Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation 9780814790502

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Negro Comrades of the Crown

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Negro Comrades of the Crown African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. before Emancipation

Gerald Horne

a NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2012 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Horne, Gerald. Negro comrades of the Crown : African Americans and the British empire fight the U.S. before emancipation / Gerald Horne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8147–7349–9 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–8147–9050–2 (ebook) ISBN 978–0–8147–4463–5 (ebook) 1. Slave insurrections—United States—History—19th century. 2. African Americans—Relations with British—History—19th century. 3. Government, Resistance to—United States—History—19th century. 4. Slavery—United States—History—19th century. 5. United States— Relations—Great Britain. 6. Great Britain—Relations—United States. I. Title. E449.H799 2011 306.3'620973—dc23 2011028435 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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1 “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

17

2 “Base Fools!”

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3 Can U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

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4 The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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5 “A Powerful Negro Army”

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6 The British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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7 Revolutionary Implications

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8 Abolition of Private Property?

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9 Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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10 London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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11 Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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12 Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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13 Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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14 A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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Notes

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Index

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About the Author

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Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

It was mid-summer 1816 and Africans in Florida,1 tensing for an epochal battle near the Apalachicola River, were well-armed. Among the hundreds gathered at what was called the “Negro Fort” were former slaves who had been trained by the British—a nation which only recently had fought a brutal war with the United States: the warriors also included escaped slaves from this young republic, along with a grouping of indigenes who too had unresolved grievances with Washington. Thanks to London, they had the ability to inflict severe pain on approaching U.S. troops: their weaponry included four twenty-four pound cannons, four six-pound cannons, one field piece, and one three-and-one-half inch brass howitzer, not to mention 2,500 muskets, 500 carbines, 500 swords, 300 quarter casks of rifle powder, and 162 barrels of cannon powder. Their encampment was one of the most heavily fortified along a river route in the southern reaches of North America. They also had flags flying over their battlement: the Union Jack and a red flag, which signaled “no surrender.”2 They did not surrender and they were overwhelmed, though some departed hastily and lived to fight another day.3 These Negroes were part of what was probably the most profoundly militant and sustained resistance of the enslaved since Europeans4 had invaded the continent hundreds of years earlier. More than this, this resistance marked a repetitive strategy deployed by London against its former colony: deploy the republic’s Africans to assault their homeland. Just before war erupted in mid-1812, Sir Alexander Cochrane noted confidently that Virginia’s Negroes were “British in their hearts and might be made great use of if war should be prosecuted with vigor.”5 Taking advantage of the war commencing in 1812, the enslaved had fled en masse. When Washington itself was torched by the redcoats in August 1814, one stricken Euro-American reported angrily that the Negroes had |

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“risen and committed murders and outrages on whites”6 in neighboring Virginia. He demanded the dispatching of militia to suppress this uprising, but these forces were already stretched to the point of snapping. According to the state’s governor, slave-owners were nervous, since even before this conflict had erupted, they associated—correctly, as it turned out—the British invasion with a “probable insurrection of their slaves who take a deep interest in a rupture between England and this country.”7 On the verge of the burning of the nation’s capital, the U.S. authorities’ unease had reached fever pitch: “Our Negroes are flocking to the enemy from all quarters,” it was said in August 1814, which the redcoats then “convert[ed] into troops, vindictive and rapacious.” An even greater fear was that the “example” of the formerly enslaved, now “armed . . . must have a strong effect upon those blacks which have not as yet been able to escape”; this “ruffian system of warfare,” it was said, “will light up one universal conflagration throughout these counties.”8 The gloom in Washington was mirrored by the glee among the British. As his compatriots approached Washington, Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane of the Royal Navy observed of the (formerly) enslaved that as a result of “their hatred to the citizens I have already a small corps in arms,” which would now “rapidly increase.” The “Blacks are all good horsemen,” he noted, “and thousands will join upon their master’s horses.” They were “as good [as] Cossacks as any in the Russian Army,” he averred, “and I believe more terrific [terrifying] to the Americans than any troops that could be brought forward.”9 His comrade, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, responded that “undisguised alarm” at London’s “intentions respecting the Blacks” was descending upon the enemy, since they “expect [the Negroes] will have no mercy on them and they know that he understands bush fighting.”10 As it turned out, the hearty men of the U.S. rallied and in New Orleans in 1815 rebuffed their mortal foes—with the timely aid of men of color in arms, who bested the redcoats, about 10 percent of whom were of African descent11—but this was not the last time that the Crown had used or acquiesced in the potent example of Negroes with deadly weapons: it was thought that the most determined fighters against the U.S. were those who had a reasonable fear of enslavement.12 Indeed, for much of the antebellum era, London deployed U.S. Negroes in its frequent confrontations with Washington. Early in the century, for example, the Crown placed armed Negro troops along the Canadian border with the republic, assuming that they would be fierce fighters in case of an invasion from the south, since in case of defeat, they could simply be re-enslaved.13 In 1819, Canada established an African Canadian military colony north of Lake Simcoe. The settlers were battle2

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tested veterans of the War of 1812 and their homes formed the first line of defense against the expansionism of the U.S.14 A central reason why Canada remains an independent nation and was not annexed by the U.S. was the vigilance of the Negro soldier. Moreover, the flight of Negroes to Canada built the Empire at U.S. expense.15 The “enemy of my enemy is my friend” has long been commonplace in diplomacy—and this was no less true of Thornton Blackburn, an escaped slave from Kentucky who found himself in Detroit in 1833.16 He had been detained and his master was hastening to retrieve him, when a sizeable crowd of angry Negroes surrounded the jail armed with sticks, knives, pistols, swords, and the like, with the aim of derailing his re-enslavement. A loaded pistol was placed directly at the breast of his jailer, then a tossed stone struck the sheriff in the face, as a heavy club struck his cranium: Blackburn was rescued amidst threats of placing the city to the torch and fled immediately across the river to Canada. In a legal opinion that outraged the U.S., since it treated “chattel” as a person, Canada allowed Blackburn to reside in freedom.17 A few years after Blackburn’s rescue, this pattern of Negro aggression was repeated. This time the site was Florida, now under the U.S. flag, but as at the Negro Fort, again Negroes and indigenes were on the warpath and the “Dade Massacre” was executed in one of the most stunning defeats ever absorbed by the new nation.18 “Forty or fifty Negroes on horseback,” it was reported breathlessly, “galloped up and alighted, tied their beasts and commenced with horrid shouts and yells the butchery of the wounded, together with an indiscriminate plunder . . . splitting open the heads of all who showed the least signs of life, with their axes and knives.”19 The “Dade Massacre” left a deep imprint on the consciousness of EuroAmericans in a manner that rivaled what befell George Custer a few decades later. For it was in 1857 in Oregon that the influential George H. Williams argued passionately against the prospect of allowing Negro slavery in his new homeland. Why? “Eastward dwell numerous Indian tribes,” he warned, “to whose welcome embrace a slave might fly and be safe,” and few had forgotten that “Major Dade’s command of 112 (except four) was slaughtered in the Florida war” with the “Negroes outstripping the Indians in ferocity and brutal treatment of the dead.”20 A few years after the Florida slaughter, Washington again had reason to be outraged, as the now familiar duo of the Negro and the British Empire struck again. On 7 November 1841 at 9 P.M. as a vessel, the Creole, filled with 135 slaves, made its way from Virginia to New Orleans, suddenly in the waters Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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surrounding the Bahamas the Negroes mutinied. One Euro-American was killed with a Bowie knife by a Negro, while another (formerly) enslaved man pressed a musket to the breast of a (former) guard. They commandeered the ship and maneuvered it into port in the Bahamas, where they were greeted warmly by a contingent of the fearsomely armed West Indian Regiments, men of African descent. Despite the protestations of Washington, the accused were freed, with a number decamping to Jamaica.21 This was not the first time that the enslaved from the U.S. had been freed after arriving on British soil.22 Incidents like the Creole mutiny23and the Dade Massacre led proponents of slavery to view abolitionism as a British plot. The prominent Henry Wise of Virginia was not alone in seeing even men like John Quincy Adams as part of a dastardly British abolitionist scheme, designed not only to free the slaves but to reverse the events of 1776 by establishing a monarchy while converting Euro-Americans into de facto slaves.24 Abolitionists, he said, were recipients of “British Gold.”25 Meanwhile, London did little to assuage these fears, nor did it help matters with its almost casual indifference toward their erstwhile transoceanic cousins. In 1844, writing from the Isle of Wight, Thaddius di Lusignan made a startling proposal to London. He had lived among the Comanches of the southwest and appealed on their behalf for a “war of extermination” against the settlers and sought to establish a base in Canada.26 Rather than rejecting this proposal unequivocally, the Earl of Aberdeen hemmed and hawed and waffled.27 In similar vein, when John Brown’s raid occurred in 1859, helping to trigger civil war, some in the Slave South thought the ultimate culprit was London. “The first suggestion of the Harper’s Ferry attack,” said a proslavery advocate, “was made to Brown by British abolitionists in Chatham [Canada]” as part of a plot to reclaim the U.S.28 After all, one of Brown’s key confederates—Richard Realf—was born in Sussex, England, in 1834,29 and the Canadian, Alexander Milton Ross, was a close comrade of Brown’s.30 A man who was said to have influenced Brown militarily—Hugh Forbes—was British;31 it was in 1857 that John Brown announced formally his association with this “distinguished officer.”32 Osborne Anderson, a Negro who fought alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry, recalled the time when Brown traveled north to Chatham, Canada, in April 1858: Anderson, who had Canadian roots himself, vividly detailed the critical meeting there on 8 May 1858 at 10 A.M. that marked a gigantic step forward to armed confrontation with enslavement, He recollected their prep4

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aration by studying the writings of Forbes,33 a man who had developed a plan for the armed liberation of the U.S. enslaved.34 Unsurprisingly, after Brown’s raid was subdued, a number of his New England comrades fled to Canada.35 When the British journalist, James Redpath, ventured to the U.S. South on the eve of the Civil War to do something rarely done by reporters of that era—actually talking to the enslaved—he discovered unsurprisingly that “an Englishman is treated with far more and sincerer respect by the slaves than any American.” He then stressed, “I have seen the eyes of the bondsmen in the Carolinas sparkle as they talked of the probabilities of a war with the ‘old British,’” agreeing that “a war with England now, would, in all probability, extinguish Southern slavery forever.”36 A. T. Jones, residing in freedom in Canada in 1863, and born a slave in Kentucky in 1814, concurred, arguing that “ever since my first recollection, the only source that colored people looked to for deliverance was the British government. They prayed that there might come some war, or something between the two countries, by which the British government would destroy slavery. That was the talk among the slaves.”37 This is a book about slave resistance in the U.S. (and Negro resistance more broadly)—particularly the armed variety—in the broader context of the often tortured diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and the British Empire.38 In one of the more prominent books on slave revolts, Eugene Genovese argued persuasively that “repeatedly the French incited the slaves of the British, who incited the slaves of the Spanish, who incited the slaves of the French.” Yet, he also argued that the U.S.—perhaps the most significant slave-owning society and most vulnerable to diplomatic manipulation on this ticklish matter—was somehow exempt from this cycle: “[T]he slaves of the Old South,” he said, “experienced little or no exterior power except that of their masters.”39 In the pages that follow, I disagree with Genovese’s assertion and argue that the alliance between London and Africans within the republic was probably the single most important threat to U.S. national security.40 I assert further that abolition within the Empire was a diplomatic imperative: it allowed London to gain an advantage on a rising rival—and former colony—by staking out a more progressive position on abolition. This also undermined Caribbean planters who seemed to have dreams of a 1776-style revolt of their own or—worse from London’s viewpoint—aligning more closely with the slaveholders’ republic. A major stumbling block to the consolidation of the U. S. was the close relationship between its Negro population and the nation that had sought to Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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foil the 1776 rebellion, squash this nation in 1812, and came achingly close to warring with it repeatedly before 1865.41 Tellingly, the deepening of abolitionism in London has been viewed in reaction to the loss of the North American colonies.42 Interestingly, it was in the critical year of 1787 that London saw the founding of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slave Trade. A scant year later some two-thirds of Manchester’s eligible males signed anti-slave trade petitions, as did at least 60,000 other Britons. By 1792, when the House of Commons passed a gradual slave trade abolition law that was blocked by the House of Lords, the number had reached 400,000. By 1833, as emancipation dawned, the number of petitioners had risen to 1.3 million, about 30 percent of whom were women. Generally, the ratio of signatures for immediate emancipation, compared to opponents, was 250 to 1.43 The founding of the republic, it has also been suggested, was a partial reaction to the rise of abolitionism in London—with slaveholders’ leading a fast break away from the Empire in fear of having their property expropriated. The eminent Canadian historian, Francois Furstenburg, in reviewing yet another book casting aspersions on the racial perfidy of Thomas Jefferson, pondered querulously, “Could it be that the American Revolution was not, in its deepest sense, a quest for freedom?”44 “Theirs was a revolution,” answers Simon Schama, “first and foremost mobilized to protect slavery.”45 More to the point of this book, Alan Taylor, the eminent historian of the early republic, too has urged a more complicated, less hagiographic view of the Founding Fathers and what they wrought, since “the revolution denied citizenship to free blacks, while entrenching and expanding Southern slavery,” as “white supremacy became more virulent and more ratified by law after 1800 than before.”46 Nor can it be said easily that enslaved Africans were betraying a nation— one that had betrayed them long since. The remarkable Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio summed things up nicely in 1848 when he said, “I think it doubtful whether slaves can commit treason, as they owe no allegiances to our Government.”47 Washington would have been justified in thinking that in Negroes it had an enemy within the gates—traitors of a special type. An ocean of miscomprehension separated London and Washington, evidenced in cases like that of the Creole where the former insisted on viewing Negroes as unjustly detained passengers on a ship and the latter inflexibly saw them as legalized property. There was a war of competing gestalts between the two powers. In May 1860 a British operative in Cleveland was engaged in a familiar opera6

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tion—seeking to entice Negroes to migrate to British soil—and mentioned in passing that in Washington the viewpoint was that “once a slave, always a slave,” while in London the notion was “once a subject, always a subject.”48 Between these two radically differing poles, there was little room for reconciliation when it came to Africans. Abolitionism took hold more readily and deeply in the British Empire than in the U.S. In 1793 Canada announced that any slave who arrived there became free, while in that same year the U.S. Congress enacted that nation’s first Fugitive Slave Law. In Canada Negroes were recognized as subjects, equal with whites, while in the U.S. full citizenship did not emerge in a fundamental fashion until after 1865. Integrated juries were not barred in Canada—as they were in a good deal of the U.S. Negroes could serve in militias in Canada, which was largely untrue in the U.S.49 Thomas Likers, who was born in Maryland, proudly declared in his new home of Canada in 1863 that “if a man spits upon us or insults  . . . we knock him down and the law will treat us fairly. We can’t do that in the States.”50 Indeed, the most significant abolitionist of his era, Frederick Douglass, had “reason to love England” and even considered becoming a subject of the Crown.51 When Douglass spoke in Birmingham in 1846 (when, as was typical of the era, the Empire and the U.S. seemed on the verge of war) he assured his British audience that “in the event of a British army landing in the States and offering liberty to the slaves, they would rally round the British at the first tap of the drum.”52 Adding heft to his claim, Douglass argued sardonically that the dogs in Britain treated him better than the whites in the U.S. The U.S., he declaimed, was the “great lie before the world,” adding querulously, “I have no country. What country have I?” He emphasized where his true sympathies rested by declaring, “I would rather be in London than Washington.”53 U.S. threats toward the Empire were empty, said Douglass during this era, for if the former attacked, simultaneously “3 millions of slaves in their bosom, [were] only looking for the first favorable opportunity of lifting their arms in open rebellion.”54 Speaking—as he so often did—in celebration of Britain’s emancipation of the enslaved, Douglass in 1857 referred to the West Indies as the true “city set upon a hill,” and hailed the “abolition movement in America,” which “like many other institutions of this country, was largely derived from England.”55 “Anglophilia,” says one scholar, characterized antebellum Negroes. This “extravagant fixation on aspects of British culture” was “far removed from and far surpassing the political imperatives of abolition itself.” Horace Greeley was struck by how Negroes “glorified” Britain.56 When the abused former Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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slave, Harriet Jacobs, arrived in Britain, she exemplified Greeley’s perception.57 Exceeding them all, when Josiah Henson, born in Maryland in 1789, arrived in Canada in 1830, his effusiveness must have alarmed onlookers. “I threw myself on the ground,” he exulted, “rolled in the sand, seized handfuls of it and kissed them and danced around till, in the eyes of several who were present, I passed for a madman.” He proceeded to demonstrate his near-hysterical affection when he enlisted shortly after arriving as a captain in the militia and fought valiantly those who—he thought—were fighting for the kind of republicanism that he had just left behind.58 What endeared U.S. Negroes to London was the energy with which the Crown protected its African subjects from harassment by the republic— while African Americans were hounded by that same republic. London moved energetically to rescue their Negro subjects who often were kidnapped, then enslaved in the Slave South, when U.S. ships sailed into ports in the West Indies.59 Yet this vigor in aiding subjects of the Crown is understandable, particularly since their repatriation meant one fewer slave laborer to be deployed by their rising foe: it is also notable how London came to the assistance of the enslaved, irrespective of nationality. In 1858, their embassy in Constantinople provided refuge for an escaped Abyssinian slave.60 Soon thereafter, the Crown’s consul in Boston was faced with an analogous situation that was complicated by the passage of the updated and more draconian Fugitive Slave Law. Stephen Beckley had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone, taken as a slave to French Guiana, where he was beaten and maltreated— then smuggled himself on to a U.S.-bound ship and landed in Salem. “Considering the difficulty all parties might be placed in if the cry of ‘fugitive slave’ were raised,” and since the “’Sailors’ Home refuses to receive coloured people,” graciously the consul decided to take this abused man “into my own house.”61 A few years later, due south in Manhattan, the infamously Negrophobic “Draft Riot” erupted,62 sparked by the Civil War and the perception that Negroes were somehow benefiting from white sacrifice. British ships with Negro crews happened to be in harbor as the conflagration was spreading and there was real fear that they would be attacked. In response, a battleship was requested and a deal was struck with French ships nearby to shelter these seafarers in safety.63 Meanwhile, local Negroes were strung from lampposts and incinerated. Further south in Hispaniola, U.S. Negroes had been living in the eastern part of this island—which was in the process of divesting itself from rule by Haiti (the nation these migrants had sought to build) and possibly Spain. 8

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Turmoil was the inevitable result and they sought refuge at the U.S. legation—to no avail. In fact, it was said with dismay, they were “refused and driven out of the office.” Thus, they did what so many Negroes did when they found themselves in distress abroad, that is, they knocked on the door of a building bearing the Union Jack. The consul “readily gave them certificates which enabled them to obtain their passports.”64 The growing militancy of Negroes was buoyed by the realization that they had supporters within the Empire. In mid-1853 Negroes convened in Canada—many of them had once been enslaved in the U.S.—and they expressed their heartfelt thanks to London for “safe asylum,”and went further by“heartily recommend[ing] to our able bodied men to learn military tactics” in order to confront Washington, if need be. Further, they declared that “colored Americans in the U.S. owe that Government no allegiance but interminable hatred”—which left them with “but two alternatives”: “Revolution or emigration.” From the tone of things, they much preferred the former.65 Thus, Negroes by the tens of thousands fled racial dictatorship, with some of them taking up arms against Washington: some of the most talented also chose to renounce U.S. nationality—which may not have been sanctioned in law66—and become subjects of the Empire, their homeland’s primary antagonist. At the aforementioned critically important 1858 meeting in Canada, where John Brown’s raid was solidified, many of the Negroes present firmly rejected his idea that the flag of militant abolition they should adopt would be akin to the one “our Fathers fought under in the Revolution.” Seemingly, Brown had forgotten that they had fled this flag in revulsion and had gained their freedom only under the Union Jack.67 If the British journalist William Howard Russell is to be believed, there was a firm basis for Negroes’ rejection of the land of their birth. Visiting the U.S. in early 1861, he commented that “the system has made the white population a police against the black race”: it is neither uncomplicated nor simple to embrace one’s presumed captor.68 Contrarily, as befitted a nation born in revolt against London, there was an ill-disguised hatred for the Empire among the Euro-American elite. This lengthy list included Andrew Jackson,69 who has been described as a “quintessential Anglophobe.”70 Thomas Jefferson was among the nation’s “Scotophobes,” spawned in part by Scotland’s fervent abolitionism,71 and had a reflexive distaste for London.72 Martin Van Buren, who despised the nation that had supplanted Holland on the global stage, championed the War of 1812 with vigor.73 The premier apostle of Dixie nationalism, John C. Calhoun, was also a carrier of Anglophobia.74 A particularly resonant trend in the Slave South Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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was the wedding of Anglophobia and Negrophobia, as exemplified by Senator Robert Walker of Mississippi in his crusade for the annexation of Texas, which he reasoned would undermine London and thwart abolitionism.75 This revulsion was mutual. There were numerous British visitors to the antebellum U.S. About 230 of them published accounts of their journey, with slavery providing a ready reason for them recoiling in horror at this upstart nation that boasted relentlessly about liberty and its overthrow of the Union Jack:76 their sojourn validated their often ingrained abolitionism and their view of the U.S. as little more than the capital of hypocrisy. In this latter point, they simply mirrored the settled opinion of Negroes.77 The ugly reality that was bondage allowed many Britons to assume an air of moral superiority in relation to the republicans, reaffirming their patriotic identity as they recoiled in disgust. F. W. Newman, a professor in London, like so many of his compatriots was appalled by “slave breeding for the market” and the auctions that tore families apart and what he termed the “right of rape”—shaping an atavistic culture with untold repercussions. “If she be forced to incest by her father or brother, the law justifies it,” he said, seeming astounded. He referred with horror to an African in the republic whose sole job was to be a “breeding man,” stressing once more the far-reaching ramifications of such a horrendous task.78 De rigeur for a visiting Briton was a tour of a slave auction, which prompted further waves of loathing. “I was frequently present at these,” said Thomas Hamilton in 1833, “and the man who wants an excuse for misanthropy, will nowhere discover better reason for hating and despising his species.”79 Among these repulsed visitors was the celebrated Charles Dickens, who was horrified by the bondage he saw in Virginia,80 and as a result denounced “Republican slavery”—terms not viewed as contradictory in monarchical Britain. He felt both drained and relieved when he sailed away. Little wonder. He recounted the burning alive of a slave in St. Louis, questioned the motives of those who decried Ireland but not Negro slavery, and added pointedly that “rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian village[,] in lieu of stars and stripes  . . . replace the streets and squares by wigwams.”81 But Dickens also left with a strategic message that reiterated what had been thought in London for decades: “the poor Negroes,” he asserted, “fairly worship English people; they would do anything for them,” particularly since they were “perfectly acquainted with all that takes place in reference to emancipation.”82 This dyspeptic reaction was reflected in popular literature. The assault on slavery in British literature accelerated in the 1780s as the revolt in North 10

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America was succeeding. In one notable novel, a former soldier on a Southern plantation lost his job as a slave driver since he had lost an arm and could no longer whip Negroes effectively; another spoke of Negroes revolting in Manhattan in the 1790s.83 By 1812, abolitionism had become almost fashionable in London—which served to drive more Negroes to its banner.84 The abolitionist pressure London placed on Washington contributed to sectional tensions85—and to social ostracism. By 1839, according to one observer, Euro-Americans traveling in Europe were so “afraid of being taken for an American savage” that they sought to pass as British or Canadian.86 Nevertheless, this British antipathy to the republic can be exaggerated,87 and it fails to explicate why so many from the monarchy migrated to the republic. Euro-Americans nervous about abolitionism also had to confront Britons of an opposite persuasion at home.88 A good deal of the success of abolitionism in the U.S. was due to the intervention of British nationals such as George Thompson (brought to the U.S. by William Lloyd Garrison), who established over 300 branches of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Ohio and other states and was denounced by Andrew Jackson as a result. Mob violence targeting him was so intense in 1835 that he felt compelled to return to the more civilized confines of Britain.89 Antiabolition momentum, particularly in the South, was often prompted by the presence of Britons. In Savannah in early 1861, one visiting British man had—in the words of his consul—“rendered himself obnoxious by a (supposed) too great familiarity with his Black Stevedores,” which led to his being tarred and feathered.90 The association of London with abolitionism allowed the slaveholders’ republic to tar antislavery forces in the U.S. with the charge that they were in bed with the reviled former colonial power. In short, slavery had created a massive national security problem for the U.S., insuring that a significant percentage of its population was supportive of its external foe. Speaking in early 1846, one Illinois Congressman revealed what was already known: British possessions, that is, “the Canadas, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Bermudas, and Bahamas stretch around us like a military network.”91 What he chose not to note was that in most of these nodes, Negro soldiers with a deep hatred of Washington were more than eager to inflict pain upon the U.S. and liberate fellow Africans in the process. Certainly this nightmare scenario was a preoccupation of Washington’s top diplomat in Jamaica, Robert Harrison, who even before Emancipation speculated that London might seek to foment a slave “insurrection” alongside “intrigues with the Indians on our borders” as the preferred means of destabilizing the U.S.92 Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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A few years later Harrison was hysterically declaiming about yet another alleged plot hatched in Jamaica—which, after all, was the launching pad for the 1815 attack on New Orleans and a site where the redcoats deposited U.S. prisoners of war who were guarded by often beefy black soldiers. The Jamaicans were to land “at various points in the southern states; to arm our slaves, who are burning with impatience (as they say) to inflict vengeance on their cruel masters. Intelligent black officers in disguise, will likewise be thrown on shore, to instruct the Negroes in the use of arms,” while simultaneously redcoats from Canada would “advance.”93 As conflict rose over the fate of Texas, Harrison informed future President James Buchanan that “in the event of a war with England . . . everyone here places great reliance on the aid to be derived from the Negroes in the United States who, it is expected, and indeed hoped, will cut the throats of every white in the country.”94 Of course, there is a tendency for diplomats to inflate the significance of the site of their posting; still, Harrison may not have been wrong in arguing that “there’s no part of the world where the people have such hostile feelings towards the people of the United States, as in this colony.”95 Yet with all the enmity Harrison encountered in Jamaica, he could not help but fret over its neighbor, the bugaboo of slaveholders: Haiti. As he saw it, this independent Negro republic was in league with London; thus, he stressed in 1841, “in the event of war, it was contemplated to land an immense body of black troops from this island and Hayti on the shores of our slave holding states.” Worse, he thought, was that this was the “common talk here and the Negroes are elated at the idea and I feel most certain that it will be carried into effect if hostilities take place.”96 This reality also drove Senator Thomas Hart Benton, father-in-law of a would-be President, John Fremont, to conclude that London was the “head-quarters of abolitionism” and “the laboratory in which the insurrection of San Domingo was fabricated”—whose next destination would include the region just below the Mason-Dixon Line.97 This worry about London being able to leverage abolitionism militarily against the U.S. reflected a broader consensus shared by John Quincy Adams, who in 1836, as the Texas crisis began to percolate, acknowledged that global public opinion would back London in a war with the U.S. in the name of antislavery.98 As is evident, the broader base of support for abolitionism in Britain—as compared to the U.S.—made it easier for this nation to adapt to the new reality of antislavery (represented by Haiti), just as it jeopardized the security of Washington. Why abolitionism took hold in Britain has long been the subject of intense debate.99 It was true that British slaves were thousands of miles 12

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from London—unlike Washington—which made it easier for this European nation to adapt to the new reality presented by Haiti. 100 In any event, more attention needs to be focused on Haiti in ascertaining why London was able to steal an abolitionist march on Washington. For the Empire realized earlier than its competitor that the Haitian Revolution had accelerated furiously a general crisis of slavery that could only be resolved with its collapse. It was not only Haiti joining the abolitionist crusade, spreading the gospel throughout the hemisphere,101 it was also its concrete action. Washington was alarmed and even London was taken aback when Haiti’s small navy sought in 1841 to interdict aggressively the illegal African slave trade102—an awful commerce in which U.S. nationals were masters.103 Further, those who peered into the crystal ball realized that the Haitian Revolution spelled doom—at least—to the continuation of this hateful trafficking, which had underpinned the model of development in the U.S. and the Caribbean. New sources of manpower would be needed, which contributed to the U.S. attracting British seamen to desert and the concomitant Washington allegation that London was engaging in “impressments” or seizing illegally what were thought to be U.S. nationals—which led directly to the 1812 war. In 1804, the year of the Revolution’s triumph, the influential James Stephen—writing from London—acknowledged that a “new order of things has arisen in the West Indies to which former precedents are inapplicable.” Quicker than his counterparts in Washington (and Philadelphia), he realized that “an intercommunity of feelings and privileges among the white-skinned colonists, which, when the subordination of Negroes was in question, made English and French, Dutch and Spanish, European friend and European enemy, very unimportant distinctions.” This racial solidarity had “been broken,” he thought. Instinctively, he also recognized that the new Haiti presented an even sterner challenge to the U.S., one from which the Empire could profit and, further, that British cozying up with Haiti would be appropriate payback to France, as London still smarted from Paris’s aid to North American rebels. Thus, he counseled diplomatic recognition of Haiti—not done by the U.S. until driven by the Civil War; further, he counseled, a “perpetual alliance against France ought to be negotiated without a moment’s delay” with Port-au-Prince. This could blunt the Paris-Washington alliance (that was inimical to the Empire) that he saw developing, since in the U.S. he had detected “a large party . . . much interested in vilifying the African character” due to the “apprehension of slave owners” that their cherished institution “will be wholly abolished.”104 Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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This would also checkmate brewing French plans to incite Jamaican slaves to revolt. Stephen’s farsightedness would receive a fair hearing in Port-au-Prince, for there, almost by necessity, international diplomacy and the nation’s political and social development were inextricably connected.105 Moreover, Stephen’s capacious vision could hardly be realized as long as slavery in neighboring Jamaica continued to exist. Abolition, in short, was partially a diplomatic necessity106—but it also salved the wound inflicted on London when North American rebels not only revolted successfully but proclaimed from the rooftops that the rejection of the Crown was also a huge leap forward for humanity: how could this be so when London was moving toward abolition of human bondage while the infant republic was basking in it? Abolition provided London with a powerful ideological and practical tool by which it could undermine and devalue the fruits of 1776, and, perhaps— as U.S. skeptics claimed—propel revanchist claims in North America. To a degree, London had to make a virtue out of painful necessity, for in the early stages of the revolutionary process in Haiti the Empire had expended tens of millions of pounds—and 15,000 fatalities—(among the greatest disasters ever endured in British imperial history) in a futile attempt to cork this erupting volcano.107 There was an equivalent response in Haiti, which felt compelled to become one of the more militarized nations in the hemisphere. This was the conclusion of the British military figure, Captain G. R. Pechell, who visited there in 1821.108 Fourteen years later, the Reverend S. W. Hanna, a prelate in Jamaica, observed in wonder that “the people of this country are a nation of soldiers.”109 By 1842, John Candler of London was referring awestruck to this small nation’s “immense army.”110 Yet their small numbers were augmented in the 1820s by the arrival of thousands of Negroes from the U.S., whose very departure was emblematic of their utter disgust with the nation they had departed.111 Those apprehensive about the joint threat posed by Haiti aligned with Kingston and London could not have been reassured about the existence of the Citadel in Hispaniola. Proclaimed as the “eighth wonder of the world” and the “first wonder of liberty,” it was 200 meters long, 150 meters thick, and 87 meters high; a fortress and a refuge, it contained food, medicines, and arms enough to enable 15,000 men to withstand a year’s siege behind its walls, with millions of pounds of coffee, along with rice and corn, and elaborate cisterns to catch water. That is was obviously built for defense could not obscure the reality that it contained 40,000 rifles, swords, machetes, bullets, and tons of powder—not that far from the shores of slavery.112 In any case, those enmeshed in evil113—as Dixie surely was—often suspect correctly that a crusade against evildoers is imminent. 14

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London was all too aware of the ferocity of Haiti’s fighting forces, not only because of its abject failure to squash the revolutionary upsurge but also because, in the pivotal battle of Savannah in 1779 that led to the creation of the U.S., they were confronted by a contingent that included Haitian soldiers—dispatched by France.114 London did not quell rumors about its intentions toward the slaveholders’ republic when in the 1820s it dispatched to Haiti as its top agent, a man of African ancestry.115 Yet when Washington sought to become involved in the dispute that led to the creation of the Dominican Republic—and its repudiation of Haitian suzerainty—Secretary of State Daniel Webster made clear that his nation was “not prepared to comply” with Port-au-Prince’s wish for diplomatic recognition. He also went further to announce that a commercial agent from Haiti would be acceptable—as long as the said person was “not of African extraction.” The proud and well-armed Haitians “took great umbrage” at this remark, said Webster’s interlocutor in a decided understatement, which would have brought a knowing smile in London if revealed.116 Webster’s stumble was not his alone but that of a system inured in the enslavement of Africans: still, he, more than most, should have been aware of the danger of offending Africans. In 1842 he dispatched a secret agent to Bermuda who was stunned to find Negroes in redcoats fingering their weapons lovingly. He acknowledged the danger posed by this possession not far from Virginia—this state was “considered by the British government as the key to the United States,” and “should a war ever occur, between and us, there would their forces concentrate. It is the only place which they are fortifying”117 [emphasis in the original]. It was hard to forget that during the War of 1812, Negroes fleeing from Virginia had been brought to Bermuda. Here they helped to construct a formidable array of dockyards and maritime installations that were perceived as a threat to U.S. sovereignty. 118 As history sped toward the pivotal spring of 1861, the idea was growing in certain U.S. precincts that the irrepressible conflict was actually between Negroes and London, on the one hand, and Dixie on the other119—with the federal government swept along in the resultant riptide.120 The young nation was encircled by an often hostile Empire, which relied heavily on Negro troops eager to settle scores. When the Empire began to outflank the slaveholders’ republic on abolitionism and strengthened its relations with Haiti, U.S.-U.K. ties became ever more complicated. Facing the prospect of revolts in its Caribbean possessions that could create another Haiti, London was forced to retreat from slavery121—then had to contend with angry Africans, aware of depredations in India and quite capable of Introduction: Negroes—“British in Their Hearts?”

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retaliating against officialdom in the Caribbean:122 directing their antagonism to the republican ogre made good strategic sense. Negro “chattel” in the U.S. were forced to seek allies abroad and this helped to drive them into the arms of London. That London was not a pristine ally was as much of a concern for Negroes as was the nature of Moscow in 1941 when Washington found it appropriate to seek its embrace to confront a larger foe.123 This is a book to uncover the long history of London-Washington tensions that buoyed the resistance of Africans. This is a book that seeks to shed light on how the ancestors of those who became African Americans responded to the unfolding assertion of U.S. sovereignty—and did so by aligning with those who had sought to block this result. Not everyone responded like those in the Negro Fort—though it was this spirit that animated their resistance to a “republic” that many viewed as illegitimate.124

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1 “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

George Washington was alarmed. He had just heard of events in Haiti which portended a shock to the entire slave system—and heartrending losses for slaveholders.1 It was a familiar tactic in the Americas2 for colonizing powers to ally with the enslaved of competing powers3—to the detriment of the latter.4 Washington’s republic had just endured the mass discontent of the enslaved and it was foreseeable that the evolution of events in Hispaniola could spell trouble for slaveholders within the hemisphere. Thus, one scholar argues that the revolt against British rule occasioned the “largest slave revolt in the Americas.”5 According to another account, perhaps 100,000 Negroes altogether—or a staggering 20 percent of the total black population—fled to the British side during the war. Between 1775 and 1787 the Negro population of Jamaica increased by some 60,000, suggestive of the demographic changes that were afoot in the hemisphere.6 Even if lower estimates are accepted, the point is that Africans were quite far from being in unanimous accord with the colonies’ revolt against London. When London sought to shift the theater of conflict to the South, this was further testimony to the idea that the enslaved were akin to a fifth column.7 Southern militia often had to fret more about suppressing a servile insurrection than confronting redcoats.8 Supposedly, after witnessing how London used emancipation as a lure, Jefferson conceived of Africans as a captive nation willing to take any chance to eliminate their erstwhile masters.9 Samuel Johnson is renowned for asking querulously, “’Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?’” Likewise, Londoners wondered why the colonists blanched at the idea of paying taxes, while not rejecting the umbrella of protection provided by British naval power that these duties supported—which had kept Spain and France at bay for more than a century, not to mention indigenes and the dreaded servile insurrection.10 Johnson was not singular in sensing that the much garlanded revolt against British rule was motivated by more mercantile concerns,11 specifically |

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the growth of abolitionism12 represented by13Somersett’s case. Unsurprisingly, when the Treaty of Paris was being solidified in 1783, ratifying U.S. sovereignty, the slaveholders dug in their heels, demanding the return of their human property—while, as abolitionism was deepening in London, Britain resisted just as adamantly.14 This trend was ratified further when in 1793, John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, played a leading rule in making Ontario the leading North American symbol of antislavery.15 During the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, George Mason rued the fact that a central weakness of the rebels was precisely what had helped to call their revolt into existence: slavery. Recalled were previous insurrections of the enslaved in Greece and Sicily and Oliver Cromwell’s ominous instructions to functionaries in Virginia to arm the slaves in case other means of submission of London’s foes failed. Even after independence the idea persisted that the enslaved might be the none-too-secret weapon in the hands of the opponents of slavery.16 The loss of the thirteen colonies would “liberate” London to a degree, making it less imperative to provide a full-throated defense of African enslavement—and provided Britain with a ready club with which to flay its former ward17—while allowing this European nation to seek concord with U.S. Negroes. Yet in order to pursue this course, London had to escape the charge of hypocrisy itself by moving more aggressively toward abolition. Helping London escape this charge of hypocrisy was the repetitive revolts of enslaved Africans laboring under the Union Jack. A slave rebellion erupted in Abaco (the Bahamas) in 1789, then others erupted in Exuma, Cat Island, and Watlings Island in the period preceding abolition. European settlers in this southern neighbor of the U.S. ultimately came to fear that the well-armed West India Regiment would emulate Haiti and toss out the colonizers, which made the occupying power more susceptible to sweet reason.18 As early as 1770, Africans were fleeing to Hispaniola from the Turks and Caicos,19 providing kindling for revolution. Yet Haiti struck back most directly in the Bahamas in 1797 when Africans said to have roots in Hispaniola plotted to unite with their Bahamian counterparts to kill sentries, then arm the enslaved, attack forts, start diversionary fires, and capture Nassau as these incendiary storms were fought. Strikingly, when this plot was uncovered, the British colonizer chose to execute the so-called “French Negroes”—still sensitive to the already staggering racial ratios in their disfavor—but not their counterparts.20 Other colonies were sending similar signals. As early as 1791, the colonizers in Bermuda had noticed a “very manifest alteration in the behaviour of the 18

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Negroes here,” which was causing “great apprehensions.” The revolt in Haiti was thought to be the cause.21 The point was, however, that already in London stark nervousness was cascading in response to the revolt in Hispaniola and the premonition was rising that, perhaps, as for slavery, the jig was up.22 But it was not in London alone that pulses were racing and nerves were frazzling in response to tumult in Haiti. In the newly formed slaveholders’ republic, French refugees driven from the island were contemplating an armed invasion of their former home. That some in the U.S. thought this “military expedition  .  .  . must be prevented”23 was more a function of the feared impact of poking a stick into a hornet’s nest than sympathy for abolitionism. “I am directed by the President,” said Alexander Hamilton in 1794 when it remained unclear who would prevail in Haiti, to announce that “those French privateers” that “were fitted out in our ports” were a “matter of real embarrassment and dissatisfaction”24—though “hostile expeditions”25 continued to be mounted targeting Haiti. Still, these erstwhile Gallic allies often were bringing their most valuable human possessions with them to the U.S., and there was justifiable concern about what racial and political impact these Africans—who had witnessed Europeans fleeing in fearful panic as the enslaved revolted—would have on the peculiar institution in the U.S. itself. It was in 1798 that Pennsylvania governor Thomas Mifflin sought to bar “French Negroes” from his state. The chief executive brooked no ambiguity with his stern edict—“enforce it without delay,” he insisted, and he informed the U.S. president similarly.26 But as long as the nation itself tolerated enslavement of Africans it would be neither easy nor simple to bar slaves from entering the nation, particularly when accompanied by refugees from a nation that had boosted the U.S. itself into existence. It is estimated that 12,000 enslaved persons from Hispaniola arrived in the U.S. in the early 1790s,27 as the Caribbean colonizer fled northward and the U.S. sought to replenish its supplies that had been diminished by Africans fleeing the empire of slavery. In one six-month period in New Orleans—ending in early 1810—a reported 2,731 Europeans, 3,110 free Negroes, and 3,226 slaves arrived in New Orleans alone28 from Haiti.29 Slaveholders fleeing revolutionary turmoil came to wield significant influence in such port cities as New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah.30 Often31 they were assimilated into the dominant reaches of the slaveholding class, solidifying this group’s more retrograde32 instincts. This made compromise with the growing abolitionist movement in London more difficult,33 not least since their well-honed Anglophobia often dovetailed with the instincts of the slaveholders’ republic. “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

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Bernard Constantine, of French Hugenot origins—Toulouse, more specifically—came to North America to fight alongside the victorious rebels (he was at the pivotal battle of Yorktown), then took his bounty and bought a plantation in Saint Domingue, but was driven out by another successful revolt and did not arrive in Savannah in 1797 with happy thoughts about the abolitionism that was simultaneously sprouting in London.34 Edward Coppee arrived in Savannah with his parents as an infant in 1793, became a U.S. national in 1812, then in 1821 won the lottery for allocation of seized land from the Creek Nation. With this he was well on his way to joining the upper reaches of the local slaveholding elite.35 Africans too were pouring into Savannah in violation of a law passed in the mid-1790s designed precisely to bar importation of such chattel property from the Caribbean basin, as a way to limit the possible contagion from Haiti. In addition to being suspected of bearing “wicked designs,” the enslaved from the Caribbean were thought to also carry exotic diseases.36 Suggestive of the danger presented by these imports was that in several Georgia counties the militia were called upon to apprehend these slaves, quarantine them, then deport them.37 South Carolina too sought to bar the entry of putatively recalcitrant Negroes from the Caribbean, mostly to no avail.38 Why such unease? They “gave new ideas to our slaves,” said one proslavery apologist in South Carolina, which “could not fail to ripen into mischief ” since these West Indians “had witnessed all the horrors” and, most important, the “dawning hope”39 of40 freedom.41 As42 1808 loomed, marking the possibility of restrictions on the African slave trade along with it, Charleston planters went on a buying spree, exhausting cash reserves and credit alike. It was inevitable that “French Negroes” could slip through43 the loosely meshed filter. But there was a price to be paid for accelerating the influx of Africans44 into port45 cities46 like Savannah; it was harder to maintain the kind of quality control that put a premium on importing the (supposedly) docile. Inevitably becoming part of the mix were those fleeing from Hispaniola with their human chattel and what they had witnessed there was the slaveholders’ worst nightmare. Thus, in 1806 the soon-to-be Senator Edward Telfair of Georgia, a scion of one of the most prominent families in the state, was warned of an incipient Negro uprising that contemplated mass murder.47 It was unclear if this group included Andrew Bryan, born enslaved in South Carolina, who became a pastor of the first Negro Baptist church in Savannah but was subsequently charged with plotting revolt and consequently arrested, beaten, and tossed into jail.48 20

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The authorities in Louisiana seemed even more apprehensive about their changing demographic reality. It was in 1804, soon after the hoisting of the stars-and-stripes and the triumph of the Haitian Revolution, that Governor William Claiborne shakily informed James Madison of the local ramifications of trends in the Caribbean. Rather vainly he was seeking “to prevent the bringing in of slaves that have been concerned in the insurrections of St. Domingo.” Well aware of market forces, he knew that “many bad characters will be introduced. The citizens of Louisiana are greatly apprehensive of the West India Negroes,” he moaned, “but no effectual stop can at present be put to their introduction.”49 The legacy of Spanish and French colonialism was the continuing existence of militias of free men of color, which was hardly reassuring to those already spooked by Haiti. There was a real fear that these men in arms could lead an insurrection of the enslaved and form a new ruling elite or, alternatively, cast its lot with foreign invaders—such as the British.50 Already there were credible rumors floating around New Orleans that London was contemplating arming the Negroes in order to capture this territory and the surrounding region. It seemed fitting revenge to the upstart republicans to unleash the dreaded Africans against them, establish a Negro colony instead, and generally create a “Negro Fort” of abolitionism in North America.51 One possible remedy for this evident dilemma of the U.S. was to increase the importation of Africans from the continent so as to crowd out the arrival of those from the Caribbean basin, thought to have minds already poisoned to slavery and too much influence from Haiti and Britain. But considerations of distance and resultant increased costs often mitigated against this supposedly elegant solution—and besides, this might only wind up adding foot soldiers to an insurrectional army. Nonetheless, it was hard to resist the filthy lucre of enslavement—even if, as Haiti suggested, life and limb might be jeopardized in the process. William Claiborne, the newly minted U.S. leader in Louisiana, wanted to see more slaves toiling there and thus winked at the proliferation of smuggling—while worrying anxiously about the demographic balance and resultant potential for revolt. In 1806 there was a reported population of 55,334, including 22,701 slaves and 3,350 free people of color.52 In any case, there had long been a broad and deep market for slaves that encompassed the now riotous Caribbean.53 If advertisements for runaway slaves are an indicator, a significant percentage of those that fled from Georgia and/or comprised the enslaved population in the colonial and early republican era had roots in the Caribbean basin.54 In the early nineteenth “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

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century in Sapelo Island, off the Georgia mainland, a number of slaves were purchased in the Bahamas.55 On nearby St. Simons Island during the same time, a prominent slave driver was described as a “devout Mohammedan from the village of Silla on the Niger River in the Foola nation” who previously had been enslaved in the West Indies56—roots in these islands57 were not unusual in the republic.58 The bond between Newport, Rhode Island, and the Caribbean was part of a noxious triangle that also included slaves being transported from Africa.59 In Providence, the cosmopolitan Negro community had roots variously in Cuba, Argentina, Bermuda60—and, of course, the Congo.61 Negro seamen from the U.S. often plied the waters of the Caribbean Sea and at times found the site sufficiently lovely to settle down in one of the islands.62 In neighboring Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century a number of Negroes were born in Bermuda and the Caribbean.63 In 1720 Philip Frances Renault brought 500 enslaved Africans from Saint Domingue into the territory that is the state of Illinois near present-day Peoria and sold them to settlers there. The man who went on to found the present-day metropolis that is Chicago was probably born in 1745 in Hispaniola.64 Often these ostensible U.S. Negroes left behind in their Caribbean homelands relatives of various sorts, with whom they shared sympathies that were invariably antithetical to slavery. The larger point is that increasingly a notable percentage of Africans in the U.S. had roots in either revolutionary Hispaniola or the British colonies and thus perhaps had a further basis for confronting the North American republic. Simultaneously, among U.S. elites it was hard to override instinctive sympathy for fellow slaveholders in the hemisphere, not to mention opposition to erosion of their property rights—a principle enshrined most recently in the heralded federal constitution. This was particularly difficult when the sworn foe in London was increasingly trumpeting abolitionism and lambasting the hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed apostles of republican liberty, who were surrounded by the Empire and restive indigenes and Africans alike. In response, serious rumors had emerged that London had fomented the revolt in Haiti, which easily bolstered the concomitant argument that abolitionism was little more than a cynical plot to destabilize the triumphant U.S. itself. Certainly the massacres of the French seemed, it was thought, to bear the fingerprints of London. Peter Chazotte, who fled Haiti for Philadelphia, then corresponded with James Madison, and was a credible source for such rumors, upped the ante by claiming that London intended a similar strategy in the U.S. itself—that is, stirring up slaves65—in a burst of revenge-seeking.66 22

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Chazotte and his ilk may have been drawing unfair inferences from the realistic assessments of Londoners like James Stephen. For, as the formerly enslaved in Haiti were hoisting their reinvigorated tricolored flag, Stephen acknowledged freely that “an unprecedented revolution has rent asunder the basis of our old Colonial policy.” Farsightedly, he plumbed deeper than most and concluded that a “fundamental maxim” buttressing racist enslavement—the “supremacy of the European race and the depression of the African”—had been punctured. “It was a rule,” he said, “paramount in importance to all national rivalships and to all national quarrels,” but now this idea of (white) racial solidarity had to take a backseat to British national interests. Minimally, he asserted, London should “engage” Haiti “in a defensive league against France” that could also target the slaveholders’ republic.67 He envisioned turning abolitionism into a formidable weapon against the U.S., most notably, and an alliance with Haiti was a sure route to this goal. Marcus Rainsford, who had served the Crown as a captain in the West India Regiment, said little to oppose Stephen’s argument. 68 The same was true for London’s William Walton, who gloated at the “advantages that result to England from dispossessing the French of Hispaniola.” The Haitian Revolution69 potentially jeopardized London’s Caribbean possessions, compelling the Empire to be at once more sensitive to the appeals of abolition—and more hostile to the slaveholders’ republic, which was increasingly viewed as being an ungrateful hypocrite in any case.70 There was preexisting abolitionist sentiment in London that was difficult to ignore, unlike in the U.S. where the entire nation seemed to be the lengthened shadow of slaveholding Virginians. Months before the August 1791 eruption in Haiti, parliamentarian Charles Fox raised the idea of abolishing the horrific African Slave Trade but wondered if doing so would leave London at a distinct disadvantage, comparing it all to a robber saying he would stop plying his trade if others would, but knowing that the dishonesty that inhered in the business made such pledges suspect at best.71 Eventually London was to overcome its hesitancy and demand in turn that the U.S. honor its purported pledge to do so. Befitting a nation whose existence had turned heavily on French aid, the U.S. could ill-afford to ignore global trends,72 not least since their birth coincided with an explosion73 in Haiti that seemed to be inauspicious for the slave system that had served to drive their very independence.74 Yet it seemed easier for Britain—not the U.S.—to draw the inescapable conclusions Haiti provided. Likewise, an empire could not afford the luxury of ignoring events beyond the banks of the Thames. Again, driving this realism in London was a dete“Huzzah for Bermuda!”

