Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806)
From Black Writers of the Founding Era

Interesting Links

Benjamin Banneker: Biography and Timeline (Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum)

“Jefferson’s Notes from Condorcet on Slavery” (National Archive)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “The natural right of all Men—& their Children,” Lancaster Hill, Peter Bess, Brister Slenser, Prince Hall, et al.
• “Madison Washington,” William Wells Brown
• “A Dream,” Anonymous

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Black Writers of the Founding Era
767 pages
List price: $40.00
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Manuscript page depicting a 1791 solar eclipse, from Benjamin Banneker’s Astronomical Journal, drawn while he was working on the survey team to establish the boundaries of Washington, D.C. Banneker’s notes read: “This projection I laid down for April the third 1791 when the Sun arose centrally eclipsed at the City of Washington. This is a back tryal to see how my present method would agree with the former. N.B. Ferguson’s Tables make the new Moon about 30 minutes to[o] soon | April 3, 10:30 | I say [April] 3, 11:32 AM." (Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture)

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In 1791 Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State under President George Washington, sent a manuscript to the French mathematician Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, who was the Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. The cover letter explained:

I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable Mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new federal city on the Patowmac [Potomac], and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an Almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I inclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions of Geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.

A decade earlier, Condorcet published Réflexions Sur L'Esclavage des Négres (Reflections on the Slavery of Negroes), a strident condemnation of slavery, and Jefferson purchased two copies of the work. Its opening preface, “Epistle dedicatory to the Negro slaves,” which Jefferson translated for himself in his personal notes, began, “Tho’ not of your colour, my friends, I have ever considered you as my brethren. Nature has endowed you with the same genius, the same judgment, the same virtues as the Whites.” When Jefferson lived in Paris between 1784 and 1789, he had known Condorcet; as biographer Fred Kaplan points out in His Masterly Pen, it’s not clear whether Condorcet and his associates knew that Jefferson was a slaveowner—or that James and Sally Hemings, the two servants staying in his hotel, were in fact enslaved by him, contrary to French law.

It is also not known if Condorcet ever received the manuscript sent to him by Jefferson. The French revolution had turned the city of Paris into a center of chaos, and Condorcet died in a prison three years later, probably from poisoning. The author of the manuscript in question, which featured among its calculations astronomical data and tide tables for 1792, was Benjamin Banneker, the most accomplished African American mathematician and scientist in the early history of the United States. The child of a free Black mother and a formerly enslaved father from Africa, Banneker was an autodidact with limited schooling but a lifelong intellectual curiosity. In his forties he took on astronomy and, with the support of members of the prominent Ellicott family who lived near him in rural Maryland, he was appointed to the surveying team that laid out the District of Columbia in 1791—an assignment mentioned by Jefferson in his letter to Condorcet. Banneker produced annual almanacs from 1792 to 1797 in seven cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond.

When Banneker sent Jefferson the handwritten copy of his first almanac, he included a cover letter that, as he put it, took “a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand.” He chided the Secretary of State for his views on Africans and their descendants, such as those expressed in Notes on the State of Virginia (“in reason [they are] much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid”), and for the hypocrisy between the professed ideas of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of slavery. Jefferson’s brief response acknowledged receipt of the manuscript and indicated he would send it to Condorcet—but he left unanswered most of the points raised in Banneker’s letter, which we reprint below. Both Banneker’s letter and Jefferson’s reply were reprinted several times, including in the Baltimore edition of his 1793 almanac and in a standalone pamphlet printed in Philadelphia.

Much of the above paragraph detailing Banneker’s biography is adapted from Black Writers of the Founding Era (edited by James G. Basker, with Nicole Seary).

*   *   *

For this week’s selection, we depart from the usual format and reproduce the selection, in its entirety, below.
You may also download it as a PDF or view it in Google Docs.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson

Maryland, Baltimore County, Near Ellicotts Lower Mill, Augt 19th 1791

Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State

Sir,

I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom which I take with you on the present occasion; a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost general prejudice and prepossession, which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion.

I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world, that we have long been seen rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments.

Sir I hope I may safely admit, in consequence of that report which hath reached me, that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of this nature, than many others; that you are measurably friendly, and well disposed towards us, and that you are willing and ready to lend your aid and assistance to our relief from those many distresses and numerous calamities to which we are reduced.

Now, Sir, if this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will readyly embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and oppinions, which so generally prevails with respect to us, and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are that one universal Father hath given Being to us all, and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also without partiality afforded us all the same sensations and endued us all with the same faculties, and that however variable we may be in society or religion, however diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him.

Sir, if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded, I hope you cannot but acknowledge, that it is the indispensible duty of those who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature and who profess the obligations of christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under, and this I apprehend a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles should lead all to.

Sir, I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves, and for those inestimable laws which preserve to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every individual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof; neither could you rest satisfied, short of the most active diffusion of your exertions, in order to their promotions from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.

Sir, I freely and chearfully acknowledge, that I am of the African race, and in that colour which is natural to them of the deepest dye, and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the supreme Ruler of the universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not under that state of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity, to which too many of my brethren are doomed; but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with which you are favoured, and which I hope you will willingly allow you have mercifully receiv’d, from the immediate hand of that Being, from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift.

Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the Arms and tyranny of the British Crown were exerted with every powerful effort in order to reduce you to a state of servitude: look back I entreat you on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed, reflect on that time, in which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation; you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of Heaven.

This Sir, was a time in which you clearly saw into the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition, it was now Sir, that your abhorrence thereof was so excited; that you publickly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Here Sir, was a time in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare, you were then impressed with proper Ideas of the great violation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings to which you were intitled by nature; but Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.

Sir, I suppose that your knowledge of the situation of my brethren is too extensive to need a recital here; neither shall I presume to prescribe methods by which they may be relieved, otherwise than by recommending to you and all others, to wean yourselves from those narrow prejudices which you have imbibed with respect to them, and as Job proposed to his friends “Put your Souls in their Souls Stead,” thus shall your hearts be enlarged with kindness and benevolence toward them, and thus shall you need neither the direction of myself or others in what manner to proceed herein.

And now Sir, altho my sympathy and affection for my brethren hath caused my enlargement thus far, I ardently hope that your candour and generosity will plead with you in my behalf, when I make known to you, that it was not originally my design; but having taken up my pen in order to direct to you as a present, a copy of an Almanac which I have calculated for the succeeding year, I was unexpectedly and unavoidably led thereto.

