From Black Writers of the Founding Era
Interesting Links
“Black Soldiers in the Revolutionary War” (Elizabeth M. Collins, U.S. Army)
“Northwest Ordinance” (Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, Mount Vernon)
Previous Story of the Week selections
• “The Petitions of Belinda an African,” Belinda Sutton
• “Letter to Thomas Jefferson,” Benjamin Banneker
• “Madison Washington,” William Wells Brown
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Black Writers of the Founding Era
767 pages
List price: $40.00
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“Black Soldiers in the Revolutionary War” (Elizabeth M. Collins, U.S. Army)
“Northwest Ordinance” (Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, Mount Vernon)
Previous Story of the Week selections
• “The Petitions of Belinda an African,” Belinda Sutton
• “Letter to Thomas Jefferson,” Benjamin Banneker
• “Madison Washington,” William Wells Brown
Buy the book
Black Writers of the Founding Era767 pages
List price: $40.00
Save 30%
Web store price: $28.00
 |
| American soldiers in uniform during the siege of Yorktown, watercolor by French artist Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger (1762–1851). Verger kept an illustrated journal while serving in a French regiment during the American Revolutionary War. Left to right: A Black soldier from the First Rhode Island Regiment, a New England militiaman, a frontier rifleman, and a French officer. Courtesy Library of Congress. |
Ned Griffin of North Carolina enlisted in 1781 as his owner’s substitute and served a year in the American army. But instead of freeing him, his treacherous owner sold him to another slaveholder, forcing Griffin to petition the state government to enforce the original agreement. . . . Even those who for their services had been granted official emancipation were not always safe, such as the African American spy Jane Coggeshall in Rhode Island. In 1777 she and two other enslaved people had escaped from British-occupied Newport and carried detailed intelligence over to the American forces, for which the Rhode Island legislature granted them their freedom. But eight years later, relatives of her former owner tried to reenslave her and she was forced to petition the state legislature again to confirm her status as a free woman.The travails of a third veteran included in the collection are even more complicated and harrowing. Born into slavery in Virginia, Peter McNelly served during the Revolution in the place of his owner, Anthony Thomson, for three tours of duty—nine months total. His first tour included service outside of Richmond in the spring of 1781; “he was kept almost in constant motion for some weeks,” according to his petition for a pension a half century later. After the British army under Cornwallis arrived in Virginia, McNelly was quartered first in Albemarle County and then participated in the siege of Yorktown until Cornwallis surrendered in October.
After the war, McNelly was kept in bondage by Thomson and by the early 1790s he was living with his wife, Queen, on Thomson’s plantation in the part of Virginia that in 1792 became Kentucky. In the autumn of 1793 he and Queen ran away, seeking freedom in the Northwest Territory. They were captured and held by Native Americans for several weeks, then sold to a trader in Vincennes (in modern-day Indiana), who sold them to a slave dealer, who a day later sold them to Henry Vanderburgh, a local lawyer, justice of the peace, and veteran of the Revolutionary War after whom the surrounding county was named in 1818.
Vanderburgh was to Peter and Queen a consummate villain, and his purchase of the couple was a direct challenge to the 1787 Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery. In May 1794, after seven months in Vanderburgh’s household, Peter filed a petition for freedom with Judge George Turner who had just set up the first circuit court ever in Vincennes. In an excruciating series of events, Peter sought legal protection while Vanderburgh and his henchmen used kidnapping, torture, and treachery to block his efforts and coerce Peter and Queen into de facto slavery. At midnight on June 6, Peter slipped out of handcuffs and escaped his captors, scrambling back to Vincennes in time to file the petition below.
“In many lawsuits, and particularly many contested freedom suits, litigants provide conflicting factual accounts,” writes Lea VanderVelde in Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott. “Not so in the six depositions in this case file. All six tell essentially the identical story. . . . The story that is revealed details Peter’s struggle, first to get to court to sue for his freedom and then the conspiratorial efforts of five men to kidnap him and his wife in order to keep him from the judge.” On the strength of the evidence, the antislavery Judge Turner would rule in Peter’s favor. But meanwhile, on the very night that Peter filed his own affidavit, Queen was abducted by a slave dealer headed south toward Kentucky. Turner placed Peter under his personal protection; he later jailed Vanderburgh for failing to produce Queen and handed out other significant penalties. In response, Vanderburgh, with support from the governor, attempted to have Turner impeached. Turner resigned his office and returned to Philadelphia rather than face impeachment, and Peter was eventually coerced into accepting a five-year indenture to Vanderburgh, who had previously threatened to sell him to slave traders from New Orleans if he refused.
Decades later, the 1840 census would show Peter McNelly as a free man in Vincennes living with an unnamed Black woman who, if she had somehow managed to escape slavery once more, may have been Queen. Otherwise, Queen McNelly’s fate is unknown. Peter continued collecting his pension as a war veteran until November 1846, when, presumably, he died at the age of 88.
The above introduction has been adapted and updated from the headnote in Black Writers of the Founding Era (edited by James G. Basker, with Nicole Seary).
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This week’s selection appears in its entirety below.Affidavit of Peter McNelly Concerning the Treatment of Himself & Wife by Sundry Persons
You may also download it as a PDF or view it in Google Docs.