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riorating situation in the Caribbean; it was not only Haiti but the unrest signaled by the feisty Jamaican Maroons, who had bested the British near the same time.75 It would be an error to see such militancy as being of concern to London alone. Despite national and regional differences, there was a single slave system and the far-sighted knew that the breach of its walls in the neighborhood bode ill for those with investments in this system.76 Southerners carefully monitored77 the movements of captured slave rebels in the Caribbean78 who could, after all, end up on their turf—in order to destroy79 the peculiar institution. Or these Africans could return in redcoats to plunder—Carolina Negroes had decamped en masse for Nova Scotia and elsewhere after the revolt against British rule and could easily return.80 From 1775 to 1783, an estimated 3,000 Negroes arrived in Halifax.81 One of these men, still smarting from the lash of slavery, was eager to return—fighting, vowing to give his former homeland, “musket balls for breakfast, cannon balls for dinner and bomb-shells for tea.” Such enraged sentiment also served to feed a preexisting abolitionism within the Empire,82 which was hardly absent from Nova Scotia’s militia and military battalions which included a significant complement of armed Negro men.83 The Negroes’ enthusiasm at escaping bondage84 suggested that they would not be opposed to returning to the republic—arms in hand.86 As independent Haiti dawned, London had an estimated Negro population of 20,000, few of whom were stirred by cries for liberty espoused by slaveholders—but were often the most ardent of abolitionists.87 The U.S. faced more forgiving racial ratios than their British cousins in Bermuda and elsewhere. A handful of British settlers surrounded by Africans in the multitudes was a recipe for catastrophe. The naval officer, Thomas Staunton St. Clair, discovered this to his dismay in Demerara in late 1807, when a slave revolt was barely blocked that would have led to the liquidation of the settler class. As it was, he and his comrades “quashed this intended revolution, which if it had broken out, might, perhaps, have terminated like that of St. Domingo.”88 With its sparse sprinkling of settlers, London also found it necessary to rely more heavily on African skilled labor. Such was the case in Bermuda. Thus, in 1795 an enslaved African, James Darrell, was freed and appointed as the “King’s Pilot” because of his demonstrated skill in steering British ships to anchor through the difficult,89reef-lined entrances to Bermuda’s various naval passageways.90 It was not long before Darrell, petitioned to own property, which would elevate him on the class ladder and possibly turn him against the system of 24

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slavery that had handcuffed him.91 Surely, the ascendance of figures like Darrell was unsettling some European settlers. As early as 1773 a group of workers of European origin petitioned for relief against the near monopoly of the enslaved and free persons of color in the all-important shipbuilding sector. Tellingly, Darrell had seen fit to bypass the local authorities and contact London directly for promotion, as in North America resident Europeans in Bermuda were more nervous about Negro advance than faraway Britain.92 London had reason to believe that Africans were more prone to stay true to the Union Jack than slaveholders. In 1782, for example, a naval vessel from the nascent republic seized a Bermudian privateer in Carolina waters and found that only five members of the seventy-five-member crew were not enslaved Africans. At the ensuing trial, the Massachusetts justices broke with precedent and offered them freedom rather than—as was customary—treating them as forfeited chattel to be sold. Not one of these men accepted this deal and all requested repatriation to Bermuda. Sixty of them took passage on a U.S. flagged ship bound for New York where they shouted “Huzzah for Bermuda.” They rose up to seize the vessel and on reaching Bermuda the ship was condemned as their prize. It was remarkable that slaves refused freedom in the U.S.—but perhaps they were aware of its unsavory reputation when it came to the maltreatment of Africans—or perhaps they had more confidence in London than in the youthful republic.93 In any case, Africans were able to rise much higher within the Empire, compared to the alleged “Empire for Liberty,”94 spurring95 more U.S. Negroes96 to flee to the Union Jack.97 Significantly, though London might have viewed Darrell as an asset, back home in Bermuda there was a growing fear about the influence of those like him. Shortly after the triumph in Hispaniola, Bermuda passed a law to block the rise of another Darrell.98 Then measures were mooted to bar free Negroes from owning real estate, which would have been beneficial to the local European elite but of questionable value to London, which was seeking to broaden the base of support for its colony.99 Thereafter the local elite sought to bar free Negroes from engaging in the primitive accumulation of capital by taxing heavily their attempt to establish a “House of Entertainment,” a measure introduced appropriately on the thirty-first anniversary of the initiation of the colonists’ revolt in North America.100After all, Bermuda did not receive a mass influx of loyalists after 1776 (unlike Canada, Jamaica, or the Bahamas, for example), not least due to a dearth of opportunity, including poor prospects for the use of slaves, which discouraged Southerners particularly.101 Was it not inevitable that London would feel constrained to create more “Jemmy Darrells,” thereby hastening “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

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the departure to the North American mainland of his white counterparts or diverting those in Europe with thoughts of migration there? And would this not also hasten the day when abolition arrived on a mass—not just an individual—scale? The local authorities were not convinced—at least, not in 1806. They expressed jumpy anxiety about the “rapid increase of the number of free Negroes,” which was a “growing evil.” Thus, they ordered that no slaveholder should free certain slaves unless they were to depart simultaneously from Bermuda, and if that freed Negro did not depart, he or she could be jailed, then sold.102 Indeed, as the authorities saw it, the increase in the Negro population actively discouraged European migration to Bermuda.103 Local elites were not reassured by the direction of population trends. Months after the consummation of the Haitian revolt, it was noted that there were 4,798 Europeans in Bermuda, compared to 4,857 slaves and 383 free Negroes—but the latter had grown by a significant 15 percent over a few months.104 Certainly, as Africans came to outnumber Europeans in the context of slavery, the possibility was increased for a revolt that could lead to London losing Bermuda altogether.105 Just as in North America, a rift was developing between settlers and London over the role of slavery. Coincidentally, these legislative maneuvers in Bermuda occurred as rebels in Haiti were gaining traction. For it was also in 1806 that it was moved that “Negroes, Mulattos, Mustees or Slaves” that had arrived since 1796 be returned from whence they came,106 a maneuver replicated in Belize.107 It did not take long for Sir George Canning, London’s chief spokesman on foreign affairs, to become concerned about the slaveholders’ agitation in overseas colonies abutting the U.S., warning the instigators that—as in North America, years earlier—the empire would “crush them by the application of direct force.” He bluntly instructed them about the clear danger of “conning over [scrutinizing] the speeches of Washington and Franklin.”108 The local elite had their own complaints and thought they had reason to believe—like those who had risen up in North America—that London was much too keen to tend to the desires of the Africans. Likewise, those in Hamilton and St. George who were concerned about the destiny of this colony could not have been happy when the Tucker family began to depart Bermuda for more opportunity in Virginia—opportunity that London was seen as blocking. George Tucker, among the foremost antebellum scholars, was born in Bermuda in 1775 and graduated from the College of William and Mary, where he was taught by his cousin St. George (who carried the name of one of the island’s principal towns). His marriage to a woman with blood 26

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ties to both the Byrd and Washington families served to insure his prominence. He was a prime member of the first faculty of Jefferson’s University of Virginia and served in the U.S. Congress. And it was in 1800 that he penned a pamphlet counseling the colonization of Africans—beyond the shores of his now beloved Virginia—in direct reaction to a recent “conspiracy of slaves in Virginia.” After London had shown in the War of 1812 how dangerous it could be in times of national stress to harbor slaves, the colonization movement accelerated, culminating in the founding of Liberia.109 Still, as the 1812 war approached, it appeared that the republic seemed more imperiled. It was not just that it found it difficult at best to project its military power onto the shores of Western Europe—unlike London, which had shown that it could dispatch troops to the shores of North America— it was also that the new nation had failed to resolve the African Question and instead had dug a deeper hole for itself. They had sent roughly 100,000 Africans fleeing into the arms of the British during the course of the 1776 revolt—who could easily return in redcoats, muskets in hand, quite willing to inflict pain. In their stead they received 12,000 slaves from Hispaniola, whose witnessing of the crumbling of the enterprise of bondage may have given them heart, or added confidence, to seek to emulate events in their former homeland. And the U.S. had imported tens of thousands of Africans from the continent and the Caribbean who had yet to be acculturated to the peculiar brand of chattel labor that obtained in the self-proclaimed fortress of liberty. London, on the other hand, was showing that it was more nimble than its transatlantic rival in adjusting to the new climate produced by Haitian independence. It was assisted in this quite ably by the youthful republic. For as the U.S. blared far and wide that its very existence was the Next New Thing, a profound departure for all of humanity, while monarchy was heading for history’s dustbin, London could deftly blunt this questionable assertion by simply pointing to the ossification of the enslavement of Africans as the Empire crept steadily toward abolition. So, which nation was more in tune with the zeitgeist? By seizing the high moral ground on abolition, London also ascended higher on the altitudinous military ground, for it could then enroll disgruntled Africans into their military. These Africans could then create havoc in the U.S., which was compelled to devote precious militia resources to suppressing its own African population. Moreover, as Sir George Canning had adumbrated, abolition—with compensation to slaveholders most critically: again, unlike the U.S.—was to undercut the possibility of another 1776-style “Huzzah for Bermuda!”

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revolt in the Caribbean and forge the fealty of Africans to London there for generations to come. This too brought hosannas and plaudits from U.S. Negroes, not a negligible consideration as tensions with Washington rose. It was the grand misfortune of the slaveholders’ revolt to be bookended by Somersett’s case in London and the Haitian Revolution, two primary forces of abolition that almost split the new nation asunder. In the short term, London came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the U.S. during the War of 1812, not least because of various forms of aid from Africans in the hemisphere.

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2 “Base Fools!”

Having quelled indigenous nations, imperial control of its territory and African dreams of freedom, the U.S.1—particularly the South2 —had become headstrong, wheezing with an overconfidence that was not entirely justifiable. Thus, not long after attaining independence, the new nation seemed poised to return to war with London,3 then in bitter conflict with Paris.4 It was heartening5 to London when in early 1797 their consul in Norfolk, Virginia, noticed that “hatred” toward his nation was decreasing. Nevertheless, he sighed, “the Party in favour of the French is still strong and numerous.”6 The powerful Virginians—actual or future presidents all: Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—all leaned toward France, whereas the Federalists, seemingly in decline, were less hostile toward London.7 His Majesty’s consul in Philadelphia had his doubts about the U.S. and was convinced this nation was not adverse to “extermination”8 of the British. A couple of years later, prominent Carolinians were bolstering his alarming contention in severely reproving London, blaming Britain for the perilous state of relations with France.9 In Charleston, the phrase “as scarce as British virtue” had become commonplace,10 suggesting the deterioration of the bilateral relationship. Yet the republicans, split in their enmity toward Paris and London, had difficulty confronting either effectively.11 The young John Quincy Adams was among those who were mortified when a scheme emerged that implicated Paris in an attempt to oust London from Canada and of effecting a “revolution” in the U.S. as a by-product. This would involve instigating a “war between the United States and England.” Adams affirmed that this plot had emerged as early as 1807.12 The problem for the republic was not only that powerful factions were confronting each other as they sought to confront Paris or London (or both), but this fractiousness made more difficult the united antiabolitionist response that the potent slaveholders craved. Nevertheless, the republic’s reluctance to align definitively with Paris seemed to be vindicated when the |

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by-product of the Caribbean turmoil was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, as a harried France moved to liquidate some of its holdings.13 Madison—colorless, shy, bookish, indecisive, anxiety-ridden—had plenty to fret about when he contemplated leading his nation into war. The cerebral Madison may have better reflected upon the severe weakness his nation faced when contemplating war with a Britain moving toward abolition: the presence of discontented Africans more likely to be swayed by a nation that seemed more aggressive in the sphere of abolition than the republic where enslavement was ossifying. Nor could Madison discount the unrest in Hispaniola, which too did not augur favorably for the slaveholders’ republic— a reality14 that London’s delegate in Philadelphia had noticed.15 Though it would seem sensible for the U.S. to appeal to the Irish under London’s rule, as a counterweight to Britain’s appeal to Negroes, at times the jingoism of the republic did not allow for such a tactic. In 1801 a prominent Carolinian railed against the “contagious disorder” brought to these shores by the Irish, these “poor wretches! Why will they leave their native country to come & disturb ours? We want neither them, their discontents, nor their politics.”16 It seemed that the common language shared between the former mother country and its rebellious infant was not a transmission belt forcing concord, but the precise opposite. That is the clear import of a spate of travelers’ accounts penned by British writers, that seemed to be increasing as the nineteenth century unwound. John Davis, a seafarer from Bristol, arrived in the U.S. from the U.K. in 1798 and stayed until 1801. He was appalled by what he saw, particularly concerning slavery: “[N]o casuistry can justify the keeping of slaves,” he argued. But in the face of what he found maddening—simultaneously contradictory claims that the U.S. had discovered the secret to happiness through jettisoning the strict hierarchy of monarchy and adopting racist republicanism— his patriotic spine stiffened. After berating Jefferson for his racism while adding, “of genius in Negroes many instances may be recorded,” he boasted, “[A]n Englishman cannot but draw a proud comparison between his own country and Carolina.” But it was to the obscenity of slavery to which he kept returning, repeating the now fabled line that “[S]laves cannot breathe in England!”17 By 1805 Charles William Janson of London was in Charleston and equally displeased by what he witnessed. He had intended to reside in the U.S., but the crushing “disappointments” he encountered sent him scurrying. Page after page he filled with a litany of tortures, beatings, and worse, all inflicted upon the enslaved. Like numerous other British travelers, he was preoccu30

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pied with the impact of slavery on the long-term mores of the nation. “The enjoyment of a Negro or mulatto woman  . . . is spoken of as quite a common thing,” he said with disgust. “It is far from being uncommon to see a gentleman at dinner, and his reputed son a slave, waiting at the table.” He too raised the specter of Haiti—which seemed to be much on the mind of Britons who arrived in the U.S.—proclaiming that this nation was not “free from the apprehension that it [Haiti] will one day overwhelm them.” For the reanimated slave trade had “multiplied lurking assassins, till they swarm wherever the planter turns his eyes,” referring to a recent abortive revolt in nearby Savannah.18 The abolitionist-minded Priscilla Wakefield arrived in the U.S. from the U.K. just before the war and she too was disappointed with what she saw— except for the enslaved, whose true grit she praised.19 This kind of conclusion was like above-ground intelligence gathering, fortifying London with stories about unhappy slaves. Such accounts both solidified abolitionism and made Britain confident that the new republic could be destroyed, while rebutting the new republic’s contention that it had uncovered the secret to governance. War between nations becomes more likely not only when their strategic interests collide in the hemisphere20 (as was the case between London and Washington)21 and when their respective ideologies are at variance (monarchy with a dollop of nascent abolitionism versus racist republicanism), but also when it seems there is a dearth of mutual respect amongst the peoples—which increasingly was the case. That the new nation felt intellectually insecure when compared to its former colonizer did not help things.22 Exacerbating tensions were maneuvers that came to characterize the U.S. modus operandi in Spanish Florida and Mexican Texas. U.S. nationals swamped fishing grounds in Nova Scotia, which was thought to be a precursor of declaring it to be somehow U.S. soil.23 U.S. vessels were sailing all too regularly into Belize, causing the authorities to attempt to tax them.24 Given the fierce assertiveness of Virginia, which conceivably could come to challenge Bermuda, London felt it had reason to tie down the U.S. By the same token, Virginians thought they were the aggrieved party and had justification in striking back. In 1801, Chief Justice John Marshall acknowledged that many in Jefferson’s retinue wanted war with London: “My private conjecture is that the government will use all its means to excite the resentment & hate of the people against England.”25 But it was not just alleged British intrigue and actual inflammatory language that was enraging the U.S. There was sharp conflict over the Carib“Base Fools!”

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bean, a region important to the toddling U.S. economy.26 Such conflict led to the imposition of an embargo upon Britain. This served to exacerbate regional tensions, as Charleston suffered since it was so dependent upon (slave-based) agriculture, while New England shifted more decisively to manufacturing, then espoused the need for protectionism, which the South opposed.27 Increasingly, British elites were accusing the U.S. of “ingratitude,” a pattern, it was said, that had not ceased from 1783 to that moment of 1807. This was a reflection of the gnawing suspicion that the expansionist U.S. had its eyes on neighboring British colonies, particularly in the Caribbean—which had vigorous trade relations with the republic—and was willing to wage war to accomplish its goal. Ordinary, business relations with the republic were impossible anyway since it was well known that this nation was the King of Smuggling, notably of enslaved Africans.28 Surely, abolition would clip the wings of this high-flying nation, buoyed as it was by nonwage labor. Just as surely, the prospect of the advance of this reform, led from London, served to push the two nations toward war. If a war erupted, said one British opinion-molder, the U.S. would move to seize Canada and the “West India islands” while U.S. Negroes would seize the opportunity to revolt. Abolition, it was thought, would at once erode the power base of Caribbean planters who might be prone to ally with the republic, while creating an insuperable problem for the slaveholders’ republic.29 Even if, by some stroke of fate, Canada were to fall to the U.S., the latter could be harassed indefinitely by armed and newly freed Africans bearing rifles and wearing redcoats.30 In an ominous sign, by 1795 some of the heartiest of the West India Regiment—Negro troops—whose very existence struck fear in the U.S., were posted in nearby Newfoundland and along the border.31 That this was not an idle move was suggested when in 1796 a Canadian official sought to form a Negro legion, 1,000 strong, and added with bravura that this might be “necessary to oppose the Kentucky Cavalry, the most active troops of our neighbors.” No less a personage than the Duke of York heartily concurred.32 Thomas Smallwood, a Negro born into slavery in Maryland, would have agreed as well. He managed to escape to Canada in 1801, though years after his harrowing journey he maintained an active dislike for the place of his birth. He even criticized the small band of U.S. abolitionists, barely hanging on, since they counseled slaves to move to the U.S. North but not to Canada. “The United States is the most hypocritical, guileful and arrogant nation on the face of the earth. It is far preferable for coloured people to be subjects 32

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of any other nation on earth than that.” He thought it idiotic for Negroes to join the U.S. military—“[B]ase fools! Fighting for territory to perpetuate the slavery of their brethren!”33 Fighting for His Majesty was another story altogether. Britain had its own problems in maintaining allegiance, however, for as tensions flared between the U.S. and U.K., the less than patriotic planters in the Caribbean demanded no surcease in trade with its powerful northern neighbor. Nationalizing their prime assets—slaves—would at once defenestrate them politically and would serve as a fitting tribute to bondage.34 In any case, it was hard to reconcile depositing armed Negroes in the Caribbean, while maintaining others in bondage and simultaneously appealing to Haiti—diplomatic imperatives were impelling London toward abolition. Moving to take advantage of apprehension in Paris and Washington about Haiti was part of London’s strategy.35 In 1802 London’s consul in Philadelphia was recounting tales of woe relayed by colonizers fleeing Hispaniola, though he did not seem overly distraught.36 Nor did Phineas Bond seem too disturbed when he reported shortly thereafter that Toussaint had “defeated two parties of General Le Clerc’s army with great slaughter,” though he did seem to be weighing the ultimate consequences of “this unexpected conduct on the part of the Black General,”37 which had obvious implications for London’s own Caribbean holdings.38 Two years later, the revolutionaries had triumphed, hoisted their reinvigorated banner—and petrified slaveholders in the hemisphere, notably in the U.S. Certainly, the consul, Phineas Bond, was mulling over how to take advantage of this flux. Having conferred in the Keystone State with a “very intelligent person” with a “considerable interest in St. Domingo,” who was “much in the confidence of General Dessalines,” Haiti’s paramount leader, Bond sensed that the authorities there very much wanted to ally with London against real and imagined foes in Paris and Washington.39 Subsequently, this “very intelligent person” and other refugees from revolution in Philadelphia, soured on the new regime in Hispaniola. This exile had “received letters from General Dessalines, as well as from General Christophe” which “discouraged him”—in fact he was “depressed by the wanton sanguinary acts of cruelty, perpetuated upon the white inhabitants,” creating a “precarious” situation. But Bond, who was as “white” as the next propertied man in Philadelphia, did not seem overly perturbed by this development.40 For it turns out that London eventually did volunteer to recognize the revolutionary regime in Haiti, which aided in outflanking Washington. This process was accompanied by sharp clashes off the coast of the U.S. between “Base Fools!”

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London and the teenaged republic, known as the Chesapeake incident,41 which augured full-scale war a few years later. These literal collisions were anticipated by disputatious quarrels that, in a sense, were assisted into being by the tumultuous events in Hispaniola that had so riveted the attention of Phineas Bond. For the Haitian Revolution, inter alia, brought a crisis of labor; to wit, if a crisis of the slave system truly was at play, then who would do the basic labor that had been done theretofore by enslaved Africans? And if Haiti was to become a republic like any other, would it not attract like metal to a magnet, Africans from other colonies and, more specifically, a certain republic to its north? And since a premium continued to be placed on “whiteness” in the North Atlantic, then a fortiori there was a premium placed on men of this type. This is the backdrop to the crisis over impressments,42 or (inter alia) London seeking to reclaim its subjects that had defected to the U.S., where history had shown more opportunity—land seized from indigenes and stocked with enslaved Africans—reigned. As early as 1792, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was complaining bitterly about this developing trend,43 though London was keen to note that France was even more militant on this matter of the U.S. recruiting their nationals.44 The flip side of this crisis was London enticing U.S. Negroes to Halifax, Bermuda, Trinidad, and other parts of the Empire. Though this impressments crisis did not lead to war until 1812, ruptures had emerged well before.45 Still, London saw this matter of impressments as bogus—a point echoed by some in the republic.46 Yet there was more than one three-cornered struggle—Paris, London, and Washington—that was causing waves of friction to cascade. There was another (substitute Madrid for Paris) and it may have been more substantial. For it is striking that in today’s U.S., three of the most populous states were once deemed to be Spanish colonies (Florida, Texas, and California) and jousting to control Madrid’s empire, which seemed to be in an advanced state of decomposition, was to roil relations between London and Washington. It was not foreordained that the U.S. would emerge triumphant with this regal bounty.47 Washington thought it had a bona fide reason for seizing Florida: it was a sanctuary for slave runaways. As was to occur in Texas, U.S. “patriots” began to migrate in droves to East Florida but there they encountered a formidable foe that had been thought to be the specialty of London: armed Negro troops, dispatched from Spanish Cuba. London had controlled a good deal of Florida before ceding it back to Spain in 1783—but not before plotting the creation of an independent state of indigenes so as to foil both rivals. Spain took the cue and backed indigenes against U.S. encroachment.48 34

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Thus, during the same year that Washington was to cross swords with London, these “patriots” were frantically informing James Monroe about this menace: “[I]f we are abandoned, what will be the situation of the Southern States, with this body of black men in the neighborhood[?] St. Augustine, the whole province, will be the refuge of fugitive slaves; and from thence emissaries can, and do doubt will be [dispatched] to bring about a revolt of the black population of the United States.” Painting Madrid in stripes that were thought to be reserved for London, this dilemma was analogized to Haiti. Just as predictably, Charleston and Savannah editors chose to delete references to these Negro troops, informing their gently delicate readers that this had been done for “reasons of local security,” that is, so as to not alarm the slaveholders, nor give the slaves reason for optimism.49 Perhaps even less publicized was Florida’s role as a sieve through which enormous numbers of slaves—and freshly enslaved Negroes who once had been free—traveled to the U.S. for the latter’s enrichment, causing apprehension about an abolitionist London or even a Madrid (that seemed as wedded to bondage as the republic itself), squeezing this profitable pipeline.50 Similarly, the turmoil brought by the advent of the self-styled patriots did seem to create openings for enslaved Africans to escape from their bondage51 and elude the U.S. altogether.52 Yet, perhaps inspired by the hawks who wanted to fight London and Paris simultaneously, as the 1812 war was being declared by Congress, the U.S. found itself challenging Spain for control of Florida. Leaders included some who had garnered earlier fortunes by confiscation of Tory estates in Florida after London was pushed out in 1783. Now the time had come, it was thought, to add another scalp to the U.S. belt.53 More than this, Florida was seen as the open back door through which enslaved Africans fled from Georgia and the Carolinas, often enticed by the Spanish and indigenes alike.54 But, as with London, the U.S. found it had stirred into motion Negroes with guns, as Spain dispatched their forces in Cuba to Florida. Africans in Cuba already had alarmed the hemispheric slaveholding class by seeming to suggest they were Haitians’ fraternal twin. In June 1812 a leading U.S. military officer near St. Augustine reported that a “hundred Black Troops have actually been landed, which are only a part of the force brought from the Havanna [sic]”55 and an attack from them was imminent.56 Republicans complained bitterly that Madrid was engaged in veritable war crimes by deploying armed Negro troops. From worrying about Madrid’s sable arm, it finally dawned that the U.S. might have bitten off more than it could chew by tackling Spain and Britain simultaneously. Major Thomas “Base Fools!”

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Bourke of the U.S. forces in Florida was alerted in horrified terms: “My God, what a scene there will be if they [London] should get a footing in this quarter & put arms in the hands of our slaves,” for “nothing but disaster” would be the inevitable result.57 Major Bourke may have had Prince—or Principe—Huiten on his mind. This former enslaved African in South Carolina escaped in the late 1700s. By 1812 he was a property owner and a skilled carpenter who had been elevated to the rank of lieutenant in a Negro militia in St. Augustine. He knew that his status would have been impossible in his former home under the lurking stars-and-stripes, so it was with ferocity that he led scores of armed Negroes, along with a band of indigenes, infiltrating U.S. lines and laying effective ambushes. His Spanish comrades credited him with lifting a siege.58 As it turned out, African troops from Cuba were essential to repelling the “Patriot Rebellion” in Florida; then there were the precursors of the “Negro Fort” or organized and armed Africans and their indigenous allies who sent repeated diplomatic missions to the British in the Bahamas and the Spaniards in Cuba.59 London understandably felt that Florida in U.S. hands resembled—quite literally—a pistol pointing at its Caribbean colonies. And given Washington’s justifiable reputation as being far distant from abolition, it was similarly understandable why Africans would do all in their power to bar the U.S. from taking what became Washington’s peninsular state.60 In Florida the U.S. faced the most capaciously wily band of Africans it had fought to that juncture, grappling as it did with “Seminole Negroes” (or Africans tied to indigenes), escaped Georgia runaways, free Negroes, Cuban Negroes, and possibly Bahamian Negroes—all united firmly against the extension of the stars-and-stripes in a premature burst of what would later be termed “Pan-Africanism.”61 Washington had managed the difficult feat of not only uniting against their rule Africans of various heritages, but Madrid and London as well: the adolescent republic somehow managed to prevail in holding on to Florida, though it was blocked from moving further against Cuba, Bahamas, and other lush targets.62 As things turned out, however, the republic launched full-scale war against Britain. In hindsight, this was seen in neighboring Canada as a joint conspiracy between the U.S. and France, timed to coincide with Napoleon’s offensive in Europe, thus ensnaring London and hampering an enhanced two-front war against Paris, which would disadvantage the latter nation.63 The War of 1812, according to historian Sean Wilentz, led to 7,000 casualties—dead and wounded—on the U.S. side, about two-thirds of the number incurred during the course of the anti-London revolt that created the U.S.64 36

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Another scholar argues that despite this high cost, this 1812 conflict is “the least studied and understood war of the nation’s past.”65 Suggestive of the analytical confusion—in the U.S.—is the claim by another writer that fifty historians since June 1812 had come up with different original explanations as to why Washington declared war on London.66 Certainly, the background presented in these pages to this point—impressments, the Chesapeake incident, incipient British abolitionism versus Southern U.S. intransigence on this crucial point, and the like—do shed light on this momentous decision in Washington. Of course, London had to guffaw over the to-do about impressments, given Washington’s rampant deprivation of liberty to Africans. Inferences surely can be drawn from the fact that in Massachusetts, almost all Negroes were pro-Federalist and this party was accused of being pro-London,67 which set the stage for the first important secession crisis in the Union: probondage hawks were among the most militant in hostility to the Crown. North of the border, there is less quizzical wonder as to the reason for this war. “We Canadians,” said William Renwick Riddell in 1915, “naturally and necessarily look at the War of 1812 from a different point of view from that of the American.” With good reason, he thought that the proposed taking of his homeland drove the declaration of war, which would not only have liquidated a sanctuary for the enslaved, but would have increased the territory of the republic by an order of magnitude, while delivering a sharp rebuke to the London tormentor. He located the engine for this war in the Slave South—“the ships at Boston Harbor hung their flags at half-mast when war was declared.” It was “Henry Clay’s War,” he contended. Yet, as was their wont, these regionalists seemed more interested in espousing fiery rhetoric than blazing their weapons—which had to be trained via militias on potentially rebellious slaves, lest they overturn the entire order. Thus, he said, New England, while reluctant to aid in the subduing of Canada, provided more recruits when the war accelerated in 1814 than the Slave South (Massachusetts leading the way), and it appeared that, with the assistance of U.S. Negroes, U.S. sovereignty seemed to be on the verge of desuetude. Riddell maintained nonetheless that the Hartford Convention, a harbinger of secession, was real. Actually fictional—a “pleasant delusion,” he said—was the “curious myth” south of the border that painted this war, which almost cost the U.S. its nationhood, as “an almost unbroken series of glorious victories” culminating in New Orleans in 1815. Instead, “many slaves had come within British lines,” which caused the “bitterest comment by Americans,” since it was “Base Fools!”

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key to London’s near triumph. On the other hand, the U.S. “destruction of York and Newark” were not negligible in Canada, “whose development was delayed a quarter of a century or more by that war.” This meant less capability to assist the enslaved, which meant that the war was far from a total loss for Washington.68 This Canadian is not far from the mark. John C. Calhoun had made clear that seizing Canada was his primary goal. Unless London relinquished this vast land, he said brazenly, Washington would have to consider “a state of war.”69 He denied adamantly that attacking Canada would lead to the British and Africans retaliating jointly against the slaveholders’ republic, as ultimately ensued.70 In 1813—crucially, on the fourth of July—speaking from Richmond, the patriotic George Hay, amidst frequent denunciations of deceitful London, conceded that taking Canada was the goal of this war—and that, in fact, this had been an original aim of the 1776 revolt. 71 As the war unfolded, one leading French diplomat in Washington marveled at how confidently the brash U.S. leaders boasted of taking over Canada.72 “The intention to wage war and invade Canada had long since been openly avowed,” said one Congressman in 1812.73 Months after the war ended, the prominent Washingtonian Alexander James Dallas conceded that the U.S. had sought to seize Canada—but this was, he said, a defensive measure in the face of London’s backing of indigenes and their growing concern about the security of heavily French (and restive) Quebec.74 The “annexation of Canada,” says the contemporary British scholar Jon Latimer, was a “long standing objective” of the republic.75 Yet though severe damage was inflicted on Canada, the regime was not dislodged, nor was its role as a haven for escaped chattel eradicated. Months after the conflict ended—again on the fourth of July—Alexander James Dallas was explicit in asserting that his nation remained angry at London’s attempt to ally with indigenes (another cause for this war), not to mention “alliances with the savage, the African,” and “insidious attempts to excite the citizens of the United States into acts of contumacy, treason and revolt against their government,” a furious reference to the Hartford Convention. With an astonishing disregard for the predicates of racial solidarity, London seemingly had forgotten that “the events, which have extirpated or dispersed the white population of St. Domingo are in the recollection of all men.” Dallas had served as treasury secretary under Madison and had an idea of the cost of this war. Likewise, his Jamaican birth had given him a healthy regard for the potency of enraged Africans, just as his Scottish origins provided further impetus for dislike of London. 38

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Dallas had a point. Playing the “Great Game” of stirring up the enslaved of the U.S. opened a dangerous door to Washington trying something similar in Jamaica—unless London trumped this gambit by dropping broad hints of abolition, something beyond the ken of Washington. It was becoming ever clearer that London had to move toward abolition, if only to better position itself to confront the increasingly aggressive republic without being outflanked. But it was not just “incitement” that incensed Dallas. Like others he was appalled by what happened in Norfolk, Virginia, when “females, the married and the single, suffered the extremity of personal abuse from the troops of the enemy and from the infatuated Negroes, at their instigation.”76 Worse for Dallas and his confederates was that British observers seemed to brag about how they had flummoxed Washington by allying with indigenes and Africans,77 while even more ominous was the Haitian praise of London as “that Liberator of the World.”78 Canada paid a heavy price for London’s maneuvering, but it also gained as it drained the U.S. of slave labor. Thousands of U.S. Negroes fled to British lines, with some returning in redcoats deployed in vicious assaults on Georgia and the Chesapeake. Others served as spies, messengers, and guides— which both maddened and frightened their former masters.79 Thousands fled to Nova Scotia and the maritime provinces, augmenting a proliferating Negro population already buoyed by those who had fled the 1776 revolt.80 Given the response of the enslaved who remained, it would have been comprehensible if Madison had encouraged more to flee. The refugee from slavery, William Wells Brown, recalled that in Charleston during the war, a slaveholder became suspicious when his chattel asked to attend a religious meeting—so he masqueraded as a slave in order to spy on them. There he discovered that these troublesome properties were animatedly discussing their possible liberation by the redcoats and musing about what to do with their soon-to-be former master, with the choices ranging from mercy to murder.81 As is well known, U.S. Negroes also fought valiantly against the redcoats.82 The U.S. had become more dependent upon Negro labor than was commonly realized, particularly in its maritime force. This led to a March 1813 turnabout, allowing this beleaguered population to serve in the U.S. Navy. Washington may have been influenced by the November 1812 sighting of a British ship cruising between Charleston and Savannah with 70 Africans in the crew: already they had been accused of having “done a great deal of mischief.” Then there was a British brig in the same vicinity, navigated by Africans, who were manning the guns and no doubt itching to bombard the “Base Fools!”

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bastion of slavery. Their failure to adhere to U.S. norms was validated, said one angry U.S. sailor when the captain of this menacing vessel “even had the daring presumption to introduce his black mistress [to] our captain.” African seamen were much in evidence on British ships in the Great Lakes region. Though the African population of the U.S. was much larger, even after 1813 it is likely that British ships had more African sailors (proportionately) aboard.83 Those who fled to British lines, during the war and before, at times recrossed the border to the U.S. in order to encourage runaways, gather intelligence, hold meetings, and provide political guidance.84 The larger point is, however, that Britain’s very example and its challenge to U.S. national security helped to spur the youthful republic toward a more realistic posture—at least in the short term—toward its African denizens.85 This course correction, in sum, was driven by stark necessity. The Negro cleric Richard Allen and his fellow Africans offered to build fortifications and fight the British as they approached Philadelphia. But the white city fathers refused to let them bear arms—in austere contrast to the redcoats on their doorstep—and would allow them to work only on the forts in segregated crews.86 When in August 1814 New York City felt threatened, heroically rallying to the U.S. cause were the much-put-upon local Negroes, often dispatched by their churches.87 But that was precisely the point,88 for the U.S. was almost congenitally incapable of bestowing the kind of citizenship that this Negro sacrifice demanded. This in turn could only increase the attraction to them of London, where—unlike their homeland—abolitionism was escalating, thus further jeopardizing national security. On the other hand, the 1812 war also happened to bring probably the most sustained spate of unrest by Africans the nation had seen to that point. That it was assisted amply by the mortal foe in London provided this restiveness with the kind of muscle that could potentially overthrow the Washington regime. It was in early 1813 that Sir James Yeo remarked, “I am persuaded there is nothing that would cause more alarm and consternation than [the] apprehension of our Black Troops being employed against them. The population of the slaves in the Southern Provinces of America is so great, that the people of landed property would be panic-struck at the sight of a Black Regiment on their coast and nothing would more effectively tend to make the war with this country unpopular than the knowledge of such a measure being in contemplation.”89 Bolling Hall, a congressman from Georgia, who earned his spurs by fighting in the successful war against Britain decades earlier, while barely a teen40

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ager, was all too familiar with the harsh challenge of confronting seditious Africans and angry redcoats alike. By late 1814, he seemed at wit’s end. “The system which had been adopted to enable the government to defend our country against the enemy has failed,” he groaned, “the treasury [is] nearly empty and loans [cannot] be obtained.” Thus, “the ranks of our army were not filled and we had no money to recruit—we were invaded by a powerful enemy who threatened to burn and destroy every place which might fall into his hands.” He was speaking in the aftermath of the torching of Washington, with President Madison and his distressed spouse barely escaping intact. “Language is inadequate to describe my feelings,” he said affectedly, “when I [saw] the ruins of the capital of the only free [sic] government on earth.” Anticipating the sectional crisis that was to explode decades later, he also lamented the reality that “to increase the difficulties I found the Federalists still disposed to defeat the measures of government—Massachusetts has called a convention of the Northern and Eastern states” which could “bring on us the horrors of a Civil War.”90 All in all, the congressman had sketched the fine mess in which the nation was embroiled, though he conspicuously omitted the closest dragon breathing down the necks of his compatriots: the thousands of enslaved Africans that resided in his state. Philip Cook, who months earlier was to be found at Fort Hawkins, near Macon, could have briefed him on this delicate matter. For if a slave revolt were to burst forth, it would be the job of his militia to suppress it. And with the Royal Navy lurking offshore, this would be difficult, even in the best of times. But at that moment, his 2,500 men were unhappy: “much discontent prevails among them. They are destitute of every kind of camp equipage & have had a continual succession of rain on them.” They were “badly provided with provisions” too. All this tended to “depress their spirit” and “desertions have taken place,”as patriotism was dissolving in the mud in which they were sinking.91 The declaration92 of war by the U.S. did not take London by surprise.93 Months earlier, Sir Alexander Cochrane already had decided that “in a war with America great attention must be paid to Bermuda,” within striking distance of Virginia and the Carolinas alike, and populated heavily with Africans who disliked these harsh slave states. Further south there was the Bahamas, which already was proving its mettle in the battle over Florida. The “place where the Americans are most vulnerable,” he stressed, is “New Orleans and Virginia,” both dependent heavily on the labor of enslaved Africans. He did not have to emphasize that the Bahamas too contained a population studded with Africans hungry for vengeance, nor that the U.S. was ripe to be split “Base Fools!”

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in two as easily as a softened plum. He also opined that this war “should be prosecuted in a very different stile [sic] than that adopted in the Revolutionary War, we must not be so supine in our efforts as at that period, when our hostilities were directed much more against the Treasury than the enemy.”94 In declaring war, Sir Alexander suggested, the U.S. had stumbled unwittingly to the brink of debacle—a development that would have warmed the hearts of Africans near and far.

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3 Can U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

It was 1811 and Paul Cuffe, one of the republic’s most affluent men of color, was in Britain as war loomed with his homeland: yet he did not appear to be seized with the idea of rallying to the stars-and-stripes. Indeed, he continued to carry on a profitable trade with the British military establishment, which he appeared to justify because of the abolitionist work of the Royal Navy and—it is not unlikely that—his vessel bore the Union Jack. This trade did not cease with the declaration of war, which suggested that some in the republic would have deemed him a traitor.1 However, is citizenship a bilateral obligation and was the new nation upholding its end of the bargain with Africans?2 So, even as the war escalated in 1814, when London was able to redeploy troops from the European theater that had been bogged down battling Napoleon, Cuffe did not rush to the side of his beleaguered homeland. Instead, he focused on his various enterprises, most of which were involved with African uplift.3 Cuffe thought that U.S. Negroes could bring fresh blood and trade to Sierra Leone and did not seem to be bothered by the fact that it was a colony of a nation with which Washington had severe problems. Depositing U.S. Negroes in Sierra Leone, along with desperately needed supplies, and bringing African goods to Britain had come to animate his existence. Cuffe also traveled to Haiti, saying sagely that “they appeared to understand military tactics to perfection.” For good measure, he also sojourned in other lands of bondage besides his own, such as Cuba and Brazil. In Jamaica, he saw U.S. prisoners of war—“nine hundred American prisoners confined  .  .  . many of them were sick with yellow fever”—but did not seem too agitated by the sight.4 In Liverpool he was lionized, a not uncommon experience he enjoyed within the Empire.5 Washington was lucky, for Cuffe could have conducted himself like other abused Africans, who doffed their slave rags, donned redcoats, grabbed weapons, and proceeded to attack Euro-Americans, a factor that London was banking on in order to prevail in the 1812 war. To be fair, London was also relying on a groundswell of antiwar |

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opposition in New England as a whole, an eventuality that could have led to secession.6 As early as the spring of 1814, Albert Gallatin—who had served the new republic as congressman, diplomat, and treasury secretary under Jefferson and Madison—informed soon-to-be presidential hopeful, William Crawford, that the alienated New England states might break with the Union and rejoin Britain.7 This Crawford already knew.8 Though it had been brewing for some time, just as the war was concluding the Hartford Convention was called to order in a session that enjoyed high-level support, with antiwar passion flowing, as well as the questioning of slavery.9 The Hartford Convention built upon preexisting and continuing antiwar10 sentiment. Some prominent Rhode Islanders owned plantations in Cuba and resided in a state where Negroes had not been wholly barred from the militia,11 and thus they fretted about the complications resulting from war,12 such as London, Madrid, or both stirring up Negroes against the republicans.13 The 1812 declaration of war, in short, had uncorked a torrent of contradictions, forcing to the fore regional tensions that were to explode in 1861—this time the South chose secession. But at the root of this crisis was the enslavement of Africans and London’s deft ability to take advantage of this burbling crisis.14 In fact, in August 1812 the president “required that a detachment of 2000 militia” be sent from Pennsylvania to Buffalo. Some were not happy15 about this, thereby increasing British leverage.16 The larger point17 was that the seeds of abolitionism in London were watered by shrewd realization by elites that attaining this lofty objective at once struck a blow at a growing rival, enlisted the sympathy of much beleaguered Africans in the hemisphere (not least in the U.S. itself), placed Britain on the side of the angels occupying the highest moral ground, and denuded of potency any proliferating independence sentiments among the slaveholding class of the West Indies, some of whom yearned to replicate their very own 1776. Stirring this pot of discontent would also allow London to rile New Englanders to the detriment of the republic.18 With enslaved Africans having sound reason to revolt, London had sound reason to expect not only victory but dismantlement of a growing rival. There were other factors too. Shortly after the war began, William Franklin, a British subject and former colonial governor of New Jersey, provided intimate knowledge of New York fortifications,19 a revelation all the more damaging given that he was scion of a founding family of the republic. Another self-described “old American loyalist” with a “thorough knowledge of the line of coast of the United States,” also provided useful intelligence,20 a proliferating trend.21 44

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Months before this conflict concluded, it seemed things were going Britain’s way, which made all the more surprising the denouement in New Orleans. For it was in September 1814, not long after the torching of the White House, that Governor Simon Snyder of Pennsylvania was informed in hysterical tones about the “truly alarming situation of the seaboard” and “the equally if not more exposed situation of our frontier in the Lake [Erie].”22 Harrisburg had to confront the ugly reality that, according to one military leader, of the “400 men of the drafted militia,“about “half of them [are] destitute of blankets and shoes” and “often with little or no straw.”23 And even if the governor had followed the recommendation of dispatching more troops, he would only have left Philadelphia exposed. Philadelphia was thought to be in the crosshairs, given the assault on neighboring Washington and Baltimore. London had sent its own Negro troops—many of whom had formerly been chattel property south of the border—from New Brunswick into neighboring New York state. The resultant battle of “Lundy’s Lane,” perhaps the bloodiest of the entire conflict, with each side suffering 900 casualties, featured these African troops fighting fiercely, knowing as they did that defeat could mean their enslavement.24 Richard Pierpoint and the “Company of Coloured Men” under the command of Robert Runchey, acquitted themselves well when they repelled the U.S. invaders at Queenston in 1812.25 Actually, African volunteers fought valiantly for the Crown at Fort George, Niagara Town, Stoney Creek, and elsewhere along the northern border. Among the African warriors who fought at Queenston Heights were 50 former slaves from the U.S. who had escaped in the 1790s and taken refuge at the Grand River Reserve with the famous Mohawk leader, Joseph Brant.26 Throughout the Great Lakes region, a major site of contestation, London relied heavily on Africans in arms. Many of them were related to those who had been enticed across the border in the first place after Lord Dunmore’s famed appeal in the midst of the brewing 1776 revolt.27 There seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of Africans who could be thrown into battle against the U.S. and this nation’s well-known reputation for enslaving their kind gave them the incentive to fight fearlessly. As the war was winding down, the British subject Dr. George Pinkard found himself in Barbados. He recalled gloatingly the armed Africans supportive of the Union Jack, who numbered in the hundreds—but whose ranks were augmented steadily by defections from neighboring French and Dutch territories, suggesting the popularity of London’s abolitionism.28 Still, if the British forces romped above the Mason-Dixon Line, famously assisted by formerly enslaved Africans who had fled from bondage in the Can U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

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nation they were now fighting, their escapades in the regions more scarred by slavery were even more devastating—for their foes, that is.29 When the redcoats occupied Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, the force included the Third West India Regiment, which included Africans from the Chesapeake region. Perhaps because of the catalytic impact of seeing (former) slaves now wielding weapons and holding frightened Euro-Americans at bay, there were so many Africans on this isle flocking to British ships that they barely had enough space to carry them all to Bermuda.30 The affluent Mary Telfair, who had just endured the fear that African troops from Spanish Florida were to invade her beloved Georgia, now feared that 2,000 Africans in redcoats had landed on Cumberland Island. “[E]verything is to be dreaded,” she moaned, “for no doubt a number of slaves will flock to his [British] standard,”31 an accurate premonition.32 They were also scurrying from Amelia Island to ships waiting to transport them to Nova Scotia, where they joined 1,232 (former) slaves who had fled to this site and its Canadian neighbors in 1784, including New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.33 There were about 2,000 of these later refugees altogether, far exceeding expectations, in what amounted to one of the most spectacularly proficient mass emancipations and successful rebellions ever witnessed in the slaveholders’ republic.34 Washington had the distinct disadvantage of being surrounded by the territory of its opponent35—Canada, Bermuda, and the Bahamas most notably—each of which contained angry Africans with scores to settle against their former homeland.36 Then there were the other prime nodes of British power—Halifax, Jamaica, and Barbados—all of which not only had a healthy complement of Africans with an incentive to halt the march of slavery from Washington, but firepower to accomplish this laudable goal.37 Africans also deserted the republic at its time of need. When the Pennsylvania governor was informed by a Marylander about the “kidnapping from the city of Philadelphia [of] sundry Negroes,” it was hard to say who was suspected—typically hyperactive kidnappers for slavers, the pro-redcoat Negroes, or Africans simply fleeing and leaving a false trail in their wake.38 The U.S. had stumbled into a two-front war, combating disaffected Negroes and British alike. Marylanders, for example, did not know where to deploy their militia—targeting concentrations of enslaved Africans or the Royal Navy39—an extraordinarily vexing and expensive dilemma.40 The sight of Africans fleeing wholesale to British lines was infuriating to the slaveholders’ republic, at once representing draining capital flight and signifying a profound national security weakness—the worst of all worlds, 46

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in other words—a thought that may have occurred to those fleeing militia duty. The anguished cries of outrage this elicited matched the profundity of the loss.41 Thus, when in Calvert County, Maryland, every African on a major estate fled hastily to join the British, fury reigned. This was a damagingly strategic loss for, with so many British forces chasing Napoleon in Europe in the early stages of the 1812 war, London could continue to dominate the coastal waters of North America but needed more boots on the ground to hold (and plunder effectively) territory. The fleeing Africans could therefore provide intelligence through difficult terrain, return to rescue others, or don boots and redcoats, both of which were the kind of finery that those accustomed to tattered rags at best could well enjoy. Then again, Sir Alexander Cochrane, like many British subjects, continued to harbor deep resentments when it came to the new republic, not only because of its excessive bragging about its supposed vanguard political status but, more personally, because he had lost a brother during the 1781 siege of Yorktown.42 This multiplicity of ferocities—propelled by disenthralled Africans, discontented New Englanders, and embittered Britons—swept through the Chesapeake like a raging oil fire.43 With militia in Maryland performing double duty, defending against slave rebellions and fighting redcoats, Africans took advantage of the resultant flux by simply refusing to work, declaring that they would soon be free. One of the patrollers acknowledged that there would be a simultaneous slave uprising if the British attacked.44 Brigadier General Caleb Hawkins of Maryland was told to spread the belated word: Well aware of the skills possessed by the enslaved, he was further informed that “the boats immediately in the neighbourhood should be hawled [sic] up or secured in some other way which might in some measure destroy the facility with which they reach the enemy’s ships.”45 The local authorities in Virgnia instructed the “Commander of His Brittanic Majesty’s forces in the Potomac” that “a number of Negroes” had “made an escape from their owners and have gone on board the Squadron under your command” and all they desired was to “reclaim” their “property.”46 Pushing his luck, one bold slaveholder chose to go aboard His Majesty’s vessel in order to “see their Negroes and take home all such as were willing to return.” He seemed surprised to ascertain that “none appeared to have a disposition” to do so, though “we saw the whole of them.”47 His visit did little to stem the seemingly ceaseless flow of Africans to British vessels.48 Then the inevitable occurred as emboldened Africans chose to stand and fight: an insurrection of slave and free Negroes was anticipated in Frederick County, Maryland, in 1814. Eleven African men were detained.49 In neighboring Delaware the Can U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

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emboldened redcoats demanded “vegetables and hay”—with destruction promised otherwise.50 The awesome combination of the armed forces of what might have been the most militarily sophisticated nation on the planet and a highly motivated internal insurgency by enslaved Africans proved to be intimidating.51 In Virginia, at Mundy Point in the Chesapeake region, raiders included several platoons of uniformed Africans, the sight of which ignited widespread terror. The British trained former slaves on Tangier Island, then deployed them in Pungoteague, Virginia. The very sight of them seemed to augur the dreaded reckoning, payback for well-nigh centuries of brutalization.52 The redcoats were spotted in the vulnerable Northern Neck region as early as the spring of 1813. Yet the local authorities were handicapped in confronting them due to the need to guard against a revolt of the enslaved. But most startling for these militia men was the sight of former slaves in redcoats, not only armed but acting as a guide for their liberators. The Euro-Virginians seemed disoriented. One admitted that some were frozen with “undisguised alarm” at the sight of Negroes with guns. Sounding pleased, one British officer cut to the root of their dismay, pointing out that “they expect Black[s] will have no mercy on them.” Subsequently, Virginia claimed that 1,721 enslaved Africans fled to British lines, with Maryland providing a reputed 714.53 Altogether, it is estimated that about 3,800 erstwhile U.S. Negroes left with the British forces and resettled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Trinidad and Tobago, and Britain itself; they fled from at least seven states. At times they left friends and families behind, suggesting how wrenching this decision could be. Overwhelmingly, Nova Scotia,54 whose naval base caused many a sleep-deprived night in Washington, received the majority of those seeking refuge, with Virginia seemingly suffering the greatest losses overall.55 Virginia had to contend with the difficult decision of determining if it should respond more forcefully against Africans, the internal foe, or redcoats, the external one.56 The state was perceived widely as the power behind the throne of the slaveholders’ republic, and as a result absorbed a punishing share of British blows. A redcoat invasion was coupled with an assisted revolt of the enslaved, then like falling dominoes came depleted militia, unarmed militia, fleeing militia, and militia with low morale. The Virginians were so pressed that they had to look askance at supposed presents. For it was there that two British deserters materialized, including a “black man named George Mitchell,” allegedly a “free man from New York,” supposedly subjected to impressment in 1806.57 But who was to say that he was not just a well-placed spy, particularly since there were suspicions that 48

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enslaved Africans were a major source for stunningly accurate British intelligence reports?58 When an enslaved African showed up in Westmoreland County in mid1814, weeks before the invasion and immolation of Washington, he was not greeted with open arms.59 Unsurprisingly, soon thereafter there was another report of a “large booty of slaves” fleeing to British lines.60 These too may have come by the Potomac, the serpentine river that defined the nation’s capital, for, quite perilously for the boastful republic, Rear Admiral George Cockburn of the Royal Navy felt that “the Black Population inclined to join us is more numerous on the shores of the Potomac than anywhere else within the Chesapeake.”61 In fact, Cockburn was informed that “the Black Refugees increase so fast” that his correspondent could only “begin to be somewhat puzzled.”62 Often those fleeing, a militia leader was told, possessed a “minute knowledge of every bye path. They leave us as spies upon our posts and strength,” it was said with utter dismay, and “they return upon [them] as guides and as soldiers and incendiaries. It was by the aid of these guides that ambushes were formed everywhere in the woods—firing upon our troopers.” The example “which is held out in these bands of armed Negroes, and the weakness of the resistance which as yet has been made to oppose them, must have a strong effect upon those blacks which have not as yet been able to escape.”63 Norfolk was in a state of nervous collapse.64 Richmond, the real capital of the nation, according to some, was likewise filled with angst: those who were there expressed “apprehensions of insurrectionary movements among the blacks under the instigation of the British.” Thus the Lieutenant Governor was advised on “the removal of the Powder Magazine to a place of greater security to the citizens,”65 which decidedly did not include human chattel. But those in Hampton, Virginia, might well have asked what evil could be greater than that to which they had been subjected. For it was on the momentous date of 4 July 1813 that militia leaders reported disconsolately and with polite delicacy that the “sex hitherto guarded by soldier’s honor escaped not the rude assaults of superior force,” “nor could disease disarm the foe of his ferocity.”66 Moreover, as others noted, compounding the evil was the assertion that even enraged Africans had participated. But this seemed to be only a foretaste of what was to come.67 In May 1814, it was reported nervously, the British landed in the state “five hundred men, partly Negroes, all in uniform.” There was understandable worry that “slaves” might join them. The correspondent, Thomas Bayley, said “the enemy . . . put about 30 Negroes in full uniform in front and rushed,” Can U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

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perhaps on the assumption that, feeling they had the most to lose—and the most to gain via revenge—they would fight with an unalloyed ferocity. This they apparently did, since they unleashed a fusillade of “continued fire.”68 From armed Negroes in redcoats, filling the warm spring air with even hotter lead, Virginians then had to turn their focused attention to a reportedly full-scale insurrection of the enslaved. Lynchburg was the focal point. It anxiously requested a “military guard for protection of this place.” But from whence were they to come? A “general rising of the blacks in this quarter” was “the subject of frequent conversations among them.” Blind vengeance alone was not their object, for “the banks of this place have always been spoken of as the first object.” With perspicacity, the Euro-American monitoring this crisis observed cogently, [T]the spirit of insurrection has no doubt been produced by two causes, first, the approach of a foreign enemy; and secondly the exposed condition in which this part of the country has been left by the repeated calls of the Militia which have been made upon it, leaving scarcely any other population than that of old men and boys.”69 The British forces, hovering offshore, with a well-supplied base in Bermuda to rely upon, did little to assuage Euro-Virginians’ real fears. Writing just after the U.S. Civil War, when apprehensions about the potential of rebellious Africans were realized, one author—in a book retained by the Library of Congress—claimed that “all along the coast, and far into [the] interior, secret organizations existed among the Negroes for united efforts to obtain their freedom; and in anticipation of the coming of a British army of liberation, they were prepared to rise in large numbers, at a given signal and strike for freedom.” This writer claimed that the vicinity of Charleston was a principal venue for these gatherings: “[T]hey held meetings every night and had arranged a plan for the rising of all slaves in Charleston when the British should appear. At one of their meetings, the question ‘what shall be done with the white people?’ was warmly discussed.” Some advocated their indiscriminate slaughter as the only security for liberty. Indeed, this seemed to be the “prevailing opinion.” Sung was a song that concluded, “Arise! Arise! Shake off your chains! Your cause is just, so Heaven ordains,” and “wrest the scourge from Buckra’s [whites’] hand; and drive each tyrant from the land!”70 Certainly the British made a special appeal to enslaved Africans, urging them to rise against tyrants, notably in the Chesapeake, with the promise of freedom as their reward.71 Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane saw this matter as being of the utmost strategic importance. “The great point to be attained,” he declared, weeks before the burning of Washington, “is the cordial support of the Black population,” for “with them properly armed 50

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& backed with 20,000 British troops, Mr. Madison will be hurled from his throne.”72 Inevitably, this infuriated U.S. nationals who harbored the deep desire to give Sir Alexander a well-attended necktie party.73 Rear Admiral George Cockburn, lurking ominously in these waters, also believed that “the Black Regiments from the West Indies, may very probably have great effect amongst them.”74 His naval comrade, Sir Alexander, based in nearby Bermuda, issued a widely circulated proclamation to enslaved Africans on the mainland, stressing that if they fled to British lines, they would be sent “as FREE settlers to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies, where they will meet all due encouragement.”75 Later Sir Alexander realized that U.S. Negroes were more interested in becoming free subjects than in being associated with the armed forces. Of course, he had “not a doubt” they would fight under the Union Jack but was “not equally certain that they will volunteer their services to the West India Regiments. Their bid is to obtain settlements in the British Colonies in [North] America.”76 Still, just in case, Sir Alexander insured that “on board the transport” from Virginia to Bermuda, carting the formerly enslaved, there were “detachments from West India Regiments” who were tasked to “recruit.” 77 By the spring of 1814, Admiral Cockburn realized that the slaveholders were taking “great pains” to “prevent the escape of the Negroes,” including “placing strong guards over them.” But he did not seem too bothered by these restraints, for he was continuing to enlist this heavily monitored group as “soldiers.” They were “getting on astonishingly,” he enthused “and are really very fine fellows”—particularly since he saw how energetic they were when “employed by us in attacking their old Masters” [emphasis in the original].78 “How uncommonly and unexpectedly well the Blacks have behaved in the several engagements in which they have now joined us,” he beamed. One had been wounded grievously, but this setback did not “daunt or check the others in the least but on the contrary animated them to seek revenge.” He was coming to rely upon them even more heavily since they were unlikely to desert, though he lamented, “I am sorry to say we have many instances of our Marines walking over [to] the Enemy.”79 This caused even more reliance on Negroes with guns.80 Meanwhile, by late 1813 more complaints were emerging from the Bahamas that troop movements northward to engage in the dismantling of Virginia were leaving the archipelago “defenceless.” In this context, the formerly enslaved fleeing to British lines—and emerging in redcoats, muskets in hand—could not have been timelier, providing Sir Alexander81 with more flexibility.82 As London came to rely even more on the West India RegiCan U.S. Negroes Commit Treason?