This calculation Sir, is the production of my arduous study in this my advanced stage of life; for having long had unbounded desires to become acquainted with the secrets of nature, I have had to gratify my curiosity herein through my own assiduous application to Astronomical Study, in which I need not recount to you the many difficulties and disadvantages which I have had to encounter. And altho I had almost declined to make my calculation for the ensuing year, in consequence of that time which I had allotted therefor being taken up at the Federal Territory, by the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott, yet finding myself under several engagements to Printers of this state to whom I had communicated my design, on my return to my place of residence, I industriously applyed myself thereto, which I hope I have accomplished with correctness and accuracy, a copy of which I have taken the liberty to direct to you, and which I humbly request you will favorably receive; and altho you may have the opportunity of perusing it after its publication, yet I choose to send it to you in manuscript previous thereto, that thereby you might not only have an earlier inspection, but that you might also view it in my own hand writing.

and now Sir, I shall conclude
       and subscribe myself with the most profound respect
              your most obedient humble servant
B Banneker

NB any communication to me may be had by direction to Mr Elias Ellicott merchant in Baltimore Town.

On August 30, 1791, writing from Philadelphia, Jefferson responded to Banneker as follows: “Sir, I thank you sincerely for your letter of the 19th instant and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America. I can add with truth that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecillity of their present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will admit. I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris, and member of the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them. I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedt. humble servt. Th. Jefferson.”

“Letter to Thomas Jefferson” was transcribed from the manuscript, Banneker Astronomical Journal, MS2700, Maryland Historical Society. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society.

Narrative and Testimony of Sarah M. Grimké

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873)
From American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation

Interesting Links

“The Wedding that Ignited Philadelphia” (Ken Finkel, The Philly History Blog)

“Angelina and Sarah Grimke: Abolitionist Sisters” (Carol Berkin, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “The Two Altars; or, Two Pictures in One,” Harriet Beecher Stowe
• “This Whole Horrible Transaction,” John Quincy Adams
• “The Lover,” Harriet Ann Jacobs
• “A Dream,” Anonymous

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American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
Autobiography, fiction, children’s literature, poetry, oratory, & song
970 pages
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“Destruction by Fire of Pennsylvania Hall. On the Night of the 17th May, 1838.” Illustration by Swiss-born American artist and lithographer John Caspar Wild (c. 1804–1846). The publisher John T. Bowen issued the print within a few days of the fire. Image and caption details courtesy Library of Congress.
         Constructed in 1837–38 at Sixth and Haines Streets in Philadelphia as a meeting place for local antislavery groups, Pennsylvania Hall opened with dedication ceremonies on May 14, a day that concluded with the wedding of Sarah Grimké's sister Angelina to the abolitionist Theodore Weld. On the night of May 17, an anti-abolitionist mob stormed the hall and set it on fire. In the illustration, a large crowd looks on as firefighters spray water on an adjoining building.

Decades after the publication in 1839 of American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, Harriet Beecher Stowe told one of its contributors, Angelina Grimké, that “she kept that book in her work basket by day, and slept with it under her pillow by night, till its facts crystallized into Uncle Tom.” Stowe acknowledged in a preface to the 1878 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that the book had “reinforced her repertoire of facts,” and she included excerpts in her supplementary work, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her use of the book was hardly a surprise to readers; American Slavery As It Is was the most widely distributed book on the subject of slavery before the publication of Stowe’s famous novel in 1852; Charles Dickens included lengthy passages from it, without attribution, in his 1842 book American Notes for General Circulation.

With help from Angelina and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké, Angelina’s husband Theodore Dwight Weld published the densely packed, encyclopedic compendium of eyewitness accounts. To counter the argument by “slaveholders and their apologists” that “their slaves are kindly treated,” the three editors compiled a mountain of evidence that evinced “their condemnation out of their own mouths”:

[The] newspapers in the slaveholding states teem with advertisements for runaway slaves, in which the masters and mistresses describe their men and women, as having been ‘branded with a hot iron,’ on their ‘cheeks,’ ‘jaws,’ ‘breasts,’ ‘arms,’ ‘legs,’ and ‘thighs;’ also as ‘scarred,’ ‘very much scarred,’ ‘cut up,’ ‘marked,’ &c. ‘with the whip,’ also with ‘iron collars on,’ ‘chains,’ ‘bars of iron,’ ‘fetters,’ ‘bells,’ ‘horns,’ ‘shackles,’ &c. They, also, describe them as having been wounded by ‘buckshot,’ ‘rifle-balls,’ &c. fired at them by their ‘owners,’ and others when in pursuit; also, as having ‘notches,’ cut in their ears, the tops or bottoms of their ears ‘cut off,’ or ‘slit,’ or ‘one ear cut off,’ or ‘both ears cut off,’ &c. &c. The masters and mistresses who thus advertise their runaway slaves, coolly sign their names to their advertisements, giving the street and number of their residences, if in cities, their post office address, &c. if in the country; thus making public proclamation as widely as possible that they ‘brand,’ ‘scar,’ ‘gash,’ ‘cut up,’ &c. the flesh of their slaves; load them with irons, cut off their ears, &c.; they speak of these things with the utmost sang froid, not seeming to think it possible, that any one will esteem them at all the less because of these outrages upon their slaves; further, these advertisements swarm in many of the largest and most widely circulated political and commercial papers that are published in the slave states. The editors of those papers constitute the main body of the literati of the slave states; they move in the highest circle of society, are among the ‘popular’ men in the community, and as a class, are more influential than any other; yet these editors publish these advertisements with iron indifference.

The volume reprinted hundreds of such notices, leaving the names intact. For example, one advertisement in the July 18, 1838, issue of The North Carolina Standard, a leading paper in Raleigh, reads: “TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD. Ranaway from the subscriber, a negro woman and two children; the woman is tall and black, and a few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face; I tried to make the letter M, and she kept a cloth over her head and face, and a fly bonnet on her head so as to cover the burn. . . . [Signed] Micajah Ricks.” In July 1836, Mississippi sheriff J. L. Jolley placed a notice in the Clinton Gazette that he had captured and jailed a man, “says his name is Josiah, his back very much scarred by the whip, and branded on the thigh and hips, in three or four places, thus (J. M.), the rim of his right ear has been bit or cut off.” (Weld and the Grimkés devoted an entire section to the cropping of ears as a form of branding and punishment.) Considered an everyday part of life to most newspaper readers in the South, the notices were a shock to many in the North.

The Grimké sisters themselves knew the ads well. They had been born in Charleston and raised among the city’s elite; the family’s home overlooked the wharves where, until 1808, thousands of enslaved Africans arrived. Their father was a wealthy slave-owner and served on the state’s top court for four decades—eventually as its chief justice. In 1819, Sarah accompanied him when he traveled to Philadelphia to obtain medical advice for a chronic and mysterious ailment. He died while seeking a rest cure on a New Jersey beach. During her stay in Philadelphia, Sarah, 26 years old at the time, had been impressed by members of the Society of Friends, and two years later she moved to the city with her recently widowed sister, Anna Grimké Frost, and became a Quaker.

