Authors: Adam Goodheart
1.
Mary Beth Corrigan, “Imaginary Cruelties? A History of the Slave Trade in Washington, D.C.,”
Washington History,
vol. 13, no. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2001–2), p. 6.
2.
Daily National Intelligencer,
Jan. 11, 1861. The description of
Green & Williams’s auction house is based on contemporary newspaper advertisements.
3.
My account of George Mortimer Bibb (1776–1859) is drawn from the following:
DAB,
vol. I, p. 235; John S. Goff, “The Last Leaf: George Mortimer Bibb,”
The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society,
vol. 59, no. 4 (Autumn 1959), pp. 331–42;
Biographical Encyclopaedia of Kentucky
(Cincinnati, 1878), p. 394; John E. Kleber,
ed.,
The Kentucky Encyclopedia
(Lexington, Ky., 1992), p. 75;
The Constitution
[Washington, D.C.], Apr. 15 and 28, 1859;
Charleston Mercury,
Apr. 19, 1859;
New-York Tribune,
Apr. 28, 1859;
Baltimore Sun,
Apr. 19, 1859;
Daily Confederation
[Montgomery, Ala.], Apr. 20, 1859. Judge Bibb’s house, 1404 Thirty-fifth Street, N.W. (formerly 55 Fayette Street), still stands in Washington.
4.
Register of Debates in Congress,
22nd Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 264–312;
Georgia Telegraph,
Feb. 13, 1833.
5.
My description of Willis is in part conjectural, based on the Green & Williams newspaper advertisement and on information about Judge Bibb’s own life and habits. The ad describes Willis as thirty-three years old, the late judge’s “body servant” and “a good cook and dining room servant, etc.” The duties I describe were those
typical of an antebellum body servant, especially in an urban setting where the family kept only a few slaves. (The U.S. Census Slave Schedules for 1850 recorded Bibb as owning three slaves in Washington: a twenty-four-year-old woman, a twenty-four-year-old man, and a twenty-three-year-old man. Based on the ages, it is quite possible that one of the two men was Willis.) Bibb’s final illness was pneumonia; President Buchanan and cabinet members did attend the funeral at his
house on the afternoon of April 17, 1859.
6.
George M. Bibb to John B. Bibb, Feb. 24, 1839, quoted in Goff, “The Last Leaf,” p. 342.
7.
An English visitor in the 1850s,
Laurence Oliphant, sniffed that the capital was “a howling wilderness of deserted streets running out into the country and ending nowhere, its population consisting chiefly of politicians and negroes.” Alice Oliphant,
Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant,
His Wife
(1892), vol. 1, p. 109, quoted in Mrs. Roger Pryor,
Reminiscences of Peace and War
(New York, 1908), p. 3.
8.
Josephine F. Pacheco,
The Pearl: A Failed Slave Rescue Attempt on the Potomac
(Chapel Hill, 2005), pp. 15–18, 23; Frederick Law Olmsted,
A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on Their Economy
(London, 1856), pp. 12–13; Felicia Bell, “ ‘The Negroes Alone Work’: Enslaved Craftsmen, the Building Trades,
and the Construction of the United States Capitol, 1790–1800” (PhD dissertation, Howard University, 2009), p. 235; Margaret Leech,
Reveille in Washington 1860–1865
(New York, 1941), p. 10; William H. Russell,
My Diary North and South
(London, 1863), vol. 1, pp. 32, 50; Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds.,
Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery,
2nd ed., (Westport, Conn., 1997), p. 192;
Daily National Intelligencer,
Aug. 29, 1849; June 21, 1850; July 8, 1852.
9.
Pacheco,
The Pearl,
p. 20.
10.
Ten of the first fifteen U.S. presidents were or had been slaveholders: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor. However, Washington never lived
in Washington, D.C., and Van Buren and Harrison both freed their slaves long before taking office.
11.
Constance McLaughlin Green,
The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital
(Princeton, 1967), pp. 41–42; Pacheco,
The Pearl,
pp. 18–24. In fact, Shadd’s predecessor at the restaurant, a free black man named
Beverly Snow, did spark a riot in 1835 when rumors spread that
he had made disrespectful remarks about white women. A mob destroyed the restaurant and almost lynched him; Snow sold the business to Shadd and moved to Canada.
12.
Russell,
My Diary,
vol. 1, p. 46.
13.
Daily National Intelligencer,
June 21, 1858.
14.