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ments in the face of an expansionist neighbor in Washington, this could only increase transatlantic conflict since the newer nation, which equated Africans with chattel, could only see this compelled maneuver as a deliberate affront, if not a violation of the law of nations. The logic of war was causing London to rely even more heavily on Africans, buoying the logic of abolition. After the war was declared, the authorities in Bermuda found it necessary to order the security measure that owners of sailboats remove “their sails and rudders every night” in the aftermath of an attempted escape by a U.S. prisoner,83 a group that was growing in the islands in goodly number.84 As the example of the Tucker family showed, there was much back and forth between Bermuda and the mainland, and the ultimate loyalties of the population of European origin could be questioned. But not so for the African. When Bermuda moved to form “volunteer battalions,” the authorities had to confront the prickly matter of what to do about the Euro-Americans who resided in this Atlantic paradise.85 By early 1815 about 700 Africans from coastal Georgia had found a new home in Bermuda, to the consternation of their former owners who traipsed there in a vain attempt to recover their “property.”86 The U.S. was also engaged in the dangerous game of battering Africans, then relying on them in their maritime fleet. During the war, captured U.S. ships, both merchant and man-of-war, were brought to Bermuda. Most had enslaved Africans or free Negroes aboard, sometimes both. Some of them wound up becoming redcoats or joining the Royal Navy.87 Others joined other Africans, including some from the republic, who wound up constructing the strategically significant dockyards in what had become the twin of London’s all-important base at Gibraltar.88 Of course, Bermuda had slaves of its own, who were straining to be free, and whose plight only seemed delightful in comparison to their counterparts on the mainland.89 Unlike London, the local population of European origin was deathly worried about the impact of upsetting the already tenuous demographic balance by bringing in so many Africans. The Legislative Council nattered on about the “magnitude of the evil” this was said to represent. Then they went further to argue that “our black population is the principal cause of the decrease of the white inhabitants,” which was seen as tragic. They thought this increased population was somehow “demoralizing to our own slaves,” and therefore wanted them sent to Halifax forthwith.90 But London could be excused if it viewed these colonists as suspiciously similar to those who had proven to be disloyal to the Crown a few decades earlier. London would have been further excused if it made a strategic shift 52

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in the colonizing project from relying so heavily upon Europeans, whips in hand, and instead heeded the call of abolitionists. By the fall of 1814, Governor James Cockburn of Bermuda denounced the “disgraceful and pernicious practice of desertion from His Majesty’s Service, which has been of late too prevalent in these islands.” He was correct in his view that this “evil” provided “manifest dangers” that “exposed” the colony. He was not wrong in his assumption that in a place as “isolated and limited in extent as are these islands, it is impossible that distortions can take place to any serious amount without the connivance, if not direct encouragement, of some of the inhabitants.”91 London would have been both blind and dumb if it had continued to rely exclusively upon a bunch of European colonizers whose loyalty was questionable. It did not take long for Bermuda to move to form an artillery company comprised of “Free Inhabitants of Colour.”92 In other words, London felt that in order to hold on to Bermuda, it had to broaden the base of this project, which meant distinguishing itself more sharply from the profile now represented by the empire of slavery headquartered in Washington. This in turn meant relying upon Negroes with guns and its ineluctable complement: hastening the pace of abolitionism. For, unlike their European counterparts, the Africans in this strategically sited British colony were less prone to accusations of being engaged in treason for the benefit of the slaveholders’ republic.

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4 The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

Paul Jennings was stunned. Born in 1799 on the estate of President James Madison, he had risen to become a “body servant” of this diminutive, ill-tempered man, whose face, he confessed unashamedly, he “shaved  . . . every other day for sixteen years.” As he recalled it, by the summer of 1814, “great alarm existed” because of the ill-conceived war that Madison had launched. The diminutive Madison, said Jennings, liked to be surrounded by “tall, strapping Negroes” (they were among the 100 he owned). But this curious homosocial predilection may have backfired when it turned out that this group was most likely to flee into the arms of the British. Jennings recollected that Madison took the time to review this black brigade in late August 1814, just before the marauding arrival of the redcoats, and, being a keen student of history, asked—as if not certain—if “his ‘Negroes would not run on the approach of the British?’” Shortly thereafter, dinner was served—just as the redcoats arrived at the White House. “People were running in every direction,” Jennings recounted, and “in the meantime, a rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House, and stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on.” Apparently, enslaved Africans were foremost among those claiming reparations for their years of unpaid labor. The redcoats too seemed eager to take advantage of the chaos they had created, for, he said, “they ate up the very dinner and drank the wines that I had prepared for the President’s party.”1 It was then that the British officer, George Cockburn, reported in a humdrum fashion, as if he were recounting a laundry list, the momentous sacking of the republic’s headquarters. It was on 24 August that Washington was “occupied by His Majesty’s forces,” as “the public buildings, docks, shipping, foundries, etc. were entirely destroyed. The opposition to our progress,” he said accurately, “does not appear to have been considerable” and “our loss 54

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consequently” was “trifling. Georgetown had also been taken & Alexandria remained at our mercy & is said to have offered one million of dollars as a ransom for her preservation.”2 For the “President & the Secretary of State” only “narrowly escaped being taken.” An added bonus were the Africans from the region who fled to British ships and would soon be “[in] the service of the West India Regiments” posted in Bermuda.3 The impression left on Washington was so profound that almost two hundred years later, in August 2009 tourists were still claiming that they could see pockmarks left by the ferocity of the British attack.4 As the British fleet approached its attractive target, official Washington seemed paralyzed or unable to mount an adequate defense, not least because it had to face the possibility of a simultaneous rebellion by the enslaved.5 Slaves who arrived in the wake of the redcoats’ pillaging,6 stayed to loot silver urns, decorative trays, and a candelabra, and did a fair amount of damage to the White House, the hated achromatic symbol of their oppression. Subsequently, a leader of the Maryland militia told Congress that “the arms of many of the enemy had fallen into the hands of the blacks” and further, they also took “advantage of the absence of men to insult the females and complete the work of destruction commenced by the enemy.”7 It was charged further that most of the plundering in the vaporized ruin of a city was conducted by the celebrating enslaved, as Washington was largely abandoned by residents not in the (usually) mudsill category.8 They were among the large number of enslaved Africans who welcomed the invasion and those who reportedly led the British to important sites they otherwise might have missed. One British officer recalled vividly former slaves demanding weapons so they could “cut massa’s throat.” While the British looted in nearby Maryland, a (formerly) enslaved African who was armed with pistols and a sword spent the night verbally tormenting his (former) master.9 John Stavely, also of Maryland, complained that he was “impressed at my house” by “two mulatto men” and “Negroes.”10 Unfortunately for these Marylanders,11 it was not only Africans who were defecting to the British side.12 Traditionally, according to the once enslaved African, Charles Ball, slaveholders “who wished to terrify their slaves,” threatened to “sell them to South Carolina.” Now it was the Africans who were doing the terrifying, and they were threatening to dispatch the once preening Euro-Americans to a site south of purgatory.13 Indicative of the vulnerability of Madison’s nation was the relatively small number of troops it took to sack the capital. Years later, Duncan MacDougall, who had served as chief aide to the conquering British general, still seemed The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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surprised that it took only a “force of four thousand men, having no cavalry and with only one six pounder and two three pounders,”14 who waltzed into the inner sanctum of power,15 that had been built by the very labor of the enslaved.16 Major General Joseph Dorst Patch, a retired U.S. officer, subsequently called the sacking of Washington the “worst disgrace in our military history . . . the flames that night could be seen for a distance of thirty miles.”17 There were tens of thousands of dollars of stated damage, including boats, guns, cannonade carriages, sloops, frigates, and gunboats, adding to the swelling debt of the republic.18 He should have recognized that U.S. forces were only notionally larger than those of the British, since their eyes and energies were diverted by the specter of rebellious Africans. Somehow the gloried founders of the nation had created a capital city of about 15,000, including about 3,400 enslaved Africans and almost 1,000 more “free” Africans.19 In so doing they had created a ruling center with a dangerously imbedded flaw in the person of Africans who had little reason to resist (and many reasons to support) an invasion. There were countless runaways guiding the redcoats adroitly to the center of Washington, so they could more effectively destroy the hated symbols of their misery.20 Mordecai Booth, a federal bureaucrat who was wandering the streets of the city on the fateful night in question, repeatedly encountered Africans about who did not seem overly perturbed by what was befalling Washington. Bumping into a flustered Madison, Booth seemed saddened to say that the president “looked careworn and weary.” Suddenly, Madison discovered that the British were searching for him, a prize catch indeed, and had “discovered a clue to his hiding place and were even on their way hither,” when “he sought refuge in a miserable little hovel in the woods,” a site more appropriate for the scores of enslaved Africans he owned.21 Assertiveness on the part of the enslaved gave rise to the real fear that the redcoats had instigated a slave revolt to accompany their invasion, for such a rebellion was deemed more awful by some than the arrival of the British forces. The British may have lit this fuse but it took little external prodding for the enslaved to understand that since their oppressors were under fire, rare opportunities were presented—and they should heartily participate in the detonation.22 Simon Schama argues that enslaved Africans in North America saw His Majesty as their “sponsor, protecter and even liberator”— and the events of 1812 had neither shaken this perception, nor eviscerated the resultant severe challenge to national security.23 56

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Actually,24 the U.S. Navy may have fallen for war’s oldest ruse—deception—for days before the plunder commenced, the head of this force thought that “appearances indicate a design on this place,” meaning Washington, “but it may be a feint to mask a real design of Baltimore,” a growing industrial center.25 Soon enough, reality dawned.26 Then there was the problem of coordination between state and federal authorities.27 Then there was sloth. Well more than a year before this incendiary invasion of the White House, Secretary of War James Monroe was informed directly that British agents were circulating freely in the region, including those deemed to be “zealous friend[s]” of the Negro, making all manner of promises to those willing to aid London. Their line was clear and subversive: “To put an end to slavery in this [country] is His Majesties [sic] design and that all who take up arms, shall, at the [close] of the war, be [entitled], not only to freedom, but to one hundred acres of land and supply of provision and clothes for five years thereafter . . . large number of slaves had then already promised to join His Majesties forces, soon as they should land in America!!”28 But how could Monroe (or Madison) act to reverse the decades of pain inflicted upon the enslaved by the republic of bondage without alienating slaveholders—even if the republic’s very survival was at stake?29 The president’s loquacious spouse, Dolley Madison, did not hold up very well under this strain. She was depressed and could hardly speak without emitting a vale of tears. She had remained in the city until a few hours before the British entered. But for some reason she was utterly confident of victory—until she heard the roar of British cannon and espied the rockets shooting through the air. Then she saw U.S. troops frantically scattering, as if from a breath of pestilence rather than a sophisticated foe. She retreated with what a friend of hers called, with a touch of unintended irony, “the flying army.” George Cockburn, like the conquering potentate he was, rode up and down the city’s broad avenues shouldered by imposing buildings on an old white mare with a long mane and tail. Dolley Madison’s friend, Margaret Bayard, recalled that “the consternation around us is general. The despondency”—the defining word of this episode—“still greater.” This miasma of gloom also enveloped the First Family. With horror, Bayard observed that it was “supposed between 4 or 500 blacks have been either . . . taken” or fled, while “muskets, cartridge boxes,” and more explosives “were found by [the] 100s and in possession of blacks.” Yes, she concluded with even more gloom, “society and individuals have received a shock it will require a long time to recover from,” as “no place seems safe.” Barely able to control her own flowing emotions, she told her correspondent, “excuse me for writing on The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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one subject only,” but understandably, “it is the only one of which we talk or think.”30 One U.S. national visiting what was called “Washington City” almost three years after its destruction, was still seemingly perplexed by what he witnessed.31 That passions could still be raw long after the fact was indicative of the trauma endured by the nation, which was forced to contemplate its fate and perhaps, its hegemonic system of labor. As it turns out, one response was to cleanse the nation partially—or at least parts of it—by constructing a new neocolony in Liberia (which would have the added advantage of countering its British neighbor, Sierra Leone, to which U.S. Negroes had been steadily flocking). It was understandable why Virginians in particular were simultaneously furious and bamboozled by the fall of the nation’s center of power, an event that seemed to portend the reclaiming of territory by the former colonial power and, perhaps worse, the empowering of Africans. For this entire period, beginning with the first talk of conflict with London, coincided with what was probably the most sustained period of rebellion by the enslaved that the nation had endured before or since. And Virginia and the Chesapeake and the region surrounding Washington—a notable target for the redcoats—was the epicenter of this eruption. By April 1812 a plot by the enslaved already was in the making, coinciding with militia preparations to confront distractedly the redcoats.32 This was occurring as the governor frantically abandoned Richmond,33 which was akin to a signal to the enslaved that the moment for revolt was propitious. A nervous Norfolk resident reported that if the “Enemy” chose to “land the same number of men they did at Baltimore—we are done. Norfolk must fall,” he stressed.34 The local paper there whined that “to take Negroes who were human beings; to tear them forever from their kindred and connections is what we should never expect from a Christian nation.” A hundred years later, a U.S. observer remarked in response that “indignation because of the taking of fowls and swine was not near so great as the indignation because of the taking of slaves.”35 The governor indicated as much when he returned to Richmond after a tour of the eastern part of the state, complaining of the “barbarous character” of “the enemy,” which had the audacity to inflict the “loss of slaves”—a catastrophe that meant “many persons in a state of affluence have been reduced to abject poverty.”36 Virginia’s besieged governor informed leading legislators of dangerous plans by London “endeavouring to effect by a secret agent the dismember58

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ment of these States, through all the horrors of a civil war.”37 In a sense this is precisely what occurred when enslaved Africans rebelled; that is, the settlers faced the daunting prospect of fighting simultaneously a de facto civil war combined with a foreign invasion.38 He was similarly distraught by the “rapes, rapine and murder” committed. “[S]uch foul deeds” and “acts of violence” were an outrage, he thought: the redcoats asserted that “the subjects of the rape were a few women of bad fame,” but this he adamantly denied. And if Africans were involved even the social demerit of these women could not liquidate the offense.39 Thus, when an enslaved African was convicted of “an attempt to commit a rape on a white woman,” the authorities rushed to provide the appropriate example, demanding that he be “castrated.”40 Outrage did not cease, however. “Private houses were plundered,” while “grey hairs were subjected to wanton outrage,” as “our respectable females were publickly [sic] borne off,”41 he charged. Weeks before the redcoats marched triumphantly into Washington, they were hovering on the outskirts of Richmond. James Monroe was advised that “two thousand militia” were desperately needed, as the “force of the enemy in the Bay is considerable” and “is perpetually increasing.” But where would these militia come from, since so many were needed to guard against the reality of enhanced restiveness by the enslaved?42 The scores of miles stretching from Philadelphia to Washington and further south were under extreme pressure. Even before Washington was sacked, Governor Simon Snyder of the Keystone State sensed what was in store.43 As Washington was smoldering, he anxiously warned his compatriots about the “powerful depredating foe”44 that hungrily awaited. The seemingly wise calculation that London would be so bogged down in Europe chasing Napoleon that it would be unable to focus on the U.S., was proving to be harebrained. The distinct possibility was arising that the new nation had met its own Waterloo.45 Just before the foray against Washington, Governor James Cockburn in Bermuda informed legislators that “peace between Great Britain and France has finally been signed, leaving to our Empire, Malta, Tobago, the Cape of Good Hope and the Mauritius.” The next stop was evident when he referred acerbically to the “unhappy policy and the wild and unjustifiable pretensions of the United States of America,” which required the “vengeance of the British Nation” and the “flames of war”46— which had engulfed47 the republic even before he declaimed.48 From heady dreams of seizing Canada and multiplying profoundly the territory under its control, the republic had to concern itself with the agony The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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of survival. Secretary of War James Monroe had proposed a 20,000 man army, with 10,000 more in reserve, for an invasion of Canada over which he would take command with a lieutenant general’s commission. But he apparently did not take adequate account of guarding his rear, which was to be bitten painfully by rebellious Africans.49 Meanwhile, in Canada the perception was further solidified that their neighbor was an inauthentic republic—or, alternatively, that republicanism itself was a fraud, as slavery was necessary for its implementation, rendering it hopelessly corrupt. This paved the way for Ontario opening its arms further to enslaved Africans fleeing republican tyranny, thereby amplifying the challenge to U.S. national security.50 That His Majesty’s employment of indigenous allies along the border was probably the single most important factor in the successful defense of Upper Canada in the face of an aggressive invasion from the south, only served to strengthen sentiment in Ontario that there was something fundamentally invalid about a republic that was based on the enslavement of Africans.51 When Buffalo, New York was left in ashes as a result of a fierce counterattack by an angry redcoat force—that apparently included a sizeable complement of Africans and indigenes—a stern message should have been transmitted to the republic as to the error of its ways.52 Abolitionist sentiment53 was beginning to proliferate, propelled in part by preexisting hostility to the southern dalliance with Napoleon and the concomitant sympathy for increasingly abolitionist London. While opponents of war were gathering in Hartford and Albany,54 the only states that cast unanimous votes for the war against London were South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This reflected the growing Anglophobia in Charleston and Savannah, driven relentlessly by the real threat that abolitionist London presented to the peculiar institution.55 Marylanders with sense, for example, should have recognized that there was something awry with their battling at Queenston to take Canada, while back in their home state the British and the enslaved were running amok.56 This revelation caused the state’s House of Delegates in February 1814 to inform Madison and Congress of their discontent.57 Ironically, the war of aggression launched from Washington had the dialectical impact of accelerating the development of a kind of Canadian nationalism, which, unlike the U.S., did not set itself apart necessarily from London, not least because of the real need for protection against U.S. expansionism.58 Simultaneously, abolitionist sentiment was solidifying north of the border, with ever more adamant refusals to extradite escaped “property.” Thus we 60

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see how this war boomeranged and fed sectional conflict in the U.S., hastening the arrival of de jure—not just de facto—civil war, of which trend London was well aware. As early as August 1812, the British consul in Newport, Rhode Island, was reporting routinely that the war was so unpopular in New England that they were quite reluctant to summon their militias, since they thought they would be “sent against Canada.”59 Strong anti-Washington sentiment in Canada was the upshot of this failed war, and much of this feeling was transferred to more legitimate abolitionist sentiment.60 As one Canadian put it looking back, during their invasion of his country U.S. forces “found themselves” in a “country so decidedly hostile that . . . their retreating ranks were thinned by the [denizens] firing on them from behind fences and stumps.”61 Many of those firing at the fleeing U.S. nationals were former forced African laborers, who had a special incentive to inflict pain on their hated foes.62 The sacking of Washington was sufficient evidence that the goal of the war—taking Canada—would not be reached and now the essence of victory would be defined as the more attainable goal of surviving as a nation. By August 1814, Charles Carroll of Maryland was warning that the “enemy are on the march from Washington to Baltimore,” and it was “probable that a deputation from the city will meet them before they enter the town and capitulate on the best terms they can.” The fabulously affluent Carroll, who apparently had made his own peace with London, advised somberly that “resistance will be fruitless and if made will only cost the lives of some valuable citizens,” plus “shipping will be destroyed.” Should Baltimore fall the “march” to Philadelphia would follow.63 Carroll’s pessimism about the new republic’s prospects was understandable. The U.S. was facing external battering from redcoats and internal weakening—the equivalent of civil war—by the enslaved.64 Baltimore was no stranger to unrest: for example, in 1812 the city endured serious rioting in which a critical element was the rioters’ attack on Negroes and property owned by Negroes, which hardly predisposed this group to join hands in defense of the republic.65 James Briscoe, a free Negro who owned multiple city properties, became an early target on the tellingly revealing premise that he was pro-British. However, it is hard to disentangle this perception from the wider feeling that Africans generally occupied this category, which was further entangled with the desire to punish individuals whose very existence violated class-cum-racial norms.66 Unsurprisingly, Sir Alexander Cochrane boasted confidently that “in an attack upon Baltimore I count upon being joined by a number of Negroes,” who he planned to “arm and employ as guides.”67 The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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The attack on Baltimore was part of an overall assault on the entire Chesapeake region in which 1,600 African troops with only 1,000 Europeans were to be employed. The object was to destroy the city’s naval yards and public stores of provisions and, it was noted pithily, “to cause an alarm among the white population” who feared most of all an “insurrection of the slaves.”68 That Baltimore, like other parts of the republic, was torn between those sympathetic—and hostile—toward France only served to weaken its defense against a British invasion.69 As late as December 1814, Philadelphia seemed to be in a similar state of distress.70 Similarly, in North Carolina71 militia arms were “in a tolerable state of use,” the governor was told, though they were aging, having been acquired in 1790 “to be used only in case of insurrection among the blacks, in which event they were to be distributed among the militia.”72 Then there was the other age-old problem: “[I]f an Indian war should take place,” Governor William Hawkins was informed, as conflict with London crept ever closer, “and the probability is that it will ultimately be the case, the frontier counties of this state will undoubtedly be very much exposed.”73 By late 1813, the Royal Navy was lurking off the state’s eastern shore and, it was reported, “agitation and alarm spread through every part” of the region.74 While British forces were actually planning to strike Baltimore, due north,75 the leader of the “Committee of Safety” in Wilmington, North Carolina, was bothering the governor with the notion that “their course may be directed to this part of the coast.”76 Though the U.S. failed in its chief goal of seizing Canada, the war was not a total bust as it led directly to weakening Spain, and ultimately swallowing the prize that was Florida.77 But Spain was not Britain, an obvious realization that dawned on Washington after the war concluded as the expansionist republic turned away from the challenge of seizing Canada to the comparably simpler task of denuding Madrid. The U.S. had opted for the considerably more difficult route of declaring war on the British Empire—and barely escaped intact. For having plundered Washington and frightened witless the entire eastern seaboard, London thought it had an opportunity to win the Gulf Coast, take New Orleans, then proceed up the Mississippi River valley and link it to Canada, which would have produced a rump republic. The battle of New Orleans—in which men of African descent played a pivotal role on both sides—thwarted this grand design.78 But it was not from lack of effort on London’s part. Major Edward Nicolls was sent to the Gulf Coast to recruit runaway slaves and form them into regiments to fight their former masters. By August 1814 he was in Pensacola 62

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and assumed virtual control of the town and proceeded to recruit nearly all the local slaves, who had sound reason to defect, for his regiment.79 Soon Andrew Jackson was told that settlements along the Gulf Coast had been destroyed by the British, that the troops were “chiefly black,” and that these included many (formerly) “belonging to the inhabitants of West Florida.”80 These words were confirmed by Arsene Lacarriere Latour, who had fled from revolution in Hispaniola and still wound up confronting armed and angry Africans. “It is an undeniable fact,” said this West Floridian, “that during the whole campaign the negroes were employed by the British in working for the army in general.” He seemed both stunned and confused by the British view of Africans. They “constantly refused to consider them as personal property, and seemed inclined to leave them at their own disposal.” With rising temper, he maintained, “surely such maxims can find no support in the law of nations.” This was “unjustifiable,” he argued as he calumniated London, since this power “scruples not to descend to the basest means, when such appears likely to contribute to the attainment of its ends.” The region was on edge and a “chief ” reason “for the success of operations in Louisiana” was “the insurrection of the Negroes.” Why? In a rationale that was to be repeated endlessly in coming decades, Latour charged that this abolitionism was driven by mercantile purposes—that is, “the British were bent on the destruction of a country whose rivalship they feared in their colonial productions.” These British ingrates, he asserted, had “cavalierly . . . secreted on board their ships nearly four hundred slaves, who had run away from their masters,” despite “severe remonstrances.”81 In nearby Alabama there occurred the infamous Fort Sims Massacre, which one scholar calls “the bloodiest single event between the white man and the Indian in the history of the nation.”82 Yet what was striking about this bloody event was that the governor of Louisiana charged that this was also a slave uprising,83 since a number of Africans participated in the slaughtering of Euro-Americans.84 Louisiana could not ignore the leaping flames in its vicinity. Andrew Jackson arrived in Pensacola in November 1814 with 3,000 troops, facing “British land forces” and indigenes in his sight. But, as he noted, he had to “leave this tomorrow for New Orleans.”85 These “British land forces” were busily recruiting enslaved Africans to join their forces86 and confront the future president.87 Once again, the U.S. seemed not to have sufficient forces to confront simultaneously redcoats, indigenes, and the enslaved, particularly when they banded together and dispersed over a far-flung land. Joseph Morgan Wilcox, a U.S. lieutenant eventually killed by indigenes, informed his father in The Enslaved Torments the Slaveholder

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December 1813 that “spies report that the British have offered to furnish the Spaniards with 2000 black troops for the defense of Pensacola,” which inevitably would mean a “bloody scene.” That he knew. For it was a few days later that he boasted of how his forces had “succeeded in burning Echanachaca (or Beloved Ground) which was one of the principal towns of deposit for corn and treasure in the Creek nation,” a “town that was defended by 120 Indians and Negroes.”88 Eyebrows and temperatures were raised when reports trickled in about Negro troops in redcoats patrolling Pensacola,89 with 300 more making their way to Mobile.90 Thus, as December 1814 approached Euro-Americans in New Orleans shuddered at what might occur there. Strict measures were imposed by the City Council to deal with those deemed to be suspicious. This could amount, disastrously enough, to strictures against those who performed most of the town’s vital functions, namely, the enslaved,91 who had numerous allies.92 The city fathers, well aware of the almost casual abuse of Africans, had reason now to be suspicious of their almost ubiquitous presence in a city Africans termed “The Nigger Hell.”93 Yet the embattled U.S. forces would have to rely upon Africans of varying hues in order to repel the invaders, a reliance made all the more necessary since as usual the militia was pockmarked by desertions, insubordination, and downright mutiny.94 Andrew Jackson, whose defense of this city catapulted him into the front ranks of leadership, recognized these two poles (a debilitated militia which meant more reliance on Africans) when acknowledging the contribution of the latter. But why should Africans, free or enslaved, ally with a nation whose very name signaled bondage while fighting a nation where abolitionism had taken root?95 Such doubts prompted Jackson to issue a still remarkable proclamation to “the free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana.” Circulated in September 1814, while Washington was still a leveled city and the entire eastern seaboard was in jeopardy, he stinted no sentiment in alleging that “due regard will be paid to the feelings of freemen and soldiers. You will not, [by] being associated with white men in the same corps,” he said unctuously, “be exposed to improper comparison or unjust sarcasm.”96 But sarcasm would be expressed by those Africans sufficiently naïve to fall for this slaveholder’s empty promises. James Roberts, born in Maryland in 1753, recounted the disillusioning story of Jackson recruiting the enslaved to confront the redcoats on the promise of better treatment—a promise promptly rebuffed after victory was proclaimed. Why such perfidy? Jackson, said Roberts, claimed in response, “Never suffer Negroes to have arms” for 64

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“if you do they will take the country. Suffer them to have no weapons over ten inches long. Never allow them to have a piece of paper with any writing on it whatever.” With a breathtaking cynicism, Jackson, said Roberts, claimed “never arm another set of colored people. We have fooled them now, but never trust them again; they will not be fooled again with this example before them.” Beyond fury, Roberts was stunned —as were so many other Africans—by this “monstrous deception and villainy,”97 a perception that ricocheted98 through the decades among Africans.99 Considering the dire straits in which his nation found itself, Jackson had cause to make promises to anyone naïve enough to accept them: so martial law was imposed on New Orleans and habeas corpus was suspended— as fears of slave insurrection spread—as not for the last time the lesson was deduced by too few that curbing the piddling rights of Africans could inevitably lead to curbing the robust rights of all within the republic.100

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5 “A Powerful Negro Army”

Eliza Chotard Gould was worried. Of French descent and born in 1777, she had fled from revolutionary Hispaniola to New Orleans and by mid-December 1814, she was beset with the reason for her flight in the first place: armed Africans. Meanwhile, others in redcoats were “trying to instigate the Negroes to insurrection, as they had basely done [with] the savages [aiding their] massacre of helpless families.” “Our sleeping was [as] irregular as our eating,” Ms. Gould cried, and “we never went regularly to bed. We had all pieces of gold concealed about our persons in case we should have to run.” But, she pondered questioningly, “we asked each other, in what direction could we run?” For “in front” there was the mighty Mississippi River but “not a boat” in sight and “the Negroes were above and an insurrection was dreaded there” and “the swamp was in back and impenetrable.” As Christmas approached, she confessed that her “pillow was wet with tears” and she and her coterie “wept” more copious tears, as they “walked” and “wrung” their “hands in terror,” wondering who would have the first opportunity to slay them—the British or the armed Africans bent on bloody revenge?1 Those like Ms. Gould, who had grown happily accustomed to the enslavement of Africans, had more than one reason to be concerned about this turn of events. In neighboring Natchez, James Moore’s premonition that this war would “be an unhappy thing for our country,” seemed to be attaining realization. He knew of a Negro conspiracy unfolding, with guns and powder taken from them: “[T]he heads of the plot are in separate confinement,” which was barely reassuring.2 Moore was planning to flee to South Carolina, given the dangers he sensed. “[T]here is every reason to suppose that this will be a troublesome place if the war should continue,” since “there are a great many internal enemys [sic] and it is reported the British have landed considerable force at or near Pensacola and the Negroes will be much against this country.”3 Rapidly growing Louisiana and nearby Mississippi both seemed to require a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bonded labor, and the war and 66

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the British ships cruising in the Gulf of Mexico had hampered the normal supplies transported from Cuba, the region, and Africa directly. The abolitionist movement had strained mightily to insure that as of 1808 the African Slave Trade would be hindered, if not abolished—a campaign that had hardly diverted the elite of this town. It was after 1808 that Governor William Claiborne petitioned Washington to allow European refugees fleeing Hispaniola to bring their slaves to Louisiana. In 1809 he personally approved importation of enslaved Africans. By one estimate, 10,000 former residents of Hispaniola came to Louisiana in the aftermath of the revolution.4 But London was pressing for a broadening of the abolitionist crusade, which was to culminate in a reckoning at the Congress of Vienna, a crusade given momentum by the battering administered to the major transgressor of these diktats—the United States.5 The invading British were struck by the assistance lent to their campaign by enslaved Africans. Benson Earle Hill, an artillery officer, recalled later being “accosted by a young Negro . . . who, in very excellent French”—possibly betraying the reality of having been dragged to Louisiana by Europeans fleeing unrest in Hispaniola—“implored me to order a collar of spikes, with which his neck was encompassed to be taken off.” Hill referred contemptuously to the collar encasing this unfortunate African’s neck as “this ingenious symbol of a land of liberty.”6 But the torturous maltreatment of these Africans was also symptomatic of the panic that descended on slaveholders as the war unfolded.7 Secretary of War James Monroe had warned presciently that a “powerful savage and Negro army, joined by the slaves of the country . . . will carry fire and sword” throughout the land. Now it was New Orleans’ turn to be punished—and to panic.8 Among those anxiously concerned about what was to befall them were those who alerted the slaveholder Jacques Philippe Villere—a future governor—and requested that he be “en garde,” acutely aware of an insurrection of Africans accompanied by a British invasion.9 More than a year before the British arrival, slaveholders were demanding the delivery of 300 guns in anticipation of an insurrection by Africans.10 As the redcoats were poised to level Washington, the cavalry in New Orleans was ordered to be prepared to confront an expected revolt by the enslaved.11 Henri de Ste-Geme,12 born in France, had moved to Hispaniola before being expelled and was reluctant to move from Louisiana. This “salty little rooster,” as Jackson described him, was hardly in a mood to flee once more13—though the redcoats and armed Africans would have a vote on his future.14 “A Powerful Negro Army”

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It needs to be understood that these slaveholders were not simply spooked by diaphanous phantoms. For in 1811, the region had witnessed what has been termed the largest slave revolt in the nation’s history, and in October 1812, months after war had been declared against Britain, coincidentally enough yet another substantial plot of the enslaved was uncovered. In November 1812 another conspiracy was exposed and 1813 brought no surcease, as it was rightly suspected that crafty Africans were seeking to take advantage of the pressure that had been placed on the slaveholding class by London. There also seemed to be an increase in runaways during this period, as individuals took advantage of the flux, and the fact that a number spoke French suggested an awareness, at least, of Hispaniola and all that it entailed for slaveholder fears.15 Louisiana led the nation in virtually every statistical category by which one might measure the impact of slave revolt, as 1811 suggested: frequency, magnitude, scope, cost. The level of these in other states seem puny in comparison with the Pelican State. Weeks after the crushing of the 1811 revolt, which, it was thought, had been sufficiently pulverizing to lessen restiveness for some time to come, a group of rambunctious enslaved Africans had hijacked a ship with the intention of sailing to the Caribbean. Journals in London had taken note carefully of the 1811 revolt and, no doubt, the high degree of unrest had affected their calculations by 1812. Louisiana had become a state a mere seven weeks before the war was launched. The sutures of incorporation in the union were hardly secure before they were being tugged on furiously by the enslaved.16 As January 1815 approached, London may have been overly confident, given the apparent weaknesses of the republic. Early in 1813, Sir James Yeo, addressing the First Lord of the Admiralty, was almost dismissive in noting that New Orleans was “not fortified,” while “almost the whole of their troops” had “been sent to Mobile.” Louisiana’s leading city was filled with “nothing but traitors and discontent,” he thought.17 But ironically what may have tipped the balance in favor of the embattled republic was the presence on their side of men of color—those whose very presence had been scorned virtually as a matter of law. Of course, many of these men had a reputation for not being particularly sympathetic to the enslaved and thus were less susceptible to being moved by the growing abolitionism in London, or the dearth thereof in Washington.18 Thus, Africans faced off in New Orleans against each other, though after the battle had ended it was those who fought under the stars-and-stripes who were to be ousted from the military.19 On the British side, there were 68

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the First and Fifth West India Regiments, who were given a prominent role in the assault.20 London had launched an enormous invasion—strikingly embarking from Jamaica, a nation made up mostly of Africans. There were sixty ships carrying more than 10,000 troops with New Orleans as its destination.21 By another estimate, of the almost 12,000 British troops at New Orleans, 1,400 were African.22 As part of their shock and awe strategy meant to immobilize Euro-Americans,23 London had designated African troops to be at the tip of the spear of the occupying force. So cocky was Sir Alexander Cochrane about the odds of victory that he downgraded the number of troops to be taken to New Orleans, feeling that enslaved Africans in the state in sizeable numbers could be organized quickly24 into armed regiments.25 But luckily26 for the U.S., these particular invaders were unaccustomed to the January frost that greeted them in Louisiana.27 “It is difficult to express how much the Black troops have suffered from the excessive cold,” said one officer, “which they are so little accustomed to.” Indeed, “several” had “died from mere cold” and others, all more accustomed to the tropics, had been weakened by the weather28 for which they were ill-prepared.29 Although the republic escaped extinction,30 grousing continued, heightening sectional tensions: while South Carolina, which had pushed for war relentlessly, contributed a meager 6,417 soldiers to the conflict, relatively dovish Connecticut contributed 32,039:31 More than two decades after the battle of New Orleans, Africans in Rhode Island were pondering this conflict—and Jackson’s broken promises—when considering whether it would be worthwhile to take up arms to defend local elites.32 The reverberations33 from the 1812 war continued to resonate,34 particularly in the fraught area of what later came to be termed antiseptically as “race relations.” For not only was the citizenry shaken by the realization that in maintaining enslavement they were harboring a dangerous fifth column, but London increased their anxiety by depositing U.S. prisoners of war in its island possessions, populated heavily with Africans, where these unfortunate Euro-Americans were often treated roughly and sternly by those they were accustomed to viewing as chattel.35 Tales of the abuse of their men in the islands36 outraged the U.S.,37 as it revealed to London the republican Achilles heel.38 Similarly, former U.S. slaves now resided in Bermuda, Nova Scotia, and particularly Trinidad,39 where their antipathy to their former homeland was a formidable barrier against Washington’s dreams of expansion.40 Already developing in Nova Scotia was a rising sentiment in Canada as a whole to define the colony in opposition to the United States. A few years after the “A Powerful Negro Army”

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war, slavery was virtually nonexistent in Upper Canada, which not only made it a magnet for runaway capital from the U.S. but also allowed London to fortify the high moral ground.41Although anti-Americanism in Nova Scotia involved more than opposition to slavery, augmenting its population of Africans with untamed grievances against Washington did little to stanch growing fury at the sight of human bondage.42 Likewise, the arrival in Bermuda of the newly emancipated from the U.S. bolstered abolitionism there, as it undermined settlers.43 With forethought or not, by relying so heavily upon Africans to confront its rising foe in North America, London had served to unleash an intimidating display of abolitionism. This was remarkable, given the number of slaves that toiled under the Union Jack. Shortly after the war concluded, a profound insurrection of the enslaved hit Barbados,44 and a few years later another occurred in Jamaica, spurred by talk in London of abolitionism.45 On the one hand, London would find it difficult to play the abolitionist card against the republic, while seeking to hide the same in its colonies. On the other hand, these slaves belonged to a settler class, which London had good cause to think were sympathetic to their counterparts in the U.S. and undermining them was a reasonable price to pay for the cost of abolitionism. There were more Africans than Europeans anyway in the islands and they had proven themselves to be the fiercest of opponents of London’s rival, the U.S. In Bermuda, for example, it did not take long for discussion to emerge about admitting evidence into courts of “Free Negroes and Free Persons of Colour.”46 After a militant display of unrest by the enslaved in Bermuda, His Majesty’s representative reminded one and all that “the Black Population have, like ourselves, every attribute of Man; not inferior in intellect or more degraded in mind . . . they are Men like ourselves in the eye of the Almighty.” Thus, all must “endeavour to ameliorate the state of the slave population, to the utmost extent of which it is capable.”47 And then there was Haiti, which had shown that it was not opposed to spreading its revolutionary message elsewhere. This could lead to a major loss for London in Jamaica. After the war Captain G.R. Pechell of the Royal Navy had traveled to Hispaniola and expressed nervous apprehension about what this militarized island meant for neighboring Jamaica. There was anxiety about whether some within the Haitian elite were too close to Paris, though the French flag was “not permitted” there. British goods “command a preference” and were “held in higher estimation” than those of peer nations, and British merchants enjoyed “the principal commerce.” “It nearly all centers on them,” he said smilingly, while “the Americans, Danes and Swedes” were lagging.48 70

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Like Bermuda, Trinidad also faced the prospect of an increase in its African population. One could well understand why Africans might want to move from the Gulf Coast to islands off the northern coast of South America, for in 1806 the governor was placed on trial for torturing a “Free Mulatto.” One could hardly imagine such an event occurring in the Slave South.49 Trinidad seemed to be the preferred site to place African prisoners of war (taken at Martinique and St. Lucia) who found it difficult to find homes elsewhere.50 Washington was worried about this growth of the Negro population in the islands, and the rumor soon emerged that they were destined for re-enslavement.51 Actually, Bermuda was interested in retaining the African refugees there, rather than dispatching them to Trinidad. But, as George Cockburn put it, there was “the failure of every attempt” to get them to stay there; the enslaved demanded to be “conveyed to Trinidad, there to be settled as many other[s] of their countrymen have been already established.” The further from the republic, the better. Cockburn also acknowledged to the Earl of Bathurst why selling these Africans into slavery was illogical, sensing that the “generous treatment which they have received cannot fail of making an impression throughout their community,” which would be “highly favourable to the British character & interest.”52 Furthermore, somehow the British concluded that the U.S. Negroes made better soldiers than the well-respected West India Regiments. Probably they had not judged properly that their ferocity in battle was due to their confronting their former slave masters and a nation they despised. Given their battered past, they were “particularly tenacious of promises made to them,” so “great caution must therefore be taken in that particular—nothing in the form of bad faith should be observed towards them.”53 The pro-London attitude of enslaved Africans was the mighty trump card held by His Majesty in confronting its former colony. Why should that be tossed away casually? U.S. nationals also sensed this disadvantage and moved to reverse it. One of this group, Edward Ironmonger, filed an affidavit claiming that these refugees were being traduced into slavery. Stung, Cockburn made the “most minute investigation,” and angrily concluded that a “group of palpable falsehoods was never [more] fabricated.”54 Writing in 1862, a Toronto writer cited a Norfolk source from that earlier time that confirmed Cockburn’s assertion that London would have contravened its interests by selling African defectors from the U.S. into slavery.55 William Smith, Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda, argued that the idea of such a trade in Africans was fanciful, and “no importation of Negroes from “A Powerful Negro Army”

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the coast of Africa into the islands [had] taken place within the last hundred years at least.” The heavy taxes imposed on such imports was suggestive of the authorities’ attitude. As was the case in other British possessions in the region, the “object of legislation” was “to discourage the increase of the black population.” Since the previous census in 1812 (he was writing in 1816) the number of Africans “has decreased upwards of two hundred.” There were then 4,583 Africans in Bermuda, which European settlers thought was quite enough.56 Thus, as early as 1815 the formerly enslaved of North America were trickling into Trinidad, many of them having performed valorous service in redcoats fighting their erstwhile masters.57 The largest group was from the Chesapeake, while others came from islands off the coast of Georgia and Florida, and still others from Louisiana. Quite appropriately, some had participated avidly in the sacking of Washington. Called “Merikins,” they were a validation of what had been thought to be a folk belief, namely, that redcoats would arrive to free them and arm them.58 It was on 23 May 1815 that these formerly enslaved persons from the U.S. docked in Trinidad. “They have nearly all expressed their wish to have a grant of land,” said Governor Ralph Woodford, “and I am preparing to comply with their desire.”59 A few months later, the governor greeted another ship from the U.S., this one with 58 (former) U.S. Negroes aboard, “principally from the Indian Country,” he added, meaning along the Gulf Coast. He said, “The number of old persons and children requires that the best ground should be assigned for their maintenance and I therefore propose placing them on some good land in Naparime [sic].”60 By late August 1815, Governor Woodford was summarizing the scale of this exile—404 men, 83 women, and 87 children—all involving “very heavy expenses” and all being settled on “preferred lands,” of “the best kind,” beyond the capital, Port-of-Spain. Soon “they were reported to be able to maintain themselves,” which, at least among resident slaveholders, had “excited at the same time considerable apprehension.” The governor, however, was pleased with “their orderly and peaceable demeanor,” which “inspires one with very different sensations”—yet another sign that the interests of the slaveholding class and London were drifting apart. One slaveholder—“an American Loyalist”—was quite worried about this influx: he made a “strong representation” about “this danger that he apprehends from the communication of these Negroes with those of his estate which is in Naparime.”61 They were given a choice,62 declared Governor Woodford, “of continuing their former employments as tradesmen” and “servants,” but “they unani72

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mously prefer[red] taking the lands and refused service.” One problem was the preponderance of men, which he deemed a “serious evil.” So he wanted “apprenticed Negro women from other islands” or those captured from illegal slave vessels to be sent there. There was the “hope” of a number “being enabled by their own labor to purchase the freedom of their relatives.” Cognizant of potential confrontations with other powers and the delight of these Africans of being rescued from U.S. slavery, he also was pondering the “propriety of establishing a military post in Naparime.”63 Concern about a perceived gender imbalance among the refugees meant that a number of women were captured from a French trader, then landed in Barbados and dispatched to Trinidad.64 By mid-1817, Governor Woodford reported that the refugees were “well settled.” They had “built themselves good huts” and many were “industrious” and had a “considerable quantity of land cleared.” Some were ill—they had come with a “want of shoes” and some had ulcers—for them he recommended “constant attendance.” Those who arrived in 1815 “appear very comfortable.” They wanted the “establishment of an English church,” though some preexisting settlers “would view any preferences given to the Americans in this as in other respects with great jealousy.”65 These Africans rapidly garnered a justifiable reputation as hard workers in Trinidad,66 as they constructed roads and toiled on sugar cane estates.67 It was reported that the Africans arriving from North America tended to “enjoy a change from their former condition: true, in America,” it was said correctly, “they did work for a hard task-master.” In fact, their adaptions to their new surroundings “have demonstrated clearly that free Negroes, although uneducated, can be useful citizens.” Indeed, their presence served as a formidable barrier against the strengthening of the more retrograde sentiments among the resident European settler class.68 Understandably, given the horrific slavery they had fled in the U.S., these sojourners were keen to express their appreciation to London.69 According to one observer, ultimately 1,000 Africans from North America migrated to Trinidad. Contrary to the widespread notion in Washington that they had exchanged one form of bondage for another, William Hardin Burnley of London declared that they were “provided for some time after their arrival with medical care and attention” befitting their new status as free individuals with a keen interest in defending the Crown.70 London had long contemplated Trinidad’s prospects, with the Haitian Revolution in mind. Far-sighted Londoners had accepted the revolutionary implications of Haiti and knew that resisting abolitionism in the Carib“A Powerful Negro Army”

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bean would be difficult, not least since it was assumed correctly that Haiti would view the continuation of slavery in its neighborhood as a threat to its own security. Thus, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was informed that “an independent Negro State would certainly be a less terrible neighbour to the British Sugar Colonies, if irrevocably hostile to France, than if under her influence and willing to promote her views.” Thus, it was noted in 1802 that abolishing the slave trade would serve to promote London’s strategic interests in the region. Though some sought to place more of the enslaved in Trinidad, the Chancellor was instructed to resist this impulse. “To found a new Slave Colony in that neighbourhood, seems . . . scarcely less irrational, than it would be to build a town near the crater of Vesuvius.” Instead, it was stated realistically, consider “Negro liberty in our new colony,” then augment a “new species of soldiery” based upon the broad shoulders of Africans, who had already shown themselves to be good fighters. As the slaveholding republic loomed as a threat to London, it was noted observantly that “of the fidelity of the armed Negroes there could in this case be no reasonable doubt; for the cause of Great Britain would be their own.” Moreover, it was pointed out expansively that these Negroes with guns “might perhaps enable us to overawe all the valuable settlements of France, Spain and Holland.”71 After the war, some writers in London were beginning to contrast the revolution in Hispaniola favorably with what had occurred in the aftermath of 1776, viewed as something considerably less than a lurch for liberty. Paris was chided for assisting this latter revolt. Whereas the U.S. was viewed as yet another bastion of the “English, white and proprietors,” Haiti was contrasted as being “in a widely different situation. They were all Africans, natives of the soil, Negroes and slaves.” The revolt of the latter was seen as righteous—that of the former as counterfeit.72 A fellow Londoner keenly noted that his nation’s future rested in alignment with Haitians, due to their “hatred of the French.”73 British attitudes about the U.S., already souring because of its brutal slavery accompanied by repetitive boasts about its liberty,74 did not improve as a result of the war.75 Adam Hodgson’s acerbic view of the republic was typical.76 Hodgson’s experience was of a piece with the complex postwar environment.77 London’s consul in New York declared that it was necessary to “contradict the constant theme” of U.S. liberty, which spurred emigration— and what better way to do that than by stressing the “constant theme” of U.S. slavery?78 A chastened U.S.,79 well aware of the exposed vulnerabilities that the victory at New Orleans could not conceal,80 realized that a new phase of conflict with London had begun.81 74