Angelina, the youngest of the fourteen Grimké children, joined Sarah and Anna in Philadelphia in 1829. She met Theodore at an abolitionist meeting in New York City in 1836, and the couple were married two years later in Anna’s home, on Monday, May 14, 1838, in a ceremony for which they had written their own vows. Later that week, Sarah described the occasion in a letter to a friend:

A colored Presbyterian minister then prayed, and was followed by a white one, and then I felt as if I could not restrain the language of praise and thanksgiving to Him who had condescended to be in the midst of this marriage feast, and to pour forth abundantly the oil and wine of consolation and rejoicing. The Lord Jesus was the first guest invited to be present, and He condescended to bless us with His presence, and to sanction and sanctify the union which was thus consummated. The certificate was then read by William Lloyd Garrison, and was signed by the company. The evening was spent in pleasant social intercourse. Several colored persons were present, among them two liberated slaves, who formerly belonged to our father, had come by inheritance to sister Anna, and had been freed by her. They were our invited guests, and we thus had an opportunity to bear our testimony against the horrible prejudice which prevails against colored persons, and the equally awful prejudice against the poor.

The wedding proved to be the concluding event of a day of festivities to celebrate the official opening of Pennsylvania Hall; many of the nearly one hundred wedding guests had been in town for the center’s dedication ceremonies. Built primarily as a meeting place for abolitionist and other reformist associations, the Hall was the site over the next three days for the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Angelina was scheduled to speak at the event on May 16 when a mob surrounded the building and eventually threw stones and other objects through the windows. She took the stage and extemporaneously began her speech, shouting over the sound of breaking glass, “What if the mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting and commit violence upon our persons—would this be anything compared with what the slaves endure?” She then spoke for over an hour before leading the women, double file, out of the building and safely through the stunned mob. The following night, however, proslavery forces returned and burned the building to the ground, three days after its opening, while the city’s firefighters stood by and watched.

The next year, the newlyweds, along with Sarah, moved to a small farm in New Jersey and published American Slavery As It Is. One of Sarah’s contributions to the volume was her own “Narrative and Testimony,” which recounted the horrors she had witnessed while living in Charleston and which we present below.

Note: Grimke’s essay refers to the Narrative of James Williams. Raised as a household servant to a man named George Larrimore in Virginia, Williams became a slavedriver on an Alabama plantation under the direction of a sadistic overseer. Elements of the book, ghost-written by John Greenleaf Whittier, had been doubted and disputed since its publication in 1838 because (as recent scholarship culminating in an annotated edition by Hank Trent shows) Williams had altered or romanticized many of the names, dates, places, and events in his biography—including his own name—to avoid discovery by his pursuers; the misrepresentations made factual verification impossible. In the words of one recent reviewer, it should be read for “what it is—an honest account of a runaway’s sufferings and escape using misdirection as a form of self-preservation.”

*   *   *

As I left my native state on account of slavery, and deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes with which I have been familiar. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

“Let Slavery Die”

Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882)
From The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It

Interesting Links

“A Black Preacher Addresses Congress” (Carla Peterson, The New York Times)

“American Free School Biography: Henry Highland Garnet” (New-York Historical Society)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “No Greater Joy Than to See These Children Walking in the Anti-Slavery Path,” Lucretia Mott
• “Building a School,” Harriet Ann Jacobs & Louisa M. Jacobs
• “Meeting “Father Abraham,’” Lois Bryan Adams

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“Emancipation,” illustration by German-born American artist Thomas Nast for the January 24, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly. This color version was subsequently produced by Philadelphia printer King & Baird, which added the title “The Past and the Future” outside the frame. In the center, a Black family enjoys a quiet evening together; below, a baby, representing the New Year, frees an enslaved man. To the left are horrors associated with slavery; to the right are promises for a better future: education, wages, and a home. (Library Company of Philadelphia)

In April 1864, the Thirteenth Amendment, which would abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, passed the Senate, but in June it stalled in the House after falling thirteen votes short of the required two-thirds for approval. During the following year, attitudes toward the amendment shifted after Union Army victories in the South and Abraham Lincoln’s resounding victory over Democratic candidate General George McClellan in the presidential election. Although initially ambivalent about the amendment, Lincoln and members of his Cabinet eventually became concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation might not survive judicial challenges or a subsequent administration and ultimately pushed for its passage. Lincoln told one crowd that future authorities might argue that the proclamation “only aided those who came into our lines, and that it was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up; or that it would have no effect upon the children of the slaves born hereafter; in fact, it would be urged that it did not meet the evil. But this amendment is a king’s cure for all evils. It winds the whole thing up.”

By mid-January 1865, Republicans were worried they still did not have enough votes. Tensions were high in the packed House chamber on January 31, when the amendment was again considered. After the vote was tallied, House Speaker Schuyler Colfax “in a trembling voice” announced the final count as 119 in favor, 56 opposed: “The constitutional majority of two thirds having voted in the affirmative, the Joint Resolution has passed.” Noah Brooks, a journalist from Sacramento, described what happened next:

For a moment there was a pause of utter silence, as if the voices of the dense mass of spectators were choked by strong emotion. Then there was an explosion, a storm of cheers, the like of which probably no Congress of the United States ever heard before. Strong men embraced each other with tears. The galleries and aisles were bristling with standing, cheering crowds. The air was stirred with a cloud of women's handkerchiefs waving and floating; hands were shaking; men threw their arms about each other's necks, and cheer after cheer, and burst after burst followed.

In the gallery, Henry Highland Garnet cheered and celebrated along with friends and strangers alike. “Oh what a pepper and salt mixture it was,” he later recalled. During his quarter century in abolitionist circles, he often despaired that this day would never come—and he certainly didn’t anticipate that less than two weeks later he would be back in the House chamber as the first African American to speak before Congress.

Garnet had escaped from slavery when he was nine years old. Under the pretense of going to a funeral, his mother and father fled with Henry, his sister, and seven relatives from his uncle’s family into the woods and swamps of Maryland. When they reached Wilmington, Delaware, they secured safe passage via the underground railroad to New York City. Garnet enrolled at the African Free School in Manhattan, an education interrupted by two years at sea as a cabin boy and cook. When he returned at the age of 14, he learned that his family had relocated after slave catchers found them; his sister had even been captured and arrested but was released when supporters fabricated proof she had been in New York at the time she was allegedly enslaved.

Friends found employment for Garnet as a servant on Long Island, away from the dangers of discovery, but he was incapacitated by an accident that resulted in a serious injury to his leg. He resumed his education and graduated from the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, in 1839. His leg, which had caused him considerable pain and increasing hardship, was amputated sometime during the following year, around the time he became pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York.

Garnet first came to widespread prominence in August 1843 at the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, New York. He delivered a speech entitled “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America,” a passionate call for open and, if necessary, violent resistance:

However much you and all of us may desire it, there is not much hope of Redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once—rather, die freemen, than live to be slaves. . . . and by all that life is worth, let it no longer be a debateable question, whether it is better to choose LIBERTY or DEATH! . . . Let your motto be RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE!—No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance.