Description based on Josephine Cobb, “Mathew B. Brady’s Photographic Gallery in Washington,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society,
vols. 53/56 (1953/56), pp. 28–69.
15.
Leech,
Reveille,
p. 19;
Speech of Mr.
Clement C. Clay, Jr., of Alabama, on the Contest in Kansas and the Plan and Purpose of Black Republicanism: Delivered in the Senate of the United States on Monday, 21st April, 1856
(Washington, 1856). “The time may not be remote,” Clay prophesied, “when one of
[Massachusetts’s] senators may offer to introduce at one of the levees of the President his sable spouse.”
16.
Wilmer Carlyle Harris,
Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1851–1875
(Chicago, 1917), p. 77.
17.
Allan Nevins,
The Ordeal of the Union,
vol. 2:
A House Dividing, 1852–1857,
part I (New York, 1947), pp. 92, 96.
18.
James M. McPherson, “The Civil War and the Transformation of America,” in William J. Cooper and John M. McCardell, eds.,
In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals
(Baton Rouge, 2009), p. 5.
19.
See, e.g., Claudia Dale Goldin, “The Economics of Emancipation,”
The Journal of Economic History,
vol. 33, no. 1 (Mar. 1973), pp. 66–85. Goldin, in her much-cited study, calculates the total
value of slaves in 1860 at $2.7 billion. Lincoln, like almost all antislavery politicians, believed strongly before
the war (and even, to a diminishing degree, during it) that any emancipation plan must fully compensate slaveholders. Furthermore, he and many other white Americans believed that any such plan ought to provide for the newly emancipated slaves’ resettlement in Africa, which would have added (by Goldin’s calculations) almost another $400 million to the total cost. Goldin suggests that the ultimate direct and indirect economic
costs
of the Civil War (let alone its human toll) were higher than
compensated emancipation’s would have been. This was, of course, impossible to predict
in 1860–61. For Lincoln’s estimate, see William Lee Miller,
Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress
(New York, 1996), p. 10. See also David Brion Davis, “The Central Fact of American History,”
American
Heritage,
vol. 56, no. 1 (Feb./Mar. 2005). Davis notes that a single prime fieldhand in 1860 “would sell for the equivalent of a Mercedes-Benz today.”
20.
George Fitzhugh,
Sociology for the South; Or, the Failure of Free Society
(Richmond, 1854), p. 255; Fitzhugh, “Southern Thought,”
DeBow’s Review,
vol. 23 (1857), reprinted in Drew Gilpin Faust, ed.,
The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830 to 1860
(Baton Rouge, 1981), p. 279.
21.
R. K. Call to J. S. Littell, Feb. 12, 1861, in Frank Moore, ed.,
The Rebellion Record; A Diary of American Events
(New York, 1864), vol. 1, pp. 416–20.
22.
Mrs. Chapman Coleman,
The Life of
John J. Crittenden, with Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches
(Philadelphia, 1871), vol. 2, pp. 362–63; Albert D. Kirwan,
John J. Crittenden: The Struggle for the Union
(Lexington, Ky., 1962), pp. 15, 42, 102, 322–23; Glyndon G. Van Deusen,
William Henry
Seward
(New York, 1967), p. 265. See also
New Hampshire Sentinel,
July 8, 1847; “Death of the Hon. J. J. Crittenden,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
vol. 7 (1863), pp. 139–42. Crittenden, who was not wealthy and had made his career as a lawyer rather than a planter, owned nine slaves in 1860, but never championed the institution. As a state legislator in the 1830s he opposed the importation of slaves into
Kentucky. U.S. Census for 1860, Slave Schedules, Franklin County, Ky.; Maury Klein,
Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War
(New York, 1997), p. 124.
23.
Kirwan,
John J. Crittenden,
p. 373; John B. Bibb to JJC, Dec. 16, 1860, in John J. Crittenden Papers, Library of Congress; Winfield Scott to JJC, Oct. 29, 1860, in Crittenden Papers, LC.
24.
A. F. Ball to JJC, Jan. 2, 1861; John Grame to JJC, Dec. 8, 1860; F. R. Farrars to JJC, Dec. 31, 1860; Robert H. Looker to JJC, Dec. 24, 1860; “A Southerner & Lover of His Country” to JJC, Dec. 19, 1860; all in Crittenden Papers, LC.
25.
F. Burton to JJC, Dec. 1860; Crittenden Papers, LC.
26.
