waldo Emerson among other of our nation’s
76. Hinton Rowan Helper. THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT. ENLARGED EDITION. New York, 1860. This book has been republished in Miami FL in 1969. His earlier book has been republished in Cambridge MA in 1968. For more on this guy and his not-all-that-novel conceit that the victims were victimizing him and needed to be trumped, see Bailey, Hugh C. HINTON ROWAN HELPER: ABOLITIONIST-RACIST (University AL: 1965). HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
prime politicians and metaphysicians.
This Emerson-admirer was an egregious case of what you would term an Antislavery Racist. –Which is to say, he was a Southern white man, from North Carolina, who owned no slaves, whose fixation was that he and other white men like him were victims of society. It wasn’t the blacks who were being harmed by slavery, it was real decent folks like him who were being harmed by slavery. All these slaves, who belonged to other people, were impacting his life! He hated the nigger who was doing him wrong, he hated the slavemaster who was doing him wrong, what he needed most urgently was a lily-white, pure America of which he could be proud, an America where he could stand tall. Slavery was a tainted and archaic social system that was standing in the way of white people’s cultural and material progress. Blacks were a tainted and inferior group who had no business being here in our New World in the first place. His new book was pretty much of a piece with the masterpiece he had issued as of 1857, THE IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH: HOW TO MEET IT. This author needed to ensure in his preface that his readers were going to understand, that it was no part of his abolitionist stance to display any special friendliness or sympathy for the blacks. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
(OK, Hinton, fellow, I guess we’ve all grasped that now.)
“History, among its many ironies, often places enemies in life into various positions of posthumous conjunction.” — Stephen Jay Gould Meanwhile, The National Democratic Quarterly Review in Washington DC was attempting to neutralize Helper’s racist abolitionism by issuing Louis Shade’s A BOOK FOR THE “IMPENDING CRISIS!” APPEAL TO THE COMMON SENSE AND PATRIOTISM OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. “HELPERISM” ANNIHILATED! THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Meanwhile, the South was attempting to neutralize Helperism by publication of Samuel M. Wolfe’s HINTON ROWAN HELPER’S IMPENDING CRISIS DISSECTED.
Meanwhile, an economist’s argument for holding the sections of the nation together was being offered by Thomas Prentice Kettell’s SOUTHERN WEALTH AND NORTHERN PROFITS AS EXHIBITED IN STATISTICAL FACTS AND OFFICIAL FIGURES: SHOWING THE NECESSITY OF UNION TO THE FUTURE PROSPERITY AND WELFARE OF THE REPUBLIC. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1861
Fall: At the outbreak of civil war, William James Hubard beat his ploughshare into a sword by converting the Washington Foundry near Richmond, Virginia, in which he had created his statue of George Washington after the Houdon marble, to the production of rough bronze castings for machining into cannon barrels. Suddenly
the focus was shifting from honoring one’s heros to killing one’s enemies. Our guy also began experimenting with gunpowder. His cannon were finished in the Richmond machine shops of Thomas Samson and James Pae — bronze field pieces, battlefield litter, have been found marked with Hubard’s initials coupled with “S & P” indicating “Samson & Pae Company” and in rare instances with an additional “W.F.” presumably indicating HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
“Washington Foundry.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1863
July 20, Monday: The manumitted mulatto West Ford, formerly enslaved, who is suspected to have been the only son of George Washington, had been being cared for at the Mount Vernon plantation during his old age. In this year he died and his obituary appeared in the Alexandria Gazette. His body possibly was placed in the emptied older tomb of Washington, which during his lifetime he had tended. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1876
A pseudobook was created, patriotically, during this patriotic year, out of wood from a dead branch of the “Washington Elm” in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the tree in question would stand until 1923, and this solid carved block of wood may be edifyingly viewed by those sufficiently curious either at the Houghton Library of Harvard University, or at the Fogg Museum).77
77. The artifact is presumably genuine, in the sense that it is made from the wood of the tree that stood in Cambridge. As to the provenance of a “Washington’s Tree” in the shade of which the famous General George Washington addressed his patriotic soldiers, we may take note that the initial written mention of such a specimen does not appear until the 1830s, and that would be more than half a century after the fact. There is reason therefore to suppose that this tree may be approximately as genuine as Concord’s famous “whipping elm.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1887
Publication in Cambridge by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. of more of H.G.O. Blake’s excerpts from Henry Thoreau’s journal, as WINTER. H.G.O. BLAKE’S “WINTER”
In this edition Blake suppressed something that Thoreau had learned in 1840 from Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF WASHINGTON IN THE REVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
We are all familiar with the censorship of A YANKEE IN CANADA by George William Curtis, whose editorial correction of “very flagrant heresies” and “defiant Pantheism” led to Thoreau’s withdrawal of the manuscript from Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. We are all familiar with the censorship of THE MAINE WOODS by bigoted, timid, mean, cowardly James Russell Lowell, whose suppression of the concluding observation “It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still” on behalf of The Atlantic Monthly led to Thoreau’s demanding from him an apology. Here, however, is a 3d instance of censorship, one of which we seem until now to have been unaware. Unlike these previous two censorships to which Thoreau had been able to react –and to which Thoreau did react– this is a censorship that occurred after his death against which he was therefore defenseless. When, in this year, H.G.O. Blake went to publish extracts from Thoreau’s journal in the WINTER volume, he suppressed the final remark in Henry’s journal section about our worshipful reprocessing of DWM George Washington: “But we are not sorry he is dead.” This shattering final remark tied a knot in the tale. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than his friend Blake considered that the general American public could be able to bear! For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1889
Dissolution of the Reverend Theodore Parker’s 28th Congregational Society. The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway spoke.