Frederick Douglass and other Black abolitionists, wary of provoking Southern fears of a slave insurrection, defeated Garnet’s attempt to persuade the convention to underwrite the publication of the address. Nevertheless, Garnet made an impression, and William Wells Brown, who sided with Douglass that day, diplomatically wrote in a later biographical essay, “None but those who heard that speech have the slightest idea of the tremendous influence which he exercised over the assembly.”

After an extraordinary two-decade career as a teacher, activist, speaker (in England), missionary (in Jamaica), and religious leader, Garnet became the pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., which is where William Henry Channing, the chaplain of the House of Representatives, found him in early February 1865. In commemoration of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Channing, with the support of several Congress members, asked Garnet to deliver a sermon to the House on Sunday, February 12. The choir from Garnet’s church was also invited.

When Garnet delivered his sermon at noon on that Sunday, the floor and galleries were filled to capacity. William J. Wilson, a local resident who had recently moved from Brooklyn and who was a congregant of Garnet’s church, recorded that “it was a strange sight, I say, to see this little band of vocalists, stand up in places where but one year ago only white persons were allowed to stand, and there chant up hymns of praise to God for his goodness and his wonderful works to the children of men; and it was a sight stranger still to see this colored divine stand up in the dignity of his high office as a priest of the Most High in that Speaker's desk.”

Garnet opened his hour-long sermon with the scriptural text he had selected, Matthew 23:4, in which Jesus censures the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy: “For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” Garnet then proceeded to a rebuke of the hypocrisy of leaders who defended or permitted slavery, a recapitulation of the barbarity of the Middle Passage and the inhumanity of the American plantation, and a sequence of antislavery quotes by great thinkers from biblical times to the modern era. The final portion of his sermon, which we present below, celebrates the end of slavery and looks to the future.

Notes: Although Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Mississippi will vote against ratification, the Thirteenth Amendment will be approved by twenty-seven states, included eight former members of the Confederacy, by December 6, 1865, and on December 18 Secretary of State William H. Seward will declare its ratification complete.

The eight lines of poetry are from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Expostulation” (1834); the two lines of poetry later in the address are from William Cowper’s “Human Frailty” (1782).

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For this week’s selection, we depart from the usual format and reproduce the excerpt from Garnet’s sermon below. You may also download it as a PDF or view it in Google Docs.

“Let Slavery Die”
(from) A Memorial Discourse

With all the moral attributes of God on our side, cheered as we are by the voices of universal human nature,—in view of the best interests of the present and future generations—animated with the noble desire to furnish the nations of the earth with a worthy example, let the verdict of death which has been brought in against slavery, by the Thirty-Eighth Congress, be affirmed and executed by the people. Let the gigantic monster perish. Yes, perish now, and perish forever!

      “Down let the shrine of Moloch sink,
            And leave no traces where it stood;
      No longer let its idol drink,
            His daily cup of human blood.
      But rear another altar there,
            To truth, and love, and mercy given,
      And freedom’s gift and freedom’s prayer,
            Shall call an answer down from heaven.”

It is often asked when and where will the demands of the reformers of this and coming ages end? It is a fair question, and I will answer.

When all unjust and heavy burdens shall be removed from every man in the land. When all invidious and proscriptive distinctions shall be blotted out from our laws, whether they be constitutional, statute, or municipal laws. When emancipation shall be followed by enfranchisement, and all men holding allegiance to the government shall enjoy every right of American citizenship. When our brave and gallant soldiers shall have justice done unto them. When the men who endure the sufferings and perils of the battle-field in the defence of their country, and in order to keep our rulers in their places, shall enjoy the well-earned privilege of voting for them. When in the army and navy, and in every legitimate and honorable occupation, promotion shall smile upon merit without the slightest regard to the complexion of a man’s face. When there shall be no more class-legislation, and no more trouble concerning the black man and his rights, than there is in regard to other American citizens. When, in every respect, he shall be equal before the law, and shall be left to make his own way in the social walks of life.

We ask, and only ask, that when our poor frail barks are launched on life’s ocean—

      “Bound on a voyage of awful length
            And dangers little known,”

that, in common with others, we may be furnished with rudder, helm, and sails, and charts, and compass. Give us good pilots to conduct us to the open seas; lift no false lights along the dangerous coasts, and if it shall please God to send us propitious winds, or fearful gales, we shall survive or perish as our energies or neglect shall determine. We ask no special favors, but we plead for justice. While we scorn unmanly dependence; in the name of God, the universal Father, we demand the right to live, and labor, and to enjoy the fruits of our toil. The good work which God has assigned for the ages to come, will be finished, when our national literature shall be so purified as to reflect a faithful and a just light upon the character and social habits of our race, and the brush, and pencil, and chisel, and Lyre of Art, shall refuse to lend their aid to scoff at the afflictions of the poor, or to caricature, or ridicule a long-suffering people. When caste and prejudice in Christian churches shall be utterly destroyed, and shall be regarded as totally unworthy of Christians, and at variance with the principles of the gospel. When the blessings of the Christian religion, and of sound, religious education, shall be freely offered to all, then, and not till then, shall the effectual labors of God’s people and God’s instruments cease.

If slavery has been destroyed merely from necessity, let every class be enfranchised at the dictation of justice. Then we shall have a Constitution that shall be reverenced by all: rulers who shall be honored, and revered, and a Union that shall be sincerely loved by a brave and patriotic people, and which can never be severed.

Great sacrifices have been made by the people; yet, greater still are demanded ere atonement can be made for our national sins. Eternal justice holds heavy mortgages against us, and will require the payment of the last farthing. We have involved ourselves in the sin of unrighteous gain, stimulated by luxury, and pride, and the love of power and oppression; and prosperity and peace can be purchased only by blood, and with tears of repentance. We have paid some of the fearful installments, but there are other heavy obligations to be met.

The great day of the nation’s judgment has come, and who shall be able to stand? Even we, whose ancestors have suffered the afflictions which are inseparable from a condition of slavery, for the period of two centuries and a half, now pity our land and weep with those who weep.

Upon the total and complete destruction of this accursed sin depends the safety and perpetuity of our Republic and its excellent institutions.

Let slavery die. It has had a long and fair trial. God himself has pleaded against it. The enlightened nations of the earth have condemned it. Its death warrant is signed by God and man. Do not commute its sentence. Give it no respite, but let it be ignominiously executed.

Honorable Senators and Representatives! illustrious rulers of this great nation! I cannot refrain this day from invoking upon you, in God’s name, the blessings of millions who were ready to perish, but to whom a new and better life has been opened by your humanity, justice, and patriotism. You have said, “Let the Constitution of the country be so amended that slavery and involuntary servitude shall no longer exist in the United States, except in punishment for crime.” Surely, an act so sublime could not escape Divine notice; and doubtless the deed has been recorded in the archives of heaven. Volumes may be appropriated to your praise and renown in the history of the world. Genius and art may perpetuate the glorious act on canvass and in marble, but certain and more lasting monuments in commemoration of your decision are already erected in the hearts and memories of a grateful people.