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The fury that gripped slaveholders, angry at the loss of their property in the years following the 1812 war,82 was particularly intense along the Gulf Coast.83 The hostility to London84 seemed to curdle in the mind of John Innerarity. He was born in Scotland in 1783 and thus had even more reason to resent the English. A towering six feet tall and possessed of a large frame, he had auburn hair and soft brown eyes. He arrived in North America in 1802. His uncle, William Panton, was a major slave trader and entrepreneur and Innerarity benefited nicely from his various businesses—then suffered accordingly when some of his prized human chattel fled to British lines. Perhaps his animosity toward London was heightened by the fact that he spoke French and had married a Frenchwoman who spoke no English. He resided in Pensacola in a massive brick house where leaders of the Creek Nation could be found, embroiled in various negotiations (it was there that their leader, Alexander McGillivray, died). These indigenes supposedly owed a huge debt to the Panton firm, which may have contributed to their subsequent alignment with London. There was nothing inevitable about Innerarity souring on London—he had served as British consul in Pensacola—but after his human chattel fled, he served as Vice Consul for France and was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor.85 Decades after Africans that were in bondage to him had fled he was still enraged at the loss, arguing that at least one of them was worth a handsome $1,400.86 Jacques Villere, who served as governor of Louisiana and was French besides, also lost human chattel to the invaders. Some were worth as much as $2,000 and the losses included a carpenter, driver, and coachman—a hefty loss of $52, 900 all told.87 A supporter of Villere attested that these slaves were “of the finest quality” and were “first rate African negroes accustomed to the climate.”88 Perhaps Villere should have been comforted by the fact that another member of the local elite, Pierre Dennis De Laronde, major general of the militia, also was deprived of his slaves by the redcoats.89 The severe losses suffered by those of Scottish and French descent served to underscore a proliferating Anglophobia in the republic.90 As with the aftermath of the 1776 revolt when Africans fled en masse, the 1812 war necessitated the replenishing of slave stocks.91 The increase in the illegal slave trade which followed brought further conflict with London.92 Surely there was no jump in manumissions93 following this war.94 There was further turnover of the African population when “colonizing” free Negroes abroad took flight. When a group of Euro-Americans in the Slave South met in 1818 to discuss “colonizing” certain Negroes abroad, they pointedly referenced a January 1811 letter by Thomas Jefferson drafted near “A Powerful Negro Army”

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the same time as a major slave revolt in Louisiana—pointing to his efforts to send Africans in North America to various sites, including West Africa and Brazil.95 According to one scholar, James Monroe—who had endured painfully the reality of confronting Negroes with guns—was the “most powerful participant” in the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1816.96 The capital of Liberia—Monrovia—carried his name, quite appropriately.97 Meanwhile, Africans in North America held a different view of Britain and Haiti than that held widely by Euro-Americans: within a decade of the war’s conclusion, an estimated 13,000 U.S. Negroes migrated to Hispaniola. During part of this crucial time, the island’s leader, Henri Christophe, flirted with making English rather than French the official language of the island, and changing the state religion from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism, to flatter and entice London. During this period London posted Charles Mackenzie, a diplomat of African origin, as its top diplomat in Port-au-Prince— this at a time when Negroes in the U.S. had difficulty acquiring citizenship, let alone receiving high-level posts.98 Finally, during this era a Negro press began to develop in the U.S., which drew heavily for inspiration and reports upon journals in Britain.99 These Negro journals, which praised British abolitionism, also had agents in Haiti, England, and Canada, sites not seen as friendly to Washington.100 After the war, slaveholders had to confront a certain restiveness among their remaining slaves, who had witnessed (or heard of) slaveholders fleeing from Negroes with guns and generally had seen the entire system of bondage in acute disarray. This unsettledness and brusque challenge to the status quo may have affected some Euro-Americans as well, for it was not long after the Treaty of Ghent had ended hostilities that a slave uprising in Virginia that resembled the more successful venture led by Nat Turner was bruited: apparently it extended from Fredericksburg to Richmond.101 Further south in Camden, South Carolina, a similar plot unwound in July 1816. A prominent slaveholder spoke of “the fear of an insurrection of the Blacks,” with only “interposition” saving them all “from destruction.” Their plan had been “in agitation since last Christmas,” as “it was their intention to have set fire to one part of the town and while the attention of the people” was diverted, the enslaved would “have taken possession of the arsenal which is filled with arms and ammunition and proceeded to murder the men but the women they intended to reserve for their own purposes.” This was “their own confession,” it was stressed. “Our jail is filled with Negroes, they are stretched to their backs on the bare floor and scarcely move their heads . . . six of the ringleaders are to be executed.” William Blanding’s cousin 76

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was “afraid to stay at home” and was considering exile.102 Those to be executed expressed no remorse: “[T]hey said they were in a good cause.” The regretless included a “professor of religion [who] said he had only one sin to answer for and that was he had [sat] down to the communion table with the white people when he knew he was going to cut their throats as soon as convenient.”103 It was a subdued U.S. that entered into negotiations to end the 1812 war, having failed to seize the sanctuary for slaves that was Canada, seeing its capital reduced to ashes, and barely escaping with sovereignty.104 At Ghent, Britain would not budge on the foremost demand: that human chattel be restored to its (former) owners. London knew that slaveholding was the locomotive of the republic and there was little incentive to bolster this budding rival where it mattered the most.105 Over the years, the U.S. doggedly pursued these claims for their lost human chattel, which only served to irritate all the more an increasingly abolitionist London.106 When the U.S. emissary, Richard Rush, met at 11 A.M. on 3 January 1818 at the private residence in London of Lord Castlereagh, he made it clear that his “first” priority was in “reference to the slaves carried off by English ships.” 107 There was a juridical basis for these claims because Russia, which served as the umpire recruited to settle the bilateral London-Washington dispute, ruled that the U.S. was entitled to “just indemnification for all private property which the British forces” took and which “related to slaves more especially.”108 But the intense wrangling continued, not least since London was moving rapidly toward seeing Africans as humans, not chattel, and Washington was not so inclined. Early in 1827, the parties agreed again and London vowed to pay “twelve hundred and four thousand, nine hundred and sixty dollars” to the U.S., though this hardly concluded the disputatiousness.109 The Treaty of Ghent, however, did state with clarity that the “traffick [sic] in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice” and Washington pledged that it was “desirous” of seeing its “abolition.” 110 This was no small concession, particularly since in coming decades U.S. nationals would become a major scofflaw in violating this sacred tenet. But the larger upshot of the war was to convince many in the U.S. that abolitionism—growing steadily in London111—was little more than a British plot (assisted by enslaved Africans and perhaps militant indigenes and feckless New Englanders) to weaken, if not overthrow, the slaveholders’ republic.112

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6 The British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

In mid-January 1819 Lord Castlereagh demanded that the U.S. minister, Richard Rush, make an “immediate” dash to his London abode, where Britain’s top diplomat was enduring a bout of gout. Rush was ushered into a dressing room where the man celebrated for bringing Napoleon to accountability was propped up on a couch. Yet the chilliness of that winter day may have been exceeded by the frostiness of Lord Castlereagh’s words as he upbraided Rush about the death of two British subjects in Florida. This was in the context of a war that, unbeknownst to the two men, came to be known as the “first” Seminole war (two more were to follow). In this conflict London was perceived by the republic as continuing its 1812 war strategy of stirring up Africans and indigenes against the U.S. Rush did not back down as he charged one of these slain subjects for being “patron of the Indians, penman of their petitions, the spokesman at their council,” which was not far from the truth. Rush contended that the two men were “taken in the field, fighting on their side,” meaning indigenes, “against the forces of the United States.” Unfazed, Lord Castlereagh advanced, reminding Rush that the dual executions were “exciting strong sensibility” in Britain. Rush did not have to be reminded of this, for he saw that “out of doors, excitement seemed to rise higher and higher. Stocks experienced a slight fall, under an apprehension of war with the United States.” The British press was in a frenzy and directed much of its fire toward Andrew Jackson: “He was exhibited in placards through the streets of London. The journals, without any distinction of party, swelled the general chorus.” Subsequently, Lord Castlereagh stressed to Rush that a “war might have been produced on this occasion, if the ministry had but held up a finger. On so slender a thread do public affairs sometimes hang!” As inflamed mobs called for Jackson’s head, U.S. and British diplomats were embroiled in increasingly contentious debates about slavery and com78

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pensation for slaveholders, the arguments being so heated that Russia had to play an ever larger role in arbitration. But there was a rudimentary conflict of competing outlooks as Washington “did not consider the original capturing of the slaves, under whatever circumstances, justified by the ordinary usage of war. The British plenipotentiaries,” he added drily, “did not accede to this doctrine.” Before his January conversations with Lord Castlereagh, Rush had taken the time to confer—extraordinarily, in retrospect, given the tender passions in the Slave South—with William Wilberforce, the epitome of rising abolitionism, whose realized goal could involve tremendous losses for slaveholders. Rush recognized that his interlocutor’s “parliamentary labours and those of his pen, had probably been more diffused over the United States than any other country out[side] of England,” testament to the utter dependence of abolitionism on the west bank of the Atlantic on its mightier counterpart in London.1 As it turns out, Rush’s dialogues with Lord Castlereagh and Wilberforce might have been a classic rendition of a sly “good cop-bad cop” interrogation, for London had shown that it could reach deep into the U.S. heartland, enlist Africans and indigenes against the government, plunder the capital, and potentially block the republic’s expansion, which was in the process of devouring Florida: the reformist Wilberforce could afford to be charming in such a context, just as Lord Castlereagh, holding more than one trump card, could afford to avoid tact. With the capital reduced to ruin, Washington knew that severe adjustments were required. Moving toward a regular army was a response2—though following Wilberforce was not yet in the cards. For shortly after Londoners were clamoring in the streets against the misdeeds of General Jackson, legislators in Kentucky petitioned Congress urging the solons to take a sterner view of Canada’s warm reception of runaways and demanding direct negotiations with London on this fraught front. A few years later Secretary of State Henry Clay proposed various arrangements to the British on this matter, but was met with a cold shoulder.3 The same year as the Rush-Castlereagh tete-a-tete, Tennessee slaveholders seeking to have their human property returned from Canada were flatly refused. Increasingly in Canada, Africans were closer to equality than they were south of the border and were accorded full “citizenship” rights after a three-year residency, whereas the U.S. lagged far behind until after a bloody civil war. The Detroit River was coming to be seen as the “River Jordan” and, as one scholar put it, “white Canadians on the whole did not seem to evince the same degree of racial animosity toward blacks as did many white Americans.”4 The British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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British travelers continued pouring into the U.S., departing with ever more bitter appraisals of the republic, further complicating already fraught bilateral relations.5 Tart opinions of the republic were congruent with the growing abolitionism in London.6 Slavery was “truly appalling,” sniffed one Londoner, reflecting a growing consensus within the Empire.7 Flaying the republic, particularly concerning the impact of slavery on sexual mores,8 was becoming a national sport9 within the Empire.10 Canada was key to London’s position in North America, where a strategy of alliances with Africans—and to an extent indigenes—was employed as a means to contain the U.S. A self-described “British Traveler” explained this doctrine in 1816: it was “impossible for the Americans to guard against predatory incursions,” “even New York is not impregnable,” he boasted. Thus, if London held Canada “in a proper military condition, “no state in the Union could be secure from an irruption from thence into its very interior, if occasion required.” It was “now a fact well understood that the friendship of the Indians to this country, when engaged in American war, is of the most decided advantage,” and it made good sense for London to resist “American policy” that was “directed toward the total extermination of the Indians.” Hence, in addition to allying with indigenes, London must accelerate an entente with “fugitive Negroes, who absconded from the plantations in the Delaware and Chesapeake and who are now in Nova Scotia as British free subjects.” “[H]ire them as overseers,” he suggested. Their liberties being duly guaranteed, they would no doubt readily embrace London.11 Despite the admonitions of these sojourners, many Britons were voting with their feet, hopping on board vessels heading westward with ever increasing enthusiasm. London’s Manhattan-based consul was told by the Foreign Office in late 1816 about an increase in the “number of British subjects migrating” to the U.S. He sought to redirect them to Canada,12 with mild success at best. This was “Evil,” said Britain’s consul in Boston. In November 1818 he reported that “several vessels” had just landed in Massachusetts with “hundreds of passengers.” He added that “passengers appear to have been deceived as to the real destination,” for “mutinous passengers” had “threatened to murder the Captain, confine him to his cabin,” then “compelled the crew to steer for the United States”—even though Quebec was supposedly the destination. This was the result of a “secret understanding between the charterer and the passengers that the latter should mutiny at sea and take her by force into the United States.”13 But London’s desire to conciliate indigenes and appeal to Africans made it more problematic for these potential Canadians to obtain huge swathes 80

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of land, stocked with Africans to do most of the hard labor. This probably caused London to push the abolitionist agenda even harder, making the best of a problematic situation. Moreover, with people constant departing from British ports, it became even more essential for the British Empire to effect an entente with Africans, particularly those in the backyard of their growing rival, the U.S. This sheds further light on the “Negro Fort.” In this context, British abolitionism made good moral and strategic sense. Opposition to the African Slave Trade, which the U.S. supposedly abjured, would deprive this rival of increased manpower.14 Euro-Americans did not accept this London critique lightly, as they had their own sharp differences with British policy.15 A fiery militancy16 had developed in the U.S. South particularly, borne not least by the violence needed to repel redcoats, subdue indigenes, and enslave Africans. As the sensitive Ghent negotiations were reaching their climax, for example, representatives of the Mississippi Territory—where these attitudes were in the ascendant— spoke bluntly of their “lively indignation” at the “haughty propositions made by the Ministers of the British government.”17 What was upsetting the Mississippians, in a sense, was infuriating others in the republic, for it was precisely at Ghent that Washington’s delegates expressed indignation at London “exciting a portion of the population of the United States, under the promise of military employment or of free settlement in the West Indies, to treachery and rebellion.” This rebuke was signed by John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Albert Gallatin in a remarkable display of cross-sectional unity.18 Yet this fury could not mask the weaknesses of the republic. For the leakage of enslaved Africans was not only northward to Canada: as the RushCastlereagh confrontation suggested, they were also fleeing southward. The British had primed the pump by deluging Africans along the Gulf Coast with handbills, offering them land in the West Indies when the fighting ended, and guaranteeing their freedom besides. Further, they trained and armed hundreds of indigenes and Africans for confrontation with U.S. forces,19 a point of pride among some Londoners.20 Those known as the Seminoles of Florida represented the zenith of Negro-Indian cooperation, though they were hardly unique. For some time there had been a fluidity of identity between these two groups, some identifying as one or another, depending on the circumstances. Besides, persons of African descent at times acted generally as go-betweens and interpreters on behalf of indigenes in their dealings with others.21 The Seminoles also represented a high point in indigene collaboration with the British. In 1819, delegations were arriving in the Bahamas from Florida,22as hostilities with U.S. The British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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forces accelerated.23 The leader of the Creek Nation, “Frances Hillishago,” had also been to London to lobby for restoration of lands thought to have been restored by Ghent. Spanish garrisons also had an interest in supporting indigenes against rampages by Euro-Americans.24 The fabled “Negro Fort” was equipped on the Apalachicola River near Pensacola by the British during the 1812 war and rapidly was garrisoned by runaways,25 aided by indigenes. This encampment was both a magnet for runaways and a suspected base for depredations against U.S. soil. It was thought that cities as far afield as Savannah were affected, and Pensacola, General Jackson was told, was “defenceless” and remained in “constant dread.”26 Its sprawling presence was a magnet for various dissidents.27 Located enticingly a mere 25 miles from the Gulf Coast, the fort28 was well designed and strongly constructed, with a parapet about 25 feet high and 18 feet thick. On a high bluff, it had a riverlike moat in front and a large creek just below, a swamp in the rear and a small creek just above, which rendered it difficult—though not impossible—to attack.29 It was the militant General Jackson who argued forcefully that the Negro Fort, erected near the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, was being strengthened by London and that it represented a clear and present danger to Euro-American settlement.30 The fort was a magnet for dissident Africans31—but many runaways fled further south to the Bahamas,32 some making it to Cuba where the Spanish also saw an advantage to winning over refugees from the Slave South.33 The republic had to consider that unless they subdued Spain in Florida—minimally—the chances of their being crushed by Britain and these European powers’ African allies would increase. Distressing to the republicans in this context was that during the war the Royal Marines had raised three companies of Africans recruited from the ranks of runaways and slaves liberated in Pensacola. Also part of this equation were residents of indigenous Creek and Seminole nations, both known to have Africans within their ranks.34 Jackson’s attack on Pensacola was seen not only as a prelude to the battle of New Orleans but also as a precondition, given the strength amassed there by the British.35 Weeks after the formal end of the 1812 war, Madrid’s emissaries visited the Negro Fort and offered amnesty to 128 Africans there. But only 12 of the 250 there accepted, suggesting that force would be needed to evict them all.36 “The Spanish Minister, De Onis, has a number of agents in this country,” said Thomas Sidney Jessup in August 1816, who were “organizing a revolution.”37 He could have added that Spain contemplated fomenting a slave revolt in 82

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the U.S. South to distract the republic’s attention and impede its advance to Florida.38 Surely, when James Monroe formulated his famed doctrine, it may have occurred to him that it had utility in hampering the ability of Europeans to catalyze revolts by the enslaved in North America.39 British military leader George Woodbine, a man of European origin who had roots in Jamaica, took a direct role in drilling armed indigenes and Africans with the objective of merging what was occurring in Florida with the general wave of unrest that was then sweeping through Latin America. Major General Edmund Gaines of the U.S. forces complained that the “notorious Woodbine” was again at the “mouth of the Apalachicola,” and had “an agent now among the Seminole Indians and Negroes in that quarter stirring them up to acts of hostility against this country.”40 At the Negro Fort41 were hundreds of Africans and some indigenes, notably Choctaws,42 buoyed by London which in turn was being pushed by abolitionists.43 The (former) U.S. Negroes among them had settled along the river and were reported to have corn fields extending nearly fifty miles along it. A number of them were in active collaboration with the Seminoles.44 They had cattle and corn and the means of subsistence. They also harvested potatoes, peas, beans, and rice and had neat gardens with plenty of fruit and vegetables.45 Official Washington was vehement in its denunciation46 of this setup.47 British officials were accused of causing the desertion of enslaved Africans48 from their misery.49 In the summer of 1816 a contingent of U.S. troops detonated an awful explosion at the fort; the scene was “horrible without description,” said one observer, as hundreds of indigenes and Africans perished. Also destroyed was an impressive cache of “three thousand stand of arms, from five to six hundred barrels of powder and a great quantity of fixed ammunition, shot[s], shells.” A number of the Africans escaped at the last second to a nearby Seminole camp, living to fight again.50 As Washington saw it, key to British plans in Florida were Robert Armbrister, son of a Carolina Tory, who had become a leading figure in the Bahamas, and Alexander Arbuthnot, who also hailed from this archipelago, which was emerging as a beachhead against the further expansion of the expanding U.S. In 1818 they were executed at the behest of Andrew Jackson.51 Reflecting the discontent in the streets of London about their death, Congress furiously debated these events.52 Powerful U.S. slave traders in the Gulf region knew about Arbuthnot’s activism. Early in 1817 he inquired on behalf of indigenes as to why EuroThe British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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American settlers were descending into the Ochlockonee River basin and the southern reaches of the Chattahoochee River, and driving poor indigenes from their land. Taking the role of a tribune, he questioned what he saw as the inertia and passivity of London’s delegate in the U.S. in the face of this encroachment.53 He informed this diplomat directly of his scorn for the wanton aggression of Euro-Americans against the Creek Nation in particular.54 He made no secret of his representation of this nation and requested that other British officials lay their complaints before His Majesty’s government.55 Then moving on to the territory of the Creek Nation, he denounced the fact that Euro-Americans were flocking to this land, provoking the indigenes into a violent response.56 A few months later he was warning of the impending arrival of General Jackson, who, he said, wanted to destroy the African population of northern Florida.57 Jackson saw things differently, informing the ostensible Spanish overlords of this region that the U.S. South was being exposed to attack from Florida by the Creek Nation and disgruntled Africans, who had fled enslavement. This provided justification for violation of the territorial integrity of what was to become an important state in the republic.58 Arbuthnot objected vigorously.59 Washington’s suspicions about him would have been confirmed if they had been able to read his letters to Charles Cameron, governor of the Bahamas. In fact, said Arbuthnot, “Bowlegs, chief of the Sahwahnee,” had “rendered equally essential services as any of the other chiefs to the British cause, while at war with America and was at New Orleans with a part of his warriors.”60 Indicative of the esteem in which he was held was the fact that Arbuthnot was granted “power of attorney” by ten indigenous leaders.61 Leaders of the Creek Nation, in response, petitioned the Bahamas about their “heavy complaints” against Washington.62 Finally, Washington had had enough. When Arbuthnot was given a perfunctory trial—before his prompt execution—a chief prosecution witness threw gasoline on the already raging flames by stating that the defendant “appeared to be a person vested with authority among the Negro leaders and gave orders for their preparation for war, providing ammunition” and “that the leaders came to him for orders.”63 That these British subjects owed no allegiance to the U.S. and were on Spanish soil besides was viewed as an irrelevant detail, when the moment arrived to suppress them.64 As for Armbrister, the Washington writer accused him of the ultimate sin: being pro-African. “In addition,” he charged, seemingly stunned, “[Armbrister] commanded a corps of Negroes in person.”65 Few tears were shed in Washington66 when he was executed peremptorily.67 84

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The 1812 war had flowed almost seamlessly into what came to be called the First Seminole War, suggesting to Washington that London68 saw signing peace treaties as a simple tactic to keep a foe off balance,69 while war was grinding on.70 When Jackson descended on Florida in 1817 it was Spanish territory, though Washington’s desire for this territory was an open secret. Florida had retained its status as a refuge for runaways and ending this status was one of his main goals—though Washington knew that London would not view with equanimity the U.S. creeping ever closer to the Bahamas and their colonies in the Caribbean. This realization contributed to Jackson’s accusation that Armbrister, in particular, was the actual commander of the African and indigenous resistance in Florida.71 That this dustup ended with Florida becoming U.S. territory a few years after the destruction of the Negro Fort was indicative of how muscular foreign policy had not withered with the 1814 sacking of Washington, and that protecting African enslavement was a driving force behind that policy.72 In early 1818 John C. Calhoun, whose hawkish views had helped to drive conflict with London, Africans, and indigenes alike, was informed about the peril presented by armed Negroes assembled near Amelia Island, off the coast of northeast Florida. But even more dangerous was the rumor that a regiment of Africans was about to be discharged in Jamaica and was to move to Tampa Bay.73 Such dangerous possibilities had not eluded General Jackson’s attention either.74 Calhoun, who was named after an uncle murdered by loyalists in 1781, required little prodding when it came to confronting London and proceeded according to this script.75 Returning the disfavor, the Foreign Office derisively referred to John Quincy Adams as “the Animal” who “bit” when “he thought he could do it with most effect.” Consul James Buchanan complained in 1818 about the “steady hostility that pervades” Washington’s approach to his nation—and he was not exaggerating. There was “commercial warfare,” often a prelude to the military variety.76 In this overheated context, London held certain advantages, not least its relations with Africans, including their preeminent representative in Hispaniola, which was not far distant from the prize that was Cuba. Wilberforce’s close comrade in the abolitionist trenches, Thomas Clarkson, was in close touch with the U.S. Negro, Prince Saunders, who was a key figure in the attempt to expatriate many of his compatriots in Haiti. Clarkson suggested that he also consider establishment of “an independent colony, to the farthest limits of the United States,” or “sending them away thither to live by themselves but as subjects of the United States and to be represented on the The British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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floor of Congress.” For, he stressed further subversively, the U.S. “is as much their country as it is that of any white man whatever.” But perhaps sensing the immediate impossibility of that which he proposed, he conceded that as a homeland “I should greatly prefer Haiti to Africa.” But he remained suspicious of the “real motive for sending the free people of colour out of the United States at all,” which then was the essence of the expatriation movement.77 Saunders signaled where his allegiances rested when in 1816 he outlined his plans for expatriation in London, not New York or Philadelphia, and openly identified himself as an “agent” of Haiti. “O happy England!” he effused. “To thee most appropriately belong the exalted appellations of protectress of the Christian world; the stronghold of rational freedom; the liberatress as well as the genuine asylum for oppressed humanity.”78 Clarkson’s counsel was heeded. The president of Haiti, Jean Pierre Boyer, welcomed U.S. Negroes “who are compelled to leave the country” since, “far from enjoying the rights of freemen, they have an existence, precarious and full of humiliation.” This, he said movingly, “entitles you to the gratitude of the Haytiens who cannot see with indifference the calamities which afflict their brethren.”79 He also sought to aid those trapped behind enemy lines in North America. Reaching out to Charles Collins in New York, he directed his “Secretary of State to the Republic to send you fifty thousand weight of coffee, begging you to sell this commodity and after having realized the proceeds, to keep them on account of the Haytien government. This fund,” he said generously, “and others which shall be added to it, are destined to facilitate the emigration of such individuals of the African race, who, groaning in the United States, under the weight of prejudice and misery, should be disposed to come to Hayti.”80 Bringing thousands of U.S. Negroes to Hispaniola—which is precisely what occurred—was not trivial in light of their brooding resentment of the U.S. and their new home’s impressive military traditions. That Boyer’s interest was not merely abstract was revealed when he dispatched an agent to Philadelphia to stir interest in expatriation. This man, identified as “Citizen J. Granville,” told those assembled that he was well aware of the “several hundred thousand individuals of African blood, who on account of the dark hue of their complexions, are objects of all the prejudice and prepossession that can arise from difference of colour.” He lamented the “wretched existence” of “these unhappy victims of prejudice.”81 Tellingly, between 1820 and 1860 about 20 percent of the free Negro population of the U.S. exiled themselves from this nation (though most arrived in Canada).82 The U.S., battered ferociously by the British only recently, could hardly ignore the enmity of Haiti, a fellow republic it adamantly refused to recog86

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nize. Already British guns were pointed at the U.S. from the north in Canada, the east in Bermuda, and the south in the Bahamas, while the Caribbean Sea appeared to be a lake of London. Adding Hispaniola to this mix was not helpful, but acknowledging a nation that was born in a revolt against slavery was a bridge too far to cross at that time. A British traveler suggested the complexities faced by Washington when he visited the region in 1815 and asserted that “the Caribbean Sea is now dabbed all over like a painter’s palette with corsairs of all colours—black from St. Domingo, brown from Cartagena, white from North America and pea-green from the Cape de Verd islands [sic].”83 This was the complex backdrop to the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, which if effectuated could have neutralized British intervention in the hemisphere, particularly as this action pertained to abolitionism. In 1826 Congress resounded with debates about the efficacy of participating in a hemispheric confab in Panama. Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina objected, since he saw this gathering as part of an attempt to internationalize the perceived domestic matter of slavery. “On this subject,” he intoned, “we committed an error when we entered into treaties with Great Britain and Colombia for the suppression of the slave trade,” which he now claimed had been negated. “Least of all ought we to touch the question of independence of Hayti,” he argued, for newly emerging regimes in the region were “looking to Hayti, even now, with feelings of the strongest confraternity.” This initiative contravened not only U.S. policy, but flagrantly contradicted the U.S. gestalt, its very Weltanschauung. Why, he said disbelievingly, “you find men of color at the head of their Armies, in their Legislative Halls and in their Executive Departments.” Hence, “our policy toward Hayti is plain. We never can acknowledge her independence,” and further, the U.S. must “protest against the independence of Hayti.” 84 “If we assent in the Congress of Panama, to a recognition, however qualified,” said the similarly powerful Carolinian, James Hamilton, “it shakes the South to its centre.” As for Haiti, its “independence is not to be tolerated in any form,” he said sneeringly.85 In stark contrast, London sent as its top diplomat to Haiti a man of African descent—which, in U.S. eyes, gave the Empire the appearance of being engaged in racial treason or unforgivable opportunism. But for London it was smart politics,86 and a bow to its ever increasing abolitionist movement.87 It was becoming increasingly difficult for London to rationalize the enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean while bashing Washington on similar grounds, while seeking to appeal to U.S. Negroes. One way out was to mark U.S. slavery as a scandalously horrific thing apart, which is what parThe British, Africans, and Indigenes versus the U.S.

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liamentarian John Gladstone alleged in 1824.88 Mr. Gladstone may have been impelled to this conclusion by the unrest that was sweeping Britain’s Caribbean possessions, which called into severe question the prevailing system of slavery and was driving London further89 toward abolition.90 Another tactic was to accede to the staffing difficulties of a far-flung empire by sending men of African descent to sensitive sites. Arriving in Haiti in the 1820s, Charles Mackenzie, a man who would have been defined as a Negro in the U.S., was impressed with the site of his posting. He encountered a “considerable number of emigrants from the United States.” He met with about 60 of these expatriates, who had “been liberated from the Southern States by a Society of Quakers.” They chose “to tell me freely, as I was an Englishman, all they thought and felt.” They were “altogether a healthy set of black men, women and children.” “Throughout the island I met with the greatest hospitality,” he declared, “partly [due] to the general popularity of my country among them.” The “liberality”of London, particularly in the charged realm of abolition, “had endeared it to the Haitians; and there is, I believe, no small portion of them who look up to Britain as the only power that could and would protect them in any difficulty. This impression I found very strong everywhere,” he asserted.91 Haiti was becoming an early Pan-African symbol,92 attracting Africans from the hemisphere, virtually all imbued with an abiding hatred for slavery. This created an opportunity for Mackenzie and London, just as it posed a peril for Washington. It was not just free Negroes who were moving to the Caribbean republic, though the crackdown on them in cities like Washington were forcing many to flee.93 As Mackenzie was settling in there, also arriving from Florida were—according to their erstwhile master—“six prime African men, my own slaves, liberated for th[e] express purpose” of sending them to Haiti.94 Then in 1825 Loring Lyman of Oneida, New York, journeyed to Haiti. He too visited “several settlements of emigrants” drawn from Africans formerly residing in the U.S., who had been “provided with horses & companions for guides and interpretation by govt. officers.” Impressed, he said, “I am treated in the most respectful and friendly manner and furnished with all I need, even money.” The reason was evident: “[T]here is an interest taken in the emigration beyond my anticipation,” and this warm embrace went beyond Lyman to encompass “the emigrants” who “too receive an attention they had no reason to expect & advantages for settlement far beyond” what they expected. Lyman and the Negro emigrants were received “with the familiarity of an intimate” by Haitian leaders, keen on attracting skilled Africans. 88

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When he visited a local governor, Lyman found him “in his large hall, where he usually receives his guests, reading a pamphlet on the slave trade and Sierra Leone. It furnished the first topic of conversation and was dwelt upon by him with much interest,” a dialogue not designed to reflect positively upon Lyman’s native land. But the New Yorker was heartened to find in Haiti “many who [have] taken an interest in the subject of the slave trade to such a degree as to excite my admiration. I did not anticipate so much and it has been most gratifying to me.” Coming from the colossus of the North, despite his progressive sentiments, Lyman was surprised to find that the leader he was addressing had a “complexion” that was “quite dark and nearly genuine black.” But the impression he made on him was overwhelmingly positive: “I cannot repeat the various expressions of friendship I receive[d].”95 Thus, in the contestation between London and Washington, the former was advantaged in that it had positive relations with what amounted to the ultimate “Negro Fort,” that of Hispaniola. Nevertheless, Hispaniola was being augmented regularly by a steady stream of Africans from the U.S. itself. This was weakening the latter nation, which responded by turning a blind eye to the importation of more Africans from the continent and elsewhere. As a result, abolitionist sentiment in London was heightened, thus accelerating what amounted to an irrepressible conflict.

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7 Revolutionary Implications

Charleston was astir. This South Carolina metropolis long had endured ideological currents flowing from the Caribbean and London. But what was occurring in 1822 was a slave conspiracy led by Denmark Vesey,1 which was said to have been inspired by Haiti.2 The rebels’ intent was to sail for Haiti based on a presumed promise that there they would receive protection. Vesey, a seafarer, had traveled widely and reputedly spoke fluent French. Some of the witnesses had the audacity to speak French at the trial, while the record revealed that “some white men” helped to fan the flames of insurrection. One of these was William Allen, described as a “tall, stout, fine looking sailor, a Scotchman by birth, about forty-five years of age,” who spoke with a “strong Scottish dialect” suggesting his recent vintage in North America.3 The conspiracy involving Denmark Vesey was viewed by those who held slavery dear as further evidence of the powerful alliance they thought they were confronting4—that between Haiti and Great Britain.5 Mary Beach of Charleston was outraged by this turn of events: “I shall never be able to bear the sight of a Negro again,” said this Euro-American, “& if I go (or live to go),” she stressed tellingly, “to the Northward, I never will have one about me & at present [I have] almost I may say a hatred of them all.”6 More than this, she was incensed by the fate that awaited those like herself: “[T]he Negroes even had a report that the black women were to be put to death that the men might have white wives, some say all the young ones [would] be spared & the old women & children put to death.”7 It is unclear if Ms. Beach was still in Carolina when a few years later yet another insurrection of Africans was discovered in three counties in neighboring Virginia. “It appears to be a general thing,” the governor was told: “all the jails are crowded with Negroes,” while “the information derived is from numerous sources and seems too authentic to be questioned.”8 But again, the surrounding atmosphere was a factor, as the air was thick with discussions of the fate of slavery in the state—discussions motivated in no small way by the 90

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transatlantic abolitionist waves crashing ashore from Britain.9 And in 1830 Negroes were again on trial for insurrection in South Carolina.10 Similar sentiments were voiced by Nat Turner when he launched an armed assault against slavery.11 When Samuel Warner chose to write about this profound event in the year of its occurrence, he raised the specter of the Haitian Revolution in the first sentence of his book.12 Another novel on this event used the term “Englishman” as a virtual epithet and, of course, compared the revolt to what befell Hispaniola.13 A crisis of slavery in the republic, symbolized by the names Vesey and Turner, was buoyed by growing abolitionism in London that culminated in 1833.14 The abortive insurrection symbolized by Vesey in particular was one of a number of turning points in the battle against the slaveholding republic. Even if the aid from Haiti and inspiration from London were not as evident as it appeared, that it would be invoked was indicative of how U.S. slavery had continued to leap its geographic boundaries and was of concern to a broader constituency. The conspiring emerged only a few years after the 1812 war, which should have convinced even the most unobservant that the Africans in the U.S. had allies. Then the fierce debates over slavery involving what became known as the Missouri Compromise further stirred the abolitionist pot. It was then that Congressman James Tallmadge argued that in prostrating itself before the altar of slavery, the U.S. threatened to invalidate the principles that led to separation from London, rendering the nation illegitimate. This conclusion had long since been reached in London and by Africans: the U.S. failure to restrict slavery in Missouri most likely encouraged British abolitionists to adopt a policy of opposition to slavery itself—not just to the slave trade alone—which accelerated the Slave South’s sense of embattlement and propelled the ongoing conflict between London and Washington. In this context, when a Carolinian asserted that the Africans amongst them were “the real Jacobins of this country,” he was suggesting that they were the force most likely to compel radical transformation.15 Thus, Whitemarsh Seabrook, who was to serve as South Carolina’s chief executive, pulled no punches when he rose in 1825 to address a group of planters in his home state. “The tenure by which we hold our slaves is daily becoming less secure,” he moaned, because of the growing strength of abolitionism. He recounted that a “legal adviser” from the White House had enunciated an “alarming doctrine” that his state held “no right to enact laws, guarding against the corruption and consequent insubordination of her slaves, if such laws tend to prohibit the ingress and egress of the coloured citizens of Great Britain.” He was referring to the uproar over African seamen on vessels flying Revolutionary Implications

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the Union Jack who were encountering difficulty (including being jailed) after their arrival in U.S. ports, including Charleston: this issue was to inflame friction between London and Washington for decades to come. It gets worse, Seabrook asserted. The worst was that a treaty had been proposed with Colombia—a state with a sizeable population of African origin— that was in “direct collision with us. In that republic Negroes are admitted to the privileges of citizenship. The treaty guarantees their admission into any port of these United States.” Then there was the “horrible and savage language of the Edinburgh Review” condemning slavery, not to mention British clergy who were similarly inclined. “In Great Britain,” he warned, “there are 220 abolitionist societies. In the United States the number is already large (about 50) and daily increasing. Between these societies,” he warned accurately, “a constant interchange of sentiments and of plans is sedulously preserved.” He warned further that abolitionism was little more than a London tool to split the union.16 Ironically, William Lloyd Garrison, a progenitor of U.S. abolitionism, agreed partly with Seabrook’s withering assessment, when he asserted in 1829 that “the efforts of abolitionism in Great Britain, absolutely put to shame every thing that is done in this country on the subject.”17 U.S. Negroes displayed their reliance upon London when their premier periodical, Freedom’s Journal, frequently used its columns to spread the news of Britain’s abolitionist movement.18 It was said that when some U.S. Negroes adopted the identity of “free people of color,” they were inspired by the way this construction had evolved in the Caribbean basin, notably Jamaica.19 Both Seabrook and Garrison may have had in mind the Reverend George Bourne, who migrated during this period from Britain to Virginia, then moved north and quickly established a reputation for being the most vitriolic of abolitionists. A number of clerics in the U.S. were inspired by such British courage and enterprise on behalf of the enslaved.20 For from the east bank of the Atlantic there was an even greater concern that the expansionist republic,21 needing to replenish its supply of Africans as they fled in all directions and as new territories for exploitation opened up in North America,22 was turning a blind eye to the virtual reopening of the African Slave Trade, which the U.S. was bound legally to reject.23 After the War of 1812, the price of the enslaved skyrocketed in Georgia and with it the price of food—by 100 percent in some precincts24—necessitating the need, as some saw it,25 for more and cheaper Africans.26 To this activity London sternly objected. But Washington thought this was hypocrisy of the rankest sort, particularly when it was asserted that on 92

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Amelia Island (which was devastated by the redcoats during the war) the Empire was dumping rebellious Africans of their own, converting U.S. land into a “Botany Bay of the United States.”27 Others suspected that planters in the Caribbean, sensing the onset of emancipation, were engaged in a fire sale of Africans to customers from the republic.28 Yet London could charge that the random activities of renegade colonizers hardly negated Britain’s devotion to abolitionism.29 Indeed, abolitionists generally felt that the U.S. was the major enabler of this human traffic. For there was a significant turnover in the African population in the years following the end of the 1812 war, with thousands fleeing to Haiti, Trinidad and Canada, while others were brought into the nation to take their place. This latter development angered London. British diplomat Stratford Canning was stunned when newly reported 1820 census figures in Washington noted that “the Negroes are thought to be about two millions and a half!”30 Though London was moving toward abolitionism at a faster clip than Washington,31 it remained a slave power and in competition with the republic in markets involving slave labor. Along with making sure that this nation was adhering to agreements on the slave trade reached at Ghent and elsewhere, this need to monitor a competitor caused London to keep track of prices and trading in enslaved persons in the U.S.32 The proliferation of slavery in the U.S. when it was declining in Canada allowed London to argue that the U.S. was a contradictory hypocrite in perpetually singing the praises of republicanism.33 Even Jamaican planters, who previously had spoken warmly of the colonists’ 1776 revolt against London, thought that the increased importation of Africans to the U.S. was dirty pool.34 Republicans responded by continuing to squabble about compensation of “their” Africans from the 1812 war,35 while refusing to return the enslaved they had captured from Empire planters.36 Consequently, in the period following the 1812 war until the onset of the Civil War, evident U.S. reluctance to assault the African Slave Trade was a major irritant in London-Washington relations. Many times during this thorny era the two nations almost went to war.37 This deteriorating relationship may have been a reason that Stratford Canning chose this occasion to make a trip to one of the most sensitive spots in the U.S.—the armory in Harpers Ferry. As the nation celebrated its most sacred secular holiday on July 4, 1821, he departed at noon from Washington in a coach with four horses. At his destination he took note of the “manufacture of fire arms” and the number of workers—250—and their wages: 50 dollars per month. He observed carefully that the site was reasonably “secure . . . from the attacks of Revolutionary Implications

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an enemy.” Not offhandedly, he observed that where he resided, “[W]e were waited upon [by] three black slaves who were stationed with large fans to keep away the flies.”38 It did not seem that this journey to Harpers Ferry was for purposes of recreation. Instead, it seemed to be critical intelligence gathering as bilateral relations suffered a downturn,39 as, not for the last time, this site was seen as crucial to the security of the republic. Though slaveholders may not have known about the Canning mission to western Virginia, they were well aware of the sensitive position in which they were placed, given their dependence upon a labor supply that harbored sedition. Some slaveholders and their allies also wanted to expatriate Africans, particularly those who were not enslaved. Meeting in Baltimore in 1827, “colonizationists,” as they were termed, recounted how this initiative had arisen in the Virginia legislature near the time of the Haitian Revolution and the revolt of Gabriel Prosser, then accelerated once more in 1816.40 Speaking just after Andrew Jackson’s election to the presidency, Henry Clay took time to counsel that it was “impossible not to anticipate frequent insurrections among the blacks in the U. States.” Addressing colonizationists in Frankfort, Kentucky, he pointed to a recent event of maximum importance that had not escaped his attention: for in Mexico the enslaved—“the whole of them”— were “emancipated.” The reverberations were bound to be felt north of the border. Free Africans—putative British allies—had to go, it was thought.41 Thus, though the Union Jack flew high in Sierra Leone, nervousness about free Negroes was so far-reaching that there was a movement in Congress to dispatch them there—though they could easily return later, armed in redcoats, bent on revenge.42 Actually, this idea of U.S. Negroes being repatriated to this West African nation did not originate with the slaveholder class but had been embraced by the Negroes themselves. Paul Cuffe was among them. Abolitionists (including, interestingly, Londoners) then took up the call, as they sought teachers43 and missionaries44 in the U.S. in particular. But, perhaps for that reason and others, all slaveholders did not concur with colonization.45 Some London abolitionists also objected vigorously to colonization.46 This objection was part of an ongoing and scalding critique of the U.S. that focused on the maltreatment of Africans.47 Nevertheless, taking the broader hint, self-described “people of colour” met in Philadelphia in 1831 and in their opening resolve encouraged “Canadian Settlement” [emphasis in the original]. This “praiseworthy and philanthropic undertaking,” it was exclaimed, was “highly necessary,” words which were music to the ears of London, perpetually in need of residents of this vast land which was desired so ravenously by Washington.48 So moved, these 94

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Africans dispatched agents to Canada, making it clear they were driven by the “expulsory [sic] laws of Ohio in 1829,” referring to their violent ouster from Cincinnati. Their emissaries returned with a favorable report.49 In 1829, a third of Cincinnati’s Negro population was forced by dint of violence to flee to Canada, while constitutions in Illinois and Indiana specifically barred Africans and indigenes from serving in militias.50 Meanwhile in Canada slavery virtually had disappeared by the 1820s, while human bondage was enjoying a new birth of freedom south of the border. Moreover, when abolitionism surged in Canada, it was taken properly as an admission of London’s responsibility for the Frankenstein monster of slavery it had set in motion south of the border, which could only increase the desire to repatriate to Ontario.51 Who could ignore the constant stream of African refugees flowing into Canada from the U.S.? As many as thirty a day at one juncture crossed the Detroit River at Fort Malden alone.52 Surely, slaveholders could not ignore the sight of their human chattel fleeing northward in droves. This led to protracted negotiations—and more hurt feelings—between Washington and London.53 But speaking from London, the influential U.S. operative Albert Gallatin reminded Washington that raising this ticklish matter was not easy, given the “difficulties thrown in the way of everything of that kind by the Courts, and by the British Abolitionist Associations.”54 Thus, after wrenching talks, Gallatin was able to tell his capital that London “would not accede to the proposal of mutual surrender of Fugitive Slaves” on the principle that “every man is free who reaches British ground.” “[S]uch was the state of opinion here on that subject, that no Administration could or would admit a treaty or stipulation such as was asked for.”55 As the 1820s unwound, this bilateral crisis did not abate. As Henry Clay had suggested, a contagious message was being sent to the enslaved of the U.S. that they were not alone, that there was a site of escape. This was potentially devastating to the slave system. “The evil is a growing one,” sighed Clay in mid-182856—an opinion shared in Dixie.57 Yet despite, or perhaps because of, this attraction to Canada, Washington had not relinquished its longing for this vast territory, despite the thumping it had received during the 1812 war.58 For there was good reason for abolitionism to gain traction in the U.S. North, since a good deal of this region bordered Canada, providing Washington with yet another reason for desiring this North American territory.59 Then there was the threat from the south, represented by Hispaniola, with which the British threat was yoked ineluctably.60 Revolutionary Implications

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The Caribbean basin was becoming a haven for U.S. Negroes seeking exile. In response, virtually since the onset of the 1776 revolt, there were those in North America who had clear designs on the Caribbean archipelago.61 The fact that thousands of disgruntled erstwhile U.S. Negroes were flocking there, where they could combine with Haiti and British possessions, was creating a formidable challenge to U.S. national security—or so it was thought. There was a natural sympathy for the Caribbean planter elite by their counterparts in Washington, not to mention that proximity naturally brought the two together.62 This raised questions about how the local elite might view another war—which heightened even further the importance of loyal Africans. Returning the favor, the planter- and merchant-dominated House of Assembly in Jamaica expressed a desire in the 1820s for closer ties to the republic.63 For with increased U.S. trade in the Anglophone colonies came U.S. seafarers and U.S. influence,64 leading to London seeking to impose various fees and taxes to curb this trend.65 Simultaneously, London was seeking to disengage from its dependence on “King Cotton” of the Slave South. By 1821 Brazil already was emerging as a challenger in this lucrative field.66 After the 1812 war Britain sought to ban U.S. vessels from its Caribbean ports and in 1825 London interdicted all U.S. trade with the West Indies.67 Two years earlier the Monroe Doctrine had been proclaimed, which inter alia was a signal to London to butt out of the hemisphere: that same year the U.S. chose to open a consulate in Barbados, a relatively rich sugar colony and a stronghold of settlement directly from England.68 Simple geography favored the growth of U.S. influence in this region and a few years later a British captain landing in Kingston, Jamaica, was distraught to find a significant number of vessels flying the stars-and-stripes.69 London followed debates in Congress about tariffs with an eagle eye, knowing that it was a major target of such duties. In 1820 Lord Castlereagh was briefed on the latest twists and turns, wherein he was informed that the republic was seeking to “be better prepared for any future contest with Great Britain.”70 The adroit ability of the U.S. to surmount hurdles strewn in its path in order to trade with British colonies in the Caribbean basin suggested the magnetic pull of proximity. In 1823, the U.S. emissary in Antigua counseled on the Crown’s apprehension about his presence. He too had sensed the potential of sedition by alienated local merchants and planters along the lines of 1776: “[N]othing restrains them from open rebellion but their weakness.” With his own hint of sedition he remarked, “[E]very individual with whom I 96

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have conversed, most ardently wish to be under the protection of the American government.” Even tiny “Dominica (small as it is) in a recent memorial solicited this, as the greatest boon that could be accorded to them.”71 There was a gravitational pull exerted by the U.S. on British possessions,72 and for reasons of economics and security, the islands that formed a necklace encircling the southeast quadrant of the U.S. became a flashpoint of contention. And just as U.S. Negroes were a natural ally of London, the republicans could hardly resist a natural alliance with the planter elite in the Caribbean. In 1827 a bill was being debated in Washington that proposed to interdict the intercourse between the U.S. and British ports in her North American possessions, the Caribbean, and other colonies if London refused to open these ports to the extent the U.S. demanded.73 Washington was backing up these striking proposals with muscular military spending. In the 1820s the U.S. Navy proposed, “for the protection of our commerce in the West India islands and parts adjacent,” a grand increase in the number of their armed schooners. These gunboats would also sail in the Gulf of Mexico and along the southern coast of Florida,74 where they were bound to come within hailing distance of the Royal Navy—an eventuality that had not escaped British attention.75 Thus, in mid-1816 a familiar complaint emerged from Bermuda: a “desertion” had occurred, “with strong grounds to believe that the men had been enticed away & carried off in American vessels.” Of course, these were not Africans.76Another reason for London to curtail trade with the U.S. was this frequent absconding of their freemen. This reality provided London even more incentive to rely upon Africans, since there was little fear they would defect to the U.S.77 As should be evident, with vessels being essential for long-distance travel, commerce, and war, seafarers were the coin of the realm. Washington had been quite adept in attracting this valued group from Britain, which responded by recruiting more Africans for this crucial job and incurring the wrath of the U.S. Physical confrontations almost ensued in Charleston between British diplomats and local officials in an attempt to enforce the Negro Seamen Acts, which were aimed generally at visiting African seafarers but were protested most vigorously by London. Some from the U.S. North also protested.78 Again, at root this was a conflict in clashing worldviews, in that Britain insisted that its African subjects were entitled to equal treatment with others and, just as insistently, the Slave South objected.79 Unfortunately, South Carolina was not alone in passing legislation seeking to limit the ingress of African sailors.80 The severity of these laws was such that they Revolutionary Implications

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were bound to infuriate even the mildest of abolitionists, for if captains did not pay the fees for their sailors’ jailing, the incarcerated could be sold into slavery.81 “No country shall ever be permitted to treat any of the subjects of Great Britain so hostilely,” said Peter Petrie of Liverpool. When vigorous protests erupted about the jailing of the Negro cook, Daniel Fraser of Scotland, upon arriving in Charleston, it was evident that Petrie had not exaggerated.82 Yet, suggestive of how the rocky marriage between slave and free states had a third adulterous and adulterating partner in London was the reality that after this legislation was enacted, over 10,000 free Negro seamen from above the Mason-Dixon Line were incarcerated. The responses from Washington and state capitals were ineffectual at best. But Britain protested vigorously, forcing change,83 and outraging some in Charleston.84 Early in 1823 a British sloop with an African crew arrived in Charleston from Nassau, seeking to take rice on board.85 But law enforcement appeared and jailed this startled crew.86 Speaking from Britain, William Huskisson of the Board of Trade captured the bruised sentiments of many of his class when he said in response, “[T]hese Yankees may kidnap one another but they must not kidnap British subjects in violation of the law of nations.”87 London was in a bind. Their “white” subjects were defecting to the U.S. and their “coloured” subjects were being detained there,88 while nervous port cities like Savannah were devising ever more draconian laws targeting Negro seamen.89 The Vesey conspiracy, the Walker appeal, and the Turner revolt seemed to ignite a wave of hysteria in the Slave South, as suspicions raged that London and its allies were behind the challenge to the system.90 But the leaders of the Slave South may also have been moved to act by the apparent boldness exhibited by free Negroes in the U.S. North. In the 1820s Africans in Providence, Rhode Island, were marching smartly in uniform and had to be convinced by Quakers to stack their arms in the churchyard before entering this holy site. In 1826 embittered Africans erupted in three days of unrest, forcing the state militia having to intervene in response.91 In 1831 there was another riot when white sailors attacked Negroes, who responded with gunfire. There were deaths and severe injuries of whites, which produced due excitement.92 For its part, London’s delegates in the U.S. sensed that the republic itself might be splitting apart. William Ogilby, the consul in Charleston, observed in early 1833 that citizens were arming and discussing nullification and he sensed that civil war was in the air.93 He expected an assault on local federal facilities sooner rather than later.94 Ogilby did not have to add that to the extent that abolitionist pressure would lead to the dissolution of its ris98