Peter McNelly, of Vincennes in the County of Knox, yeoman, being duly sworn, upon his oath deposeth and saith, That he, together with his wife, a negro woman named Queen, now of the same place, were held in Kentucky as the slaves of Anthony Thomson of that state, planter;—that early in the Autumn of last year, he this deponent and his said wife absconded from the service of their master, and came into the Territory North west of the Ohio:—but that on their way to Vincennes, they were taken and detained for some weeks by certain Indians, who afterwards brought them to and sold them at Vincennes to John Small of that place, in consideration of two rifle guns and ten dollars worth of ammunition:—that he lived with the said Small for the space of three weeks, or thereabouts, when a certain Peter Smith, of Kentucky, appeared and claimed this deponent and wife, as his, the said Peter Smith’s, property, for that he had purchased them of their former master:—that accordingly the said Small put the said Smith in possession of them, on receiving reimbursement.—that thereupon this deponent was confined in the guard house of Fort Knox, till the ensuing evening when it was announced to this deponent by the said Smith that he had sold him and wife, as slave, to Henry Vanderburgh, of Vincennes aforesaid, esquire:—that this deponent and wife were in consequence, delivered over to the said Vanderburgh, as the property of the latter:—that this transaction took place in or about the month of October last;—since which time this deponent and his wife have ever been held in the service of the said Vanderburgh. And this deponent on his oath farther saith, that on the arrival last month, at Vincennes, of the subscribing Judge, he this deponent applied to him for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for the purpose of establishing his and his said wife’s claim to freedom—and received for answer, that the said writ should issue. And this deponent farther saith, that the said Henry Vanderburgh now made frequent overtures, by himself and others, to this deponent, towards an accommodation, and appeared desirous that he and his said wife should become bound to him, during a certain term of years—but which this deponent declined:—that on Tuesday, the 27th day of May last this deponent was ordered by the said Vanderburgh into the prairie adjoining Vincennes, to the distance of about half a mile from town, there to procure, as he pretended, a load of earth:—that accordingly this deponent proceeded with a horse and cart, in company with one Jonas Dutton, a house-carpenter in the said Vanderburgh’s employment—and arriving at the spot, there suddenly appeared in view three persons, to wit Joseph Baird, acting prothonotary to the Court of Common pleas of Knox, Joseph La Motte, Indian Interpreter in the Service of the United States, and Nathaniel Ewing, occasionally of Vincennes, Trader; that the lastnamed three persons forcibly seized on this deponent, bound his arms to his sides with a rope, and made the rope fast to the tail of Baird’s horse, and thus dragged him, this deponent forward into the woods—telling him, exultingly and sneeringly, that he must now go before the Judge—that, at this time, the said Dutton was dispatched back to Vincennes with the said cart and horse, and this deponent disengaged from the horse’s tail, but his arms remained bound—that the said Baird now mounted the lastmentioned horse, and after an absence of an hour, or thereabouts, returned on foot, accompanied by a person named Henri Renbeau, an inhabitant of Vincennes, leading Baird’s horse, and on which was mounted this deponent’s wife, she was (as he had been told and verily believes) had been forcibly seized in the dwelling house of the said Vanderburgh—And this deponent farther saith that Jean Baptiste Constant, junior, of Vincennes afsd. yeoman, and also an Indian, to whose name he is a stranger, accompanied the said Baird to the spot where the first party had halted—that the said Indian, Constant, Renbeau and Baird acted as a guard over the persons of this deponent and his wife, on the route to White River, which they took, and where they arrived the same day at a point about twelve miles, or more from the town of Vincennes; and that here the party halted within about fifty yards of a stoccaded settlement called White River Station; and the said Baird went to the said station and returned in company with the said Dutton, who bore in his hand a paper which he informed this deponent was an indenture to bind him and his wife for the term of five years and a half to the said Vanderburgh, who had sent it for execution;—and that in case of refusal, the said Vanderburgh had determined to send both this deponent and his said wife to New Orleans; for that he had already provided a boat to convey them thither—that this deponent, terrified at the threat, agreed to sign the paper; upon which the whole party advanced to the station or fortified stoccade, and entering the house of a certain Moses Decker, there the Indenture was read to this deponent and signed (but not sealed) by him and his wife—and that the witnesses who signed their names to this instrument were Joseph Decker and the said Moses Decker, Joseph Baird and Jonas Dutton. And this deponent farther deposeth and saith, that the said Dutton and Baird now mounted each a horse and returned to Vincennes with the Indenture thus forcibly taken—Baird previously leaving orders with the party to take this deponent and wife across White River—that on ascending the opposite bank they bound this deponent to one tree, and his wife to another, and in this situation, they remained from twelve o’ clock at noon till about one o’ clock in the afternoon of the next day—a prey to the tormenting musketoes, which, during this period were so insupportable that he this deponent oftentimes begged his oppressors to kill him, and put him out of pain—that at length the whole party recrossed the river; and this deponent and his wife were lodged within the Station, in the house of the said Moses Decker,—the said Baird Renbeau and Constant alternately acting during their duresse, as centinels over them by night and day:—that the day after the party recrossed White River as aforesaid, the said Baird returned from Vincennes and told this deponent that the said Vanderburgh’s orders were, to hold him and his wife prisoners till the said Vanderburgh should either come himself or send:—that the said Baird brought with him a pair of Handcuffs, with which he manacled this deponent, and that, in this situation, the deponent remained until near midnight on the sixth day of this instant June, when, disengaging one of his hands from the manacles, he made his escape from the fortified station aforesaid, through the roof of the said Moses Decker’s house, and the next morning presented himself before the subscribing Judge, at Vincennes. And this deponent farther Saith not—
Peter x M.Nelly {his Mark}
Sworn at my chambers in Fort Knox,
Vincennes, the seventh day of June
one thousand seven hundred and
ninety four Before me George Turner
esquire, one of the Judges in and over
the Territory of the United States
North west of the Ohio
G. Turner
Transcribed from the manuscript, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. Courtesy of University of Chicago Library.