The nation has begun its exodus from worse than Egyptian bondage; and I beseech you that you say to the people, “that they go forward.” With the assurance of God’s favor in all things done in obedience to his righteous will, and guided by day and by night by the pillars of cloud and fire, let us not pause until we have reached the other and safe side of the stormy and crimson sea. Let freemen and patriots mete out complete and equal justice to all men, and thus prove to mankind the superiority of our Democratic, Republican Government.

Favored men, and honored of God as his instruments, speedily finish the work which he has given you to do. Emancipate, Enfranchise, Educate, and give the blessings of the gospel to every American citizen.

From A Memorial Discourse (1865).

I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
From Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings

Interesting Links
“The Abolitionist Movement: The Atheneum Celebrates Nantucket’s Anti-Slavery Movement and Local Abolitionists” (Caitlin Kelley, Nantucket Atheneum)

“Lynn Legacy: Frederick Douglass’ Local Connection” (Rianon Prushinski, Lynn Museum & Historical Society)

Previous Story of the Week selection
• “Letter to His Old Master,” Frederick Douglass
• “Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman,” Annie Parker
• “Pinda:—A True Tale,” Maria Weston Chapman
• “This Whole Horrible Transaction,” John Quincy Adams

Buy the book
Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings
List price: $40.00
Save 20%
Web store price: $32.00

Portrait of Frederick Douglass, c. 1845. Oil on canvas, artist unknown. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. This painting is believed to be based on the engraving that appears as a frontispiece in Douglass’s first book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845). Click on image to see full painting.

In August 1841, Nantucket hosted the island’s first antislavery convention— an event that would permanently alter Frederick Douglass’s life as a freed man. He was then living with his wife and two children in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he was employed variously by a whale-oil refinery, at a shipyard, or in a brass foundry. He was also licensed to preach by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and frequently spoke from the pulpit.

“Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent abolitionist in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my colored friends in the little school-house on Second street, where we worshiped,” Douglass recalled in his Life and Times. “He sought me out in the crowd and invited me to say a few words to the convention.” A “few words” somehow became a speech to the entire gathering—well over five hundred people, most of them white—on the last night of the three-day event. Years later, the abolitionist and reformer Samuel J. May recalled when Douglass took the stage:

To his great confusion, he was called upon and urged to address the convention. A number were present from New Bedford who had heard his exhortations in the Methodist church, and they would not allow his plea of inability to speak. After much hesitation he rose, and, notwithstanding his embarrassment, he gave evidence of such intellectual power—wisdom as well as wit—that all present were astonished.

A correspondent for The National Anti-Slavery Standard, then edited by Lydia Maria Child, was in attendance and, unable to recall the reluctant speaker’s name, reported later that month:

One, recently from the house of bondage, spoke with great power. Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence. Our best pleaders for the slave held their breath for fear of interrupting him. . . . It seemed almost miraculous how he had been prepared to tell his story with so much power.

The reporter ended the article by noting that the closing session—scheduled to end at nine o’clock—held the audience spellbound until nearly ten because Douglass’s speech inspired William Lloyd Garrison to deliver a rousing, extemporaneous stemwinder “taking me as his text,” as Douglass put it.

What is clear from numerous surviving accounts and memoirs is that no one who witnessed Douglass’s “debut,” as it were, ever forgot it. Years later, however, the speaker himself could barely remember that night:

It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb. I am not sure that my embarrassment was not the most effective part of my speech, if speech it could be called. At any rate, this is about the only part of my performance that I now distinctly remember. The audience sympathized with me at once, and from having been remarkably quiet, became much excited.

Although many eyewitnesses later remembered how his initial embarrassment gradually became confidence and “dignity” and how he shared stories of his years of bondage, no record has survived indicating the specifics of what Douglass said that night.

Before Douglass returned home, John A. Collins, an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, offered him a paid position for a three-month trial period, during which he would travel with other abolitionists to speak at county meetings and attract subscribers for The National Anti-Slavery Standard and Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator. “I was reluctant to take the proffered position,” wrote Douglass, who was still legally a fugitive. “I had not been quite three years from slavery and was honestly distrustful of my ability, and I wished to be excused. Besides, publicity might discover me to my master, and many other objections presented themselves.” Yet, in the end, Douglass accepted: “Here opened for me a new life—a life for which I had had no preparation. Mr. Collins used to say when introducing me to an audience, I was a ‘graduate from the peculiar institution, with my diploma written on my back.’”

In October 1841, the abolitionist Edward M. Davis, who was visiting from Philadelphia, witnessed Douglass speaking in Lynn, Massachusetts, during his “trial period.” (Douglass and his family would move to Lynn the following spring.) The speech by “the runaway slave,” Davis wrote, “was delivered with energy, and evidently from one unaccustomed to make speeches, yet it came so spontaneously that it thrilled through every one present, and compelled them to feel for the Wrongs he endured.” Impressed and awed, Davis had the presence of mind to write down the gist and “in some parts the language” of Douglass’s speech, and he published it in the The Pennsylvania Freeman. It is the earliest record of Frederick Douglass’s oratory and so it is the opening piece in the just-published Library of America volume collecting more than one hundred of his speeches and works of journalism. We present it below as our Story of the Week selection.

Notes: The man Douglass refers to as “my master” is Thomas Auld. For more on Auld, as well as the public letter Douglass addressed to him in 1848, see “Letter to His Old Master.” The “young female slave” was Douglass’s cousin Henny Bailey, who had been severely burnt in a childhood accident and lost the use of her hands. Douglass recounts Auld’s “most brutal” beating of “this lame and maimed woman” in My Bondage and My Freedom. Though not an abolitionist himself, John Quincy Adams during his post-presidential career as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1831–48, became an outspoken advocate for the right of citizens to petition the government to restrict slavery.

*   *   *

For this week’s selection, we depart from the usual format and reproduce the selection, in its entirety, below. You may also download it as a PDF or view it in Google Docs

I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery: An Address

I feel greatly embarrassed when I attempt to address an audience of white people. I am not used to speak to them, and it makes me tremble when I do so, because I have always looked up to them with fear. My friends, I have come to tell you something about slavery—what I know of it, as I have felt it. When I came North, I was astonished to find that the abolitionists knew so much about it, that they were acquainted with its deadly effects as well as if they had lived in its midst. But though they can give you its history—though they can depict its horrors, they cannot speak as I can from experience; they cannot refer you to a back covered with scars, as I can; for I have felt these wounds; I have suffered under the lash without the power of resisting. Yes, my blood has sprung out as the lash embedded itself in my flesh. And yet my master has the reputation of being a pious man and a good Christian. He was a class leader in the Methodist church. I have seen this pious class leader cross and tie the hands of one of his young female slaves, and lash her on the bare skin and justify the deed by the quotation from the Bible, “he who knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”

Our masters do not hesitate to prove from the Bible that slavery is right, and ministers of the Gospel tell us that we were born to be slaves:—to look at our hard hands, and see how wisely Providence has adapted them to do the labor; and then tell us, holding up their delicate white hands, that theirs are not fit to work. Some of us know very well that we have not time to cease from labor, or ours would get soft too; but I have heard the superstitious ones exclaim—and ignorant people are always superstitious—that “if ever a man told the truth, that one did.”