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ing rival, it made good sense for London to continue pressing an antislavery agenda. It was not just African seamen and free persons of color who were complicating relations between the two powers. After the 1812 war slaveholders felt the need to move enslaved persons from the Upper South to points further south and west, transporting them by ship if possible. However, what was to occur if, perchance, these vessels were blown off course into Bermuda or the Bahamas? Why should the Crown send these poor souls, it was asked querulously, “by compulsion to a place which it is not their own pleasure to resort?” Instead of seeing them simply as slaves, they were viewed like any other “aliens”—like Euro-Americans, for example, in an analogous position in the Bahamas, to the dismay of the self-proclaimed “ruling race.” But what about the unavoidable fact that slavery was allowed in Nassau but not in London? Indicative of how abolitionist imperatives and enmity toward the republic had merged almost effortlessly, the authorities chose to override this “inconsistency,” as one of many “anomalies, however much they may be regretted.” These were deemed necessary to confront “an institution of so anomalous a character as is that of domestic slavery.” Almost welcoming a robust response from Washington, the authorities observed that “foreign powers are, of course, at liberty to retaliate.” Thus, 165 Africans from the republic were allowed to remain free and at large in the Bahamas as “aliens”—and possible potential recruits to a redcoat army in case another invasion of the mainland was suggested—in the aftermath of this stormy 1831 incident.95 Most of these Africans were between the ages of 15 and 25 and almost all the men were over six feet tall (the “complexion” of most was “black,” though some were “yellow,” suggesting white parentage and perhaps further reason for anger). All but one were from Alexandria, Virginia (the exception was from Maryland), and possibly knew what had befallen this region in August 1814 when the Africans ran amok and the capital was torched.96 The case of the Comet, en route from Washington to New Orleans but running aground in Abaco in the Bahamas,97 was deemed to be one more act of aggression by Washington. That it involved an uncompensated expropriation of what was considered private property was deemed to be all the more despicable. The vessel departed the nation’s capital late in 1830 but was buffeted by adverse winds and, like so many ships before and since, ran aground in the perilous waters within ten miles of Abaco. Wreckers brought the vessel and its valuable cargo to Nassau, and Captain Isaac Staples, recognizing the dilemma he faced, sought to sail away immediately to Louisiana with his human cargo. But the authorities resisted. Revolutionary Implications

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Subtle distinctions were drawn between slavery and the slave trade (which this transaction was thought to be), which allowed the Crown to rationalize its own bondage. In any case, it was asserted forcefully, “[T]he rule established in England has no application to the colonies.”98 But this casuistry would not last long as London came to realize that for various reasons—not the least of these being the enhanced ability to better challenge its rising rival—abolition made good strategic and tactical sense. In the meantime, the Crown had to confront the contradiction of alleging that the air was too pure for enslavement in London, but not in Nassau.99 The U.S. had its own contradictions to confront in this matter. Soon the formerly enslaved were said to be worth almost $100,000. “[M]any of them” were said to be worth $2,000 apiece, which seemed to be inflated.100 The erstwhile owners of this former property made a sworn statement that “none” of the Africans “have been imported into the United States or the Territories subsequent to the 1st of January 1808,” but others were not as sure.101 Dixie contended that the republic was akin to today’s European Union, a kind of network of sovereigns. But if that were so, moving Africans from Virginia to New Orleans was like slave trafficking, akin to moving Africans from Africa to Virginia, which was known to be prima facie illegal. The local authorities in the Bahamas ascertained that several of these Africans were valued at a hefty “1000 to 1200 dollars each and a large proportion of the rest are prime young Negroes,” which meant this case soared far beyond legal nitpicking. Yet again, the local planter class in Nassau was not necessarily on the same strategic page as London. They did not seem enthused by the idea that the Bahamas was the open front door, complementing Canada, allowing the enslaved to flee southward.102 In fact, these local slaveholders petitioned on behalf of their class counterparts in the U.S., warning ominously that “so large a body of so dangerous a class of Negroes” being placed in this colony was cause for “serious apprehensions.” This “large body of strange Creole slaves, also combining, as the American Negroes generally do[,] the intelligence and cunning of the lower order of freemen, with the characteristic want of thought and foresight,” was equally cause for concern in the Bahamas. Their “profligate habits, the vices, the crimes,” and the like that they would bring, according to the planters, were “calculated to inspire fears in this quarter of the most alarming character.”103 But grudgingly they were compelled to adjust to a new order. Soon advertisements began to appear about “servants,” including “mechanics and sailors” as well as “indoor and outdoor servants of both sexes,” with a “good number of promising boys and also some very young girls without any parents among them,” it was added almost salaciously.104 100

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But U.S. slaveholders were all too aware of the revolutionary implications of this case—implications no less threatening than Vesey, Walker, and Turner—and they chose not to accept the inevitability of their loss. Lord Palmerston was informed by their representative of the “existence of a large slave population” in the U.S. requiring “necessary and frequent removals of portions of it from one section of the country to another” (of course, this unitary view of the U.S. could be seen as being at variance with the typical Dixie notion of state sovereignty). Pressing on, it was said further that the “safe and easy mode of conveyance” was “through the Bahama Channel,” which had become a “dangerous thoroughfare.” Thus, London was threatened, informed curtly that if Britain sought to “establish a doctrine authorizing the liberation of the American slave whom unavoidable accident” had deposited in the Bahamas, this would be “too dangerous to a large section of the country to be tolerated.”105 Apparently this threat was persuasive, as Lord Palmerston referred subsequently to the “illegal act of the English Customs House Officer” in freeing the Africans and compensation was granted.106 But the Africans were not returned to bondage. Yet this pressure from the U.S. could not alter the basic facts of geography and topography: the Bahamas remained perilously close to the U.S. and what occurred there was inexorably of import to the republic. Some of the surrounding islands—notably Abaco—were seemingly designed with the idea in mind of generating shipwrecks, which occurred frequently. This would not have been important if London and Washington had been in fundamental accord on abolition and related matters, but as this was not the case, the Bahamas107 was becoming yet another irritant108 in an already passionately intense relationship.109 Spurred, inter alia, by a growing abolitionist movement and the tricky matter of Caribbean planters seeming to express ever more sympathy for the U.S., the Empire was moving steadily and inexorably toward ridding itself of slavery. At once this would accelerate the developing trend of pushing Africans in North America toward alignment with London, a trend that had revealed itself during the 1812 war with devastating consequences for the republic. Thus, in 1831 the Slave South was aflutter with concern about real and imagined slave revolts and moved accordingly in an increasingly harsh fashion against the enslaved. Meanwhile, in Nassau—and in other sites within the Empire where slavery reigned—a forty-page document was imposed which sought to “ameliorate” the horrible conditions faced by the enslaved.110 London realized that in the Caribbean Africans grossly outnumbered Europeans Revolutionary Implications

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and that keeping a lid on their restiveness would involve enormous expenditures of blood and treasure. As Africans from Virginia were about to descend on the Bahamas, the authorities there were simultaneously contending with a plot of the enslaved at Turks Island to hijack a vessel and sail to Haiti.111 Ships from Haiti sailed to the Bahamas as a matter of course, which both represented a potential danger to the U.S. and helped to make the authorities in Nassau more reasonable.112 French-speaking Africans continued to trickle into the U.S. too. Many of them could be seen as Haitian even when they were from Guadeloupe, suggesting the continuing fearsome reputation of Hispaniola.113 Then in early 1832 the Bahamian courts endured a trial of nine enslaved Africans, who were convicted of plotting an attack on their master, and seven were sentenced to hang. What had inspired their unpremeditated assault was the master’s refusal to grant an extra day’s holiday during the festive Christmas season.114 It was evident that the slave system was not sustainable and inherently generated strains that London had difficulty in containing. Washington had moved to take Florida in order to create a firewall against the prospect of the enslaved fleeing from Georgia and the Carolinas. But now it had to consider if it needed to take the Bahamas in order to bar its valuable property from running away there. In August 1831 the Bahamian government had to detain Africans from Florida, who apparently had arranged to be transported to their territory but argued that they were not enslaved and should not be treated as such; if this was inaccurate, then the Bahamas would have to face the wrath of Washington.115 Anxiety flowed in both directions. During that same period, August 1831—the time when Nat Turner went on a rampage in Virginia—the Bahamian authorities felt reassured that there was no immediate fear of an insurrection of the enslaved in their archipelago. They seemed to be trying to settle their own nerves as much as anything else.116 The same perception was left in the spring of 1832 when serious unrest rocked Jamaica and the Bahamian leadership reassured itself there were no local repercussions.117 More forthrightly, the authorities in British Honduras facilitated the dispatch of a naval force to Kingston in the wake of disturbances there propelled by fiery abolitionist debates in parliament in London.118 During this tense moment, similar revolts erupted in Brazil and Tortola, leaving the distinct impression that a contagion was spreading like wildfire and if losses were not cut, then all might be lost.119 The Bahamian leadership still had to reassure the enslaved, who too seemed to become more unsettled as debates about abolition surged.120 The more perceptive in the republic as a whole too had to be concerned if this perception of contagion was accurate. 102

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Washington thought that London was preening as a protector of the Africans, while slyly profiting from their labor. The Royal Navy aggressively patrolled the world’s waters, and when captured Africans were detained improperly on slavers, the Navy brought them to sites like the Bahamas where they entered the labor force.121 This included Africans from Florida who wound up in the Bahamas and were settled on Andros Island.122 Early in 1834 there was yet another wreck of a U.S. vessel at Abaco and the enslaved were advised that they were free. They were housed in old barracks and provided rations.123 Seemingly contradicting the decision in the case of the Comet, the immediate decision was to refuse compensation to the owners for their loss, as this would set a dangerous precedent.124 Others were slated for settlement in Trinidad, bolstering that colony,125 while yet others were considered for dispatch to Demerara.126 Of course, they could also be incorporated in the Second West India Regiment, stationed in the Bahamas, within hailing distance of U.S. soil in case of another war.127 This is precisely what happened with fifty Africans who were brought to the Bahamas by the Royal Navy.128 Perhaps more worrisome for Washington was that Africans allied with the Seminoles settled by the score on Andros Island, which could be used as a base of subversion against Florida. Many found unconvincing the authorities’ explanation that they were unaware of their presence.129 Washington found it hard to accept that as early as 1825 the Home Office in London ruled that any slave brought to the Bahamas from outside the British West Indies would be manumitted, which led to 300 slaves owned by U.S. nationals being freed.130 This decision was blamed by some in the republic for hastening runaways, but the enslaved in Florida had been escaping to the Bahamas well before 1825.131 This situation was made more complex as more U.S. nationals discovered the pleasures of the archipelago after the seizure of Florida, and brought their human chattel with them.132 “This is certainly one of the most charming climates in the world,” enthused a Philadelphian in 1824, speaking of the Bahamas; “it is often resorted to by American invalids and several have died here.” But this tourist also caught sight of something rarely seen in the republic: the governor approached, “preceded by a file of black soldiers.”133 Meanwhile,134 London had its own problems with slavery that inevitably influenced its view of the peculiar institution135—a particularly grave problem in Central America136 and its environs.137 Generally, the states of Central America were more advanced on the path to abolition than London, so just as Britain pressed the U.S. on this front, these nations—in a chain reaction—pressed the Empire, as they actively enticed the enslaved to flee across Revolutionary Implications

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the border.138 In 1825 there was only one enslaved African in Mexican-ruled California and this fortunate soul soon was to be freed. By the time the U.S. muscled in there in 1846 there was not even one.139 The colonists in Belize even had to worry about pirates from faraway Buenos Aires infesting waters claimed by London. They could hardly afford to alienate already miffed Africans,140 many of whom were well aware of the global implications of the unfolding abolitionist movement. Vesey, Walker, and Turner, in sum, carried revolutionary implications for the Slave South. But as had been the case since 1804, then 1812, London and its African allies in the Caribbean (and Canada) were no less threatening: that is, the republic was not a thing in itself that could bully and subdue Africans at will without incurring the venom of those beyond its jurisdiction. Like a feedback loop, the rebelliousness of U.S. Negroes fed on abolitionism emanating from London, and vice versa, creating an irrepressible conflict with the slaveholders’ republic.

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8 Abolition of Private Property?

U.S. Consul Robert Harrison was worried, though frightened might be a better word. He had arrived in Jamaica at a nervous moment: a fierce rebellion had rocked the island in late 1831 and 1832. As a result, the cries in London for abolition were becoming ever more insistent. The number of antislavery societies in Britain multiplied sixfold from 1830 to 1831, which had given heart to Africans and was inspiring others to revolt.1 Unrest in France near the same time created ripples of discontent in Martinique, then St. Lucia, with the enslaved seeking to immolate the plantations and their European inhabitants and simply murder the rest. The contagion spread to Dominica, leading to thousands fleeing enslavement and many perishing in the seas in their attempt to do so.2 Upon arriving in Kingston in the spring of 1832, Harrison3 found himself in the midst of an insurrection of the enslaved4 that brooked few eventualities besides abolition:5 In July 1833 he reported to his superiors in Washington that a ship had just arrived with a “plan” mandating the “emancipation of the slaves,” and “compensation” offered to the planters that amounted to “a mere nothing.” Harrison was displeased and sensed instinctively the impact this could have on the slave system in his homeland, for he could well surmise that this was a staggering blow, at the very least. What he did not foresee was of equal moment: that unrest in the Bahamas could impact what became known as the Second Seminole War, and that abolition in the Empire could inspire Africans to resist a republican revolt in Canada. There was the probability, he thought, of emancipation leading to the “introduction of colored persons from the English colonies under the American flag and others, into the U. States” itself, particularly a port like New York City. From there they could easily “find their way to our slave holding states,” spreading the sedition of abolition.6 Contrarily, enslaved Africans in the U.S. were inspired by the abolitionist demarche.7 Harrison was on to something, for abolition within the Empire was a ruinously damaging blow inflicted simultaneously on the Slave South;8 for |

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just as Communists in Berlin and Budapest had difficulty hanging on to power once their comrades in Moscow began to wobble, the same held true for the system9 that was slavery.10 Reporting from the listening post that was the Bahamas, a U.S. emissary agreed with Harrison and prophesied—correctly, as it turned out—that pre-existing British law which made it difficult to return the enslaved to their U.S. owners upon arrival in the archipelago, was strengthened by the abolition decree.11 By October 1834, a few months after emancipation had been enacted formally, Harrison remained demoralized, continuing to worry about newly freed Africans traveling to the republic and causing upheaval.12 When in 1839, several formerly enslaved Africans in Jamaica voluntarily sent a then hefty $51 to U.S. abolitionists “to be expended towards the emancipation of their brethren in America,” Harrison’s mordant fear of this rebellious island was confirmed.13 Surely, the Slave South had quite a bit to be reassured about.14 In early 1836 John C. Calhoun fretted that “$950,000,000” in slave property was now at stake—the heart of the republic’s economy.15 A crackdown on U.S. abolitionists proceeded16 accordingly, which only served to heighten the importance of their British counterparts.17 Harrison knew more than most of the critical importance of Jamaica’s proximity to Haiti and what that might mean for the future of slavery in the U.S. Perhaps trying to avoid becoming overwhelmed by a torrential rush of abolitionism, a self-described “large slaveholder” from the U.S. journeyed to Haiti, shortly after the pivotal date of August 1, 1834. Though he did not return claiming that he had seen the future and it worked, he seemed less hostile than a slaveholder could be expected to be. “Here they read our newspapers and daily accounts of mobs and persecution of color,” which was catnip for Haitians interested in destabilizing their northern neighbor. He also detected that “every colored person of good character is a citizen from the moment of his arrival,” which surely augmented their already impressive military ranks. The “militia troops,” he noticed, were “well armed and all mustered in uniform” consisting of “one hundred thousand effective men,” though the navy was “small.” He regretted the “display of military pomp and expense in a time of peace, caused, it is said, by the fear of enemies without”—the identity of which seemed to be a mystery to him. Meeting with President Boyer, he found this “middle size” man with a “rather dark complexion” to be “very intelligent and sensible.”18 For this slaveholder sensed what Harrison knew and what the enslaved came to realize,19 namely, that abolition meant that there was an even greater 106

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incentive than previously existed for the U.S. enslaved to reach Bermuda, Bahamas, and Canada by any means necessary. This could cause these Africans to take greater risks, up to and including homicide and grand larceny (“liberating” a ship), which could shorten severely the life expectancy of slaveholders. Minimally this could mean capital flight unlike anything that had occurred before. By November 1834 this burdened matter was causing agitation at 10 Downing Street. Since formal abolition months earlier there had been numerous instances of “fugitive slaves seeking refuge,” the Caribbean governors were told, and London desired general rules for all colonies to follow. Acknowledged weightily—“for the first time”—was the dramatic reality that the fugitive African “stood in a position precisely identical with that which he would have occupied if he had found his way to His Majesty’s European Dominions.” In words that would have spawned dyspepsia in Washington if revealed, governors were told that from this point forward the “relation” of master and slave was “not only unknown to but forbidden by the Law of this Empire.” It was recognized equally that abolition would make the Empire an even more attractive site for Africans seeking a new homeland. Yes, it was acknowledged, almost triumphantly, “[T]he moral influence of our example will not be without a salutary” and “early effect upon the Slave Codes of other States.” One remedy to this dilemma would be deporting “forcibly” to a nonslave state those Africans lucky enough to make it to British soil—which still was an incentive to flight. Moreover, in an exception that seemed to invalidate the rule, if the fugitives could show they “had been driven to make their escape by intolerable usage and oppression,” then they would have an “irresistible claim to our hospitality. They should neither be punished as offenders nor removed as aliens but protected.”20 It did not take long for these rules of abolition to be applied, for in January 1835 a vessel carrying 78 enslaved Africans from Virginia southward was blown off course into Bermuda. A court hearing was held and the enslaved were informed they were free. The journalist on the scene seemed as dumbfounded as the Africans. “It would be difficult to describe the sort of joy and wonderment” that prevailed. An immense crowd had assembled to welcome these new subjects with hearty cheers.21 The term “people of color” was apropos to describe these individuals, since one of the (former) captives was described as an “Indian squaw.”22 Apparently some of the slaves aboard were indigenes.23 Euphoria was not universal, for when the captain of this ship returned to Charleston, he was livid, charging the Crown with “piracy” and demanded Abolition of Private Property?

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that the U.S. “avenge” the “insult.”24 His lividness was shared widely among Euro-Americans: it had “created much excitement,” said an abolitionist periodical, as it was denounced as “an insult to the flag of the United States.” But a contradiction was espied for when abolitionist petitions were presented to Congress, Dixie claimed that the federal government had no right to interfere in a state matter. But now they were demanding federal action.25 It was understandable why slaveholders were so upset with this case. This was valuable property: the oldest was 31, the youngest 5 months. This meant they all had many years of slave labor ahead of them. Most were youthful, between the ages of 7 and 15, then between 19 and 25. All were owned by Joseph Neal, which concentrated the anger involved. None were over 5’ 7” tall, and their listed color ranged from “black” to “yellow” to “copper” with a goodly number in that latter category (perhaps suggesting that a number were of indigenous origin) and not too many listed as “black.”26 This massive brig of about 127 tons was journeying from Alexandria to Charleston. Besides the enslaved, there was a hefty cache of tobacco aboard; all of the former were purported to be born in the U.S. and of the 41 females and 37 males, all except the infants spoke English. The slaveholders were aghast when the Bermudian authorities advised the Africans of the fact of abolition and informed them that if they wished to remain on British soil, they could do so. As the bureaucrats and lawyers were debating, an impassioned group of local Africans appeared and filed a Habeas Corpus petition on behalf of the 78. They were brought before a judge. The slaveholders may have been heartened by the fact that six of this group—a woman and her five children—expressed a desire to return to the mainland and were permitted to do so. The others were freed. Local Africans—organized as the “Friendly Institution”—borrowed an empty house in which these newest Bermudians could reside and launched a fund-raising drive on their behalf. Quickly all 72 obtained places to live and/or work in various parts of the colony. The local authorities did not seem displeased by this turn of events and asked that the Earl of Aberdeen provide instruction for future such cases.27 The Earl of Aberdeen thought that freedom via habeas was a “correct and authoritative interpretation of the law.” This was not good news for either an uptick in London-Washington relations or the future of slavery. As for what to do in cases of shipwreck, ships being blown off course and the like, he was explicit in recognizing the inherent humanity of the Africans, which cast a lengthy shadow over the destiny of the peculiar institution.28 What seemed to shape the British response was the active intervention of the local Africans.29 Before this engagement, it did seem that the Privy Coun108

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cil was leaning toward allowing the rights of property to prevail.30 Beyond the action of London, this local initiative was of far-reaching consequence, seemingly auguring an era of activism by hemispheric Africans on behalf of their benighted brethren in the U.S. The U.S. official, Aaron Vail, was furious. This was yet “another illegal seizure of slaves,” he informed Lord Palmerston curtly. In high dudgeon, he rued this “outrage” and announced ominously that he was “instructed to say that by the President of the United States.” He zeroed in on London’s “colonies adjacent to the southern section of the United States” as the locus of the problem: did London have a grip on the throat of the republic?31 There were reasons beyond the obvious for the transoceanic planter class to be anxiously concerned about this turn of events. In the run-up to abolition it seemed that slaveholders from the U.S. were going to Bermuda for what appeared to be a fire sale in slaves; they were offering top dollar, several times more than the Crown had agreed to pay; there were also claims of a rash of kidnappings of valuable slaves—and others—and unadvertised sales right up to the millisecond of 11:59 P.M. on July 31, 1834. Emancipation, it was believed, contributed to inflation in the market of slaves generally, providing incentive for Bermuda slaveholders to sell their stock in the U.S.32 This occurred as London had options beyond the scope exercised by Washington. After 1 August 1834, the British had other alternatives, choices that could place enormous pressure on the slaveholders’ republic. For as Gerrit Smith, the abolitionist, was told, after this portentous date in the U.S. and Brazil it cost the owner of an estate having 1,000 laborers about 37,000 pounds a year—but in Bengal, the cost was 3,600 pounds.33 Certainly as 1 August approached, slaveholders in Bermuda petitioned for a “fair valuation of the slaves of this colony,” which they did not see in the compensation offered.34 After this momentous date passed, they remained unhappy with compensation, at least providing them with an incentive to dispose of their property in the frothy U.S. market. The figure offered, said a planter petition on 3 August 1834, would “operate very injuriously.”35 Abolition led to consequences that seemingly were not anticipated. As Bermuda had to sort out the accidental arrival of the Enterprise, the Bahamas had to confront the arrival of the Encomium. This vessel was headed to New Orleans from Charleston with 45 enslaved persons and 3 U.S. citizens aboard when it ran aground at Abaco in 1834. The enslaved, said a U.S. representative, were “forcibly seized” and their owners “threatened with an ignominious death if they attempted to recover their property and proceed to their original destination.” Britain was thought to be challenging the very right to Abolition of Private Property?

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private property itself,36 which was viewed as profoundly dangerous.37 When the parties appeared in court, the slaveholders may have been heartened by the fact that of the 45 Africans, 3 chose to return to enslavement.38 Understatedly (but bluntly), the Bahamian authorities reminded the angry property owners that the “only impediment against the American gentlemen removing” their erstwhile property from British soil was that they were “liable to be hanged.”39 This left the slaveholder John Waddell profoundly dissatisfied, which he made known to the North Carolina authorities. This “humiliating treatment” should not be tolerated, he objected. More than this, he realized that Bermuda lurking just offshore was “holding out a premium to insurrection” and his beloved Slave South was thereby “rendered even more anxious than it has heretofore been.”40 [emphasis in the original] As if that were not sufficiently “humiliating,” the Slave South had to endure further indignity when subsequently Congressman Joshua Giddings objected to their being compensated. In doing so he referred contemptuously to Waddell and company as “hucksters.”41 The protracted negotiations for compensation to the slaveholders sparked as much difficulty as the earlier wrangling over the enslaved fleeing with the redcoats during the 1812 war. The U.S. wanted not only compensation but also interest—and it claimed that each person was worth hundreds of dollars. One Virginia mine owner claimed that the enslaved toiling on his behalf were worth $700 each, though London—speaking in 1839—argued the price should be closer to the 1830 value of $150 each. Lord Palmerston finally agreed to pay tens of thousands of dollars with interest, plus expenses— which should have been viewed as extraordinarily generous.42 One year after the earthshaking date of 1 August 1834, the Bahamian authorities reported that the anniversary was greeted with tranquility, suggesting that tales favored in the Slave South that emancipation would bring rapine and despoliation by the formerly enslaved were overblown, thus providing a further boost to abolition.43 Washington was left to fume as London once more claimed the moral high ground of abolition, then profited handsomely by seizing at sea Africans destined for slavery and bringing them to the Bahamas and other colonies. Here they could be enlisted in the labor force44 or conscripted into the West India Regiments,45 both of which were occurring with alarming frequency (from the Slave South’s viewpoint). But London had its own problems, which abolition had not solved wholly and which it may have exacerbated. For example, now instead of guarding against the enslaved escaping to Haiti, they had to worry about apprentices 110

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doing the same—with similar untoward consequences.46 The significant increase in the West India Regiment seemed to have augmented the stress these troops endured, as suggested by an outgrowth of murder and suicide.47 The inflation in the market for slaves in the U.S. seemed to be occurring in neighboring Cuba as well, bringing more slavers into Bahamian waters.48 These islands were far-flung and required patrolling to forestall the arrival of brigands who arrived in lockstep with slavers-—which required more troops, the concomitant augmentation of the West India Regiment, and the resultant residual anxiety from placing rifles in African hands.49 Washington’s vociferously unforgiving attitude toward abolition had created more problems in their relationship, including the need to keep a more careful eye on Key West50 (and again increasing the number of African soldiers). The related problem of U.S. nationals’ proclivity for equating “African” with “slave” and thus kidnapping British subjects and dragging them into slavery on U.S. soil51 was yet another irritant in the bilateral relationship.52 Surely, abolition did not wholly wreck relations between the Bahamian archipelago and the U.S.53 But this rainbow of optimism too bore a cloud, for more traffic in this region meant more shipwrecks at Abaco, which in turn meant more profit for the Bahamas and more distress for the U.S. In practical terms, condemning these vessels meant they had to be rescued and their cargo confiscated. The latter not only could include slaves but also many bags of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other commodities. Confiscation also darkened bilateral relations, providing another incentive for the British to frustrate the expansion of the republic’s commercial reach in the waters surrounding the U.S.54 Plus, it was reasonable for the Royal Navy to be on alert in the region, given slave smuggling by U.S. nationals to Cuba from the slave states and vice versa55 (not to mention smuggling from Africa itself).56 Moreover, it was not easy to separate the abject difficulties brought to London-Washington relations by the complexity that was the Bahamas from the related problem brought by the ongoing conflict in Florida between the U.S. forces on the one hand and indigenes and Africans on the other.57 Perhaps not coincidentally, what came to be known as the Second Seminole War of 1835–42 arose alongside the sharp alteration in regional relations resulting from abolition. The decision to remove the Seminoles from Florida was deeply influenced by the presence and position of Africans, just as the “Seminole Negroes” strongly influenced the decision to resist removal.58 Just as the U.S. saw the Bahamas as threatening to the slave system, London saw Florida as a wicked dagger thrust at its possessions in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.59 Abolition of Private Property?

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Though the U.S. had seized Florida, many of its denizens had not reconciled themselves to this reality; in fact, one scholar claims that this second war was “the largest slave rebellion in United States history.” This indicates the significant presence of Africans in the battle against Washington, alongside Seminoles, Creek, and Mikasuki (Miccosukee) indigenes and most notably the leader Abraham, an African leader of the Seminoles, who fought beside the redcoats during the 1812 war. As one U.S. general claimed, this was “not an Indian war but a Negro war.”60 The Seminoles would “literally starve” without their African allies, claimed one U.S. officer.61 “Any attempt to interfere with Indian Negroes,” said Thomas S. Jessup, the leading republican soldier, “or to arrest any of the chiefs or warriors, either as criminals or debtors[,] would cause an immediate resort to hostilities. The Negroes,” he warned, “control their masters.”62 Concern was growing in Florida and the Slave South generally63 that Africans were fleeing to join the revolt of the indigenes and that this was jeopardizing plantation life.64 The hysteria was such that even the newly formed Whig Party was suspected of sympathizing with the abolitionist claims of those supportive of the indigenes and their African allies.65 The “Negro Fort” may have been destroyed, but resistance by Africans was not.66 The vaunted Abraham, born about 1790 and a one-time slave in Pensacola, was among the resistants.67 Over six feet tall with a broad square face, a thin moustache, and a fierce intelligence, he was well-equipped to confront the U.S. forces.68 Bearing a courtly manner worthy of a diplomat, his most distinguishing feature was his squinted right eye. He spoke English and the language of the Seminoles, making him indispensable to all sides. It was he who shepherded the indigenes to Washington in 1826 for negotiations. He did not ignore Africans, secretly visiting plantations and urging them to join the struggle of the indigenes.69 As impressive as he was, there was yet another leader of the indigenes whose bloodlines also illustrated what a formidable foe Washington confronted. The father of Osceola was a British trader who had married a Seminole woman.70 This was not unusual—though apparently not the product of a conscious strategy—for Alexander McGillivray, a Creek leader, also had a British father.71 The circle of solidarity was completed when Osceola’s spouse, thought to be of African origin, was enslaved in Florida.72 This came to be regretted when he took to the path of war and proved himself to be a ferocious warrior.73 Such awful realities caused the unusually progressive U.S. Congressman, Joshua R. Giddings, to denounce subsequently the “mania for obtaining slaves by piratical violence.” The “scenes so often witnessed upon 112

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the Slave Coast of Africa,” he said regretfully, “became common in Florida” as the kidnapping of indigenes became a casus belli.74 Finally in October 1837 Osceola was captured after coming forward with a white flag to talk, and a number of Africans were also taken with him. They were marched to St. Augustine, then sent to South Carolina, where he died. A doctor sliced off his head and carted it away to his home and later his gravesite was vandalized75—all of which infuriated many U.S. Negroes.76 The ferocity of the African fighters was impressive.77 It was in 1836 that Daniel F. Blanchard informed his readers about how “near four hundred fell victim to the barbarity of the Negroes and Indians.” This bellicose body included about “800 captured or runaway Negroes from the South.” With horror, he described how “the Negro, grinning with a ghastly smile  .  .  . approached them with uplifted axe, apparently intent on their immediate destruction!” There were “many horrid murders” that were “perpetrated,” he lamented, as “the Negroes with hellish cruelty, pierced the throats of all.”78 The climax of this conflict was the legendary Dade Massacre, one of the most significant defeats inflicted on U.S. forces before the Civil War and the last stand of George Custer. It stirred the Slave South to frenzied bloodlust, targeting indigenes and Africans alike. A lieutenant with the U.S. forces recalled that Dade and company were “suddenly attacked from an ambush of pine trees, palmetto bushes and grass,” with about “100  . . . well mounted on horses, naked and painted in the most hideous manner.” Another lieutenant was “tomahawked by a Negro,” and an officer was “barbarously tomahawked and butchered” by “an Indian Negro.” After “dancing the war dance around the bodies of the slain,” the “savages” proceeded to engage in more mayhem. Indigenes “did not themselves take the scalps of their victims but left this to be done by the Negroes, who outvying their savage masters in hellish cruelty, also barbarously [slit] the throats of all whose cries and groans gave token of lingering life.” Apparently, “Negro spies” facilitated this massacre and a Negro guide—with Dade—led the U.S. forces “into [this] ambuscade.”79 Woodburne Potter was a military officer during this war and was also present at this annihilation. “One of the slain,” he asserted, “was found in a truly revolting condition—a part of his body had been cut off and crammed into his mouth! The Negroes stripped all the officers and some of the men of their clothing,” then “the Negroes came inside of the breastwork and began to mutilate the bodies of those who showed the least signs of life”80 Potter’s account was corroborated contemporaneously.81 Though in retrospect it seems preordained that these Africans and indigenes would be subdued, that was not the unanimous view at the time. The Abolition of Private Property?

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1812 war had demonstrated that an alliance between redcoats, indigenes, and Africans could create enormous problems for the republic. Given the kerfuffle involving U.S. vessels in the Florida Straits running aground in the Bahamas, the possibility again was raised that London would seize the opportunity to disrupt the union. John Quincy Adams, one of the most experienced on the global scene of the entire U.S. elite, asserted as much in 1836. Similarly, the discrepancies among indigenes, London, and Washington allowed Africans to engage in a form of political arbitrage designed to victimize the ultimate enslaver: the U.S. For his part, Adams feared a “servile war,” shorthand for an African uprising, “complicated as to some extent it is even now with an Indian war.” He pointed to the war for independence in Texas as bleeding into this conflict, as it was, he noted accurately, a “war for the re-establishment of slavery where it was abolished.” Thus, as things stood there was a “Mexican, an Indian and a Negro war” in North America, which seemed made to order for British interference.82 But the views of the jowly Adams were not accepted wholly in the halls of Congress. Surely, Congressman W. O. Butler of Kentucky did not share his opinion. Instead, he surmised that as in the First Seminole War after the 1812 war,83 Britain was—again—stirring up trouble. An “intelligent gentleman” informed him that during this ongoing war, there was quadrangular cooperation among the Crown, indigenes, Africans, and Haiti: “the spirit of abolition,” he charged further, “has been one of the causes which produced and is now protracting this war.”84 But the southern border of the republic was not the only place where London and its African allies were able to fish in troubled waters. All along the border from the U.S. Midwest (Michigan)85 to the northeast (Maine), there were problems, particularly boundary disputes.86 In 1837 a republican rebellion erupted in Canada that—minimally— received ample encouragement from the U.S. Indeed, scores of U.S. nationals were detained by the Canadian authorities, about 20 being executed and 81 sent to detention in Tasmania. The Canadians were accused of crossing the border and destroying a U.S. vessel near Buffalo, while the U.S. retaliated against British subjects.87 In one unnerving incident, about 300 men from the U.S. side crossed into Canada and surprised a small body of militia at Windsor, near Detroit, killed seventeen people, burned three buildings, and left others wounded. Elizabeth Campbell, a sister of Judge James V. Campbell of Michigan’s Supreme Court, said, “[T]here is a great deal of excitement here, of course,” and “some of the good people here (ladies, I mean) anticipate that Detroit will be burned over their heads.” Thus, “we have a watch on the city 114

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every night.”88 During this tumultuous time, Toronto’s African community of no more than 400 men, women, and children provided an astonishing 50 volunteers to repel republicanism. Still celebrated in Toronto’s history is the tale of how one African man stood alone on a bridge with a shotgun over his crossed arms—his body language conveying a stern message—in order to bar the rebels.89 Africans from Canada were involved in sinking the ship Caroline on the U.S. side of the border, which once again almost brought the republic and the kingdom to war.90 Reflecting the most dystopian of Robert Harrison’s dreams, Jamaica served as a depot when the republican rebels in Canada were squashed.91 Exposing republican weakness was the fact that the Caroline, destroyed by British forces reputedly in U.S. waters, became a flashpoint. Yet this vessel contained a number of African seamen and, given recent history, Washington had to wonder if (in a pinch) they would remain true to the stars-and-stripes or, like so many other men of the darkest color, opt for allegiance to the Union Jack.92 In any event, London found it curious that Washington objected to her taking this ship, towing it to the Niagara Falls, then torching and destroying it, since Andrew Jackson had himself marched into Spanish Florida, seized two British subjects, and executed them. Was not the door opened to such behavior by this earlier brigandage?93 This aid from Africans was quite timely. During this uproarious time only 400 regular forces guarded the city that became Toronto, and some were thought to be disaffected,94 not a negligible factor95 as Canada again was threatened.96 The authorities warned of the “existence of numerous and formidable associations in many parts of the United States for the purpose of over-running” Canada and “plundering” this territory. It was emphasized that the invaders had the “expectation of being joined by numerous disaffected persons,” which underscored further the presence of Africans wholly immune to the alleged charms of U.S. style republicanism.97 There98 was an “imminent danger of an immediate invasion” and “an attack upon this city by the rebels and pirates,” said Toronto leaders.99 The Crown had a corps of Africans upon which to draw for defense. By 1834 there were a goodly number of Negro families in the city that evolved into Toronto, a number of them former U.S. runaways.100 Disaffection with London was not as widespread among Africans, as one republican discovered to his dismay. After crossing the border to Canada he sought to escape southward via Lake Erie, but a stiff gale drove him back to the shore where he was captured by armed Negroes.101 That the leader of the republican revolt, William MacKenzie, was compared to George Washington may have won Abolition of Private Property?

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him plaudits in the republic. But it frightened Africans in Canada into militant action.102 This disdain by Africans, in a sense, was a disservice to MacKenzie, for he lamented the fact that in the U.S. in “all classes of white society, their ebony brethren are treated as a degraded caste.”103 He was a stern critic of slavery.104 The revulsion created by enslavement influenced those beyond the circle of Africans, for even James Mackenzie of Lockport, New York, opposed his nation’s union with Canada due to “that detestable slave system.”105 Thomas Gibbs Ridout of Canada engaged in one-upmanship when he declared during this tense era, “I wish that the British government would declare war immediately against the United States.”106 William MacKenzie, the republican leader, was told that “perhaps your defeat in Canada may hasten the abolition of slavery in the South.”107 This profound assertion at once disconnected the victory of republicanism from what was thought to be its complement, abolition, while underscoring that actually it was the weight of the Crown and not its defeat, which was in the best interest of the African. As one sage noted, it was the “power of the British to throw into the Southern States thousands of free Negroes and thereby call forth all those horrors so fearfully dreaded from the slave population.”108 This upsetting reality dawned on U.S. forces when they were warned that the Crown was sending a Negro cook across the border who would falsely join with U.S. forces, then poison them.109 This chef was among the Africans who rallied faithfully to the Union Jack in a replay of the 1812 war. The rebellion’s embodiment, William MacKenzie, conceded that the Negroes were “extravagantly loyal to the Executive.” With sincerity, he asserted, “I regret that an unfounded fear of a union with the United States on the part of the colored population should have induced them to oppose reform.”110 He knew this well, for when he held a republican meeting in Ontario in early 1832 it degenerated into a riot with vociferous Africans throwing stones, since they thought republicanism meant slavery. And when MacKenzie actually leapt to revolt, virtually every able-bodied African man in Toronto leapt to oppose him.111 The leading Canadian official, Sir Francis Head, knew he had a powerful asset in the form of anti-U.S. Negroes. “They hastened as volunteers in wagon-loads to the Niagara frontier to beg from me permission that [they] might be permitted” to “defend the glorious institutions of Great Britain,”112 he boasted.113 At this juncture, the population of Upper Canada did not amount to half a million, while that of the United States exceeded sixteen millions, thereby 116

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underlining the Africans’ importance, since at that moment Wales was revolting and Ireland was about to do so.114 Detroit was a headquarters for the anti-London rebels,115 and skirmishes occurred there. The last and decisive battle, which led to their defeat, took place within 2,000 yards of this city on the opposite Canadian shore. MacKenzie and company were armed by the U.S.116—or so thought London.117 London’s man in Washington, H. L. Fox, advised Secretary of State John Forsyth of the preparation for a “hostile invasion of Lower Canada” from upstate New York by “French Canadian outlaws” and Euro-Americans, who were “fast increasing in numbers.”118 Fox told Lord Palmerston the same thing.119 This conflict was the inexorable outcome of the tensions that rocked the bilateral relationship that abolition only served to worsen.120 When the “Canadian outlaw MacKenzie” showed up in Buffalo, Fox thought he had grasped the nature of the forces arrayed against London’s most sizeable possession.121 Even a fire-eating South Carolina Congressman conceded that a man London deemed to be a “traitor” was “permitted to recruit men in the public streets of Buffalo” and were now violating British soil in Canada.122 Even the U.S. Marshal in New York state’s northern district admitted that a force “now about 1000 strong” and “well supplied with arms” was under the leadership of “Albany” men and attacking Canada.123 Hundreds of miles away in Detroit, Sir Francis Head was up in arms about a “large force” of about “1000 or 1200 in number, with arms and artillery,” that had “attempted to invade” Ontario; the invaders “commenced battering the town of Amherstburgh.”124 But Fox was not the only man upset with this border war. Henry Clay was breathing fire, telling his fellow Senators that it was the republic that was the victim of aggression.125 Yet his inflammatory words were mild compared to those of Congressman Jonathan Cilley of Maine, who claimed that the Empire was claiming “one third” of his state and that in Canada a replay of 1776 was now in motion that Washington was duty-bound to support. A colleague, however, counseled that this was unwise, due to the “defenceless state of the northern frontier owing to the military troops having been drawn away for the purpose of prosecuting the war in Florida.” Candidly, said Congressman Isaac Bronson, “military posts of the country had been stripped for the purpose of sending the forces to Florida” and now “there were none to send” northward. This argument bolstered those in London who thought that backing Africans and Seminoles was a wise approach.126 While Washingtonians were worrying about Florida, those who were to be regarded as Torontonians were concerned about basic security. Sir Francis Head acknowledged that “those dreaded questions” of “Texas and AboliAbolition of Private Property?

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tion” were creating “great anxiety,” which caused the “higher classes” in the republic to assert somehow that “the Canadas must be had” as a palliative and diversion from the internal tensions generated.127 But complicating any attempt by the U.S. to redirect Canada away from London was the dread-arousing obstacle of the Africans, particularly those who had fled slavery. As the Civil War approached, sojourners from the United Kingdom were arriving in ever greater numbers in the republic. Almost instinctively, they noticed that slavery was a gaping chink in the armor of the U.S. that an astute foe could exploit rather easily.128 The British traveler, Harriet Martineau, detected this when she arrived as the embers of battle remained warm. “In Upper Canada there are upward of ten thousand people of colour,” she remarked, “chiefly fugitive slaves.” She was struck by “one peculiarity” they possessed, namely, the “extravagance of their loyalty” to the Crown. “They exert themselves in defense of all the acts of the executive, whatever they may be. The reason for this is obvious: they exceedingly dread the barest mention of the annexation of Canada to the United States.”129 Since the air in Britain was too pure to tolerate slavery, it was simpler for the Crown to take advantage of the republic’s weakness. Likewise, the air in London seemed to asphyxiate U.S. slaveholders, or so might have argued the Kentuckian, Robert Breckenridge, when he arrived in 1836. “I found,” he said, “a state of great excitement in the public mind on the general subject of Negro slavery,” which was a “matter of great and constant annoyance to every American in England.” Then, to his chagrin, at the World Anti-Slavery Convention that met later, he “was denounced in its open sessions, in such terms of unmeasured bitterness and contumely as Englishmen alone know how to use.”130 The culprit, as he saw it, was the Church of Scotland, which he viewed as an abolitionist stronghold—though he could have added that abolitionist sentiment had penetrated the highest levels of British society.131 Hence, when the Carolina slaveholder, James Henry Hammond, visited Britain in 1836 he came prepared to be unimpressed—and was not disappointed.132 In fact, U.S. travelers in Europe often were stung by reports of the barbarity of slavery in their homeland. Such reports seemed to be a staple in the newspapers of Austria, Germany, Russia—and of course Britain—where despots and aristocrats alike could point to the republic as proof that so-called “popular democracy” was a sham. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., abolitionist organs were hailing Europeans as enlightened in contrast to the general run of Euro-Americans, who were stigmatized as cruel and rapacious, which also was seen as evidence of the failure of republicanism.133 British abolitionists 118

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went as far as to suggest that even Russia—a byword for autocracy—might have had a better human rights record than that of the republic.134 Thus, when Lord Durham arrived from the British Isles to monitor the border crisis, he saw “many American settlers in Canada,” which was bound to be unsettling and suggested the need for soliciting more African runaways as a counterweight. He found that “one cause of the discontent among the settlers from the United States” was their discomfort among these Africans, “proof of the extraordinary and anomalous feelings of Americans on the subject of slavery, or rather of the freedom of the people of colour. It was gravely mentioned to me as a striking abuse,” he said, sounding surprised, “that a slave who could escape into Canada, or the other provinces, became free, and could not legally be [placed] in the hands of his masters. Another grievance was the equality conceded to coloured people who were not taught ‘to know their station’ as in the United States and that these errors would soon be rectified under the American republican system.” He distinguished further the rule of the Crown by noting how English was imposed more forcefully in Louisiana than in Quebec.135 The larger point was that the border crisis of 1837–38 and the Second Seminole War suggested that as long as Washington resisted the winds of change augured by emancipation, it would perpetually be at a disadvantage, with the concomitant threat to sovereignty, in its ongoing battle with its former colonial master. This was a reality well-recognized by J. W. Longuen, an African who escaped from Tennessee to Canada before settling in Rochester, New York. He was there in 1838 at the time of the border crisis and expressed apprehension that Washington would “destroy the only asylum for African freedom in North America. The promptness with which several companies of black men were organized and equipped and the desperate valor they displayed in this brief conflict, are an earnest of what may be expected from the swelling thousands of colored fugitives collecting there, in the event of war between the two countries.” These Africans, he asserted boldly, “are the most reliable fortress of national strength on the Canadian frontiers.” He warned angrily that they would “imprint upon the soil of slavery as bloody a lesson as was ever written.” This he knew since—despite his New York residence— he was “urgently solicited by the government of Canada to accept the captaincy of black troops in the provincial army.”136

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George Thompson was frightened. It was 1835 and this passionate British abolitionist had come to Salem, Massachusetts, to preach the antislavery gospel. On arrival, however, he was informed that a mob was searching for him. He fled—but the mob did not. More than 100 men collected in the street, hovering over the site where he had sat, demanding that he be handed over, crying out, “turn him out’ . . .turn out the Englishman,” “turn out the foreigner.” These hostile salutations were peppered with threats of extreme violence and stones were tossed at the home where he was thought to reside. They were joined rapidly by hundreds more who gathered in front and back of this unlucky abode, threatening to burn it down, immolating all those present, compelling Thompson—like a runaway African—to escape to the more comforting climes of New Brunswick. Repeatedly, during his journey, Thompson was exposed to imminent danger: as one supporter put it, there were “threats of savage mutilation that make the blood run cold,” as he was “continually harassed with the fearful apprehension that if he was not murdered, he would one day return to his family with his tongue pulled out, or his ears cropped or his nose cut off! He was pursued like a wild beast.”1 In Lowell there was a “disturbance,” accompanied by a “great deal of stamping and yelling.” A“heavy brick-bat was hurled with tremendous force through a window immediately behind” the startled speaker and “passed upon an exact level with my head.” An “inflammatory handbill” was circulated, denouncing “‘the foreigner’” and his “intermeddling,” as the “excitement increased hourly throughout the day.” Perhaps what incited the rabble was his provocative speech on the importance of Haiti.2 Whatever the case, loud stomping, vociferation, and hisses greeted his remarks. Thompson did not flinch, however. He assailed the U.S. press for not printing the truth about the course of emancipation in the Caribbean: “Is it told in Charleston? No. Is it told in Richmond? No. Is it told in New York or New Haven? No.” Perhaps this blind spot was driven by a reluctance to face the fact that the 1834 decree 120

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sounded, as well, the “death knell of American slavery. American slavery cannot last ten years longer,” he predicted.3 To be fair, there was little doubt that there were those in London who wanted to see the splitting of their growing republican rival. The axis of slavery provided a wonderful opportunity for the implementation of this notion (as the Civil War was to demonstrate later). Still, it would be churlish to ascribe such motives to well-intentioned British abolitionists whose fealty to their cause was sealed by the Jamaican insurgency. The outcry against Thompson4 in Massachusetts was fierce precisely because abolitionism there had made such progress, not least due to the active ministrations of the British.5 So influential were the British in the realm of abolitionism that William Lloyd Garrison chose to use their opposition to the colonization of Africans as evidence of its invalidity.6 Increasingly, U.S. nationals traveled to Britain and from there published screeds against slavery in their homeland.7 Likewise, when Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley sought support for colonization, naturally he journeyed to Europe where he found, “nowhere, perhaps on the island of Great Britain, burns the fever of abolition, more intensely, than in Glasgow.” He returned home with little support for his project.8 Republicans did not accept these criticisms passively. The slaveholder James Hammond argued that slavery was “not a sin” but was “especially commanded by God through Moses and approved by Christ through his Apostles.” Perhaps enmeshed in amnesia—or seeking above all to reassure himself—he advised that “it is a great mistake to suppose, as is generally done abroad, that in case of war slavery would be a source of weakness,” for the enslaved would not, he opined, “seize such an opportunity to revolt.”But, he added, “against such instigations we are always on guard” and even if the guard failed, “should any foreign nation be so lost to every sentiment of civilized humanity as to attempt to erect among us the standard of revolt, or to invade with Black Troops for the base and barbarous purpose of stirring up servile war, their efforts would be signally rebuked.”9 Hammond’s fellow Carolinian,10 Congressman Robert Rhett, was similarly reproachful, saying it was a bit rich for London to rebuke the republic, given that she had accompanied conquest “by fire and slaughter.” The “time may not be far distant,” he warned pointedly, “when all the nations of the earth will be compelled to combine for her overthrow, as all Europe combined, under her auspices, for the overthrow of Napoleon.” How could London, he declaimed, rebuke any state, since it was the “greatest robber and oppressor that now controls the destinies of men[?]”11 Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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Fundamentally, the opinion arose in the U.S that emancipation was a cynical scheme to undermine their nation and that abolitionists were promoted by the Crown.12 When the prominent parliamentarian J. S. Buckingham arrived from Britain in the republic in 1839, he was quickly and repeatedly apprised that “English abolitionists” had “abolished slavery in the West Indies, for the sake of encouraging a Negro revolt in the Southern States and thus revenging” the 1776 revolt.13 Buckingham also spoke of the “stimulus” provided abolition by Caribbean emancipation. The Empire was not without leverage, for this parliamentarian was struck that in Hilton Head, of the “large ships” he saw merely “two or three” were from the U.S., while the “greater number” were from Britain.14 This evident economic leverage that London held on the republic was reflected when it was suggested to Gerrit Smith that he push for Britain to place a duty on U.S. cotton in order to hasten the fall of slavery.15 This was of a piece with British observers who paid acute attention to the real and imagined defects of the slaveholders’ republic, probing for weaknesses that would be vulnerable in case of military assault.16 One Londoner pooh-poohed the increasingly popular republican idea that it was London that was responsible for slavery in the U.S., citing the founding of Georgia and the substantial British backing for abolition that was overridden by the locals. How could Britain “force the Americans to be oppressors, though she could not force them to be slaves?” What of the contrasting British and U.S. records on abolition since 1787? What of slave trading in the republic’s capital? He reserved his most withering fire for Thomas Jefferson, a “man deserving everlasting infamy.” The entire “republican system,” he insisted, was a fake and a fraud.17 The kind of intelligence gathering conducted by Buckingham went in both directions. For a few years after the full implementation of emancipation, Albert Fitz visited Bermuda, then filed a report on the “great importance of these islands” which was “made manifest during the last war” in 1812. It remained “one of the most impregnable fortresses in the western hemisphere.” The people continued to “anticipate great spoils in case of another war with the United States. The opinion is prevalent,” he wrote in mid-1842 to Secretary of State Daniel Webster, “that the Americans are very desirous of obtaining possession of these islands, and they are particularly jealous and distrustful of American visitors.” He then made his way southward to Barbados and Jamaica, inspecting “fortifications,” and seeking data on the feared West India Regiments. This sensitive mission was a “profound secret,” he emphasized, as he deployed “great caution” throughout his journey.18 122