In this year the Reverend Conway was publishing, as Volume IV of the Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MOUNT VERNON.78
78. Moncure Daniel Conway. GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MOUNT VERNON: BEING VOL. IV. OF MEMOIRS OF THE LONG ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 8vo, pp. 352. Brooklyn, 1889. Published by the Society. READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1890
79 The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway issued his LIFE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. He prepared a new edition of George Washington’s RULES OF CIVILITY.80
79. Moncure Daniel Conway. LIFE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: Great Writers Series. 1 vol, pp. 223. London, Melbourne, and New York: Walter Scott. 1890. READ THE FULL TEXT
80. GEORGE WASHINGTON’S RULES OF CIVILITY, TRACED TO THEIR SOURCES AND RESTORED. Edited by Moncure D. Conway. Small 8vo. London: Chatto & Windus, 1890. New York: United States Book Company. READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1900
Thomas Jefferson had hoped to eliminate religion from his proposed public university by removing theology from the curriculum. However, as evangelical Protestantism came in the early 19th Century to dominate Virginia’s culture, he had been forced to compromise and his University of Virginia had begun to provide nonsectarian religious instruction (under the rubric “Moral Philosophy”). Jefferson’s compromise had then been reenacted at all the other institutions of higher education in the state, so that even denominational colleges had been able to adhere to one or another such “nonsectarian” pretense while offering an essentially religious education. By the end of the 19th Century separation of church and state in Virginia’s public school system had become compatible with a generalized evangelical Protestantism — complete with all its Bible-thumping, all its obligatory-lecture “praying,” all its singing of tendentiously worded “hymns,” and all its dissing of any other religious understanding. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
When asked to nominate the “Americans most deserving representation” for inclusion in a hall of fame that was being planned in Massachusetts, the Honorable George Frisbie Hoar needed to exclude his world-class heros William Ewart Gladstone, John Milton, the Marquis de Lafayette, General Simon Bolivar, Giuseppe Mazzini, Lajos Kossuth, and Miss Florence Nightingale because they were not Americans (well, in addition to being disqualified as a mere Brit, Miss Florence was not even male and not even yet deceased), and he excused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne because to be great a man must possess “more than the quality of a great artist,” and he banished Benjamin Franklin to the outer darkness for having been “without idealism, without lofty principle, and, on one side of his character, gross and immoral,” and, finally, aware that he could not get away with submitting his own name because he wasn’t dead yet (and besides that it would have been utterly immodest), he submitted the following dozen dead white American malenesses: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
• President George Washington (the most “noble” on the list, representing “the prime meridian of pure, exalted, human character”) • President Thomas Jefferson (the most “influential” on the list, because of his alleged authorship of the Declaration of Independence, a document endorsed by the Honorable George Frisbie Hoar’s grandfather Roger Sherman) • President Abraham Lincoln • The Reverend Jonathan Edwards • President John Adams • Sam Adams • Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton • Senator Daniel Webster • Chief Justice John Marshall • Senator Charles Sumner • Waldo Emerson •Friend John Greenleaf Whittier HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Daniel Chester French did an equestrian statue of George Washington, for Paris.
(This isn’t it — bronze horses are so easily mistaken for one another.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
Oh, all right. How can I keep it from you?
The general had of course ridden various horses at various times. At least two of his mounts had been killed in combat. “Old Nelson,” “Roger Leo,” “Ellen Edenberg,” and “Blueskin” were among the survivors. We seem to have lost track of which of these the sculptor was here attempting to render immortal in bronze — perhaps he was merely immortalizing the spirit of horseness. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1906
February 12, Monday: George M. Cohan’s “George Washington, Jr.” opened at New York’s Herald Square Theatre, with Cohan himself introducing the song “The Grand Old Rag” (soon changed to “You’re a Grand Old Flag”). His song “I Was Born in Virginia” was also introduced in the show. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1910
Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July: A bronze statue of George Washington was unveiled at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In St. Louis, Missouri and Albany, New York, an emphasis on “sane Fourth” celebrations resulted in no injuries ascribable to fireworks or other explosives (in each case this was the first time. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1923
October: Some workers were cleaning up the pseudohistoric “Washington Elm” in Cambridge, Massachusetts when, unfortunately, they pulled it over.