A large portion of the slaves know that they have a right to their liberty.—It is often talked about and read of, for some of us know how to read, although all our knowledge is gained in secret.

I well remember getting possession of a speech by John Quincy Adams, made in Congress about slavery and freedom, and reading it to my fellow slaves. Oh! what joy and gladness it produced to know that so great, so good a man was pleading for us, and further, to know that there was a large and growing class of people in the north called abolitionists, who were moving for our freedom. This is known all through the south, and cherished with gratitude. It has increased the slaves’ hope for liberty. Without it his heart would faint within him; his patience would be exhausted. On the agitation of this subject he has built his highest hopes. My friends let it not be quieted, for upon you the slaves look for help. There will be no outbreaks, no insurrections, whilst you continue this excitement: let it cease, and the crimes that would follow cannot be told.

Emancipation, my friends, is that cure for slavery and its evils. It alone will give to the south peace and quietness. It will blot out the insults we have borne, will heal the wounds we have endured, and are even now groaning under, will pacify the resentment which would kindle to a blaze were it not for your exertions and, though it may never unite the many kindred and dear friends which slavery has torn asunder, it will be received with gratitude and a forgiving spirit. Ah! how the slave yearns for it, that he may be secure from the lash, that he may enjoy his family, and no more be tortured with the worst feature of slavery, the separation of friends and families. The whip we can bear without a murmur, compared to the idea of separation. Oh, my friends, you cannot feel the slave’s misery, when he is separated from his kindred. The agony of the mother when parting from her children cannot be told. There is nothing we so much dread as to be sold farther south. My friends, we are not taught from books; there is a law against teaching us, although I have heard some folks say we could not learn if we had a chance. The northern people say so, but the south do not believe it, or they would not have laws with heavy penalties to prevent it. The northern people think that if slavery were abolished, we would all come north. They may be more afraid of the free colored people and the runaway slaves going South. We would all seek our home and our friends, but, more than all, to escape from northern prejudice, would we go to the south. Prejudice against color is stronger north than south; it hangs around my neck like a heavy weight. It presses me out from among my fellow men, and, although I have met it at every step the three years I have been out of southern slavery, I have been able, in spite of its influence, “to take good care of myself.”

Originally published in The Pennsylvania Freeman, October 20, 1841. Reprinted from The Frederick Douglass Papers, volume 1 (1979). Copyright © 1979 by Yale University Press. Reprinted by permission.

The Two Altars; or, Two Pictures in One

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
From American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation

Interesting Links
Meet the Beechers (Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Cincinnati)

Interview with Stowe biographer Joan D. Hedrick (PDF, Library of America)

“The Pro-Slavery Riot in Cincinnati” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture, University of Virginia)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “Abraham Lincoln,” Harriet Beecher Stowe
• “The Lover,” Harriet Ann Jacobs
• “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes,” Lydia Maria Francis Child

Buy the book
American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
Autobiography, fiction, children’s literature, poetry, oratory, & song
970 pages
List price: $40.00
20% off, free shipping
Web store price: $32.00

“Operations of the Fugitive-Slave Law,” c. 1850. Hand-tinted print of a wood engraving by American artist Albert Bobbett, (1824–c. 1888).

In speeches delivered to various organizations during the winter of 1855, Frederick Douglass proclaimed, “One flash from the heart-supplied intellect of Harriet Beecher Stowe could light a million camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery, which not all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are with blood, could extinguish.” Three years had passed since the publication of Stowe’s first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and, as Douglass affirms, she was now one of the leading lights of the antislavery movement.

Only five years earlier, however, Stowe was barely known in abolitionist circles; she came to the cause hesitantly and somewhat indirectly. Born and raised in Connecticut, she moved with her family to Ohio in 1832. “When she came to Cincinnati, she was a New Englander; when she left eighteen years later, she was an American,” writes biographer Joan D. Hedrick. “The West was the cradle of her career.“ Like other members of her family, Stowe was against slavery, but she initially felt that abolition was too extreme a position; her first writing on the subject was actually a piece defending freedom of the press. Published in 1836 in the antislavery Cincinnati Journal—her brother Henry Ward Beecher was temporarily the newspaper’s editor—the essay condemned the mob that attacked another local antislavery newspaper before killing several black residents and destroying homes belonging to free black families.

For the next few years Stowe wrote short fiction inspired by her New England background and admired for the use of dialect, as well as moral stories and temperance tales. Her debut collection, The Mayflower; or, Sketches of scenes and characters among the descendants of the Pilgrims, appeared in 1843. Two years later, however, she wrote “Immediate Emancipation,” her first antislavery story, recounting “literal matters of fact occurring in the city of Cincinnati, which have come within the scope of the writer's personal knowledge [and] have merely been clothed in a dramatic form, to present them more vividly to the reader.” Abandoning the more conservative views of her father and sister and adopting the more radical opinions of her brothers, this sketch signifies a turning point in Stowe’s attitude toward the question of abolition.

In the summer of 1849 Stowe’s eighteen-month-old son died in a cholera epidemic that swept through Cincinnati and killed several thousand residents. She later wrote to a friend that it was “the awful scenes and bitter sorrow of that summer” that gave birth to Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In those depths of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain. There were circumstances about his death of such peculiar bitterness, of what seemed almost cruel suffering that I felt I could never be consoled for it unless this crushing of my own heart might enable me to work out some great good to others.

But it was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act that ignited her indignation and passion. While the law was working its way through Congress in 1850, she wrote “The Freeman’s Dream,” which advocated civil disobedience against any attempt to capture and return escaped slaves. Then, in June 1851, just as Uncle Tom’s Cabin began appearing in serial form in The National Era, she published a third story, “The Two Altars,” meant as a response to the newly passed legislation. Blending the didacticism of antislavery writing with the sentimentalism expected by the readers of her fiction, the story’s two parts contrast the romantic idealism of the Revolutionary War with the devastating reality of a people torn apart by slavery.

Note: Several details in this introduction are from The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852–2002, by Claire Parfait (2007).