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The insights19 of Britain’s Thomas Hamilton were not as oriented to the onset of war, but were just as explosive. He too was appalled with what he saw, lamenting that in this republic it was “common for fathers to sell their children, for sons to sell their brothers and sisters.” The republic, he proclaimed, had “become a nuisance upon earth and an object of hatred and derision to the whole world.” Brightening, he recommended that “every Englishman who visits Charleston,” should visit “Jones’ hotel,” since the proprietor was a “black man and [has] whispered in the world, for, I learned, he was laid up with gout—the disease of a gentleman.”20 While Hamilton21 was thankful, after witnessing slavery, that he was “white” while visiting the U.S., Adam Hodgson was grateful that he was British after his visit: seeing the republic reinforced his patriotism. But he kept returning in his tale of woe to New Orleans, “the very name of which seems to strike terror into the slaves and Free Negroes” alike of the “middle states.” Thus, he knew of “slaves destroying themselves by cutting their throats or other violent means” to avoid being sent there. But like many of these accounts, he left his readers with the idea that London retained allies in this land of cruelty. Thus, he encountered indigenes who were “much pleased” when they heard he was British.22 British abolitionists were becoming increasingly militant in their characterization of republicans. Controversy erupted in 1839 when such caustic views were expressed directly to the chief U.S. diplomat in London, Andrew Stevenson. At a meeting in Birmingham commemorating emancipation, the well-known Irish politician Daniel O’Connell assailed his nation for “slave breeding” and tossed in an assault on George Washington for good measure. Stevenson, a slaveholder defending his class’s alleged honor, demanded a duel—which did not occur. Stevenson, who had been pressing London for compensation for indemnification of the enslaved from the Comet and the Enterprise in particular, was noticeably displeased.23 O’Connell did not back down in condemning the “vile union of republicanism and slavery,” referring to the republic as a “nation based on hypocrisy,” and observing that “of all men living,” an “American citizen who is the owner of slaves is the most despicable.”24 O’Connell invidiously compared Washington with Simon Bolivar, who he hailed as much more progressive on the bedrock matter of enslavement. Like his compatriots, he was particularly outraged by reports of slave breeding in the republic.25 Responding to the republic’s tendency to blame London for imposing slavery on North America, O’Connell pointed out that republicans revolted against the Stamp Act, so why not slavery? He was contemptuous of those Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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who complained of aristocracy, then imposed in the republic “the worst of all aristocracies,” “that of the human skin.”26 His causticity was echoed enthusiastically by articulate U.S. Negroes,27 which in turn was used to deflect the charge that London’s depredations in Ireland and India28 made the Empire the real hypocrite.29 Given their fraught relationship, it was easy to see why the Michigan Freeman in 1840 spoke in “anticipation of WAR” between the republic and Britain.30 But it added threateningly that on such an occasion, “more than two millions of dissatisfied slaves in the South and southwest can instantly be aroused to a state of fearful rebellion, who will hail the opportunity thus offered them to reek bloody vengeance on their oppressors.”31 The pestilence of slavery was providing the shovel for its own grave-digging, which, if further proof was needed, became clear when the abolitionist Gerrit Smith was asked to assist in establishing a colony of fugitive slaves in Canada; this would have probably provided more recruits for a republican-resistant Canadian militia.32 The quintessential example of runaways receiving refuge in Canada was that of Thornton Blackburn and his spouse, who had escaped from the Slave South to Michigan, where they were detained, before fleeing northward. This was a few years before the republican revolt in Canada. But it seemed that the Africans were engaging in a militant rehearsal of their own rebellion; at least that is the inference to be drawn from the frightened remarks of Alexander McArthur, the unfortunate deputy sheriff in Wayne County, Michigan, who had to confront their fury. Seeking to rescue Blackburn from the state’s clutches, they told him bluntly that “they expected some of them would be killed,” but they were no less “determined.” But, as he saw it, it was his life that was in jeopardy for as he “went out among the crowd” they were “brandishing their weapons over him,” and “threatened the extremity of violence.” As he was about to walk away, he “perceived the prisoner Blackburn standing on the steps of the jail door, in the act of drawing from his bosom which he presented to the breast of the jailor.” Then, “instantly after turning around [he] pointed the pistol” at the sheriff while declaring that unless he were freed, he would shoot. At that moment “the crowd of Blacks and mulattos” cried, “shoot him—shoot him—blow him through,” then punctuated their words by rushing toward the authorities, grabbing Blackburn, and escorting him to a stage coach as others attacked the authorities with “frequent and violent blows,” including a weighty stone that was tossed at the sheriff ’s head, knocking him down. As he was “falling,” his pistol “discharged” and an 124

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African then rushed the sheriff, club in hand, and “struck him upon the side of the head.” His terrified deputy confirmed that “the intention of the same Blacks and mulattoes so assembled” was “to the life” of this battered official.33 The Crown refused to return these refugees for a criminal trial, infuriating republicans.34 Detroiters should have considered themselves lucky, for in Windsor, just across the river in Canada, there was serious contemplation of crossing the border and burning down the town if Blackburn had not been freed. In any case, after this incident the torching of houses and barns became more frequent in what became the Motor City. Africans were blamed for this outbreak, which engendered even more hostility against them, leading ever more of them to escape to Canada. The Blackburn case was not sui generis, for it was not long before an enslaved man from St. Louis made it to Detroit and was detained as a prelude to his return. Upset Negroes sought to rescue him but better prepared officials were well-armed in the face of considerable resistance mounted by these men, some of whom had just departed the Canadian militia and the repulsion of the republican revolt.35 Among those fleeing northward was John Malvin, born in Virginia in 1795. He was among the many who escaped during the flux brought by the 1812 war. By 1829 he was in Cincinnati, thinking he had found safe refuge there, but like others he found it necessary to flee to in the face of racist riots and wound up helping to build a community in Canada that took the name Wilberforce.36 When the runaway Solomon Moseby escaped from Kentucky to Canada in 1837, what ensued was both chaotic and predictable. Arriving in Niagara with the threat of capture tailing him, Africans armed themselves with pitchforks, shovels, and stones and planned to blockade the bridge joining the two nations if an attempt were made to grab him. In the event, two men died in the resultant chaos and a number were imprisoned. Those who survived were not jailed but allowed as their alleged punishment to join the militia to resist the republican revolt, which had broken out contemporaneously with this turmoil. Moseby wound up escaping to England, not an atypical occurrence.37 Repeatedly,38 the Crown refused to return fleeing Africans to the republic, which simultaneously boosted their allegiance to the Union Jack.39 Why should the Crown send Africans back to a land where they would toil for free, thereby increasing the wealth of this challenger, particularly when they would enlist happily and gratefully in militias and fight London’s foes to the death? This was a question that even the estimable MacKenzie had difficulty answering,40 as Africans continued opposing his project.41 Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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There were few good reasons for London to comply with the dictates of U.S. slavery, particularly after 1834. Even before this date, London was hardly a model of cooperation. Afterwards, its spine stiffened appreciably, thereby heightening anger and frustration in the republic about the surge of abolitionism, which ineluctably washed over local emancipationists, exacerbating the sectional crisis. There was mass popular sentiment in both Canada and Britain hostile to the extradition of African refugees, in any case, with the Crown often resorting to abstruse legalese to justify its policies.42 This attitude received some support within the republic.43 The Negro journalist toiling for the New York-based Freedom’s Journal well knew that the state of public opinion in London was such that no administration there could or would admit to a treaty mandating the return of human property— and this was before abolition. This was an incentive for more Africans to cross the border and become militant fighters against U.S. style republicanism in Canada.44 This trend seemed to require few enticements,45 as the number of Anglophiles among U.S. Negroes continued to accelerate. Surely Canada was no racial paradise, though some U.S. Negroes seemed to think so after enduring the agony of life in the slaveholders’ republic. And no nation could live side by side with the U.S. without being influenced negatively toward those of darker skin. Yet William Wye Smith of Toronto recognized this and took affirmative action to soften the harmful blow. In light of the “unchristian prejudices of the whites,” he said, speaking of the 1840s, “I always feel like giving a black man an extra warm ‘good morning’ or a warmer shake of the hand than anybody else, as a kind of acknowledgement and restitution.”46 Increasingly, Anglo-Canadians’ identity—which had been shaped by the stories of woe brought by loyalist refugees—was being reinforced by worse stories delivered by African refugees. These streams were merging and creating a rushing river of discontent in Canada that did not bode well for transborder relations.47 With every passing day it seemed that abolitionism was a way to forge a distinctively Canadian identity strong enough to withstand the monstrous encroachments of the power to the south.48 Britain had been held in deep affection by Africans before 1834. But afterward49—particularly when its policy contrasted so sharply with that of the slaveholders’ republic—this affection mutated into dewy-eyed romance.50 The famous runaway slave, Harriet Jacobs, for example, exclaimed upon arriving in Britain, that “for the first time in my life I was in a place where I was treated according to my deportment, without reference to my complexion. I felt as if a great millstone had been lifted from my breast.” Jacobs and 126

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runaways like her experienced a sense of political and spiritual liberation on British soil that was unknown to her in Dixie.51 The pressure placed on the U.S. by abolitionists in the wake of 1834 showed little sign of ceasing, nor did it seem to have squashed the militancy of U.S. Negroes. When the republic failed to engage positively with their resident African population, many of the latter looked longingly to London for satisfaction, placing Washington at a disadvantage. And when in Rhode Island, poor and working-class Euro-American men failed to ally with local African Americans, the latter joined the armed militia and helped to squash a rebellion of the former, thereby gaining enhanced rights for themselves.52 The larger lesson was that there was a stiff price to be paid for ignoring, or taking for granted, or worse, oppressing Africans.53 Meanwhile, to the south and east, the British authorities seemed to become more comfortable with emancipation, which did not augur well for the continuation of enslavement. “The Negro and Coloured race evince more desire to read and learn than the poorest of the whites,” claimed Governor William Reid in Bermuda in August 1841.54 “It is one of the evils of Slave Institutions,” he observed two years later, “that under them men’s minds are not directly led to devise substitutes for manual labor, in increasing production. The workman has his own mind enchained.”55 It would not be easy to quarantine these seditious ideas, forbidding their reach hundreds of miles westward in the slave-bound Carolinas and Virginia. Moreover, by 1845 as a British merchant put it straightforwardly, “we have spent 20,000,000 [pounds] to abolish slavery” and “20,000,000 [pounds] to repress the Slave Trade.” Yet just west of Bermuda the slave system continued to thrive, which meant that London would have to spend even more if bondage were to be distinguished—though neither Britain’s patience nor pocketbook were inexhaustible.56 The patience of Africans also had its limits. By 1840, one African journalist writing in The Colored American seemed to be trying to bait the republic into a war that Washington would find difficult to win. If such a conflict with London were to explode, the republic knew “very well that Great Britain would light up flames on the whole southwestern frontier[,] that she would sweep Texas with an allied army of English, Mexicans and Indians and from headquarters of New Orleans would proclaim freedom to two millions of  . . . slaves  . . . they also know that a West Indian Army composed in part of regiments of well-disciplined and brave blacks, would land in Florida, furnish with arms, ammunition and provisions Indians and Negroes there” and “cooperate with the southwestern army and with fleets, issuing from the Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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British West Indies, Cuba and Vera Cruz. They know,” he continued, “such fleets and armies would contain many colored men from the United States, perfectly acquainted with the face of every part of the country and with every creek, inlet and harbor and what is worse, smarting under the wrongs which have been inflicted upon them in the land of their birth. Material of attack more destructive could not be imagined.” Worse for the south was that “a war with England would give an unprecedented prosperity to northern manufactures, wool growers, graziers and farmers.”57 By 1840, there were an estimated 12,500 runaways in Upper Canada, many of them adult men with a similar burning incentive to wreak havoc on the land they had left.58 There were many more in Haiti who were thought to harbor similar bloody feelings. When the Reverend S. W. Hanna, a prominent cleric from Jamaica visited Hispaniola, he received that impression. “As we crossed another street,” he remarked in 1836, “a black man in military uniform called aloud to the one who accompanied us, and demanded who we were. Our companion replied, ‘people from a man-of-war.’” “‘[O]f what nation’ was the next demand. ‘English’ it was answered. ‘Then,’” said the now satisfied soldier, “‘you may proceed.’” This response was all the more remarkable since at that juncture, said Reverend Hanna, “the whites are in some respects, a proscribed race. No white man is permitted to possess property in lands or houses in this country.”59 By the early 1840s, thousands of U.S. Negroes had migrated to Canada and thousands more to Haiti, with many more considering other alternatives to the slaveholders’ republic. Imbued with optimism about what was occurring under the Union Jack, a sizeable group of Black Baltimoreans gathered in November 1839 to consider moving en masse to Guiana, the British colony on the northern coast of South America. So moved, they dispatched two emissaries there to inspect their possible new homeland, where they were received, it was reported, “in a manner highly flattering.” They went to inspect the court system—an arm of racist repression in the slaveholders’ republic—and were pleasantly surprised to find that appointments were made to the bench “without regard to color.” Generally, they found that “no distinctions of color exist,” while the “colored classes are wealthy, influential and highly respectable. Many of them are magistrates, wealthy proprietors, merchants with large establishments and managers of estates, receiving liberal estates. The collector of customs at one of the principal ports is a person of color” in this “magnificent country.”60 Edward Carbery, whose job it was to promote migration to this colony, assured these Negroes that—unlike life under the stars-and-stripes—life 128

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under the Union Jack would not be a perpetual trial. He visited New York, Philadelphia, and Boston with similarly attractive offers.61 A vast land with a scant population scattered largely on the northern coast—though the colony stretched strategically to the Brazilian border—Guiana was in need of people. By mid-1835, even the U.S. Consul there, Moses Benjamin, was acknowledging that “the experiment of Free Labour in the cultivation of estates in this colony” had proven “imminently satisfactory,” and thus U.S. Negroes would not be arriving in a land as distressed as some had thought.62 One would think that Washington would not hesitate to rid itself of nonslave Africans, an enunciated goal since the initiation of colonization. So thought London, which sought to effectuate this process.63 To that end, H. L. Fox of London’s legation in Washington had “much conversation” with Secretary of State Abel Upshur on this issue, who seemed to sense the “advantage that would result to this country from being relieved of as large a number as possible of the free men of colour who now inhabit it.” The sticking point was the inevitable “encouragement to runaway slaves from the Southern States” that would ensue once so many former U.S. Negroes had moved to the Caribbean, for “Negro slaves” would “hope to obtain at the port of embarkation” in a “free state, a certificate of freedom” allowing migration to British soil, thereby strengthening Washington’s foe.64 It was not long before Upshur announced that he was “very far indeed from approving or encouraging” this project, as, Fox recounted, there was “much annoyance and dissatisfaction on the part of the Southern States if the design should be carried into effect.” A slaveholding Virginian himself, Upshur feared this plan was “liable to be perverted by the ‘Abolition Party’” via “encouragement to runaway slaves.” This was not far from the truth, which was why this project had difficulty in gaining flight.65 Thus, Upshur told Fox that after “much reflection” he had ascertained that “in the slave holding states of our union, the Negro race belong to a distinct caste and are not recognized as entitled to all the benefits of full citizenship.” Mind you, he and his class did not “feel any desire to retain their free coloured population.” It was a “relief to get rid of that entire class.” Yet there was a “great delicacy of the subject,” not least aiding runaways, which hindered his aiding their removal. Effectively, Upshur was saying that the Slave South was riding an abolitionist tiger—and that it was dangerous to continue doing so and dangerous to stop.66 An undeterred Carbery continued beating the bushes in the U.S. Northeast for potential immigrants: the U.S. consul in Guiana had noticed the effects hundreds of miles southward. This immigration was “exciting a good Africans Flee from “Republicanism”

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deal of interest,” he said. It “probably” would mean “an improvement in the condition” of these Africans, “particularly craftsmen of almost every description, wages being higher than in the United States.”67 A studious analyst of Anglo-American relations would have to be concerned about such repatriation.68 With thousands of U.S. Negroes moving to Canada and thousands more to Haiti—with the potential of returning to Washington with sharpened bayonets in hand—the prospect of thousands more moving to the Caribbean basin caused U.S. leaders to reconsider the efficacy of such a move, even of free Negroes, though they would not object to their residing thousands of miles away in Liberia. And even if these Negroes were not a military threat, there were other concerns to consider. Thus, in 1837 Robert Harrison, the top U.S. diplomat in Jamaica, mused about being compelled to appear before a tribunal to be “adjudged” and “interrogated and at times insulted by Negroes, mulattoes, and Jews in a colony over which the British flag still waves.” This, he said, was “mortifying in the extreme” and could only be exacerbated if the official to be faced was a resentful former U.S. Negro.69 But as Harrison saw things, looming larger was the military threat from the Caribbean. Those in Kingston with whom he conversed did not “scruple to say that the forces in Canada even now are capable of marching to Washington and dictating terms to our government.”70 Rather hysterically, in 1838 he informed his superiors in Washington that Africans in Jamaica “are meditating something of a most serious nature; as some of them have been heard to say that they would hang up all the whites, unite themselves with Hayti and then attack Cuba, from whence three or four hundred thousand men then would go to America.”71 Since a society had been formed in Jamaica whose “object” was the “entire emancipation of the slaves in the U. States,” and since ships bound for the U.S. routinely took on “paupers and other vagrants,” potentially providing a guise for subversion, Harrison could not ignore this inflammatory rhetoric.72 Unrest in Haiti was part of this complex equation, as he gnashed his teeth constantly about this reputed “horde of Black Savages.”73 But Harrison’s main mission was to monitor Jamaica and the news, he thought, was deeply unsettling. “Two Black regiments [were] expected from the Windward Islands,” he said in the spring of 1839, which had to be watched since “in the event of a rupture between the two countries, those fellows will be excellent firebrands to be thrown ashore on slaveholding states.”74 A year later Harrison reported the dispiriting news that the “intention” in Jamaica was “to burn and destroy all our seaport towns (Wash-

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ington included)[,] naval dockyards, carry our fortifications by a coup de main.” Then “the slaves” in the republic would “constitute a powerful auxiliary army in the interior of our country.” At that point redcoats would land in the northeast.75 “Here they are most abusive and anxious for war,” he announced in early 1841.76 When a detachment from the West India Regiment arrived on the island from Sierra Leone, Harrison lost whatever equanimity he possessed. The militia were “now mustering and drilling,” and the authorities were mulling “war in order to give the Yankees a good [beating].”77 When more troops poured into the island, this time via Gibraltar,“for what purpose I cannot understand,” said a nervous Harrison, his rapidly diminishing composure virtually disintegrated.78 “It is to be lamented,” he remarked mournfully, “that one of our cruisers was not here” of late and “that indeed they are so rarely seen at this island.”79 There was yet another reason for London to seek the overthrow of the slave system in the republic—at least, as Harrison saw things. “A bad woman is always rejoiced at seeing others reduced to her own level,” he contended, and London sought to reduce the republic thusly.80 Continuing to irritate bilateral relations was the continued kidnapping81—and probable enslavement in the republic82—of British subjects of African descent sailing on ships heading toward U.S. waters.83 Harrison had reason to be angst-ridden, surrounded as he was by restive Africans whose suspicion of his nation seemed boundless.84 Apprehensively, he concluded that Jamaica was “likely to become a second San Domingo,” the slaveholders’ worst nightmare.85 Harrison also suspected that this pentup energy could be directed northward.86 Meanwhile, former slaves continued to arrive in the Caribbean basin.87 Trinidad retained a vibrant colony of formerly enslaved Africans from the republic with unaddressed grievances that acutely implicated the U.S. They were joined in 1839 by a delegation of U.S. Negroes who were contemplating relocating there, thus “augmenting a key possession of London and depriving the republic of their labor.”88 “This matter is of no small interest,” The Colored American reported of this proposed venture.89 But what of opposition to colonization? Well, said this paper, “while we wage unceasing, uncompromising war against colonization,” Africans were “not so hostile to voluntary emigration” to Trinidad and “some of the West Indian islands,” including Jamaica and “Puerto de Plata, in the island of Hayti and the settlement of British Guiana, on the

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mainland.”90 Returning the favor, the Legislative Council of Trinidad provided $25 subsidies for the passage of those coming from the U.S. and $30 for those coming from Canada.91 The publicity surrounding this venture among U.S. Negroes was generally favorable,92 as evidenced in The Colored American: “The subject of West Indian emancipation is exerting considerable interest,” for “Hayti and the island of Trinidad are the places to which several of our friends look as their future homes.”93 The presence of African refugees from the 1812 war also seemed to be an inducement to abandon the republic. Reference was made to “seven hundred and seventy-four slaves” who “escaped from their masters” and headed southward as “free laborers, where they are earning their own livelihood with industry and a good conduct.”94 So induced, by October 1840 a British vessel sailed from Baltimore with 250 new migrants, destined for Trinidad, a trip of 1,800 miles requiring almost two weeks.95 Emancipation in the Caribbean had a gravitational pull on Africans trapped within the republic. Some—particularly the enslaved—decided to reach British soil by any means necessary, a decision that rapidly led to yet another major crisis between the republic and the monarchy, bringing these two powers once again to the brink of war.

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The angry and well-armed African threatened to murder his white captor “if he would not take them to a British island,” so the Creole, a vessel containing scores of slaves, set sail immediately for Abaco, the Bahamas.1 Confirming that this derring-do was not spontaneous but planned, was the contention by the crew that one of the rebels had heard of the ship Hermosa. When it recently ran aground at Abaco the Africans obtained their freedom, and thus that was exactly where the rebels wanted to go.2 During the antebellum era,3 the very word “Abaco” was spine-tingling for U.S. shipmasters,4 for there British wreckers lurked, engaged in a profitable business of—as Washington saw things—looting their vessels after they vainly sought to navigate turbulent5 waters.6 The number of slaves on this island dot on the map that was Abaco was never large, as cotton cultivation was a failure. Moreover, more northern than southern loyalists settled there, and they were poorer than most and lacked slave property, thus ill-disposing them to sympathize with the slaveholders’ republic.7 Nevertheless, commerce meant that U.S. vessels routinely passed through these turbulent waters.8 On Sunday evening, about 9 P.M. on November 7, 1841, the laden vessel was heading from Virginia to the slave market in New Orleans. A good breeze was blowing at the time and trade clouds could be detected high in the sky.9 Then was heard the hair-raising declamation that the Slave South hated to hear: “The Negroes have risen,” cried one startled member of the crew.10 William Merritt, a Euro-American, had hitched a ride on the vessel in exchange for agreeing to keep a close eye on the enslaved. He was informed that the ironically named leader of the revolt, Madison Washington—“head cook of the slaves,” as he termed him—had violated the stated rules of gender segregation by communing with the female enslaved. He went to check this out and roust him. He had stumbled on the beginning of a rebellion that led |

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to the death and injury of his comrades and an even more severe crisis in the already tattered London-Washington relationship when the Crown, instead of prosecuting the rebels, freed them.11 The Slave South was in an uproar as state legislatures sprang into action, passing resolution after resolution denouncing London, as editorials bleated for war.12 In response to what was termed “the most successful slave revolt in American history,” scores were freed, thanks to the Crown.13 The Creole story was circulated widely in the press, inflating the importance of what was already a formidable tale: When Madison Washington was detected in the women’s quarters on the vessel, the crew erupted in fury. Then the Africans followed suit. Washington rallied his comrades: “I am going up,” he cried, “I cannot stay here  . . . we have begun and must go through. Rush, boys, rush aft and we have them!  . . . come up every damned one of you. If you don’t lend a hand, I will kill you and throw you overboard.” Ignoring his fervent appeal were William Devereux, a “free colored man,” and “the slave Lewis.” But others acted otherwise, including Elijah Morris who was able to wrest a pistol, which he fired at a crew member, grazing his head. Another crew member grabbed a musket, but it was wrenched away; undeterred, he grabbed a handspike, but was knocked down and stabbed twenty times. Somehow he rose, then crumpled to the deck as he uttered the deathless words, “I am dead—the Negroes have killed me!” Promptly, his body was tossed overboard. Then the daring Africans turned their attention to the helmsman, a Frenchman, who some wanted to kill. But the magnanimous Washington instructed otherwise because he did not speak English and was not Euro-American—so they spared his life. They then turned to a man described as “the mate” of the vessel, who they planned to do away with. But he saved himself when he piped up and indicated that he was the “only person who could navigate.” At first Washington suggested taking the ship to Africa but was told there were insufficient supplies for such a lengthy journey. This is when the idea of reaching the Bahamas arose. Fortunately, one of the enslaved knew the route there. By then it was 1:30 A.M., about four and a half hours after the initial uprising. About 5 A.M. the rebels were told that crew members were in the rigging, engaging in behavior whose import was unclear. Washington ordered them down and one of his comrades pointed a musket in their direction to insure compliance. These white men were told succinctly that if they talked to each other, absent authorization, one or both would be unceremoniously thrown into the sea. The 19 men thought to be leading the revolt huddled frequently and spoke occasionally to the once captors, now captives, telling 134

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them freedom was their motivation. In a show of force, they paraded on the deck, armed, a signal meant to deter any attempt to alter the new status quo. By 10 P.M. on 8 November—about 24 hours after they had revolted—the vessel reached Abaco. As they landed, the dumbfounded crew got a taste of a world turned upside down, as Africans boarded the ship and mingled with the former slaves, telling them they were now free and they could go ashore if they so chose. The governor dispatched a guard of 24 African soldiers in redcoats with loaded muskets and bayonets. It was then that the captain of this contingent was said to have told the former U.S. Negroes that they had been foolish not to have killed all the Euro-Americans before landing, for this would have simplified matters tremendously. There were 500 soldiers on Abaco and about 13,000 Africans in nearby Nassau (and about one-third as many Europeans of various nationalities, though mostly British). Suspecting that there would be an effort to reclaim now lost property, about fifty boats overflowing with angry Africans surrounded the brig, all filled with men armed with clubs and evidently undeterred or discouraged by the authorities. Shortly all but the 19 rebels were freed, while amidst hurrahs and shouts the others were loaded into other boats and escorted ashore as Africans in redcoats stood at the ready. The Attorney General and a magistrate mingled with the now freed people, congratulating them on their escape. The next day the authorities advertised for a vessel to take the refugees to Jamaica, all expenses paid. Three women, one girl, and a boy chose to travel on to New Orleans—and to their presumed continued enslavement. By this point an angry entourage led by the U.S. consul had appeared with the idea of boarding the Creole with arms, rescue the remaining “property,” then sailing the ship to Indian Key where a U.S. man-of-war awaited. To that end, they had sought to buy arms in Nassau, but all the sellers rebuffed their urgent entreaties. This did not halt their plan as they gathered weapons elsewhere, wrapped appropriately in a U.S. flag and concealed in their own vessel that sailed toward the Creole. An African had been watching them all the while, followed the conspirators, then gave the alarm to the redcoats, who were not amused. Thus, as the boat crept closer to the Creole, they heard the urgent cry, “[K]eep off, or I will fire into you!” A company of 24 men stood on deck with loaded muskets in hand and violent engagement in mind. The would-be captors chose the wiser course and retreated, but the now raging consul demanded that the 19 be sent immediately to the U.S. to stand trial. This request was promptly refused. By November 19, the Creole set sail for New Orleans, arriving on December 2, thereby reigniting the dispute as London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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the remaining crew members informed all who would listen about what had befallen them.14 That Madison Washington15 apparently had traveled from his refuge in Canada to rescue his spouse in Virginia before this uprising ensued increased the suspicion in Dixie that London was now actively conspiring against their fearful region.16 He was described as a “large, strong person” and a “fugitive slave from Virginia living with Canada West’s black community in 1840,” who “knew British abolitionist Joseph John Gurney and black underground railroad operative Robert Purvis of Philadelphia.”17 That he and his colleagues were freed because of the aggressive intervention of a mobilized group of Bahamian African civilians, accompanied by armed African soldiers, neither of whom was in a mood to see these refugees returned to enslavement and both seemingly willing to commit further acts of violence to insure their favored outcome, was further cause for anger. As if this were not enough,18 Dixie suspected that the brain behind this revolt—it was hard to admit that Africans may have executed this audacious act—was a British preacher, then in Richmond.19 U.S. consul John Bacon found it hard to accept this “distressing case” that involved the fate of 135 (formerly) enslaved persons.20 He was flabbergasted when he saw the liberated Africans come ashore “in a body and proceeded to the office of the Superintendent of the Police, accompanied by between one and two thousand people,” boisterously marking this emancipation via self-help.21 Meanwhile, the revolt further energized Africans within the republic,22 notably Frederick Douglass who wrote that the case hit the republic “like a bombshell.” His lavish praise for the Crown garlanded23 his elated remarks.24 Douglass acknowledged that the enslaved “had feelings towards” Canada and Britain “of which their masters had little dreamed.” Inspired by Madison Washington, he said candidly that “in the event of a British army landing in the States, and offering liberty to the slaves, they would rally round the British at the first tap of the drum,”25 an idea that was not his alone.26 Alternatively, the British people generally backed their government’s abolitionist policy warmly and it was dangerous politically for any politician to compromise on this principle. Though some in London had been dreaming of an entente with Washington, which would have allowed for a more robust approach to long-standing and emerging foes in France and Russia— not to mention consolidating new gains in Hong Kong—generally, they were frustrated.27 For London had made a fateful political and philosophical step on 1 August 1834, when emancipation took effect. Simultaneously, U.S. leaders like 136

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John C. Calhoun could envision no alternative to slavery. Calhoun and those of his ilk saw the consequence of London’s demarche as striking at the very independence of the republic, its raison d’etre, what had set in motion the 1776 revolt in the first instance. The Creole revolt combined with the 1837–38 Canadian conflict and a host of other nettlesome matters served once more to bring the republic and the monarchy to the point of bloodstained hostility. It was thought that freeing slaves who killed to be free only encouraged emulation, thus perilously jeopardizing the institution of slavery.28 Calhoun and his fellow defender of African enslavement, Duff Green, believed that if war with London were to come, they preferred the grounds presented by the Creole case over any other, foregrounding as it did their foundational tenet of the right to human chattel. The successful prosecution of such a war would douse the now raging flames brought by emancipation and restore the status quo or at least place abolition on the defensive. Such a conflict also placed New England and the north in a corner, forcing them to stand with their slaveholding brethren or risk being accused of appeasing John Bull. The north, conveniently, could also pretend to defend its commercial and shipping interests against the designs of London, while downplaying its defense of enslavement.29 Doubtlessly there were those in the Slave South who were prepared to roll the dice in a reckless dash for the security of their valued property in the face of a challenge that showed few signs of abating.30 Calhoun had seen this plot unfold before: the Comet and the Encomium and the Enterprise showed that London only paid for losses after interminable delay, while seeking to compensate for slaves seized before 1834 but not after. In fact, while wrangling ensued over the Enterprise, the Creole case rudely intervened.31 So even before this latest crisis, Calhoun had taken to the floor of Congress. Even though the gallery was empty,32 his words brimmed over with vitriol.33 Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio was not intimidated by Calhoun’s verbal onslaught. His resolution on the revolt was a rebuke to those like Calhoun, which led to his being lambasted, then censured—yet in his next election he triumphed handsomely 7,469 to 383. This victory helped to congeal abolitionist sentiment and pushed the question of slavery even closer to center stage than it had been,34 not least due to the example of British emancipationists in London and the Bahamas.35 Yet, despite the sectional clash that such a war suggested, the historian Don E. Fehrenbacher is correct in pointing out a “striking feature” of this diplomatic tiff, namely, the probondage posture of Washington: “It made little difference whether Democrats or Whigs, southerners or northerners were in charge.”36 London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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All could unite to confront London. But north of the Mason-Dixie Line it was apparently not well understood that such friction did as much to entrench hostility to abolition (thus, hastening civil war) as it assuaged sectional tension. Of course, there were northern voices that dissented from this consensus. John Quincy Adams, liberated from high office, proclaimed that Dixie had “done more to blacken the character of this country in Europe than all other causes put together. They point to us as a nation of liars and hypocrites.”37 This was a bracing reality—but so was the presumed casus belli in the Bahamas. Rather quickly the Colonial Office concluded that the actions of Madison Washington and the 18 other men that the republic considered to be pirates were acceptable, since their intent and object was not plunder but resistance to an illegitimate relation: enslavement. Perhaps they could be charged with murder. But then again, they were not British subjects, the supposed crime was not committed aboard a British vessel, and thus—in a typical example of British legal legerdemain when confronted with the possibility of prosecuting an African refugee from the republic—there was insufficient jurisdictional contact to respond. 38 A well-placed London bureaucrat said there was no relevant treaty to govern such an episode. Anyway, it was now infamous that Washington was hardly eager to extradite British criminals. So what was sauce for the goose,39 was sauce for the gander.40 On the other hand, embroiled as it was in administering a conflict-ridden empire, London could hardly stumble into yet another war with the rising republic.41 This standoff led to the epochal Webster-Ashburton treaty,42 a landmark in London-Washington relations.43 By mid-1842 Lord Ashburton was on a “secret mission” to the republic and conceded that “better security of the Bahamas Channel” and enhanced extradition procedures were needed. Daniel Webster demanded that “mutiny at sea” be covered by an extradition treaty. Although his interlocutors were not opposed, they did object to such a proviso applying to slave revolts, which would undermine fatally their commitment to abolition. “Long desultory conservation[s] ensued between Mr. Webster and myself,” said London’s man in reference to shipboard revolt by the enslaved, that proved mutually unsatisfying. This contested vessel was the “chief of these difficulties,” he sighed, in reaching concord with the U.S.44 Repeatedly, Lord Ashburton emphasized that London distinguished between killing “where the murder was rather an accident than a design.”45 This troublesome case of the Creole was “my main difficulty here,” he conceded. For days on end it “had given me more trouble than all the other questions taken together,” a lengthy list that included impressment, boundary disputes, extradition more generally, and the like.46 138

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Aghast, Webster avidly and aggressively defended the slaving interest, demanding “better security of vessels” near Florida, a “subject which is deemed to be of great importance.”47 But London’s delegate, H. L. Fox, found this approach unacceptable. U.S. diplomats were preening about “comity, good offices,” and the like but “in behalf only of the pretended owners of the Negroes; while no mention is made of what is due, not in comity, but in justice and by absolute right, toward the Negroes themselves.” Once more, fundamentally at issue was a clash of worldview. Washington simply could not understand the logic or rationale of upholding the rights of what they deemed to be human chattel, while abolitionist London had moved beyond this primitive view—even as the U.S. continued to insist that republicanism was avant garde.48 A precedent for Madison Washington’s bravery took place in 1829 when the enslaved aboard a vessel bound from Norfolk to New Orleans revolted— albeit unsuccessfully, though this should have sent a piercing signal to Dixie of what was to come. Before that the enslaved belonging to a Baltimore trader rebelled as they were bound for Georgia; apparently, those who spearheaded the revolt on the Creole knew of these earlier efforts, just as it was not unusual for slave seafarers in the republic to travel frequently to the Caribbean.49 Near the same time, in what was becoming a regular occurrence, 14 African seamen on a U.S. vessel bound for Wilmington, North Carolina, defected to the Bahamas instead. This should not have been surprising. As the fate of the Creole was being debated, Henry Jones, a U.S. Negro seafarer, was freed by the Bahamian authorities on the grounds of being a slave—an illegal status there.50 That slaveholders realized that shipboard insurrections were not that extraordinary is glimpsed by the existence of insurance policies hedging against such eventualities.51 Ships running around, sailors turning up destitute, passengers perishing, the enslaved revolting—such was the normal order of things in the perilously swirling waters encircling the Bahamas. These slaps in the face were accompanied by a knee to the groin—or so it was thought—when it was reported that the Crown allowed scores of the former captives on the Creole to depart for Jamaica for resettlement.52 Would not this encourage further shipboard insurrections and killings of proslavery advocates? Whatever the case, the Africans were sufficiently organized to be able to create an international incident whose gory details simultaneously terrified and infuriated the Slave South. Statements to the Bahamian authorities, mostly by the crew, similarly filled in the blanks. When confronted while consorting with the women London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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aboard the slave ship, Madison Washington shoved his interrogator and at the same time a weapon was fired, which seemed to be the signal to rise up. At that point, crew member John Hewell was killed with a Bowie knife.53 One crew member added the provocative detail that during the midst of the revolt, he heard a voice declaring “kill the son of a bitch” . . . the “same voice said kill every white person on board—don’t save [even] one.”54 It appeared that the rebels displayed tactical agility, for as one African was threatening death, another cooed, “I don’t want to see you hurt but they talk strong of heaving you overboard,” so “you best comply with their wishes.” 55 There was quibbling about the time of the uprising, but regarding the broader picture, there was consensus—for example, the reluctance of the African women to join in. William Merritt claimed that at a crucial moment one woman “concealed” him and he was “covered over by several of the colored females” as the African men searched for him.56 William Woodside, the “Chief Master” who hailed from Brunswick, Maine, recalled that two Episcopal clergymen came aboard the Creole after it arrived in the Bahamas and were in “familiar conversation with the slaves and appeared to be giving them directions and instructions.” He also heard threats made to the crew to the effect that if they resisted the departure of the formerly enslaved “there would or might be bloodshed,” which left him “intimidated.”57 He found it hard to accept that at a crucial moment, the ship was “literally surrounded with boats full of black people armed with large clubs,” making him fear “violence.”58 A passenger, Jacob Leitner, found it hard to forget his encounter with one of the African assailants aboard this then bloody vessel. “Ben Blacksmith sat in the cabin with a large knife covered with blood, and said he had sent some of them to hell this night with the knife.”59 But even after these inflammatory statements, the indignities continued to be piled on the republic, for the Bahamian authorities seized blankets on the Creole and gave them to the formerly enslaved, in a gesture that seemed dangerously close to reparations. Edward Everett, the U.S. emissary, found it hard to believe what had occurred. One argument proffered was that the enslaved were simply passengers and the only problem might be their failure to pay a fare on the vessel! But the republic was entangled in a unique set of contradictions as it argued simultaneously that return of property was at issue—like a horse crossing from Maine to Canada—while contending that these Africans were “Americans” over whom London had no jurisdiction. A somewhat bemused London replied that no, actually they were humans, not slaves—the latter status they no longer recognized. Astonished, Everett 140

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responded that the Bahamas sat astride the passageway connecting “the cities of the Atlantic with the ports and harbors of the Gulf of Mexico and the great commercial emporium on the Mississippi.” So, in a real sense London held the republic in a death grip on its windpipe with its action. “[I]t is, in effect, a direct temptation to mutiny and murder” with the “most serious and painful consequences.”60 The State Department had recoiled at the prospect of relocating the former slaves to Jamaica, not least because of fear that these new subjects would encourage a mass exodus of the enslaved from Dixie. 61 The republic had moved to seize Florida partially on the premise that this territory had become an escape hatch facilitating Africans from Georgia to abscond. Now with Florida under its belt, the republic found that it had compounded its own misery, for now it had to contend with the absconding of Africans to the soil of its sworn enemy, Britain.62 The metastasis on the decaying body of slavery was evident when the case of Jonathan Walker arose. Born on a farm in Harwich, Massachusetts, in 1799 he became a sailor. In the 1830s he aided fugitive Africans in gaining refuge in Mexico. But what caused him to become a contemptible symbol in Dixie was his aiding Africans in Florida in 1844 to flee to the Bahamas. Detained, he was tried and convicted of slave stealing and his hand was branded in retaliation, lifelong evidence of his alleged crime—and actual heroism—occasioning the epic poem about him by John Greenleaf Whittier.63 The intrepid Walker had set sail for Key West, the weakest geographical link in slavery’s chain, from Pensacola. With seven runaways aboard, he made it to freedom. When convicted, the deprived slaveholder was so angry that he pelted Walker with rotten eggs; then Walker was placed in the pillory before being branded.64 Contrarily, Frederick Douglass’s journal spoke of him warmly as “an honest-hearted, weather beaten sailor,” and denounced his jailing.65 Though the “S.S.” brand on his hand was meant to signify for all time “Slave Stealer,” Douglass’s periodical thought it meant “Slave Saviour.”66 This was true, for already the enslaved from Florida had been sequestering vessels and escaping to the Bahamas. Walker’s bravery was bound to inspire67 others.68 Apparently not everyone in Pensacola was upset with him, for it was not long before Walker attempted escape and had been supplied with an ax to that end by an unknown party.69 The controversy70 did not end there, not least since the Florida authorities would not let it die. A select committee of the state’s senate recommended that the “crime of Negro stealing” and of “aiding and abetting Negro stealing be made punishable by death.” A hefty 500 copies of this senatorial report were sent to the White House and MasLondon Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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sachusetts, and distributed “through the Northern and Eastern states and in foreign countries.” As for Walker, in feeble condition after sailing in a flimsy vessel on the open sea, he was confined with a single chain around his ankle and had a brand on his hand. As in South Carolina, there was acknowledgment that Africans were neither citizens of the U.S. nor of Massachusetts either for that matter. Thus even free Negroes could be blocked from the state, akin to the Negro Seamen’s Acts.71 By contrast, John Scoble of the British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society “resolved unanimously” that there was an “enormous wickedness [in] American slavery” that “deprives nearly three millions of human beings of their personal rights.” But while scorning the republic, they heaped praise on “Captain Jonathan Walker.” “[T]his committee,” they declared, “feels it to be their duty publicly and warmly to express their sympathy” to him.72 But Florida was hardly willing to accept entreaties from Britain. Since literature from Scoble’s group was found on Walker’s person when he was detained, the chief executive of the state accused Scoble and his comrades of cooperating clandestinely with Walker in league with “the authorities of Massachusetts in fiendish machinations.”73 The republic, London thought, was not without weapons when it came to stirring internal foes against an antagonist. The British traveler, Robert Baird, was struck by the ferocity of denunciations of his homeland launched by those of Scottish and Irish ancestry.74 As Jonathan Walker was breaking bread with Africans in Pensacola, London’s consul in Charleston had to remind the republic of meetings there about Ireland, complaining of the “impropriety of their interfering with the internal affairs of a foreign country, when their own were so open to retaliation.” The consul objected strenuously to “money [that] is being transmitted in very considerable sums from several of the principal northern cities” to Dublin.75 This republican assertiveness did not halt—rather it seemed to increase— British aid to Africans within the republic, thus complicating further bilateral relations. As Jonathan Walker wasted away in prison, London’s consul in Charleston was tracking down Edward Dunston and Margaret Scarlet, “persons of color said to have been abducted” from Jamaica and now presumably ensconced as slaves in the republic. There was a lamentable practice in Dixie, he said, of “imprisoning persons of African blood free or slave without distinction upon their arrival,” as the “constables” went aboard the vessels as soon as they docked and departed, “marching [Africans] off to the public jail, where they remain till the vessel quits port.” Then corruption and fraudulence allowed for their spiriting them from jail to enslavement.76 142

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This kind of brutality seemed to be more common in regions such as southern Florida that were close to British possessions and cities like Charleston, which were busy ports. In 1832 Florida passed a bill barring migration of “Free Negroes or mulattoes” and deemed that if somehow they arrived, they should be arrested and if they were so bold as to return, they should be “sold to the highest bidder for the term of five years.” But the territorial boundary between British soil and what was now U.S. soil was porous and historic commercial relations did not always coincide with this legal barrier.77 The seizure of free Africans increased in the 1830s and 1840s, as the pace of Bahamian visits to Florida quickened—for abolition provided more mobility and more reason to explore wider horizons.78 As emancipation was enacted, William Forster, an African from the Bahamas, arrived in Florida and was promptly seized and sold.79 He had been residing periodically in Key West and was involved in the profitable wrecking business but was ordered to leave, which he did. Then he had the misfortune to sign on to a U.S. ship as a seafarer and arrived again, was arrested on board, then sold despite the strenuous objections of the Crown.80 There was “great outrage” in London when a free British subject from Liverpool—Henry Steward, an African—was arrested in New Orleans and it was “presumed that he may [now] be a slave.”81 Then John Jones, another British seafarer of African descent, was jailed after arriving in Charleston. He was forced to clean his cell but raised a ruckus saying he’d “be damned if he would do any more work,” and harangued his fellow Africans to the same effect. When he was beaten there was a sharp rebuke from the British consul.82 “My exertions in behalf of colored persons claiming British protection have been incessant,” said the monarchy’s consul in New Orleans in 1843; “I have been the means of liberating many such persons from unjust confinement and this at considerable expense.”83 The consul freely acknowledged that this was occurring as “commercial intercourse and trade between this city and the British West Indies is now extending so rapidly.” In other words, there was reason to suspect that these racist measures were also a form of economic warfare.84 These seamen’s acts targeting Africans, lamented one well-placed Briton, were “detrimental to the interests of the British ship-owner,” as they sought to “force him to hire either white American citizens, or more probably slaves to do the work of the crew in port,” neither of which was palatable.85 More than this, the legislation fomented violent confrontations in southern ports with combustible consequences akin to the Creole case.86 The same John Scoble who had objected, on behalf of British abolitionists, to Jonathan Walker London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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being jailed, took similar exception to the seamen’s laws.87 Yet by 1847 Key West was about to enforce a federal law from 1803 that declared that ships which had aboard a “coloured person, shall become forfeited.”88 Meanwhile, back in Charleston, a fervent meeting of disunion was organized with John C. Calhoun—still smarting over the Creole—as the featured speaker. It was “unusually large and enthusiastic,” said the Londoner there of this antiabolition gathering89 which reflected an escalating discontent about emancipation.90 That the Slave South was not retreating was made clear when it continued to jail British subjects of African descent as they arrived in Savannah, Mobile, and other ports.91 Things came to a head in 1846 when a U.S. ship captain was detained in Montego Bay after being accused of selling a Jamaican seafarer into slavery in the republic years earlier. “The fury of the people in Montego Bay against him is alarming,” said Robert Harrison.92 The U.S. consul found it hard to believe that the captain, Roger Frisbie, had been tossed into a dank prison cell “based on the affidavits of several Negroes and mulattoes,” alleging that the African seafarer was laboring as a slave “in the Penitentiary at New Orleans.”93 Tit for tat: African incarcerated in New Orleans, Euro-American in Montego Bay. Born and residing in New Haven, the tall and long-nosed Frisbie did not expect to be spending the third decade of his life in a Jamaican jail. Frisbie had dark hair, shaved off round the forehead in a manner described as remarkable, perhaps because of the accompanying narrow retreating forehead. He was a drinker and chewer—but he did not smoke tobacco. He routinely sported a black hat and a great linen coat and dressed neatly and cleanly. But the impressive figure he cut was reduced substantially in a Jamaican jail.94 Somehow he managed to elude his captors and depart prison which, Harrison said with accuracy, “has created a great deal of sensation here.”95 Harrison found this to be fortunate since he thought Frisbie’s “innocence” was “clearly” evident and “in any place but this,” meaning Jamaica, would be accepted. But since “the prejudice against Americans is extraordinary” in this island, his being adjudged not guilty would be neither simple nor easy.96 Robert Harrison in Jamaica was in a good position to feel the full force of London’s rage. “War is the general cry of everyone here,” he wrote in 1845, as tensions waxed over Texas and related matters. “[T]hey speak of conquering and overrunning our country with the same ease as they have done to many of the Asiatic provinces,” a reference to Hong Kong, where the Union Jack had just been hoisted.97 Calhoun was told that there was “an army of 144

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30,000 blacks” in Jamaica and there was little “doubt but [that] they meditate an attack on either New Orleans or Charleston, to stir up the blacks and desolate the Southern States and thereby carry out their avowed purpose of abolishing slavery throughout the world”98 [emphasis in the original]. Harrison believed that “in case of war” London would be busily “working among the slaves in our Southern States” and would “strain every nerve to get hold of Pensacola,” which had a troubled history of African unrest. Thus, he counseled, “careful watch” must be maintained “upon all our southern ports as their population in whites is small in comparison with other states and they have a deadly and dangerous enemy in the midst of them.”99 Washington’s travails did not end there. Repeatedly the Jamaican authorities accused U.S. vessels of being complicit in kidnapping Africans on the island, then dragging them into enslavement. Harrison begged to differ.100 He was responding to the fact that late in 1847 a brig from Baltimore landed in Jamaica but departed bereft of its African cook, John Johnston, on the grounds that he was a slave, though the captain contended that he was not.101 The “forcible liberation” of this man, as Harrison put it, was so startling that he advised that no U.S. flagged vessels visit “the English West Indies Islands with a Negro or mulatto on board and particularly for this island.”102 That he held magistrates of African origin as being responsible only deepened the pain.103 It was becoming all too common, he thought, for seafarers who were U.S. Negroes to arrive in Jamaica and be confronted with “black and brown people soliciting their discharge” on the grounds that they were enslaved.104As was his wont, Harrison blamed British missionaries who were busily proselytizing on the north side of the island. He thought they had “unsettled” the Africans there, as they had “instilled into their minds that the United States were to take possession of the colony and make them all slaves again.”105 The very idea of Jamaica being annexed to the U.S., as Texas was, was sufficient to convert the island into a flaming inferno of discontent. The Colonial Office was told of the “alarm,” “sulkiness,” and “irritation” it was fomenting. Apparently this rumor was emanating from local bosses who “taunted the Negroes with suggestions of the terms they would have to submit to when the Americans or the Spaniards should become their masters.” Although the Africans were willing to “fight against the whites to resist” this initiative the upshot was to increase the already proliferating hostility on the island toward the republic.106 A similar fury directed at the republic existed on the northern border, raising searching questions about U.S. security. The case of Isaac Brown revealed London Sanctions Murder of U.S. Slaveholders?