Buchanan’s papers (archived at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) contain only one letter from a concerned citizen during this period, although it is possible that others have not survived.
27.
John Sherman to Frank Blair, February 9, 1861, quoted in Kenneth Stampp,
And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861
(Baton Rouge, 1950), p. 111.
28.
David M. Potter,
The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861
(New York, 1976), p. 522; William W. Freehling,
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861
(New York, 2007), p. 82.
29.
Stampp,
And the War Came,
pp. 129–30.
30.
This was, admittedly, not too different from the tone of Congress during the entire 1859–61 session. When the
Japanese envoys sat in the spectators’
gallery in the summer of 1860, they understood little if anything of the debates, but were impressed by all the shouting and gesticulation. One of them
compared it in his diary to the Edo fish market.
31.
Klein,
Days of Defiance,
p. 127;
Congressional Globe,
36th Congress, 2nd Session (hereafter
CG
), pp. 3–5; 11–12. Referring to Texas Governor
Sam Houston, an outspoken foe of
secession, Iverson threatened that “if he does not yield to public sentiment,
perhaps some Texan Brutus will arise to rid his country of the hoary-headed incubus that stands between the people and their sovereign will.”
32.
Russell,
My Diary,
pp. 106–7.
33.
Alvy L. King,
Louis T. Wigfall: Southern Fire-Eater
(Baton Rouge, 1970), p. 102.
34.
CG,
pp. 112–14; Kirwan,
John J. Crittenden,
p. 377.
35.
CG,
pp. 115–20;
New York Herald,
Dec. 19, 1860.
36.
David Detzer,
Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War
(New York, 2001), p. 28.
37.
The flag from St. Louis was inscribed with the motto “We love the North; we love the East; we love the West; we love the South intensely.” Coleman,
The Life of John J. Crittenden,
vol. 2, pp. 240ff.; Nevins,
Ordeal of the Union,
vol. 4,
Prologue to Civil War
(New York, 1947), pp. 392–93; Kirwan,
John J. Crittenden,
pp. 402–03; David M. Potter,
Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis,
2nd ed. (Baton Rouge, 1995), p. 198; Samuel Eliot Morison, “The Peace Convention of February, 1861,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
vol. 73 (1961), p. 60.
38.
Stampp,
And the War Came,
pp. 124–25; Philip S. Foner,
Business & Slavery: The New York Merchants & the Irrepressible Conflict
(Chapel Hill, 1941), pp. 215–16.
39.
Foner,
Business & Slavery,
p. 208, quoting
New York Times,
Dec. 3, 1860, and
New-York Tribune,
Jan. 9, 1861.
40.
Philadelphia Inquirer,
Jan. 4, 1861;
Boston Daily Advertiser,
Jan. 19, 1861; Foner,
Business & Slavery,
p. 266, quoting
Journal of Commerce,
Feb. 6, 1861.
41.
Stampp,
And the War Came,
p. 95;
Henry Adams,
The Great Secession Winter of 1860–61, and Other Essays
(New York, 1958), p. 7. Adams was in the capital serving as secretary to his father, Rep. Charles Francis Adams, a Republican moderate.
42.
Theodore Roosevelt,
New York: A Sketch of the City’s Social, Political, and Commercial Progress from the First Dutch Settlement to Recent Times
(New York, 1906), p. 246; Foner,
Business & Slavery,
pp. 286–87, quoting
American Railway Review,
vol. 3, p. 345.
43.
New York Times,
Jan. 22, 1861;
Wendell Phillips,
Disunion: Two Discourses at the Music Hall, on January 20th, and February 17th, 1861
(Boston, 1861), pp. 3, 25;
New York Herald,
Jan. 26, 1861;
Boston Daily Advertiser,
Jan. 25, 1861;
Philadelphia Public Ledger,
Jan. 26, 1861. “Carve him out,” as a nineteenth-century colloquialism, meant something like “carve him up” or
“cut his guts out.”
Phillips himself may not have helped matters when he mocked the hecklers from onstage in terms that cast some doubt on his egalitarian principles: “I guess the Irish boys here will earn their holiday pretty well. Perhaps they are glad to be excused from sweeping out their masters’ shops to come here and halloo.” (
New York Herald.
)
44.
New York Herald,
Jan. 10, 1861;
Evening Patriot
[Madison, Wisc.], Jan. 31, 1861; Coleman,
The Life of John J. Crittenden,
p. 237.