*   *   *

The well-sweep of the old house on the hill was relieved, dark and clear, against the reddening sky, as the early winter sun was going down in the west. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

“This Whole Horrible Transaction”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)
From John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1821–1848

Interesting Links

“Twelve Years A Free Woman–And Then A Slave” (JQA Speaks)

“Alexandria Museum Tells Story of Slave Trade” (Mark Berman, The Washington Post)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman,” Annie Parker
• “A Sketch from Maryland Life,” Caroline W. Healey Dall
• “Defence of Fort M‘Henry,” Francis Scott Key & Roger B. Taney

Buy the books
The Diaries of John Quincy Adams
Two-volume boxed set
1,515 pages

Drawing of the Slave Pen in Alexandria, 1862. The building sign in the illustration reads, incorrectly, “Pierce, Birch & Co. Dealers in Slaves”; the company’s actual name was Price, Birch & Co. (The slave trader James H. Birch is mentioned by Adams in the selection below.) Originally built as a private home in 1812, the compound was converted into a large slave jail and pen in 1828. The central three-story edifice still stands at 1315 Duke Street and is the home to the North Virginia Urban League and the Freedom House Museum. Image courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.

---

Elected to the House of Representatives in 1830, former President John Quincy Adams almost immediately began presenting to Congress various petitions from citizens, nearly all of them demanding the abolition of slavery, and he insisted on First Amendment grounds that these documents be received by the House and referred to the proper committees. By the middle of the decade thousands of such petitions were flooding Washington. In May 1836 South Carolina representative Laurens Pinckney proposed three resolutions on the issue of slavery, the third of which advocated that all petitions, memorials, and resolutions relating to slavery be peremptorily tabled and not acted upon. Denied an opportunity to speak against the proposals, Adams demanded, “Am I gagged or am I not?” For each of the next four years, over his strenuous protests, the House successfully reintroduced what became known as the gag rule.

In June 1838 John Quincy Adams used a parliamentary maneuver to “ungag” himself, at least temporarily. The question of annexing Texas was under consideration by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which moved to table it since there weren’t enough votes in the House for it to pass. Adams, who opposed annexation (since it would further tilt the balance of power to the slave states), took the opportunity to seize control of the House floor. Each morning for three weeks, from June 16 to July 7, he maintained a filibuster against a motion he in fact supported—tabling the question of Texas annexation—and delivered a series of speeches describing a long-standing “conspiracy” among the slave states to acquire Texan territory, upholding the propriety of women petitioning Congress, and declaring slavery to be a sin. His daily orations ended with the arrival of summer recess.

Midway through the filibuster, on June 30, Adams responded to an interruption by South Carolina representative Francis Wilkinson Pickens and described a notorious incident from the previous year.

I do not doubt in the least that he is, himself, a kind and indulgent master; so, I doubt not, are all the gentlemen who represent his State on this floor. They know not the horrors that belong to the system, and attend it even in their own State; and when they are stated by those who have witnessed them, he calls the whole a tissue of misrepresentation. . . . He does not know the profligate villain who procreates children from his slaves, and then sells his own children as slaves. He does not know the crushing and destruction of all the tenderest and holiest ties of nature which that system produces, but which I have seen, with my own eyes, in this city of Washington. Twelve months have not passed since a woman, in this District, was taken with her four infant children, and separated from her husband, who was a free man, to be sent away, I know not where. That woman, in a dungeon in Alexandria, killed with her own hand two of her children, and attempted to kill the others. She was tried for murder, and, to the honor of human nature I say it, a jury was not to be found in the District who would find her guilty. . . . The woman was asked how she could perpetrate such an act, for she had been a woman of unblemished character and of pious sentiments. She replied that wrong had been done to her and to them; that she was entitled to her freedom though she had been sold to go to Georgia and that she had sent her children to a better world.

The incident involving Dorcas Allen, the woman described by Adams, is described in detail in several fascinating entries of his diary. When he first came across the case in the newspaper, he asked for more information about it from his brother-in-law and business associate Nathaniel Frye, who seemed reluctant to speak on the subject. Adams gradually learned the complicated history of “this horrible transaction”; his investigation would involve such luminaries as Francis Scott Key, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; William Cranch, Adams’s cousin and the chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court; and General Walter Smith, most famously the commander of a brigade of the district’s militia during the War of 1812. During the fall of 1837 Adams “imprudently” involved himself in the matter and became personally acquainted, for the first time, with the byzantine horrors of slavery. We present the relevant entries as they appear in the Library of America edition of The Diaries of John Quincy Adams.

Notes: During this period (until 1846), a substantial portion of Alexandria and the surrounding area was part of the District of Columbia, which is why the case falls under the jurisdiction of district officials. In the first diary entry presented here, Adams mentions belatedly receiving issues of Niles’s Register, an influential Baltimore-based national weekly news magazine published by Hezekiah Niles. William Winston Seaton was co-publisher of the National Intelligencer, the dominant daily newspaper in Washington, DC. The entry of October 28 notes that the prosecutor of Dorcas Allen’s case entered a noli prosequi (nolle prosequi) on the second indictment, a legal term declaring an abandonment of all or part of a suit or action.

In each diary entry, the letter following the number refers to the time; thus the first entry was written at 5 in the morning on October 23. The entries, when possible, are presented in full. Certain passages, especially such recurring items as meteorological observations, records of social visits received and returned, and accounts of bills paid and due, have been cut; such breaks are indicated with the ≈ symbol.

*   *   *

There was in the National Intelligencer this morning an advertisement, signed James H. Birch, and Edward Dyer Auctioneer — headed Sale of Slaves — A sale at public auction at 4 O’Clock this afternoon, of Dorcas Allen, and her two surviving children aged about 7 and 9 years. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

A Sketch from Maryland Life

Caroline W. Healey Dall (1822–1912)
From American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation

Interesting Links
Slaves Are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law (History Is a Weapon)

America’s First Direct Mail Campaign (Smithsonian)

Caroline Healey Dall, Daughter of Boston (Helen R. Deese, Beacon Press)

Previous Story of the Week selections
• “Pinda:—A True Tale,” Maria Weston Chapman
• “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes,” Lydia Maria Francis Child
• “Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman,” Annie Parker

Buy the book
American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
Autobiography, fiction, children’s literature, poetry, oratory, & song • 970 pages
List price: $40.00
20% off, free shipping
Web store price: $32.00
Also available as an e-book

Left: Bible belonging to Nat Turner. The surviving artifact is missing its front and back cover. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Maurice A. Person and Noah and Brooke Porter) Right: Page from Anti−Slavery Melodies; for The Friends of Freedom, 1843, edited by Jarius Lincoln. (Old Sturbridge Village Museum, via TeachUSHistory.org)

In the early 1830s abolitionists flooded the U.S. postal system with antislavery literature, sending pamphlets and newspapers to politicians and business leaders whose addresses had been culled from directories in slave states. By this period, it was illegal in most places to teach slaves to read. A North Carolina statue, for example, claimed “the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dis-satisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion.” Still, some of the antislavery literature made its way either to slaves who had managed to become literate or to sympathetic whites and free blacks who might defy the law and read these materials aloud at secret gatherings.