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why such sentiments existed. Born enslaved in Maryland, he was blamed in 1845 when his master was shot; he was whipped with hundreds of lashes, jailed, then sold to a slave trader and shipped to the Hades of the enslaved— New Orleans. But somehow he escaped and made his way to Philadelphia where his spouse and 9 children joined him. But instead of congratulating him on his pluck and good fortune, Maryland’s chief executive demanded his extradition. So he was jailed again—but then freed via legal machinations and fled forthwith to Canada, where British subjects could shake their heads at the stubborn cruelty in the republic.107 Consonant with the discussion of emigration unfolding among nonslave Africans in the republic, relations between this group and their counterparts in Jamaica were deepening. After the 1776 revolt, a number of Africans from the new republic settled in Jamaica, which set a pattern in succeeding decades.108 After inspecting the results of migration of U.S. Negroes to Trinidad and Guiana,109 Jamaica decided that it too wanted more of this population in residence. A hefty $250,000 was allocated in Kingston for this venture.110 In 1847 at a gathering of U.S. Negroes in Troy, New York, it was resolved to organize a “Jamaica Hamic Association” in response to their “great pleasure” at the “courteous proposal” from Kingston to bolster relations. They desired a “more intimate acquaintance” with the Jamaicans, which would “be of mutual benefit” and “advantage”—and of corresponding detriment to the republic. A “common effort for the extinction of slavery” was the overriding concern.111 This mutuality reached a crescendo in mid-1840 when a massive abolitionist convention gathered in London. Full attention was provided to republican slavery, particularly the prickly matter of the frequent occurrence of ships bearing the enslaved sailing into the Bahamas and Bermuda from the U.S. Daniel O’Connell recalled the brouhaha in Washington when U.S. nationals were held captive in North Africa earlier in the century and wondered why sympathy was not extended to Africans held similarly. He denounced the framers of the vaunted U.S. Constitution as cowards, lamenting that in 1787 “there was not one man who had the moral courage [to] insert the word SLAVERY in the declaration.” For they were among the “vilest reptiles,” particularly those now seizing Texas who were no more than a “set of plundering knaves” who “actually stole the land and their first act was to introduce slavery.” The “first act[s] of the robbers were to murder systematically all the Indians and to enslave all the Africans.”112 When abolitionists in Glasgow hailed the formation of “800 anti-slavery societies” in the republic, noting 146

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that “of these, about 100 are female,” they seemed to be speaking like proud parents, though they referred fraternally to “our trans-Atlantic brothers and sisters.”113 But it was Frederick Douglass who best captured enthusiasm about the lands where the Union Jack flew. He found that residents of Nassau were “peculiarly susceptible to antislavery impressions. They are much interested in the subject of the imprisonment of colored seamen in our Southern States,” as a noted Bahamian journal “recommends reprisals upon citizens of South Carolina.” This “paper is under the editorial charge of a colored gentleman, Thomas Dellette, Esq., a talented lawyer. Nassau is the home of the heroes of the ‘Creole,’” he said by way of endorsement. “Madison Washington himself is there.”114

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11 Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

Ashbel Smith could barely contain himself. It was mid-1843 and this diplomat representing the so-called Republic of Texas was in London–not the friendliest climate for an emissary from a state founded on the principle of the enslavement of Africans. This Smith well knew, which was why he was complaining to soon-to-be U.S. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun about their mutual hostility to emancipation and the “great efforts” in London “to accomplish the abolition of slavery in Texas.” “I sincerely believe,” Smith declared, “that the ultimate purpose is to make Texas a refuge for runaway slaves from the United States & eventually a Negro nation, a sort of Hayti on the continent [under] the protection of the British government,” an “entering wedge to the abolition of slavery in the United States.”1 Ties between London and Washington had reeled from bad to worse since the republic had been established. But the crisis over Texas and Oregon seemed to drive the relationship to a low not reached since August 1814. It was not just the accretion of territory making the republic more formidable than it already had been, and the extension of slavery that this seemed to portend, but this auspicious development came on the heels of what Washington saw as the sanctioning of murder by the enslaved, a loud signal to the enchained to make it to Canada, Bermuda, or the Bahamas by any means necessary. Repeatedly during this era, the republic and the monarchy came terribly close to war but, as historian David Pletcher put it, London thought it had the advantage here because the enslaved Africans were “ready to revolt.”2 London long had looked askance at the republic’s designs on Mexico, assuming—as many did—that Mexico’s 1810 revolt against Spanish rule was supported a bit too avidly by Washington and that the invasions of Texas by Euro-Americans3 had less than benevolent designs.4 In succeeding years— or so thought Washington—London went to some lengths to inflame Mexican anxieties regarding U.S. intentions toward Texas.5 Alternatively, London sought a British-dominated buffer state in the borderlands.6 As early 148

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as 1826, Britain and Mexico signed a treaty of cooperation against the slave trade, though its soon-to-rebel province of Texas was widely suspected of importing Africans from the U.S. and from Africa itself: this treaty may have sparked secession.7 Thus, in the U.S. calls emerged as early as 1829 for annexing Texas.8 Correspondingly, as early as 1830 Mexico drew London’s attention to Texas and Washington’s evident desire to annex it.9 In 1834 Henry Clay was advised that London would look irritably at the idea of Texas’s annexation. And in 1844 London’s David Urquhart argued that once “Mexico surrendered, England becomes of necessity the satellite of the United States in the West, as she is of Russia in the East.” But Urquhart also espied an escape from this dilemma, since “among the chief sources of American weakness— glaring amidst the [existence] of constitutional fallacy and of human injustice, is the state of the Negro and the condition of the coloured race.”10 Frederick Douglass concurred. Speaking, as he often did, in London, with his words interrupted by loud cheers, he reminded the throngs assembled that “you need not fear that you will have any war with America while slavery lasts, and while you as a people maintain your opposition to the accursed system.”11 Britain’s hostility to the republic of Texas and the odoriferous slavery it so ungallantly represented may have convinced Lone Star leaders that independent existence was futile, thus hastening the embrace of annexation. An alternative perspective is that the nation of Texas lulled London into thinking that it could evolve as a counterweight to Washington but that it had no intention of doing so (though it caused the Crown to at least wink at secession from Mexico) and by the time London awakened to the prospect of annexation, it was too late.12 Arriving there in 1840, the British lawyer Nicholas Maillard heaped scorn on Texas’s pretensions. In his view it was “filled with habitual liars, drunkards, blasphemers and slanderers; sanguinary gamesters and cold-blooded assassins.” He warned against diplomatic recognition—which London had yet to bestow.13 Harriet Martineau called the events leading to the republic “the most high-handed theft of modern times.” Francis C. Sheridan, son of the famous playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, arrived in the republic and similarly denounced Texas as replete with scum and rogues. But like other Britons he thought that the republic could serve as a check on its eastern republican neighbor, a miscalculation that eventually led to diplomatic recognition.14 Likewise, some in the republic saw annexation as a means by which British influence in Texas could be derailed.15 The fact that abolitionist sentiment in the U.S. opposed Texan independence, then annexation, which dovetailed with similar sentiments in LonBritain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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don, further convinced Dixie that emancipation itself was a devious foreign plot.16 “Under no circumstances whatsoever,” said Massachusetts petitioners, should Texas join the union, which would be quite “dangerous.”17 Speaking to his constituents in the Bay State in 1842, John Quincy Adams did little to dissuade abolitionist thinking.18 An unnamed opponent of the former president advised that backing secession and slavery in Texas was in Washington’s interest since “the tyrant of Mexico” had threatened to “invade” Texas and “never stop until he had driven slavery beyond the Sabine,” then “loose his servile horde on the citizens of Louisiana.” Adams was appalled to ascertain that “if any man dares to raise his voice against going to war, he is immediately charged with being a British partisan—and English orator,” while jingoists argued that “a war would extinguish two hundred millions in our debt to England.”19 For his part Secretary of State Abel Upshur felt there was “no doubt” that London was “determined to abolish [slavery] throughout the American continent & islands.” But it was “worse than childish” to think that the “impulse of philanthropy” was the motive. No, he insisted, “I can find no other motive than a desire to find or to create markets for her surplus manufactures,” and Texas was part of this connivance. Next on the hit list were Louisiana and Arkansas, then onward to the Atlantic. Texas had to be “under the protection of some stronger power.” This had to be “either England or the United States” and since abolitionist Texas would be “ruinous,” that left two choices: the U.S. or “war,”20 an idea gaining traction.21 This jingoism reached a fever pitch in the year preceding and following 1836. Texas’s independence was “strongly opposed” by emancipationists,22 and London abolitionists23 may have been even more upset with proslavery secession, as this was said to convert Texas further into a “market for the Maryland slave trade.”24 While abolitionists25 were upset,26 racist anxieties in Washington were more intense and ultimately prevailed. Joel Roberts Poinsett, a Carolinian of note and an emissary in Mexico, puzzled over the ancestry of the president who had led his nation to abolition: “I do not think that he was a mulatto,” he said nervously of Vincente Guerrero. “He appeared to me to be of Indian descent.”27 As policy makers in Washington scrutinized the map of world power, they could not avoid noticing that their nation was surrounded by British soil or those like Mexico and Haiti that appeared to be London’s allies. There was what might be called a “domino theory” of African enslavement: a neutralized or British-influenced Texas would spell doom for slavery in the U.S. 150

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itself. 28 President John Tyler felt this was so and was especially bothered by London’s opposition to annexation. London, he said, had executed “repeated acts of annexation, beginning from the time of the Heptarchy and concluding with the annexation of the kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland,” yet gallingly it objected to Texas joining the union. He invoked the Monroe Doctrine peremptorily.29 The influential Duff Green, related to Calhoun by marriage, kept President John Tyler apprised of emerging trends from his post in London. He had learned that Texas would “attempt to amend the Constitution” so as to “abolish slavery,” driven by “assurances from the British Minister that such a measure will secure for Texas the warmest support from [Britain] in their present struggle with Mexico and also the means of paying for their slaves.” London, rather adroitly, thought Green, was “endeavoring to foster abolition in the North by opening a trade to the northern states through Canada, which he denies to the southern states”—thus driving a wedge through the union—and further, was “stimulating rebellion and servile war in the South by purchasing and emancipating the slaves of Texas.”30 This deviousness, said Green, was reflected in the reality that “Tory sympathy for the Negro is but another name for Tory oppression of the white labour of England,” since “under the mask of humanity to the black race she seeks to enslave the white.” The “British attempt to convert Texas into a refuge for runaway slaves and thieves” was at the heart of this scheme.31 Perfidious Albion,32 said Green, was also busily seeking to dislodge Dixie via investments in India that “had for its object the abolition of slavery in America as a means of enabling them to obtain cotton, sugar, rice & coffee” in South Asia.33 Annexation, he said, was “the only means of preventing Texas falling into the hands of English fanatics,” which made war “not only possible but probable.”34 After statehood,35 the Texas legislature suggested that the momentous year of abolition, 1834, was connected to secession.36 What was not said was what Texan leader Anson Jones admitted later: that he and his colleagues sought to “arouse the slumbering jealousies of the people of the United States” by casting their struggle in the context of the ongoing struggle against the British lion.37 This was evident.38 Ashbel Smith, the Lone Star republic’s delegate to London and Paris, found in 1842 that a British firm was building a sizeable military cruiser for Mexico to use against his homeland. London’s influence was so pervasive that there was “proof conclusive” that even Anson Jones and Sam Houston—founding fathers of Texas—“were plotting to sell Texas to England.” Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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Speaking in 1875, he also added that Houston “was not considered to be very ardent for annexation.” There was a wildly severe reaction, he said, to Daniel O’Connell’s proposal in 1839 that envisioned Texas as an “asylum or free state of persons of color.” A few years later, Lewis Tappan, the abolitionist, sailed eastward to London to meet in the Foreign Ministry to discuss this idea.39 Repeatedly40 in the run-up to annexation, London suspected that U.S. nationals were involved in revival of the African Slave Trade.41 As if it were not enough to keep track of U.S. flagged ships seeking to capture and smuggle Africans, London then had to worry that the latest slaveholders’ republic—Texas—was similarly inclined. It was in September 1843 that such a vessel with human cargo was found off the coast of Brazil with the flag of Texas proudly fluttering.42 Typically, former British subjects were flocking to Texas43 for the enhanced opportunities and buying ships to convey enslaved Africans from the U.S. to Texas (mostly from New Orleans to Galveston).44 Naturally, this migration was discouraged actively by London.45 Similarly, London sternly warned its subjects against dealing in slaves, a preoccupation in Texas.46 London’s consul in Charleston reminded its British residents with emphasis that it was “unlawful for any British subject, wherever he or she may be” to be involved in this dirty commerce, which could easily be seen in the republic as yet another dangerous extension of extraterritoriality.47 London well knew that Texas had become a site for the enslavement of Africans kidnapped from its Caribbean possessions, particularly Barbados.48 Other Africans were smuggled into Texas from Florida, Cuba, and elsewhere,49 even Goa.50 William Kennedy, speaking for Britain in Galveston, asserted that since the proclamation of the republic in 1836, slave trading with Cuba had escalated. The new republic’s constitution did not bar emigrants bringing slaves there—an invitation to kidnapping. The law there said that an African convicted of “maiming” a white person should receive the death penalty, while a white person convicted for a similar offense should receive a fine and flagellation. Migration by free Africans was outlawed and if one chose to do so, he or she could be jailed and then sold into slavery.51 At this juncture, the British estimate was that the “free” population in Texas was “between 40 and 50,000 souls.” The enslaved were “estimated” to be “between 15 and 20,000 souls,” with a “considerable excess of males.”52 Yet Africans kept pouring into independent Texas.53 Annexation was seen as a sure means to raise the value of Texas land and the slaves that went along with it.54 London had reason to think that annexation, inter alia, was a ploy to bring more Africans to the republic via Cuba and Galveston. Consider, for example, 152

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Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, an ill-famed slaver, related to Mirabeau Lamar, a top leader of Texas. He also had an uncle in the U.S. Senate. It was after annexation that he dispatched a ship to the Congo River that returned with 750 Africans who wound up in New Orleans. Then in late 1858 he arranged to bring 300 Africans to Cumberland Island, off the southeastern mainland.55 This slaving occurred though Britain had twisted the arm of this new slaveholders’ republic, compelling it to sign a treaty for the suppression of the slave trade that included the controversial right of the Royal Navy to search Texas-flagged vessels.56 The same year, 1842, the U.S. also signed a similar treaty wherein the republic promised to place more cruisers off the coast of Africa in order to halt this odious commerce—and in return (apposite the Creole), London agreed to extradite for murder if the “crime” would have been so seen in British territory.57 Nevertheless, U.S.-flagged ships continued to engage in slaving.58 The U.S. annexation of Texas could only be seen as a setback to the sacred cause of abolition. Thus, British abolitionists could well believe that despite their strenuous activism, slavery and the slave trade had simply departed the Caribbean and moved northward. In fact, more Africans than ever were now ensnared in this web of iniquity. The reliable Daniel O’Connell said that this Texas revolt was nothing more than a revolt against abolition, “a blot which no other country but America had ever yet suffered to stain its history.” Powell Buxton thought that this revolt was unique in history since it “had for its sole object the obtaining of a market for slaves,” backed by “munitions of war of all sorts by the slaveholders of the United States.”59 That the formation of this republic was partially a British responsibility was felt keenly. In Edinburgh, Robert Kaye Greville targeted Washington, D.C., which allowed an end run around the republic’s typical excuse about states’ rights barring federal action. He stressed that here was the “great slave mart” with “not less than 80,000 slaves  . . . annually exported from the slave producing to the slave consuming states,” while “African Slaves continue to be smuggled into the United States.” Attendant to this ugliness was “licentiousness,” especially “slave breeding,” which had become a “business  .  .  .. fathers sell their own offspring  . . . the best blood of Virginia flows in the veins of the slaves.” Was not, he asked rhetorically, “the American worse—incalculably worse—than the African Slave Trade?”60 A U.S. abolitionist felt that slave breeding was Texas’s specialty, not Washington’s: “they do not marry; they breed,” he said. “Their dwellings are not homes but stalls and sties.”61 And would not adding Texas to the union only give a fillip to both slavery and the trade?62 Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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Abolitionists thought that the increased republican militancy should be met with their own and this helped to propel the demand of the “right of search” of vessels—even U.S. or Texas-flagged vessels—thought to be involved in the African Slave Trade. Sir William Gore Ouseley singled out the “self-styled Texians” [sic]. He warned that the republicans were playing with fire, recalling “the last war with the United States” when, he said drily, “the assistance of the slave population was so useful.” He scorned the U.S. tendency to stress the plight of the Irish, informing them that this would backfire since they too were not proslavery. He assailed the U.S. for failing to recognize Haiti, deplored the maltreatment of indigenes, called the Negro Seamen’s Acts “monstrous,” and suggested that jailing British subjects for violation of these laws would mean “war,”63 a conclusion that the leading Michigander, Lewis Cass,64 stridently sought to refute.65 “Who has made England the Great Prefect of the Ocean?” he asked with scorn.66 Sir William had a point in seeing Texas as little more than a front for Washington. In the year of secession, 1836, the U.S. military found that hundreds from its ranks had fled to enlist in the Texas army. “They still wore the uniform of our army,” said a U.S. official, “but refused, of course, to return.”67 Yet the Earl of Aberdeen asserted in 1843 that London had not opposed Texas’s independence initially—a gargantuan blunder for it did not require an oracle to envision that the U.S. would seek to annex this territory, thereby complicating the movement toward abolition.68 In 1838, one highly regarded Texan in London fretted about the “delays” in “recognition,” and encountered similar obstacles in Paris.69 Yet London recognized this breakaway formation belatedly in 1840 by which point it seemed that it was a freestanding entity.70Perhaps London’s thinking was shaped by the subsequent perception of their Galveston consul, William Kennedy, who in 1843 observed that some thought Texas would become a “sort of British colony, whose smuggling operations would defeat any tariff and whose anti-American prejudices would be fostered by British capital and emigration.” He attached newspaper clippings suggesting as much.71 This optimism proved to be misplaced. For the next few months there was worry in London that annexation would be a mere “stepping stone to Mexico.”72 Now aroused, the British emissary in Washington met with Secretary of State Calhoun in order to protest against the prospect of annexation. The Carolinian “listened” with “great calmness,” which belied the nerve-wracking events yet to unfold.73 For Calhoun’s calm was just a prelude to his raising inciting abolition issues with Sir Richard Pakenham.74 154

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London did not accept Calhoun’s words with the calmness with which they were rendered. The British emissary in Texas, Charles Elliot, instead maintained that London would be willing to accept “cession” of the then republic to Washington on the condition that “first,” the “slavery (wrongfully) existing in Texas should be gradually abolished” and “second,” that “no more slaves should be introduced.”75 Of course, Washington might have thought that he had been overcome with insanity. In fact, Elliot had entered the Royal Navy in 1815 and had served on the African coast and had seen the pain inflicted by the slave trade. He entered the colonial service in 1828 and rapidly became renowned for his abolitionist fervor. Assigned to Galveston during the years of the republic, he escalated his abolitionism efforts, became friendly with Sam Houston, and worked tirelessly against annexation.76 Calhoun would not retreat. He tore into London’s stance, charging that its real agenda was abolition in the U.S. itself. Spinning the globe, he posited a lineup of Britain versus Cuba, Brazil, and the U.S.—with the latter prevailing. London, thus, only wanted to “cripple or destroy” her more “successful rivals.” He raised Haiti—the specter that haunted the slaveholders’ republic—and contended that abolitionism led to “unforgiving hate between the two races” and a “bloody and deadly struggle between them for  . . . superiority. One or the other would have to be subjugated, extirpated or expelled.”77 Calhoun, who had been terribly upset by the Creole, was unwilling to retreat on Texas.78 Britain imagined that a replay of the last war might be in store, when they had to confront both Washington and Paris simultaneously. Lord Cowley referred in “confidential” terms to the “old policy of France,” namely, to “side” with the U.S. “upon most occasions and especially in any measures which [were] contrary to the interests and views of Great Britain.”79 Besides, London had to fret that its sparsely settled Central American colony could be overrun by neighboring states in league with secessionist Texas and Washington.80 The Empire was confronting restive indigenes in India, Hong Kong, Africa, Ireland, and elsewhere and hardly had the time or the resources to take on Texas—a land larger than England and France combined.81 London realized that confronting the U.S. over Texas could involve it once more in a disastrous two-front (or even multiple-front) war. It seemed that London’s emissary in Texas was more optimistic about democratic renewal in the despotisms of Eastern Europe than in the slaveholders’ republic. He reminded Calhoun that “great men can have black faces and, unhappily, that white men can have black hearts.” Elliot, who had vivid recollections of chained slaves in Virginia,82 lamented annexation in 1845. It was an “immense triumph of the great Slave Trade interests of this country,” Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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he said. “Men, women and children” had “risen in value at least 30 per cent since this scheme was proposed by Mr. Tyler in 1844,” and allowed the formation of a state where “surplus human produce” could now be dumped.83 Yet Britain was not the only one that had to contemplate the global ripples of annexation. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri worried about the “alienation of all the South American states from our cause,” as Washington pursued the “folly” that was Texas. He also thought Dixie had a hidden agenda: “[U]nder the pretext of getting Texas into the union, the scheme is to get the South out of it. A separate confederacy stretching from the Atlantic to California” was their goal. This was an “abolition quarrel picked with Great Britain to father an abolition quarrel at home,” which could lead to “catastrophe.”84 Later Benton recalled the Point Coupee revolt of the enslaved in Louisiana where “the death of all the whites was resolved,” and wondered if this could be duplicated. He was angry that London, which did not have slaves on its soil, could still preach self-righteously at the republic because of abolition. He reminded the Crown about the republican revolt of 1837–38 when “the French population, being the majority” were in an uproar (along with “some emigrants from the United States,” he confided), and suggested that this “excitement and commotion” could be replicated (a not so subtle hint to the monarchy to retreat from antislavery militancy). He railed against the African Squadron, U.S. vessels devoted supposedly to suppressing the slave trade.85 James Buchanan viewed things from a different perspective, fretting that a Texas alliance with the Crown could expose Louisiana to the dreaded “servile insurrection.” No annexation of Texas meant that Texas would ally itself with London, he said. Already the Empire was growing cotton in “Brazil, Egypt and the East Indies” to circumvent Dixie, and Texas too could form part of this alliance. Texas could grow to become a rival of the U.S. and a pawn of London besides. Taking Texas would allow slaves to live—or be diffused— there and they could “finally pass off into Mexico.”86 The republicans were quite confident,87 however, that irrespective of other contenders, this was a question they could resolve,88 not least by allying with the Crown’s European antagonists, notably France.89 Calhoun was emboldened, for when William Ogilby, the British consul, met with him in Charleston, Ogilby concluded that the slaveholder and his cohort were willing to pursue annexation “even to the length of a division of the [republic],” that is, secession.90 Ogilby forwarded to London a southern appeal that cried out emphatically, “ANNEXATION OR DISUNION.”91 156

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Ogilby was distressed with the “hostility and mistrust” that he perceived was “fostered for political purposes” against his nation and used as a bludgeon to worsen sectional tensions that could lead to civil war. The cry was that northern interests were aping the monarchy, an appeal that had been proven to be quite effective over the decades.92 Tied up in Hong Kong and India—among other distant sites93—London was unable to intervene to halt what its Galveston consul subsequently termed “the annexation of Texas and the dismemberment of Mexico.” William Kennedy warned that the next thing on Washington’s agenda was “aggression against British North America.”94 Instantly, on the northern border the cry for annexation arose. All were reminded that the original Articles of Confederation forming the republic contained a distinct provision for admittance of Canada.95 In Nova Scotia there was a real fear that the annexation of Canada was inevitable.96 In 1849, one journal there announced that Canada would be annexed to the republic within five years.97 In Montreal, where a Francophone majority chafed under British rule, a declaration favoring annexation to the republic reportedly garnered 300 signatures in 5 hours, mostly from merchants and landholders.98 Stories that the republic was not the new El Dorado it was thought to be did little to stem this desire—or fear.99 So energized was the republic that John Quincy Adams was among those who felt that annexing Texas was simply the “first step” to the conquest of all of Mexico, then the British Caribbean—perhaps the entire Caribbean—and perhaps even Canada.100 There did seem to be some territorial envy in the republic’s view of the Empire: one Southern congressman suggested as much when he claimed that the annexation of Texas should not cause concern since London controlled far more territory than the U.S., in any case.101 Yet, if the U.S. consul in Jamaica could be relied upon, the Crown was terribly unhappy with Washington’s defeat of Mexico.102 Republicans were still smarting over the failed 1837 revolt in Canada and were infuriated when London responded by sending U.S. nationals all the way to a prison in Tasmania as punishment.103 The border conflict between Maine and Canada had yet to be resolved and looming on the horizon was a wider conflict over the Oregon Territory and what became British Columbia.104 Confident after swallowing Texas and disfiguring Mexico, republicans seemed ready to take on the major power that had blocked its expansion—Britain. But, as things turned out, republicans would find that picking through the detritus of the Spanish Empire would be easier than taking on the planet’s reigning power. Then again, the republic had created enormous problems for Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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itself by its inflexible hostility to Africans generally and Haiti more particularly, which handed a diplomatic advantage to London on a silver platter. The dilemma of the republic was evident when the Haitian leader, Henri Christophe, passed away and his widow and his grown daughters resided at the home of the leading British abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, for five months, then circulated at the highest levels of London society. This would have been inconceivable in Manhattan.105 The influence of Britain on Haiti was clear. President Boyer had spent time in North America and spoke English. When the British writer, John Candler, arrived in Haiti in the early 1840s, Boyer “made particular inquiries after the venerable Clarkson.” Candler said that Haiti “sent more merchandise to the United States than almost any European power, except Great Britain, France and Russia and nearly as much as the latter,” and he thought rebalancing was necessary. Repeatedly he bumped into English speakers in Hispaniola, including a number who had spent time in the U.S. itself (perhaps these were migrants from the republic): “[A] large number of the mulatto class of citizens residing at the capital, came over as emigrants from the United States,” he observed). Candler also noticed that there were Haitians, including highlevel officials, who had been “treated well” in Europe. But in New York “no tavern or boarding housekeeper would receive them as guests.” He met “one of the richest merchants of Port-au-Prince, whose father was one of Christophe’s barons, [who] assured me that he went into a woolen draper’s store in Philadelphia and desiring to be measured for a black coat, the storekeeper” barred him, then a hatter “refused to sell him a hat!” Yes, he concluded, “the Haytiens have a settled dislike against the Americans, owing to this deeprooted and wicked prejudice.” Like his hosts, Candler said, “the subject is too sickening to dwell upon.”106 Washington had its own complaints about Haiti, many of which stemmed from the economic tie that Candler had detected.107 As London stepped up its patrolling of the waters encircling Cuba in pursuit of illegal slavers, inevitably they had rude encounters with U.S.-flagged vessels. In this context Haiti declared this odoriferous commerce to be piracy, allowing ships so charged to be towed to an uncertain though bruising fate in the ports of Hispaniola.108 The republic’s top diplomat in London, Andrew Stevenson, earlier denounced as a “breeder” of slaves by Daniel O’Connell, had further reason to be livid. He expressed his “disappointment” at this turn of events and pointed out that “our people were strongly excited on the subject,” which would “create unfriendly national feeling.” As for the supposed “continued abuse of our flag by nations engaged in the slave trade and of vessels being 158

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built in the United States especially for this traffic,” he was decidedly less condemnatory.109 Adroitly, Lord Palmerston sharply disagreed.110 Writing from Santo Domingo, the U.S. agent Benjamin E. Green noted that to “judge by this city, the blacks and mulattoes would seem to be greatly in the majority.” The “whites, however, control the government and fill nearly all the civil offices.”111 Daniel Webster was told that the Haitian leader “Faustin the First is stout and very black,” as the republic continued its obsession with the color of its interlocutors.112 R. M. Walsh, a U.S. agent in Haiti, wanted Port-au-Prince to dispatch a commercial agent to Boston but insisted that this person not be an African. “After nourishing its anger for nearly a fortnight” at this racist insult, the Haitians “gave vent” to “impertinent . . . rebuke.” Walsh envisioned “intimidation” as a tool to be wielded against a nation that was creeping ever closer to an avowed martial alliance with London against Washington, precisely because of this unalloyed white chauvinism.113 U.S. diplomats in the region kept a close eye on Haiti, sensing correctly that weakening the African Republic would be a victory for slavery. According to B. E. Smith, U.S. consul in the Turks Islands, there were 500 U.S. nationals in eastern Hispaniola—the soon to be officially recognized Dominican Republic—and he wanted a man-of-war sent there to protect them. Somehow he managed to obtain “five hundred acres, along with a “beautiful house and lot with a wharf and warehouse belonging to it, at the port of Samana.” He said he would “feel some uneasiness” if the Haitians “should march upon the country.” Thus, though it took a civil war to encourage the U.S. to recognize Haiti, Smith with “earnestness” urged recognition of the Dominican state since “it would place the Haitiens at our mercy” and “give us great commercial advantages over all other nations together.”114 A flaw, as U.S. diplomats saw things, was that some of those seeking relief in eastern Hispaniola were U.S. Negroes enticed to move there years earlier by Haiti.115 This kind of white chauvinism was what allowed the nation that became the Dominican Republic to escape from Haitian jurisdiction. Green condemned the “cruelties of the Haytiens towards all who speak the Spanish language,” which had “given such force and universality to the white feeling, not only among the mulattoes but also among the blacks of this end of the island, that it is not uncommon to hear a very black Negro when taunted with his color reply, ‘soi negro, per[o] negro blanco;’ ‘I am a Negro but a white negro’ . . . ‘though I have a black skin, my heart is white.’” This situation was made to order for Washington, as Hispaniola was effectively split, Haiti was weakened, and tumbled into decades of turmoil, forestalling a viable emancipationist bloc that included London.116 Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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This situation was also encouraged by Washington.117 Daniel Webster knew of a filibustering plot to invade Haiti.118 Subsequently, a group of Boston merchants noted that John C. Calhoun “dispatched a secret agent” to Hispaniola since he believed there were “130,000 white Dominicans whose lives would be in jeopardy from the blacks, unless they received protection from the government of the United States.” But the figure was wildly inflated, they reproached,119 suggestive of the racial solidarity that animated Washington’s policies toward its southern neighbors. By 1860, the U.S. traveler J. Dennis Harris was in Hispaniola.There he encountered a fugitive slave who spoke no Spanish, “and for that matter very little English.” He had been a slave in South Carolina, was brought to Key West, then hired out to work in the vicinity. He and his comrades escaped by sea to the Bahamas but his condition did not improve measurably there, so like other U.S. Negroes of that time, he moved on to land ruled by Haitians. He purchased land near Puerto Plata, where he toiled alongside “numbers of colored men from the Southern States . . .some who have made small fortunes by the cultivation of cotton.” But the unrest generated in no small part by Washington had placed all their lives in jeopardy.120 By early 1861, turmoil was continuing and Lord John Russell in London was told by his local consul that “about 1000 men” with “arms” were “dispatched this morning by the Spanish” for “St. Domingo.” It was “secretly managed” and now it was “rumoured” that “there has been a massacre of the whites by the coloured population of St. Domingo,” though he conceded that it “may be that the rumour is purposely circulated and I am inclined to this opinion,” Racial hysteria had been whipped up (particularly by the slaveholders’ republic) in order to split Hispaniola.121 As this was unfolding, Martin Delany, the noted abolitionist, objected sternly, though he hoped the upshot would be “a medium of communication to be opened between the colored people of the United States and their brethren of foreign countries, never before dreamed of,” leading to “communication between all of the colored races of the Western Continent.”122 This was heartening, but could not stop the splitting of Hispaniola. Score another point for Washington—but there were still weapons held by London that cast doubt over the future of slavery in the republic and among these was Trinidad. It continued to contain a growing population buoyed by migrants from the U.S. in the aftermath of the 1812 war who had little reason to love the nation they had long since left behind.123 “What excellent well-disciplined troops they are,” said one gushing visitor from Britain of the troops she saw in Port-of-Spain. She rambled on about the “formidable strength of 160

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the militia’s force in this colony,” detailing the potency of the “Royal Trinidad Light Dragoons,” the “St. Anne’s Hussars,” the “Royal Trinidad Artillery,” the “Royal Trinidad Battalion,” the “sea fencibles,” “Diego Martin’s Chasseurs’ and infantry,” and so on. The list was quite lengthy. “Every colonist is liable to serve in the militia,” she confided. Given a total population of well over 40,000, of substantially African ancestry, citizens were expected to have what had become a normalized hostility toward the slaveholders’ republic. While there, this writer, who called herself “Mrs. Carmichael,” encountered “B.W., a free American and a rich man, with fine grounds.” He was a “person of consequence” there, a status routinely denied in his former homeland. He was not alone as she met yet another “free American Negro—a very smart clever-looking young man.” She was even “inclined to boast” of her “free American gardener; he was a neat, civil, clever fellow.”124 As the Texas crisis accelerated, U.S. visitors to Trinidad found that the former U.S. slaves there were “generally comfortable and doing well.” They were “looked upon as greatly superior in intellect as well as in industry to the native creole, and, as a consequence, are much preferred”—perhaps as militia men too. After all, they enjoyed “civil and political privileges” unknown in the republic. They were overjoyed that they had escaped the “evils” that had “driven them from the land of their birth.”125 The relative bounty available in this lovely island off the northern coast of South America had been noticed in the republic. The Colored American hailed the hundreds of “slaves [that] escaped from their masters” and settled there,126 and encouraged further migration.127 As the 1850s dawned, Frederick Douglass, who did not normally encourage migration of this type, chose to congratulate those who decided to “emigrate” to Trinidad,128 as official London continued to facilitate this movement southward.129 Further south in Demerara, on the northern coast of South America and a neighbor of Brazil, a prime interest of U.S. slavers, Washington’s consul found the republic’s role “rapidly growing in influence,” and he pledged to “do all I lawfully can to bring it under a just American influence.”130 This was no easy task, being a place where the Union Jack flew and resentful former U.S. Negroes were flocking. For it was in the nation that became Guyana that the republic sensed that London’s abolitionism was not as benign as it seemed, though that did not seem to deter these emigrants. Hundreds of Africans taken from slavers were settled there, thus strengthening the Crown. At the same time, there was a “very bad feeling” toward U.S. vessels and “against myself,” said the U.S. consul. Things were so bad that “a black man by the name of Smith was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment,” Britain to Forge a Haiti in Texas?

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though he was convicted of the “murder of the mate” of his brig. Certainly a more severe penalty would have obtained in the republic.131 Smith had malice aforethought, as after the killing he threw his knife overboard and proclaimed that this was “the only way” to confront “Yankees,” for “if you don’t kill them, they will kill you.” Yet, said the consul, “had the case been reversed and the mate been the aggressor he would have been hung and nothing would have prevented it.”132 A befuddled consul in this upside down world noticed that there “seems to be a bad feeling towards the masters & officers of American vessels, the consuls and in fact every American citizen who come to this colony.”133 He had to confront realities unknown to him since the Solicitor General there was—he stressed—a “Coloured Creole Man from Bermuda” and was “very malicious and vindictive towards me.” He had “instituted vicious and vexatious lawsuits” against him. The police, who were “principally Negroes,” chose to “insult” him “in every way on all occasions.”134 Jamaica too did not want to be neglected as this process unfolded. At a gathering of the abolitionist Liberty Party in Buffalo in September 1851, W. W. Anderson of Kingston informed those assembled that “there is a home for the fugitive and for every colored man in the islands of Jamaica.” Rather than fight unreconstructed racists in the republic, why not move to Jamaica? he asked invitingly.135 Such developments were noticed by the mainstream press.136 It would not be easy to resist the blandishments of London as long as slavery and Jim Crow reigned in the republic,137 which reanimated the idea of colonization of the Africans.138 When the Free Negro population met in Rochester in 1853, it was observed that as early as 1798 President John Adams had been apprised of the “importance” of “colonizing” those like themselves at the Cape of Good Hope. But this too was motivated by “jealousy” of London, which was encroaching steadily at this vital chokepoint. After the Crown emerged victorious there, the republicans turned to West Africa as a spot to deposit the Free Negro.139 Yet when the idea was raised of abolishing slavery via taxation to pay for the value of the enslaved, then repatriating them in Hispaniola, it was rejected by the American Colonization Society—and others in Dixie who were no friend of the Negro—though one might have thought they wanted to rid themselves of those they so often berated.140 Jamaica was problematic too, thought the republican consul, Robert Harrison. There were “two Quakers here,” “very dangerous persons,” one of whom had was known to have visited Haiti. Both had been “sent out by the antislavery society in England” and both “had made long speeches” about the region. “[F]rom here they are to proceed to the United States.”141 The 162

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slaveholders’ republic was shown no respect in abolitionist Jamaica. There was a “shameful prostitution of our national flag,” he spat out, “which is now hoisted at taverns, grog shops, brothels and sailors’ boardinghouses,” and in the frequent “rows between English and American seamen it is not treated with much respect.” Then there were the ratios—“fifty Negroes and mulattoes to one white man,” and besides, “they hate the very name of an American.”142 Even Henry Bleby, a missionary from Barbados who was not unaccustomed to such, was struck in the 1850s that “the present head of the Jamaica government” was “Edward Jordan, a colored man; his dark face and his frizzly hair” were not often seen on leaders in the republic. This predisposed Africans in the hemisphere to view the Crown with sympathy, particularly in their growing confrontation with Harrison’s homeland,143 now augmented by the annexation of Texas.

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12 Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

George W. Bush was not a fan of the United States of America. His father, Matthew Bush, may have been born in India, then brought to North America by a British shipping merchant before the 1776 revolt.1 The younger Bush was born about 1790 in Pennsylvania and grew to be a formidable figure, six feet tall with broad shoulders, dark eyes, a Roman nose, and a heavy beard. He weighed around 180 pounds and was rugged in physique though not in disposition, as he was quite soft-spoken. He may have fought at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, but this did not rescue him from the brickbats tossed so casually at men of his color. As he moved westward across the continent, he well knew that the indigenes who allied with the British and the French treated him in a more evenhanded manner than any who were tied to the Euro-Americans. He once had toiled for the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of Canada’s most significant companies, and had little reason to reside in the land of his birth. By June 1844 the provisional government of the Oregon Territory—dominated by Euro-Americans—passed a law barring all Africans. Thinking ahead, Bush chose to move north of the Columbia River where its remit did not reach; minimally, he assumed, he would be under London’s jurisdiction, perhaps part of the Canadian province that came to be called British Columbia. He moved there at a moment of rising tension bordering on unrestrained doom between the republic and the monarchy—which was typical of the relations between them.2 If it was any consolation to Mr. Bush who, with perverse irony, has been bequeathed to history as the first nonindigenous “U.S.” settler in what became the state of Washington, as the border was renegotiated,3 the British subjects residing in the Hudson Bay settlements south of the Columbia River were also frightened by the presence of Euro-American settlers, whose brutality was all too well-known. Things were spinning out of control as the crisis over Texas too spiraled downward, to the point where British subjects strength164

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ened their defenses at Fort Vancouver, then appealed to London for more protection. Powerful republican whaling interests longed for British scalps.4 The settlers did their part, passing a draconian law in 1844 mandating that any African or“mulatto” found in this vast territory could be “arrested,” and if found “guilty” could be “hire[d] out” to “the highest bidder” on the premise that he or she would be ousted from Oregon.5 Unsurprisingly, shortly thereafter British abolitionists contacted them, communicating a stern reprimand. Their deputation arrived in the republic and visited the White House and toured Dixie, in addition to reproving settlers in the Oregon Territory.6 Meanwhile, republicans were in high dudgeon (with slaveholders in the vanguard),7 threatening war with London.8 By 1846, particularly after the upset caused by the annexation of Texas, the possibility of war loomed between the republic and the monarchy but this time over the Oregon Territory. The “people of both nations hate each other,” said slaveholder James Henry Hammond.9 This broad brush did not encompass U.S. abolitionists, thought to be on London’s side,10 not to mention Africans in the republic.11 One editorialist in New Orleans was moved to new heights as friction arose over Oregon, exclaiming that “if the English ever land a regiment of blacks in this country, we can grant no quarter to prisoners. It will be a war of extermination marked with blood at every step.”12 But London did not challenge the republic, because the Crown was too entangled elsewhere. Alert to developments in Europe, Washington sought to take advantage of the Crimean War by raising the stakes with Britain in the northwest by supporting Russia—this, after Britain and France had declared war on the most sprawling of nations.13 Unfortunately, Russia, then enmeshed in a wrenching process of devolution of serfdom—akin to slavery in the republic—was not pushed by the U.S. to move away from bonded labor (and vice versa).14 Proslavery propagandist L.W. Spratt argued that Russian serfdom did not lead to a “foreign war” against them and thus, his republic too would be exempted from such a fate.15 The republic of necessity had to rely heavily on Russia for, as Calhoun was told during this era by a correspondent in Constantinople, there was a “hostile feeling of Europe, particularly of England, towards the institution of slavery.”16 This republican affinity for Russia was not new. Baton Rouge’s Edward George Washington Butler, whose very name bespoke his elite ties, contemplated joining Russia’s foreign service and military in the 1820s.17 Strikingly, the same parties involved at Ghent—the U.S., Britain, and Russia—were now jousting in the northwest, as in the midst of these protracted negotiations the Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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“Emperor of Russia,” according to London’s representative in Washington, issued a “ukase  . . . appropriating the sovereignty and exclusive use of His Imperial Majesty the North West Coast of America down to the 51st parallel of latitude together with a considerable portion of the opposite coast of Asia.”18 Russia was the power that had to be courted, as British interests in the region found themselves in a pincers movement with Russians on one side and Euro-Americans on the other.19 Thus, while Canadians were soliciting funds for the spouses and children of British soldiers and sailors at war with Russia, Washington was pushing in the opposing direction.20 Ironically, John C. Calhoun, otherwise a flame-throwing Anglophobe, was hesitant about warring in the Oregon Territory. He had not relinquished his lust for “the Canadas, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia” in a war “in which we should drive the British flag from the continent.” But he suspected, like John Quincy Adams, that “it would in all probability prove a Mexican and an Indian war, as well as a war with Great Britain.” He “clearly perceived that in annexing Texas there was no danger of a war with England”—but the northwest was different.21 President Polk also vacillated about Oregon.22 So London and Washington retreated from the prospect of war over the northwest, but this hardly meant that the monarchy was acquiescing to republican pretensions. Indeed, some of the more scalding analyses of republicanism emerged from London in the wake of the Oregon controversy. One writer warned that his nation could unleash a “servile war,” that is, “another St. Domingo [would] be repeated in the cotton states of America, on a much larger scale!”23 An opinionated pamphleteer, H. P. Scholte, also suggested that a war over Oregon would cause London to try to unleash an insurrection of the enslaved: “[W]ere they able” to do so, he said, Dixie would be “the theatre of a frightful slaughter.” He thought that “to break apart the Republican Union” was the “secret aim” of “British machinations” since 1815.24 London’s25 jaundiced view of the republic may have been vindicated when in the aftermath of the Oregon settlement, Calhoun announced that “Congress has no power whatever” to bar slavery from this region; in fact, he argued, “neither the inhabitants of the territories, nor their legislatures have such right.”26 Calhoun had captured the determined opinion of many of his fellow citizens, just as he and his comrades had infuriated many Britons. In Norfolk in the 1850s there was still the awful matter of seeking to rescue subjects kidnapped in the Caribbean and then placed on sale; others had been dragged to New Orleans for similar purposes. The U.S. Attorney in eastern Virginia estimated that in 1850 alone over 200 African subjects, mostly seafarers, had been kidnapped and sold in the U.S.27 It was not unusual when it was 166

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reported by a Bermudian passing through Louisiana, that a fellow subject, Patrick Williams, who was born free, traveled to New York and then was enticed to Kentucky, where he was kidnapped and sold as a slave.28 Williams spent at least six years as a slave.29 Strikingly, London’s consuls also came to the defense of non-British Africans30 ensnared by the racist republic.31 Energetic consuls even took money from their own pockets to rescue Africans.32 In Louisiana the Bermudian may have encountered Alexander White, another African subject, born in Canada, who had arrived in New Orleans as a mariner and by early 1861 was jailed.33 He was among a number of “coloured British subjects” accorded “shameful treatment.”34 This, said the consul, was “not the first time that such cases have been brought under my official notice,” though the maltreatment was becoming progressively “unfeeling.”35 This was becoming a “daily occurrence,” he added.36 Almost intoxicated by the victory in Texas and the increase in slaves it portended, Dixie was energized in confronting what was seen as its chief threat, namely, the emancipationist empire. In early 1861, a British abolitionist, Arthur Robinson, was arrested in Louisiana by what the consul called a “secret body of men, called a Vigilance Committee.” Then he was indicted for “using language calculated to promote insurrection among the Negroes.” The evidence on his person included sermons by Henry Ward Beecher.37 But slaveholders were nervous, as Galveston’s consul observed that “since the attempt made last year to incite the slaves to insurrection, their owners have exercised [a] vigilant espionage over travelers.”38 Actually what was occurring was that as civil war approached, Dixie launched a reign of terror against its internal foes, which included a disproportionate number of British subjects. In Savannah in early 1861 a British ship captain was detained by one of the many secret societies that littered the coastal city; they evicted him from his vessel, dragged him to the outskirts of town, shaved his head, then tarred and feathered him—and flogged him for good measure. Then they sent him back to his ship.39 Thomas Vaughan was lucky to escape with his life. Two men confronted him and accused him, as he recalled it, of “unbecoming intimacy with Negroes.” They took him to a house where he confronted five men seated at a long table with bottles and glasses before them. But when he sat down, suddenly about 70 other men appeared. He was accused—and found guilty-—of inviting a Negro stevedore to dine with him and his wife at his cabin table. At first they were going to “hang” him. To that end an assailant struck him in the face with an open hand filled with tar. His head was shaved on the left side and he was struck a number of times, perhaps fifty strokes across his Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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shoulder and back, with a belt studded with a “metallic substance.” Then tar was applied to his head, and shoulders, along with a helping of cotton.40 London did not improve its popularity in Dixie when it exerted itself to defend its subjects so ensnared.41 London championed litigation against those who transgressed the rights of their subjects, black and white alike.42 There were so many of these cases that they had become almost routine, as the Fugitive Slave Act seemed to encompass Africans, irrespective of whether they were deemed to be subjects. “A colored man is said to be a slave,” said the consul in New Orleans, who had reason to know, “unless he can prove his title in freedom, while the owner of a slave is not bound to prove the validity of his title.”43 As early as 1842, Louisiana had passed a law mandating that African seafarers must be jailed upon arrival and their detention paid by the ship captain. London argued that this contradicted the 1815 Ghent treaty and the U.S. constitution. But when William Mure, New Orleans consul, pressed Washington, Louisiana escalated the tension by threatening to abrogate this bilateral concord. So the consul chose to lobby the state. As this was occurring, the Fugitive Slave Act passed and “morbid excitement” erupted. So he retreated briefly before advancing by placing in a local newspaper an unsigned article on the subject, that was then forwarded to every member of the legislature. He then drew up a bill repealing the 1842 law and forwarded it to this body which passed and signed it into law; thereafter Africans would not be jailed but could remain aboard their vessel.44 This was part of an upsurge that included the African Slave Trade itself, which had been promoted in Dixie, placing a further strain on the Royal Navy which was sworn to crush this illegal traffic. “At this day there are more men in the Southern States and even in Virginia who would now approve of reopening the legal African Slave Trade,” said Edmund Ruffin in 1857.45 “The only way to get what is needed,” said a Charleston writer in 1858, “is to bring Africa across the water,” since “Asia is out of the question and so is Europe.”46 “The African Slave Trade must be opened to bring down the price of Negroes,” argued Carolinian, C. W. Miller.47 Simultaneously there were reports of cargoes of Africans being landed near Galveston, ships heading from New Orleans to Africa with malign purposes, advertisements offering $300 per head for every new African landed in the republic, and stories of U.S. slave dealers sighted in Gabon. In the wake of the case involving Dred Scott, frank discussion “pronounc[ed] the prohibition of the slave trade by our national government unconstitutional.”48 Similarly,49 in 1858 slaving by U.S. nationals was suspected near Sierra Leone.50 This was nothing new; in 1841 in St. Helena, the beleaguered Afri168

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can continent’s South Atlantic neighbor, several suspected U.S. slavers had been seized by the Royal Navy.51 Months later another seizure of a U.S. slaver occurred near Cabinda, part of Portuguese Angola.52 The latter site was suggestive of the reality that U.S. slavers were then descending like crazed bees upon Brazil.53 This pattern continued in the 1850s, as Cuba became the recipient of these forced laborers, as it seemed that54—despite London’s best efforts—the republic was bent on capturing and chaining every African it could detain.55 Further south near the Cape of Good Hope, Washington kept tabs on the war then unfolding between European colonists and indigenes, a parallel to their own situation insofar as the European colonists reacted badly to London’s emancipation decree and promptly sought to move away from their perceived jurisdiction.56 These colonists emerged victorious over the Africans, which gave a boost to the renewed slave trade that U.S. nationals were so interested in reviving.57 In the waters separating the island of Zanzibar and Mozambique,58 at least 4 U.S. vessels were found to be engaged in the slave trade in March 1851.59 The U.S. consul there conceded that the U.S. role in the slave trade was “steadily increasing.”60 But like61 a broken record, London was spoiling the party—motivated not by humanitarianism, as the republicans saw things, but by crass rivalry instead: by May 1861 the Royal Navy was “making use of strong measures to suppress the Slave Trade,” the State Department was told. This was “very injurious to business,” said this diplomat whose nation was now in a death match with rebellious provinces determined to split his nation precisely on the grounds of foiling abolition.62 In fact, in the years leading to secession and the immediate aftermath of this illegal act, slavers from the republic had carpet-bombed southern Africa particularly, snatching Africans with wild abandon in what may have been the greatest surge in this despicable trade since it had been conceived.63 By late 1859 Lord Lyons found “very little prospect of any satisfactory result from our remonstrances concerning the Slave Trade.” He felt that in Dixie it had “many avowed advocates” and “it is to be feared that some of the professed abolitionists of the North derive too much profit from dabbling themselves in the trade” to be stout opponents: most of the vessels were “fitted out at New York,” all of which was “shocking.” There were “plans for the re-enslavement of all the emancipated Negroes,” and, from the state of things, those in the Caribbean as well—a problem he found “almost insuperable.” Even if the lawsuits they had filed on behalf of these subjects ended in victory, he emphasized, “we shall have gained little but a good casus belli Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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against the United States,” which was not appealing.64 Lord Lyons, posted in Washington, reproved the “notorious” Dred Scott decision and the “proslavery” court that produced it.65 He was in tune with his populace, as the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was wildly popular in Britain, selling tens of thousands of copies. Similarly, slave narratives sold better in Britain than in the republic.66 London’s abolitionism was of immeasurable aid in the battle of ideas67 between monarchy and republicanism.68 But Lord Lyons had to worry that London’s staunch abolitionism could be used conveniently as a whipping boy. By 1860 he noticed that the notion that a “foreign war” could promote sectional reconciliation was “gaining ground” and he had “little doubt” that Britain would be the country selected for this experiment.69 Thus, Lord Lyons was concerned about the rise of the Republican Party, since their antislavery credentials—which seemed to place them in alignment with London—would mean that they would have to demonstrate their ability to stand up to John Bull, to reassure Dixie. Then there was their “illiberal” agenda on trade or protectionism, which was not embraced in London. Thus, “whatever party is in power in this country,” he said, “we must, I am afraid, be always prepared for a declaration of war from the United States,” particularly, as the Crimea showed and Napoleon before that, “if we are involved in serious difficulties in Europe,” especially since the “Irish vote” was growing in importance.70 Days after the election of Abraham Lincoln, he fretted that the president thought it would be a “safe game to bully us,” a policy egged on by “Mr. [William] Seward [who] has more than once played this game before.”71 Hence, Lord Lyons was wary of sending any British-flagged ships to Charleston for fear that it could “provoke” an incident and vitiate disunion.72 In the immediate prelude to civil war the Slave South, which had garnered more territory via the annexation of Texas and victory over Mexico and was pressing for more in the northwest, had gained momentum and grown in confidence politically and otherwise.73 More land required more Africans and, besides, Brazil and then Cuba lurked as profitable markets for Africans “fresh” from the continent. The beleaguered Royal Navy had set up a picket line to foil the U.S.’s best efforts in the traditional hunting grounds, western Africa—but U.S. vessels had managed to elude the Navy’s grasp by simply rounding the Cape and heading northward.74 Because Britain was embroiled in a draining conflict in the Crimea these republicans thought they could proceed unmolested. But instead, this further alarmed already inflamed abolitionists who stepped up their own pressure against the Slave South, which hastened the start of civil war. 170