Presumably, this tree under which General George Washington had once upon a time stood had been HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
approximately as authentic as Concord’s famous “whipping elm.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1926
July 4/5: Our national birthday celebrations this year were actually so intense that they consumed two days, the 5th as well as the 4th. At Philadelphia during the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the USS Constellation made its last public appearance as a commissioned vessel.
London’s Morning Post, “the only great English newspaper of the present time that was in existence in 1776,” printed a miniature reproduction of the page in which the full text of the Declaration of Independence had been printed in its issue of August 17, 1776.
The text of the only known letter written on the Fourth of July by a signer of the Declaration of Independence (Caesar Augustus Rodney of Delaware) was printed in the New York Times.
President Calvin Coolidge planted the same kind of willow tree as was growing near the tomb of George Washington at Mount Vernon on the South Jersey exposition grounds in connection with the opening of the Delaware River bridge, and also delivered an oration in Philadelphia at its Sesquicentennial Exposition, and at Christ Church read the names of 7 signers of the Declaration of Independence on a bronze replica of a tablet that was being unveiled there by 6 young women descendants of the signers.
The National Amateur Press Association had its 50th anniversary, the first meeting having taken place on July 4, 1876.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, upon the centenary of Thomas Jefferson’s death, the Right Reverend William T. Manning, Episcopal Bishop of New York, stood at the graveside and delivered an oration.
At Natural Bridge, Virginia, on July 5th, a bronze and granite marker commemorating the granting of Natural Bridge to Jefferson by King George III on July 5, 1774 was unveiled. Monticello was formally “given to the nation.”
In Budapest, Hungary, as church bells tolled, Count Albert Apponyi delivered a Fourth of July gratitude speech.
Near Chatham, New Jersey, on the banks of the Passaic River, as a pageant depicting colonial life and the birth of a new nation was being presented, the collapse of a grandstand threw people to the ground.
In Washington DC, Representative Harry R. Rathbone of Illinois delivered a celebration speech in which he calls for home rule for the District of Columbia.
In the Bronx, New York, Congressman Anthony J. Griffin delivered an oration as part of a Sesquicentennial HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
service held at the historic St. Ann’s Episcopal Church of Morrisania, known also as the Church of the Patriots.
In London, American Ambassador to England Alanson B. Houghton presented a bronze statuette of a bison to the Prince of Wales on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America. The prince received this statuette on behalf of the Boy Scouts of Great Britain.
In Prague, Czechoslovakia, near the American Legation, the American flag was raised in the Sokol Stadium.
At Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the “Star-Spangled Banner” peace chime and the National Birthday Bell were dedicated. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1929
A “Slave Memorial” was erected at the spot where the Mount Vernon plantation’s slaves had been buried (refer to http://www.westfordlegacy.com/home.htm). GEORGE WASHINGTON
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin established the 1st Soviet forced-labor camp. Slave labor in the following three decades would construct 12 new railway lines, 9 new Russian cities, 6 new centers of heavy industry, 3 new hydroelectric stations, 3 new ship canals, and 2 new highways (forget about the partridge in the pear tree).
It seemed that Bertrand Russell had not been adequately offensive, so in this year he issued his MARRIAGE AND MORALS in which he opinioned nicely that women are on the average stupider than men:
“Women are on the average stupider than men....” — Bertrand Russell, MARRIAGE AND MORALS, 1929
Having taken the bit of sexism between his teeth as above, he proceeded a certain distance toward racism: “It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensable, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable.” — Bertrand Russell, MARRIAGE AND MORALS, 1929, page 209
Also in this year, in MYSTICISM AND LOGIC, the British philosopher famously opinioned that he was right and anyone who disagreed with him was wrong: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the labors of all the ages, all the devotion, all the aspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1936
Our national birthday, Saturday the 4th of July: Near Boonsboro, Maryland, on South Mountain, they rededicated a “109 year-old monument, believed to be the first erected [on July 4, 1827] to the memory of George Washington.”
In New York, Harry W. Laidler, Socialist candidate for Governor, called for a new Declaration of Independence, one that this time would be freeing us from “judicial tyranny and industrial autocracy.”
In Suffolk County, New York, the beginning of the Long Island Tercentenary Celebration.
At Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, the 135th anniversary of the birth of favorite son Admiral David Glasgow Farragut was being celebrated this year in tandem with the 4th-of-July event (they called it “Farragut Day”).