The mailings peaked with a coordinated campaign by the American Anti-Slavery Society in the summer of 1835. Tipped off to the effort and invoking the Boston Tea Party, a group of Charleston residents broke into the Post Office and burned bags of mail that contained antislavery tracts from New York. President Andrew Jackson stepped into the controversy, proposing in his annual message that “severe penalties” be established for sending through the mail publications “intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.” The Senate declined to pass such a law, but Postmaster General Amos Kendall, with Jackson’s support, condemned the “revolting pictures and fervid appeals addressed to the senses and passions of the blacks” and encouraged local postmasters to circumvent the law on their own initiative. In New York City, the major conduit for the mailings, postmaster Samuel L. Gouverneur refused to accept abolitionist mail addressed to Southern states—a policy that remained in place, with varying effectiveness, until the Civil War.

In slave states, many legislatures passed laws banning the possession of such literature or, at the least, sharing it with slaves. In “A Sketch from Maryland Life,” Caroline W. Healey Dall presents the heartrending case of Sherry Williams, a free black man who traveled from Pennsylvania to the east side of Chesapeake Bay, unthinkingly taking with him a hymnal that contained abolitionist songs. Although Dall was from Boston and spent most of her life in Massachusetts, she learned of Williams's story in 1845, when she and her husband, a Baltimore native, lived with his family during the first year of their marriage. The story appeared in the 1847 edition of The Liberty Tree, an annual gift book published by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

While living in Maryland Dall also wrote article for the Christian World newspaper, describing the experiences of other free blacks in the area. Like most members of her Boston family, she did not yet support a complete and immediate end to slavery, but she conveyed in the article how revolted she was by it—which surely didn’t go over well with her in-laws, who owned slaves. Her own father scolded her in a letter from Boston. “Would to God, his eyes could be opened,” she wrote in her journal, “no one is more opposed to the stand taken by the Abolition party than I, but were I to stop—writing—would not stones cry out?”

*   *   *

Ten years ago, a colored man, with an honest, straight-forward countenance and long dark hair thinly striped with grey, walked irresolutely back and forth before the window of a bookseller’s shop, in the city of Philadelphia. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.

Pinda:—A True Tale

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885)
From American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation

Interesting Links
Maria Weston Chapman (Maggie MacLean, Civil War Women)

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's Weekly Contribution Box (Teresa A. Goddu, Common-Place)

Other Story of the Week selections by abolitionists
• “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes,” Lydia Maria Francis Child
• “Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman,” Annie Parker
• “An Hour,” Louisa May Alcott

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American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
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Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Weekly Contribution Box, c. 1840. Boston Public Library Rare Books & Manuscripts Department. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library website.

In 1836 Mary Slater of New Orleans visited her father Thomas Aves in Boston and brought along Med, a six-year-old slave girl. Slater’s stay in Boston was extended when she fell ill, and Med was housed by Aves during her mistress’s lengthy recuperation. Several local abolitionists and lawyers, on behalf of both the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the young girl, petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus against Aves, arguing that because Med was “free by the law of Massachusetts” the state court must intervene on her behalf to prevent her from being forced to return to New Orleans.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, led by its chief justice Lemuel Shaw (Herman Melville’s future father-in-law) ruled unanimously in Commonwealth v. Aves for the petitioners, in favor of Med’s freedom. In his decision Shaw distinguished the case at hand from situations involving runaway slaves (which were covered by federal law) and determined that “if a slave is brought voluntarily and unnecessarily within the limits of this State, he becomes free, if he chooses to avail himself of the provisions of our laws.” The court placed Med in the care of a guardian, and she was eventually adopted by Isaac Knapp, the famous copublisher of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. The ruling was almost immediately used by activists to free slaves voluntarily brought by their masters into Northern states.

Four years after this landmark court case Maria Weston Chapman of Boston received a message from her sister in New Bedford, about a fugitive slave newly arrived from Georgia. He hoped to be reunited with his wife, who had recently been freed by abolitionists using the precedent set by the Aves decision:

Today at noon Abraham came with your letter. . . . He kept talking about his family, & removing his family. Pinda I suppose he meant. . . . He wants you to tell Pinda that at the place where he is staying are two old acquaintances of his, who came from the very place he did, Savannah I suppose & that he has not the least trouble in getting along. . . . There is great feeling for runaway slaves here [and] I dont doubt he will prosper. I should not think it at all safe though to publish his story, which is a great pity, for there never was a prettier one.*

At the time of her husband’s arrival, Pinda was living in Boston, either with Chapman or with a neighboring family. Ever watchful for Pinda’s welfare, Chapman warned a friend in New Bedford six months later that “the amiable Mr. Hogan,” Pinda’s former “christian slave-holder,” had arrived in town. Chapman received a reply indicating that Abraham, who had a job in New Bedford, had canceled his impending visit to Boston to see his wife and thought “it would be better for Pendas [sic] to remain where she is for the present as Hogan might discover his whereabouts if she should attempt to come to him.”

Chapman chose to disregard her sister’s advice to not publish the couple’s story, and “Pinda:—A True Tale” appeared weeks later. The names Pinda and Abraham are retained in the tale—although, even in the correspondence quoted above, these are almost certainly pseudonyms—and Hogan becomes Logan. Although the real identities of Pinda, her husband, and their former owners have never been determined—and it’s not known what became of them—surviving documentation otherwise confirms the seemingly melodramatic essentials of Chapman’s fictional version. The story was published in late October 1840 in an early issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, founded that year by the Lydia Maria Child (best known today as the author of the poem that begins “Over the river and through the woods”), and it was widely distributed as a small book by the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York.

This week’s selection is preceded by a headnote on Maria Chapman written by James G. Basker when “Pinda” was included in the Library of America anthology American Antislavery Writings.

Notes: The opening of the story takes place on the Eli Whitney, an actual ship, named for the inventor of the cotton gin. On page 389 is a reference to Paul’s Epistle to Philemon in the New Testament. Philemon, a wealthy Christian in Colossae, owned a slave named Onesimus. Shortly after Paul had left Colossae, Onesimus ran away to Rome, where he met Paul and converted to Christianity. Eventually, Paul sent him back to his master, urging Philemon to treat him as a brother. Garrison, first mentioned on page 395, refers to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

* The documentation for this case is excerpted more extensively in Kathryn Grover’s Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (2001).

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One dark night in the year 1836, an unusual stir took place on the deck of the good ship Eli Whitney, about to sail from Boston to Savannah. It was occasioned by the appearance of an officer, charged with a writ of habeas corpus, in favor of a supposed slave, who was known to have been carried on board by her master. . . . If you don't see the full selection below, click here (PDF) or click here (Google Docs) to read it—free!

This selection may be photocopied and distributed for classroom or educational use.