In New-York, Tammany Hall left nothing unattempted in marking its 150th anniversary with a spasm of corruption and celebration. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1983
A monument was dedicated to the hundreds of anonymous slaves of George Washington and Martha Washington whose bodies had been discarded in unmarked graves at Mount Vernon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
1996
Descendants of the manumitted mulatto slave West Ford went public with their story that their ancestor had been sired upon the slave Venus by George Washington in 1785. Articles about their allegation appeared in Newsweek, TIME, and Der Spiegel.
Meanwhile, articles on Thomas Jefferson appeared in The Atlantic Monthly:
• An Excerpt of Query XIV from the NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1781) by Thomas Jefferson • The “Blood of Patriots and Tyrants” letter from Jefferson to William Smith, Paris, November 13, 1787 • The “Adam and Eve” letter from Jefferson to William Short, Philadelphia, January 3, 1793 • 1862: A.D. White’s “Jefferson and Slavery.” Through examination of Jefferson’s public writings and personal letters, White makes a case for the image of Jefferson as both an abolitionist and a champion of human rights. • 1873: James Parton’s “The Art of Being President.” the author examined “the leading traits of Mr. Jefferson’s administration, with a view to getting light upon the question, whether he satisfied the people of his time by doing right, or by adroitly pretending to do right.” • 1992: Douglas Wilson’s “Thomas Jefferson and the Character Issue.” As the 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth approaches, a Jefferson scholar reflects on Jefferson’s life — and in particular on the enigma at its core: that a slave holder should be the nation’s most eloquent champion of equality. To understand how this could be so, the author explains, is to appreciate the perils of “presentism” and the difficulties that may impede the historical assessment of motive and character. • 1994: Merrill D. Peterson’s “Jefferson and Religious Freedom.” Peterson asserts that Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is “one of the main pillars of American democracy and a beacon of light and liberty to the world.” • October 1996: Conor Cruise O’Brien’s “Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist,” drawn from his book THE LONG AFFAIR: THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1785-1800 (U of Chicago P, 1996). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
1998
The allegation that George Washington had sired a mulatto son West Ford, his only child, on a black slave named Venus in 1785, appeared in major US newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and USA Today. There were a number of television broadcasts including live feature stories on MSMBC and on Denver’s Channel 9. The allegation was mentioned on the TV program “Saturday Night Live.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
2000
March: There was a meeting at Mount Vernon between descendants of the manumitted mulatto slave West Ford, possibly the only son of George Washington, and Mount Vernon staff.
At the launch of a replica of the schooner La Amistad, in Mystic, Connecticut, the keynote speaker was Samuel H. Pieh, head of an organization working to improve relations between Africa and the USA, the “Mid-South Africa Link” (Mr. Pieh being a great-grandson of Joseph Cinqué).
JOSEPH CINQUÉ
May: PBS broadcast a documentary featuring the allegation that the manumitted mulatto slave West Ford was the only son of George Washington and posted a mini-documentary, “George and Venus.”
Four pieces of inconsequential cultural bric-a-brac that had been looted by French and British troops before the torching or the Old Summer Palace on the outskirts of Beijing in 1860 were offered at auction in Hong Kong by their present possessors. A bronze monkey head and a bronze ox head were auctioned off for $16,000,000HK (roughly US$2M), and a bronze tiger head fetched $15,400,000HK. These figures had been spouts in an attractive and/or grandiloquent zodiac calendar fountain in the garden of the palace. The attitude of the government of the People’s Republic of China had been that such “cultural treasures” should be confiscated, rather than paid for, since they helped define what it is to be Chinese, so when these private parties who had bought the looted items allegedly in order to make them available to the nation turned out to be having difficulties in raising the requisite millions within the auction deadlines, the PRC expected the government of the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region to pony up the cash. The activity was analogized to a hypothetical auctioning, in Tel Aviv, of Jewish art treasures looted by the Nazis during WWII, with the proceeds going to the current “possessors” of the loot. The newspapers speculated that this ponying up of cash would be considered to be “a suitable punishment” for the “one China two systems” officials who had been legitimating this fencing of stolen goods as an exercise in “free enterprise capitalism.” It “added insult to injury,” even if it did mean that these loose pieces of bric-a-brac would henceforward be dusted with great regularity. The auction house, Sotheby’s, issued a public statement, declaring that it was in fact “extremely sensitive to stolen property issues in China.” It characterized its auction as “legal.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
2001
September: A History Channel special focused on the claims made in a new book by Linda Allen Bryant, a descendant of the manumitted mulatto slave West Ford, entitled I CANNOT TELL A LIE: THE TRUE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S AFRICAN AMERICAN DESCENDANTS.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
President, General George Washington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
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 2015. 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: February 18, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON
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. HDT WHAT? INDEX
GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in 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