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It seemed that the irrepressible conflict that had emerged was between Dixie and London,75 for the Crown was hardly ready to retreat from abolitionism, while the slaveholders’ republic was busily seeking to reignite the slave trade and annex more land for bonded labor to work on.76 The Slave South’s “success of their struggle for supremacy in the Senate depends upon their getting new states admitted into the union as Slave States,” said Lord Lyons, “and they are beginning to think that they must import slaves in order to have enough to send into these new states.”77 Per usual, British travelers to the republic may have been more acid in their analysis than the ultimate victims: Africans. John Benwell in Charleston was shocked to see so many Africans “with one hand only,” a result of a law that said an African “lifting his hand in opposition to a white man” should have it sliced away.78 An equally disgusted William Chambers found that “numbers of purely Anglo-American children pass into slavery,” as—like West Indians—they were “kidnapped” and branded as having Negro blood. This was “notoriously on the increase,”79 he said.80 Like others, he concluded that republicanism was inseparable from the enslavement of Africans and then warned against reopening the African Slave Trade.81 Isabella Lucy Bird, while traveling in Tennessee was stunned when she encountered Negro women who “wanted me to bring them all home to England, to which they have been taught to look as a land of liberty and happiness.”82 Given these sentiments, the words of Frederick Douglass were destined to resonate in London. He asserted that while “the slave tyranny is dominant in America, England is in constant peril either of being robbed, or engaged in war to prevent robbers.” He hypothesized the case of a “colored West Indian, high in office under the British Crown,” seeking to “take a tour in the southern states”and barely escaping insult, prison, or worse.83 Douglass’s plea—that slavery bred conflict, then war with London—was becoming an incessant cry, notably by African abolitionists.84 As so often happened, U.S. Negroes and the British were thinking along parallel lines. Emancipationists in Leeds worried that unless U.S. slavery was abolished, the republicans would seek to return the Caribbean to slavery.85 This reflected the gnawing realization among Africans that violence would be necessary to topple Dixie and if so, London—and their own arming86—could be the vehicle for the attainment of this goal. Africans could sense the growing frustration of the Crown with the republic, particularly concerning abolition, and the long-standing belief that ultimately slavery would be overthrown by military means—akin to an 1812 invasion—with redcoats in the lead in brigades that included the darkest Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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of them all. In the 1850s an ever sharper denunciation of the “Slave Power” began to be heard, a force which not only controlled Washington but, as Douglass saw things, which “aspires to the undisturbed oppression of the whole Western continent, Cuba and Haiti, the Sandwich Islands, and even Canada.” All would be “annexed to the Union.”87 The threat to Canada88 was taken quite seriously among abolitionists, since it was the escape hatch through which enslaved Africans could find refuge. By 1854 Martin Delany, a leading African thinker and activist, was dubious about this colony’s prospects, assuming that it could easily fall into the hands of Washington, whose desire for it seemingly knew no bounds. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, he opined, was part of a republican crushing maneuver designed by Washington to both shut down the refuge and to trap in the U.S. all those who wished to flee.89 Also holding an abiding affection for Canada were the Africans who met in Ontario just before Delany’s bracing words were uttered. Nonetheless, they “resolved” to state that the “the true policy of the Africo-American race” was to “emigrate from the U.S. to Canada,” and also to the Caribbean “or such other points on this continent, as are contiguous to the United States,” which would allow a “helping hand to their brethren in bonds” (unlike distant Africa). That they had martial intentions firmly in mind was suggested when they counseled to “be ready at any moment to volunteer their services in defence of their adopted country.” As they saw it, there were “but two alternatives” left for Africans trapped in the U.S: “Revolution or Emigration.” The two were not at odds, since emigration could foil the U.S. annexation of Canada, which could strengthen the republic greatly: “[H]ere we can hang as a threatening black cloud over the American Union, waiting and praying for the Lord’s Day of Vengeance.” Barring a move to Canada, next in line was Jamaica: they sought to form a “Continental League of the Africo-American race” which could prove handy in the near future.90 Influencing the Africans’ affection toward Canada was its long-established reputation as a refuge and the fear that it would be seized by republican annexationists, almost stupefied by their success in taking Texas. In 1853 the enslaved African in Missouri, John Anderson, was accused of murder as he was about to be sold and fled to Canada.91 His extradition turned upon an interpretation of the torturously negotiated Webster-Ashburton treaty, which had been driven by the Creole case. The Canadians found a technicality that forbade his being shipped back to an uncertain fate in the “Show-Me State,” despite the fierce protestation of President James Buchanan in early 1861.92 The republic’s top representative in London pointed out that the case had 172

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“awakened, of course, so much interest” in the monarchy and told the State Department what it already should have known: the “pungent and uncompromising hostility to social bondage which prevails throughout this country.”93 But as the slaveholders viewed the world, they saw a sieve northward that they thought could be plugged by measures such as the Fugitive Slave Law, which only quickened the revulsion of others to their despised system.94 Dixie’s rhetorical response was again to cast abolitionism as something manufactured in Britain in order to bring down its domestic abolitionist rival.95 The Georgia slaveholder, Cuyler Young, was not alone in musing that perhaps a harder core of government, based solely on the slaveholding states, could more effectively confront London than a government which— albeit dominated by Dixie—still had to occasionally consult Boston. “Suppose England should claim Savannah,” he asked, Washington might “give it up to John Bull.” The same could be said for “Georgia South of 34 [degrees] of latitude.” Suppose the “Negroes should rise and revolt—in all these cases, his own Georgia, having no army and navy, could not defend herself,” and Washington “would not defend her, because it has failed repeatedly to defend her against aggression.” He was horrified by the compromise over the Oregon Territory that did not provide land that remains part of Canada and pointed the finger of accusation northward at Daniel Webster and “other American Englishmen,” though “our ancestors twice vanquished [Britain] on land and sea.” Why? This federal union “failed to protect the whole Union against foreign foes, whereby each state might be said to have been less safe in it than out of it,” and he cited the Creole case, Texas, and Oregon as his examples. But for this union, Georgia “might have built a fort on every island and river on her coast.” Instead Washington had “built up a Northern navy,” which one day, he prophesied, would be “brought against Georgia if she dare to carry out the absolute right of collecting her own revenues.” Secession seemed to be the only alternative he envisioned and as a parting shot to London, he issued an open invitation to “the noble sons of Erin, come brothers, and find an asylum in Georgia!”96 Young expressed openly what many slaveholders were thinking, namely, that independent Southern states could hardly be more feckless in confronting London97 than Washington. Yoked in a union with nonslaveholding states caused much too much compromise that would not occur with Southern secession. Besides, it was the North that refused to crush abolitionism, which Dixie perceived as little more than a foreign import. The North may have been the immediate problem but lurking behind it—indeed its puppeDeclare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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teer—was John Bull (or so it was thought). Then those like Young had to consider if they could more forcefully repress the dreaded “servile insurrection” if they did not have to contend with nosily noisome Northerners. Britain’s consul in Mobile provided inferential confirmation of this supposition when he suggested that secession was influenced by the fear of an all-encompassing uprising by the Africans,98 which could then be aided by a triumphant London. Young and others could have beaten the North on the Negro Seamen’s Act but when London weighed in, they had to beat a hasty retreat. Understandably, Dixie felt it would have more room for maneuver and stonewalling if it could jettison the excess baggage that the North was seen to be. By 1856, the consul in Charleston, Robert Bunch, said, seamen’s acts were under British pressure and had been “extensively modified and amended.” Yet now Carolinians were pushing for a revival of the original 1822 law, emboldened as so many Southerners were, by the immense Texas conquest, the victory over Mexico, and the augmentation of the republic provided by Oregon.99 Yet by early 1861, Charleston was again considering tightening this bill and Bunch again instructed the authorities of the “extreme folly” of their contemplation, which London would deem “positive hostility.”100 Dixie could not reconcile the conflicting ideas of seeking the Crown’s diplomatic embrace in pursuit of secession, while denouncing London for being a locus of abolitionism. Abolitionist gatherings continued to take place in sites like Buffalo, Cleveland, and particularly Detroit,101 where Canadian influence that could tend toward the seditious, was noticeably strong. William Wells Brown, the famed Negro abolitionist, was once employed on a lake steamboat docked in Cleveland and frequently on its trips to Detroit and Buffalo provided passage to escaping enslaved Africans.102 Republican areas near Canada—including Frederick Douglass’s Rochester—were becoming citadels of abolitionism.103 Canada’s leading city, Toronto, was termed “the black man’s Paris” by an effusive Martin Delany.104 Even the U.S. consul in Montreal conceded in 1854 that “here the colored man has equal rights and privileges with the white.”105 Delight with Canada106 reached such a fever pitch among U.S. Negroes that at an Ohio convention they denounced emigration to any country except Canada.107 This Canadian influx also strained sectional tensions in the republic for John C. Calhoun was among those who averred that while Dixie was true to the republic, Northerners were “enticing and seducing the slaves to leave their masters and to run them into Canada.”108 African mariners who were subjects continued to complain about maltreatment in Dixie.109 In Mobile by 1857 the city fathers had ruled that “free 174

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Negroes can’t land from [the] bay.”110A difference in the 1850s was that now France had joined the outcry against such racist legislation, adding weight to Britain’s plaints,111 and reinforcing the idea that perhaps the stiffest opposition to slavery in the republic came from abroad and that ditching the North gave Dixie a better opportunity to resist. In mid-1851 thousands showed up in London in solidarity with fugitive slaves. The great and the good assembled, including Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, peers, parliamentarians, bankers—even “American visitors were particularly numerous,” according to one observer. As interracial couples strolled arm-in-arm, it was asked, “[D]id the representatives of any other country have their notions of propriety shocked by the matter? None but [Euro] Americans,” as “probably for the first time in their lives, they felt themselves thoroughly muzzled; they dare not even to bark, much less bite. Like the meanest curs, they sneak through the Crystal Palace unnoticed and uncared for; while the victims who had been rescued from their jaws, were warmly greeted by visitors from all parts of the country.”112 Reverend Jeremiah Asher, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Philadelphia, was also embraced in Britain, though he was scorned in his homeland because of his African ancestry.113 Even the abolitionist Gerrit Smith probably found it hard to believe—as a British emancipationist informed him—that bias against the African was entirely unknown in London and that even in the most elevated circles there was intermarriage.114 The monarchy showing up the republic by displaying its more expansive view of antiracism was becoming a trend. In 1860 the U.S. diplomat George Dallas was put on the spot at an international congress in London when asked if he objected to the presence of a U.S. Negro—and quite naturally, he did so object and stormed away.115 Dallas was outraged that the London press accused him falsely, he said, of “cordially shaking hands at the opening of Parliament with the Minister of Hayti . . . a man of color.” Dallas, who spent time consulting with Brazilians on how to foil strictures against the slave trade, found this accusation to be beyond the pale. But it was the incident at the International Statistical Congress that bestirred him tremendously. Lord Brougham called him by name, then pointed to a “Negro in the assemblage.” His temper rising, Dallas recounted, “I perceived instantly the grossness of the act and seeing the black,” recognized instantaneously that “it was a premeditated contrivance to provoke me into unseemly altercation”—but he would not bite. “The gentleman of color,” he remembered, “rose and requested permission of the Prince Consort” to thank Lord Brougham, then declared, “‘I am a man.’” A steamed Dallas wonDeclare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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dered, “[I]s not the government answerable for this insult?” Speaking of Lord Brougham, he wondered, “[I]s [he] on this question of slavery deranged?” He demanded “an ample and distinct apology for the insult upon the United States.” Later Lord Brougham called on him and Dallas “had just time to tell my servant to refuse me.” He came later and left Dallas with the remark, “[Y] ou don’t treat your Negroes as well as they are treated in the Brazils!” This left Dallas even more out of sorts, wondering further if he had “too tranquilly submitted to the remark of Brougham. One of them here wishes I had ‘jumped to my feet and knocked the old blackguard down!’” For it was “great folly” to “imply” that “the question of slavery in the United States could legitimately be discussed before the American Minister at a European Congress of any sort. Second, the Congress was unanimously and vociferously hostile; the words of Lord Broughham were cheered loudly,” despite or perhaps because of “the slur.”116 Martin Delany, contrarily, in the midst of a fivemonth lecture tour of Britain, regarded this episode as a turning point in his celebrated existence.117 Also increasing sectional tension was a push by Boston merchants to promote trade with Haiti and diplomatic recognition of this republic. Haiti, they said, was “the only nation having extensive commercial relations with us, that has not been recognized by the government of the United States.” As for the argument that the regime had been unfair, they responded curtly that “blacks did no more to the whites than they had seen the whites do to those of their own complexion.” “[T]he colonists proceeded to exterminate the slaves” and the “slaves adopted the same course toward the whites.”118 These Boston merchants realized that there were opportunities to be found in Haiti which were being frittered away. They could have talked to James T. Holly, their ostensible compatriot, and this Negro could have told him that “English architects, carpenters and stone masons were hired” in Haiti “to improve the style of building,” one of many contracts let in London.119 As if that were not enough, London was maneuvering to get closer to the U.S. surrogate that was Liberia, in order to squash the slave trade.120 These merchants’ anodyne view of Haiti could have been drafted in London—which was distinctly what some jingoists in Dixie may have been thinking. The sectional crisis did not exist in a vacuum limited to the region where the stars-and-stripes fluttered; it was fed and driven by a larger crisis between slavery and abolitionism in which the former mother country, Britain, was a prime player. Since the republic had its origins in a breakaway from London, it was perhaps inevitable that a powerful and transformative movement like emancipation would be viewed as traitorous in the Slave 176

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South. And likewise, recognition of Haiti would be viewed as recognition of the right of the enslaved to revolt. But just as Cuyler Young of Georgia thought that his beloved Slave States would be better positioned without the baggage brought by the North, some in the latter region would have been excused if they had thought they would be better off absent the South. For these nagging conflicts with London did not seem to be disappearing. And the insistence by some in Dixie that slaves had to be introduced into Oregon, while other troublesome issues like Texas and the Creole implicated enslavement directly, suggested that the entire republic could be lost in a war with the Crown involving a form of property that was on the verge of evanescence north of the Mason Dixon Line. By mid-1854, Robert Harrison reported from Jamaica that “most of the West India colonies are about raising militias, volunteers and so forth, to oppose attacks” to “be made upon them by the hated Yankees. None of the inhabitants of the islands,” he insisted, “are so hostile however toward us as those of this colony.” Strikingly, he found “some of our countrymen who have long resided here and sworn allegiance to the British Crown, are amongst the greatest enemies of our government and its institutions,”121 an enmity probably influenced by abolitionism. For in Jamaica were “a number of missionaries from the Northern States” who were “all abolitionist and the most bitter enemies of our Government.”122 To hear Harrison tell it, the monarchists were so confident of their ability to overturn the slaveholders’ republic that they were already measuring for new drapes in the White House. The Crimean War had brought Paris and London closer together, and to their dismay, had driven the U.S. into Russia’s arms. Now, in Kingston “ignorant and foolish people” had “dared to talk of the division of our beloved country between England and France!!” This was not idle talk but was indeed “held at the highest authority in this country! It is said that France is to have Louisiana and the French part of Canada, whilst England is to take possession of the main body of our country.”123 “The people here talk of nothing but war with the United States, which they say is inevitable,” Harrison reported in early 1856.124 Whether the Crown actually sought to overthrow and carve up the republic was not altogether clear but plainly evident was the growing animosity in Jamaica—where some of the fiercest recruits of the feared West India Regiments were housed—toward the republic. “Atrocious act and insult, committed on our flag” by “half savage Negroes” was Harrison’s frequent complaint.125 Unsurprisingly, Harrison thought that Jamaicans were “more hostile to us than any other class of people I have ever met,”126 more than Declare War on Britain to Avert Civil War in the U.S.?

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once he had to “fasten my doors and windows more securely than usual as the Negroes and people of colour were distinctly heard to use threatening language towards me.”127 Combined with the resentment toward the republic in Haiti and the ongoing displeasure in London, this was seen as a threat to national security. If all of this fury were combined with that of millions of enslaved Africans in Dixie, Northerners had to wonder if even their own security might be in jeopardy. Harrison recounted that in the Slave South agents had been sent by the Crown to “poison the minds and stir up the Negroes to take up arms in the event of war, and that the British Government as well as unprincipled inhabitants here calculate on them, as powerful allies should a rupture take place.”128 Harrison propelled the sectional sentiment that juxtaposed Southern and Northern concerns. Jamaicans tended to “rejoice beyond measure to hear of the Kansas difficulties,” he wrote sorrowfully in the summer of 1856; “they say these things will lead to the dissolution of the union and annexation of the northern states to Canada!! Massachusetts being already ripe for it!!!”129 “Anti-slavery meetings have become quite the rage throughout the parishes in this island,” said Harrison in early 1857.130 That is, abolitionist sentiment was not simply limited to the North, but it had spread beyond the borders of the republic to the point where it was becoming a mortal danger to national security.131 But for the Southern republicans particularly, it was as if the walls were closing in on them. They were surrounded by Africans who had shown they were ready to ally with invaders and they were pressed by abolitionists just offshore. War was becoming increasingly unavoidable. The question was: Who would be the combatants in this irrepressible conflict?

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13 Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

The men of African ancestry were born in the U.S., but as tension rose between the republic and the monarchy, the choice facing them was simple: as Civil War crept ever closer, imperiling the future of their homeland, they chose to enlist in the armed militia—of Her Majesty. They had fled to what is now British Columbia from San Francisco, chased away by racism and now, as Washington and London jousted over what amounted to southern Canada, they accepted the invitation of Sir James Douglas1—also a man of color, who had made a special appeal to them—to relocate. Hundreds fled northward in the late 1850s and though it was no Shangri-la, they recognized that the difference with the republic was that racism in the town of Victoria did not receive official sanction.2 Thus, in the 1850s about 150 of these emigrants had become British subjects. Many of them had been leaders of a recently concluded “Colored Convention” in California.3 Ironically, like George W. Bush during the same era, many of these Negroes had fled westward to California in order to elude U.S. jurisdiction, then found themselves ensnared by Washington.4 If there was any consolation to these refugees from Gold Rush California, it may have been that a veritable reign of terror prevailed not only against themselves but also toward the prototypical victim of “Manifest Destiny”—indigenes—and another familiar victim: the British. The infamous vigilantes of San Francisco seemed to think that the clear and present danger to U.S. hegemony came from the British. There was extraordinary xenophobia in a state in which the notorious “Know-Nothing Party” was gaining sympathizers. This bigotry ensnared African and British subjects alike, drawing the two together; high on this list were Australians5 and even Irish.6 This is not to suggest that Englishmen were exempt, for that would hardly explain the fate of Joseph Hetherington. A beefy six footer, he was also a man of considerable wealth; this Briton was |

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also overbearing in nature and violent in passions. He also possessed valuable city property though he had only arrived in San Francisco in 1849: he was tried, convicted, and hung (the hangman was of Irish descent) soon thereafter.7 Many republicans in San Francisco had had their fill of the British presence on “their” continent and in competition for shrinking amounts of gold,8 and were revolting in response.9 The intimidation they faced convinced many of these erstwhile Britons that the better part of wisdom was to become U.S. citizens. By 1859 there had been an armed clash between the two powers in the border region separating what is now British Columbia from the state of Washington.10 By June 1859, John Brown was gearing up to attack slavery in Virginia while on the other side of the continent, Sir James Douglas, a man of color, had ordered a warship to San Juan Island—with former U.S. Negroes ready, willing and able to back him up militarily, if necessary.11 It was evident that racial slavery had become unsustainable.12 Yet the interrelationship between the clash in the northwest and the civil war that was soon to arrive was exposed when George Pickett, the U.S. commander at San Juan Island, quickly doffed his blue uniform and dressed in the gray, leading the charge at Gettysburg that bears his name.13 In fact, one analyst who fought the Seminoles beside Zachary Taylor, charged that San Juan became an imbroglio because Dixie wanted to drive the republic into war so as to divert U.S. military assets to the northwest in anticipation of their secession and concomitant wider hemispheric schemes.14 Friction had become a way of life between the republic and the monarchy.15 The prediction that republicanism could not survive slavery was apotheosizing in what was to become the most populous and richest state. The British, who had objected to the unfolding of this trend in 1776, were becoming a major victim of this process. But in what was also to become a proliferating tendency, it was not long before an accommodation had taken hold: “[S]everal British subjects have joined the [vigilance] committee,” said the consul, which had now “enrolled some 5000 members.”16 Then the region was adjudged to be “in a state of insurrection” and British residents of San Francisco found it hard to adhere to the consul’s admonition to “keep aloof.” This was centered in a city with an estimated population of 20,000.17 London seemed to stand by impotently and helplessly.18 California’s governor received the support of the newly elected “Know-Nothing Party,” closely allied to the vigilantes, many of whom, said the beleaguered consul, “entertain the project of separating California from the United States and of forming a Pacific Confederacy with the territories of Oregon and Washington.”19 180

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By early 1861 London was told that a “secret organization” existed in San Francisco “with a view of seizing the United States forts in harbour” and the “treasury.”20 Further south in Los Angeles, it was said, “avowed secessionists” reigned and a rumor persisted that a “Confederate force from Texas would be sent over to revolutionize the state or the southern part of it.”21 It was not easy for Negroes to flourish in such a fetid atmosphere.22 By December 1856, worried Negroes were gathering in Sacramento with numerous complaints. One disgruntled conventioneer declared, “I would hail the advent of a foreign army upon our shores, if that army provided liberty to me and my people in bondage.” It was evident that the army he had in mind belonged to the power then in distress in San Francisco.23 In April 1858, 600 Africans jammed a San Francisco church packed to overflowing to hear a letter from Sir James Douglas read aloud, inviting them to move en masse to Canada. A delegation was sent north to meet with him and when they espied him and found that his visage carried more than a hint of ebony, they were predisposed to feel that they would be treated fairly, not least since they had become accustomed to those of such color being shunned and shunted aside in the republic.24 Though they were fleeing one gold rush, they were arriving at another, as the Fraser River Valley was beset by thousands of miners—many from south of the border—as gold was discovered in profusion in Canada.25 When this discovery was made, the British population was sparse and Euro-Americans flooded across the border. The Crown desperately needed sympathetic migrants, not only because of concern about the destiny of a gold-rich region but also because of an ongoing boundary dispute with the republic. These African migrants fleeing persecution were like manna from heaven,26 for earlier London had sent a secret mission to this vast region to determine precisely how strong their republican rivals were and how many subjects would be needed to counter them.27 Thus, from that point until the onset of the twentieth century, the republic had to contend with the Royal Navy patrolling the less than becalmed waters of the Pacific Northwest.28 Of the few hundred families who migrated, the majority were born in Missouri and Virginia, though others had roots in Scotland, Ireland, Liberia, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Amongst these was Mifflin Gibbs, born in Philadelphia in 1823, a former engineer of the Underground Railroad who worked alongside Frederick Douglass. All of them were inclined to move since in the aftermath of the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott case, many of them were not thought to be legal citizens, which helps to explain why so many became British subjects promptly upon arrival. The Crown was to find that Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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these men, women, and children were fiercely loyal to London, ready to bare their breasts in her defense if need be. They differed from others arriving in Victoria in that most of these non-Africans did not wish to relinquish their nationalities. As one analyst put it, these Africans “condemned everything American and hated some Englishmen merely because they had lived in the United States.” They cherished their ability to vote—generally denied in the republic—and when they voted en bloc, they could, and sometimes did, control electoral outcomes. They also rushed to become police officers—a status generally barred in the republic—and by April 1860 had formed the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps, marching armed under the Union Jack, as friction rose between their former homeland and their new one.29 Their unbridled hostility to the republic may have been reflected when they declared, according to an account, that they “would not allow any white person to join them”30— yet another indication of how the racialism of the republic shadowed these Negroes even after they headed north.31 Gibbs—who returned to the republic after slavery was abolished and rose to become a prominent jurist and diplomat in Madagascar—was among those who were effusive upon arrival in Canada. Eventually he was elected to high office in Victoria and was a prominent voice urging closer unity among the Canadian provinces against what he termed the “heresy of ‘states’ rights”—unity that served as a foil to annexation by the republic.32 It must have been a heady experience for Gibbs to have been befriended personally by Sir James Douglas (as he was) virtually from his first day in Victoria, a sharp change from being harassed by leaders in San Francisco. His new friend appointed him to a commission charged with establishing a boundary with the racist republic he had fled, yet another irony in what was amounting to a tidal wave of them.33 James Williams, born enslaved in Maryland in 1825, by 1858 was residing in Victoria, alongside Gibbs, where he had moved—adopting the language of a London court decades earlier—“thinking with a number of my colored friends, that I would like to breathe purer air.”34 By the time he arrived in Victoria, a movement was afoot in California to bar the migration of Africans there. Joining them in Victoria was John Sullivan Deas, born in South Carolina in 1838, who had moved to San Francisco before joining the exodus to the Promised Land in the north. There he became a prominent entrepreneur, an opportunity virtually denied him in the land of his birth. Unlike his homeland, anti-Negro laws designed to block upward mobility were virtually absent in a Victoria that desperately needed them in order to better block incursions from the south.35 182

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Abner Hunt Francis also embraced Canada. This correspondent of Frederick Douglass had tarried—and been harried-—in Portland, Oregon, before joining other Africans amassing in Victoria. It “must” become “the most important point on the Pacific Coast,” he told Douglass, to contest San Francisco. There was “busy strife and dissatisfaction” between London and Washington. But he seemed pleased that “John Bull has already a force in the beautiful bay of Esquimalt, three miles from Victoria,” including “some of his best men-of-war and gunboats, that would blow satisfaction into Uncle Sam in double quick time.” The perspicacious shopkeeper realized all too well that “the great difficulty seems to be: the English are holding out the hand of kindness and protection to the colored people” and the republicans consequentially were in “high dudgeon.” It must have worried the republicans, he thought, that in Victoria, the “last election” was “most beautifully controlled by the colored people”—so pleased was he about this that he was thinking of becoming a British subject. “I have never seen a more beautiful place,” he said gushingly. “In relation to colorphobia,” the republic’s bane, “I must close by saying,” he said, enthusiasm overflowing, “that there is a grand future for the colored man in the British possessions on the North Pacific.”36 By late 1858 Victoria had the largest African population within a radius of hundreds of miles. The promise of equal rights by Sir James was a major selling point.37 The fact that Francis and other Africans were elected repeatedly to the City Council of Victoria was further reason why those who chose to stay in California rather than head due north may have been thought to be clinically insane.38 Mary Ann Shadd was among those who migrated to Canada from the republic. She noticed early on that this sparsely populated though gigantic territory had a distinctive identity as compared to its larger southern neighbor. She was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1823 but passed away in 1893, having, with so many others, fled northward upon passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. “The common ground on which all honest and respectable men meet,” she said of her new homeland, “is that of innate hatred of American slavery.” It was of “first importance” for the future health of the African in the hemisphere, she thought, to “strengthen that and similar positions.” The strategic imperative, she said, was to strangle the “serpent that swallows all others,” speaking of the slaveholders’ republic.39 Secretary of State Lewis Cass begged to differ. By mid-1858 he asked about the nationality of those in this increasingly contested land. “What military or naval force have the British authorities in the vicinity of the river?”40 When he was told in response that there were “six American citizens” in Victoria, Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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it was unclear if Dred Scott meant that Gibbs and his compatriots could not be counted. 41 The republicans seemed tongue-tied when it came to assessing the security threat posed by London building yet another base on their northern border with the avid support of former U.S. Negroes. The republicans did not find it easy to accept a man like Sir James Douglas—a Founding Father of British Columbia-—for not only was this Demerara-born man darker than U.S. leaders, but he also had a spouse who had an indigenous parent. His color caused him to be referred to as a “Jamaican” or “mulatto.” Actually, there were enslaved Africans in his mother’s and grandmother’s household and he hailed from a family of means. Yet during his governorship, Africans were able to purchase land, start businesses, and vote. He was a member of a racially integrated church—which was probably not the case for each and every comparable leader in the republic.42 Sir James was fully integrated within the ruling elite—indeed, he sat atop it in Victoria—as his sister was married to David Cameron, the first Chief Justice of Vancouver Island.43 Sir James had been hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose racial policies, including policies toward indigenes, were much more enlightened than those of their republican counterparts: he served as chief accountant, keeping the books of this enterprise. He was not unique in being hostile to the growing U.S. encroachment in the northwest,44 though his words—“the interests of the American colony and the fur trade will never harmonize”— were notably astringent.45 By 1840 he was touring the Oregon Territory and growing ever more concerned about the growing Euro-American presence there. In California he called on Mexico’s governor and sensing what was to come, urged London to “erect or purchase premises at the Yerba Buena” near San Francisco, “the port considered most favourable, from its growing trade for the opening of a mercantile establishment.” He then visited Santa Barbara, San Pedro, and San Diego.46 Sir James had more reasons than most to resist the onslaught of the slaveholders’ republic. By 1854, as governor, he was worried since he had “no military force at [his] disposal.”47 By the time of the gold discovery, he was ready to panic, as southern adventurers began arriving in droves.48 “Boats and other small craft” were entering the Fraser River, navigated by republicans and carrying “passengers” and “ammunition.” He needed an “offensive force”49 to repel them, but it did not seem it would materialize.50 Men were deserting51 the Royal Navy to try their luck at gold mining, despite a sharp increase in pay.52 The small British population, the gigantic territory, and the rapacious neighbors caused the Crown to become more flexible; thus, 184

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property requirements for appointments like the Justice of the Peace were set aside.53 Things seemed to be collapsing. If he were not careful, Sir James could find himself presiding over a region where those like himself were not only in a minority but a despised and hunted one at that. This invasion showed no surcease. It was evident that Sir James needed a reliable force devoted to the Union Jack that would not be tempted by republican overtures. His prayer was answered by the arrival of hundreds of Africans from San Francisco. Months after their mass arrival U.S. nationals were on the back foot, objecting to their alleged rough treatment.54 But they were not thwarted altogether as contestation over the San Juan Island’s did not abate.55 Sir James thought that the Crown had pursued “concession” in the wake of the Oregon settlement and that this was only encouraging republican aggression to the point where “little more remains for us to concede. We are truly in the position of the lamb in the fables—our lands have been occupied by squatters.”56 The republicans saw things differently, complaining that the Crown had “arrogated to themselves the right to board and search American vessels” to derail the slave trade and though this was happening in the Atlantic, not the Pacific, Oregon’s leaders found it appropriate to protest sternly. They had reason to think that “Governor Douglas,” whom they singled out by name, would try something similar in the “waters on the northwest coast of America.” Already he had “interdicted a transitory migration of American citizens.”57 Another Oregonian denounced “British influence,” particularly Sir James’ former employer, the Hudson’s Bay Company, which included “half breed Indians, some Sandwich Islanders,” and the like.58 Though an assiduous effort had been made to exclude slavery from the northwest, this was not because of solicitude toward the African by any means. The dearth of abolitionist sentiment emerged when in 1860 a slave escaped to Victoria and nervousness arose. As one republican put it, “[O]ur proximity to the British possessions on this coast afford the same facilities to an Underground Railroad that the Canadas do to the Atlantic.”59 Apparently the enslaved African was approached near the border by a man well aware of the welcome he might receive in Victoria. The man then escorted him aboard a departing vessel where, despite angry protests from the highest republican authorities, he was not returned to slavery.60 Perhaps driven by their antipathy to the diversity north of the border, Oregon’s 1857 constitutional convention voted by a 8-1 ratio to exclude Africans and slavery by 3-1. Further, there was fear that the state would send to Washington proenslavement Congressmen. This apprehension became palCanada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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pable when the voters there elected a proslavery man and the legislature sent two ardent advocates of secession and slavery to the U.S. Senate. Yet in February 1859 Oregon was admitted as a state, though its constitution excluded Africans.61 Tellingly, what seemed to propel the thinking and behavior of the Beaver State in its early years was not simply a hatred of Africans but also a biting anxiety that this group would somehow ally with indigenes,62 a reality that Florida had exemplified.63 As the territory stretching south of Canada congealed into statehood, what was occurring in one part of this enormous land contained repercussions for another. This was the reason for concern about events in Florida, for as the 1850s unwound, Africans and indigenes were embroiled in another protracted conflict in the peninsular state north of the Bahamas. When Frederick Douglass enunciated the timeless aphorism that “the fate of the black man and the red man are intimately connected,” he neatly summed up what was unfolding in Florida, a bitter war to the death. He hailed the Seminoles since they sought to “furnish an asylum for the freeing slave,” in contrast to the “American army” which had the “purpose of slave-catching” in mind.64 Britain’s David Turnbull found himself in Washington just before the 1850s war began and listened intently as imprecations were tossed at his homeland. Sardonically, he found it was “not easy to restrain a smile at the vehement tone,” since “had any one whispered the word ‘Seminoles,’” and that the “whole military force of the Union has been fruitlessly employed in the attempt to subdue a mere handful” of indigenes, their threatening London would have abated measurably—and instantly.65 The remedy selected by Washington was to remove the indigenes from Florida to Texas. But there they resumed allying with Africans, helping to transport the enslaved deeper into Mexico.66 Tensions with London were also rising in a manner that now seemed normative southwest of Florida, this time in Central America.67 Basically, Washington found Britain’s growing presence in Belize, abutting Mexico, where some in the U.S. continued to harbor designs—and flush with timber and mahogany besides68—inconsistent with the Monroe Doctrine. During the war with Mexico, disturbances increased in the Yucatan, as the U.S. blockaded the Campeche coast, bringing the republicans ever closer to Belize.69 Simultaneously,70 the regime in Guatemala pressed territorial claims against Belize, at times in concert with other Central Americans.71 The fact that Mexico was supposedly contemplating selling rebellious indigenes as slaves in New Orleans was suggestive of how disruptive and 186

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far-reaching was the ascendancy of the ideology of the slaveholders’ republic.72 When Louisiana proscribed Negro sailors from Britain, it was Belize, due south of New Orleans, that was impacted severely.73 The result was a protracted and difficult negotiation—not unlike that which produced the Webster-Ashburton treaty—that eventuated in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty.74 However, it was loosely worded, subject to various interpretations and thus it contributed to the friction that was growing as the sectional war erupted.75 London knew Washington was tied down in Florida (and the northwest) and facing a potentially devastating civil war, but it also knew that an enhanced confrontation with the Crown could deflect and channel republican attention adroitly. So it began preparing for war in Central America76 (including strengthening the detachment of the fearsome West India regiments),77 and worrying that disaffected Euro-Americans in Ruatan, the largest of Honduras’s Bay Islands, were plotting an attack.78 When the EuroAmerican adventurer William Walker79 invaded neighboring Nicaragua, London’s worst fears were realized.80 Secretary of State William Marcy disagreed.81 Marcy82 knew better than most people that there was “considerable opposition” within the U.S. Senate about a settlement of this crisis since it “contains a prohibition of slavery in the Bay Islands,” which could “prove fatal.”83 It also proved to be problematic to reach a mutual concord with a nation with which the republic seemed to be in perpetual conflict. Though it was typically London that complained about the republic aggressively recruiting its subjects and persuading them to defect, Marcy was the one making this charge during this crisis.84 Actually, this flare-up underscored the importance of the African defection to Victoria, for the Crimean conflict had placed a real strain on London, leading to James Buchanan’s accusation that Nova Scotia had become the headquarters for luring U.S. nationals into the British military.85 Rising to the bait, Lord Clarendon fundamentally disagreed and responded that it was not his fault that humanitarian republicans wished to align with the leading abolitionist power.86 And besides, there was the issue of U.S. nationals enlisting in the Russian military so as to better challenge London, including alleged Russian privateers fitting out in Manhattan.87 Marcy, however, was more worried about the reverse: U.S. merchant ships aiding London by transporting troops and munitions, and private republican interests providing powder, arms, and “warlike stores” to Britain.88 By necessity then89—outnumbered drastically in their colonies—the British had to rely more heavily upon Africans, while worrying all the while that they would be victimized by the next “St. Domingo.”90 This made them more Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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willing to compromise with, and engage, this Black Majority. Deflecting hostility to the known and notorious hemispheric ogre—the slaveholders’ republic—made good sense. Though jingoistic jousting was the order of the day in the slaveholders’ republic, the fact that the U.S. was surrounded by British colonies that of necessity had to rely heavily on the good wishes of Africans should have been unnerving, especially in Dixie. In Bermuda, for example, the colony was becoming more—not less—dependent on African mariners (hence the objection to Negro Seamen’s Acts). “The common sailors in Bermuda vessels are colored,” asserted the U.S. consul in 1854.91 Embarrassed, U.S.-flagged vessels seeking to smuggle potential slaves and other suspect cargo made unplanned stops in Bermuda, where their encounters were not always pleasant.92 Other vessels from the republic also made unanticipated visits to the colony where they had to endure the indignity of encountering officials who were African.93 In the Bahamas there was a perception that the rush to California had led to a decline in visiting U.S. vessels.94 But that did not stop the U.S. from worrying about the heavily African militia.95 U.S. vessels continued to be wrecked regularly in these swirling waters96—66 within a 30-month period ending in 1856.97 Even the fact that wreckers and U.S. shipmasters98 may have been conniving to split ill-gotten gains from insurance companies should have alerted Dixie to the peril of having such a close neighbor when it was considering the construction of an enhanced slaveholders’ republic. The branding of Jonathan Walker, for example, did not halt the flow of enslaved Africans—often from Key West—into the Bahamas.99 Washington continued to demand without success the extradition of wanted Africans from nearby sites such as the Turks Islands.100 Alternatively, Dixie could have considered profitably leveraging its nationals in British possessions—except that by 1854, for example, there was not one U.S. citizen reported to be residing in St. Lucia or St. Vincent, and only two in Barbados.101 There were fewer still in the smaller Bahamian islands.102 In Demerara the concern was not the absence of U.S. citizens but their presence, as Secretary of State Marcy and the high level official Matthew Fontaine Maury eyed the southern reaches of this colony as part of a larger plan to seize the entire Amazon River valley. They deemed it to be a possible site to deposit enslaved Africans from the republic.103 Fewer notions were better designed to inflame London’s abolitionists with the sentiment that until the slaveholders’ republic was overthrown, or drastically weakened, the entire emancipation project was in jeopardy. That U.S. nationals were simultane188

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ously becoming the major force in the longtime slave storehouse that was Zanzibar was hardly reassuring.104 Even after the assault on Fort Sumter, the U.S. consul in this East African island was complaining of the “strong measures taken by the English Government to suppress the slave trade,” which were “very injurious to business.”105 Even in Nova Scotia, not as close as the Bahamas to Dixie, potential secessionists should have been on guard as to the difficulties that independence might entail. For even before 1861, disputes over fisheries were not becoming less complicated;106 neither was smuggling by U.S. nationals.107 Given the Fugitive Slave Act, the squashed republican revolt of 1837, and the like, it should not have been surprising that in 1852 public meetings in Halifax were discussing potential “hostilities” with the republic—“Slave States” being singled out for critique.108 In sum, neither the global nor the immediate environment were favorable to those desiring secession. Most of all, not far from the shores of the slaveholders’ republic were Africans with weapons they were more than willing to unload against slaveholders. There were occasional glimpses of this dilemma, which led Congressman William Tecumseh Avery of Tennessee in 1859 to argue that the Crimean war was a prelude to a war against Washington, both driven by a desire to cut down to size yet another formidable competitor with a presumably sizeable labor advantage.109 Just after Lincoln’s election, Lord Lyons confided that a “quarrel” with Dixie would provide the “means of ameliorating the condition of their slaves,” and since their “Confederation” would “ever be repugnant to our feelings,” he did not shrink from the task. “Some of them even talk openly of reviving the African Slave Trade,” he said with disgust. It would require, a “united force of the Northern States, of Great Britain and of civilized Europe” (excluding Russia presumably) to crush this audacity, he proclaimed.110 Predictably, John Brown’s plot was concocted in Canada—unsurprising, given the surge of Africans across the border. This suggested that the idea of slavery being squelched with aid from abroad was not far-fetched. Brown had visited Britain in 1849 and was a devotee of Oliver Cromwell. His comrades in Kansas included Britons like James Hanway and William Phillips.111 A British comrade of Brown’s was the specialist in guerilla warfare, Hugh Forbes.112 He collaborated with the Scot, Allan Pinkerton, in smuggling slaves to Canada. Pinkerton, who attained notoriety as a labor spy, was an admirer of Douglass and felt that Brown was “greater than Napoleon and just as great as George Washington.” (He also thought slavery was an “abomination.”)113 Another of Brown’s comrades was the British-born journalist Richard Realf, Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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who had allied with the militant abolitionist in Kansas.114 A young man of poetic genius, his ties to the heroic Lord Byron signified how the attack on the slaveholders’ republic had assumed the romantic proportions once monopolized by the liberation of Greece.115 Realf was summoned to Congress, revealing his 1854 arrival in the republic and his meeting with Brown in 1857. “I had been and was a radical abolitionist,” he testified. He revealed that during Brown’s tour of Europe he had inspected “all fortifications” and studied “mountain warfare.” The legislators may also have been amazed when Realf was asked, “Were there any Canadians other than Negroes?” The response: “No, sir, not one.”116 But Realf and the other Britons were merely following a lengthy tradition in their homeland, for as early as 1823 a British traveler tellingly wrote, “[N]o traveler should return from America without seeing Harper’s Ferry.”117 The curious participation of Britons in Brown’s raid did not escape the attention of Samuel F. B. Morse. He took note of the report of a journalist who asserted that “the first suggestion of the Harper’s Ferry attack was made to Brown by British abolitionists in Chatham.” Morse recalled that in 1809 a British agent, John Henry, was sent to Boston in order to foment discord between Federalists and their opponents, anticipating the Hartford Convention and the attempt to have the New England states join Canada. What about George Thompson? he asked, reciting a litany of past slights.118 The idea that Brown may have been an agent, or at least a tool, of London was not Morse’s alone,119 just as many were coming to agree that if Britain pulled the plug, U.S. abolitionism would die.120 The African woman known as “Mammy Pleasant,” who claimed to have funded the conspiracy and later resided in San Francisco, once resided in Chatham, Canada, something of a bastion for anti-Washington sentiments.121 It was in Chatham that Brown penned a letter to friends in Boston, requesting “two or three hundred dollars without delay.”122 It was in Chatham that a convention was held to plan the armed overthrow of slavery in Dixie.123 It was Chatham that Congress pointed to when they investigated Brown.124 Decades after Brown’s execution, the house in Chatham where the sainted figure had established what a Canadian writer termed his “headquarters when he was plotting the destruction of slavery in the United States,”125 still stood. Brown arrived in Canada on April 29, 1858 and for several days thereafter drilled his men in Chatham’s Tecumseh Park. There the Shadd family, famed Negro abolitionists, gave him the use of their offices and printing press. Isaac Holden, captain of the Negro fire brigade, also aided him.126 Per-

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haps unsurprisingly, in early 1864 a suspicious Confederate-flagged ship was detected in the waters near Chatham.127 When Reverend W. M. Mitchell of London referred to Chatham as “the headquarters of the Negro race in Canada,” his assessment was overly modest, for he could have well included the entire continent.128 Actually, at least two Canadians fell at Harpers Ferry and, as one student put it, after Brown was captured “nowhere was the news received with more intense or sadder interest than in Chatham.”129 This may have been due to the fact that a number of escapees to Ontario included Africans who had been enslaved in Harpers Ferry itself.130 Southern Ontario shared the concerns that animated Black Detroit. William Lambert of this budding metropolis recalled later the conspiratorial apparatus encoded in their abolitionism, a precondition for a planned armed overthrow of the hated slave regime. “We arranged passwords and grips and a ritual,” he recalled. But suggestive of the importance of Brown and some Euro-Canadians, which helped to erode encrusted racial animosity, was his (and others’) deep suspicion of those defined as “white,” “[W]e were always suspicious of the white man,” he said, “and so those admitted we put to severe tests, and we had one ritual for them alone and a chapter to test them in. To the privileges of the rest of the order they were not admitted.”131 Among Brown’s consultants was the Euro-Canadian abolitionist, Alexander Milton Ross, who—like Harriet Tubman—repeatedly returned to Dixie to aid escaping Africans, who were often armed. He actually had the nerve to travel to Mississippi and spread the good word about Canada among the enslaved. “There was not a plantation within fifteen miles of Selma [Alabama] that I did not visit successfully,” he asserted. In Georgia he collaborated with the son of a U.S. senator “by a female slave.”132 While in Cleveland, he conferred before the raid with Brown who told him that it was “very strange” that “you should have a pistol exactly like the one I have in my pocket.” They talked for 7 straight hours, then Ross headed south. Although jailed during his Mississippi foray, he was miraculously freed.133 Amidst Euro-Virginians who emitted rebel yells upon hearing of Brown’s execution, he could not escape the conclusion that this episode represented a “death knell” for slavery itself.134 After Brown was captured, suspected conspirators like Frederick Douglass found a sanctuary in Canada, then in Britain.135 Unsurprisingly, Governor Henry Wise of Virginia blamed London after the raid, observing that the “real groundwork of dissension in this country” rested with the “foreign influence of Great Britain.”136

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Though Governor Wise was reproaching London, Africans were speaking differently. Rhapsodic euphoria reigned amongst them when the Prince of Wales arrived in Boston in 1860. Since practically every leading British newspaper had one or more correspondents in the republic, this respectful and ecstatic attitude reached readers in the monarchy, thus fortifying preexisting abolitionist sympathies.137 The veneration of Queen Victoria included a feeling that she had offered to purchase the enslaved, then liberate them—but the South refused this offer.138 The Africans knew all too well that a refuge for them existed on British soil. As Sir Edmund Head put it in 1859, “[W]e have plenty of territory for these emigrants.”139 Because of the deep amity toward the Crown held by the Africans in the republic, the notion that sectional conflict could be overcome by rallying against the presumed foreign antagonist in London reflected the abject desperation in Washington—for such a gambit could boomerang wildly making the 1812 war seem mild by comparison. This provided the monarchy with an advantage as it contemplated its critically important role during the U.S. Civil War.140 Likewise, the estimated 40,000 Canadians—perhaps 50,000-— who fought against the secessionists provided London with considerable influence on the outcome of this titanic conflict.141 The difficulties faced by the secessionists142 were glimpsed when, during the conflict’s early stages, one of their emissaries was holding court in Bermuda, discussing the crucially important blockade running. A local, described as a “sulky Negro girl,” interrupted him and told him forthrightly: “[Y]ou’d better believe dat dis child doesn’t wait no longer on dis crowd of Secessers.” And off she marched while splattering the stunned with her departing words: “[Y]ou is all Secessers, Secessers!”143 Perhaps this enraged African woman in Bermuda knew of Joseph Rainey. A balding man with thick mutton chops and a stern visage, he was born in South Carolina in 1832 and toiled as a barber. In 1859 on a trip to Philadelphia he met and fell in love with a woman described as a “part-French quadroon girl,” often code for Haitian heritage. Then he was conscripted to serve as a steward on a secessionist blockade runner, which allowed him to flee to Bermuda. This well-spoken man toiled there during the war, then returned to Carolina. Here he was elected to the State Senate, then the U.S. Congress— the first of his ancestry to be so designated.144 Likewise, the secessionists knew of the fervent abolitionism in Europe— particularly Britain—that made recognition of their rump state problematic at best. This knowledge was probably what drove them to move haltingly toward abolition themselves (though it was slavery that drove their seces192

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sion in the first place).145 Though some in London would not have been displeased if their powerful rival had been split asunder, the odious bondage that blighted Dixie made it difficult for the enslavers to win diplomatic plaudits.146 The fact that William Gladstone himself was among the powerful Londoners who leaned toward the Confederacy—though the secessionists strained hard to gain support in Britain—was suggestive of the steep uphill climb they faced.147 Dixie had a hard time living down its previous brusque reprimand of London, particularly its denunciation of abolition itself 148 and the continuous scorn it heaped on New England abolitionism as little more than a London149 front.150 At the same time, the Duke of Newcastle was among those who found it unseemly that as the gore of civil war mounted, the republican press continued to clamor for the annexation of Canada.151 Lord Lyons was disturbed when William Seward sent “two secret agents to Canada” to explore this issue in April 1861. When he confronted the Secretary of State, Seward unsuccessfully dissembled.152 But Seward seemed to think, as London had long suspected, that such a move would ignite waning enthusiasm in the republic for the war.153 Such maneuvering caused some in London to think that the Confederacy should be recognized “as soon as possible” in order to “impede the success” of those determined to invade Canada: that is, Britain could foil any sectional reconciliation based on an assault on British Canada by leaning toward the Confederacy.154 Nevertheless, Lord Lyons conceded that he was “impatient to settle the San Juan and Hudson Bay Question”—he was “almost in despair about them”—in order to foil a possible attack on Canada.155 Lord Lyons thought the situation was made worse by the fact that Lincoln was “wholly ignorant of foreign countries and of foreign affairs.” He warned Seward that of the two powerful forces in the monarchy, namely, “manufacturing” and the “Wilberforce party,” the latter would be unhappy with such an invasion, while it would “injure” relations with the former. But Seward was not listening, he thought.156 Subsequently, Lord Lyons seemed pleased when he ascertained that Washington recognized the “immense encouragement” their Canadian plans had “given to their Southern foe,” diverting northward the antagonism that should have gone southward—though this “act of madness” had not died altogether, suggesting that to “remove the temptation to attack Canada” was a priority.157 The problem was, he said, that Seward’s maneuvering was part of a plan to succeed Lincoln and form a new party of “union at any price” combined with “hostility to England.” But this “madness” would not disappear, and so London must be “prepared for the worst.”158 Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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By July 1861 Lord Lyons sensed a possible “compromise between the North and South,” leading to “military preparations” and the U.S. “conquering British and Russian North America,” including Alaska, “Cuba, Jamaica and the other West India islands and Central America,” and all stretching from “the North Pole to the Orinoco River,” leading to “one or two mighty republics.” This was “arrant nonsense,” he scoffed, but since it was promoted by the Manhattan elite, it could not be dismissed as mere “national vanity.”159 After perusing the founding documents of the “slaveholding confederacy,” Britain’s consul in Charleston, Robert Bunch, was reserved. He acknowledged the force of the argument that the “treaty of peace of 1783” recognized “sovereign states,” but not a sovereign state—a viewpoint that deft diplomacy by Dixie could have parlayed into a major victory.160 Surely Dixie tried. Bunch thought there had been an attempt to “conciliate” London on the matter of the slave trade, but the “threat to Virginia,” whose “only commerce was the breeding of slaves for sale,” made this process difficult.161 At the other end of this hateful trade, objections to the slave trade provisos were raised in New Orleans, since captured Africans brought there illegally could be sold at public auction and the proceeds split with other states (of course, Louisianans who had profited handsomely over the decades from the trade wanted to keep it all to themselves).162 Bunch concurred that the secessionists did not “rise above that dead level of mediocrity,” with the added bonus of “bombastic self-glorification so common in the United States.” He was floored by their devotion to the “preservation and extension of Negro slavery,” since it was “quite impossible that in the present age of the world, a government avowedly established for such purposes” could win “sympathy.” They would be “ostracized,” which would only add to their “filibustering tendencies,”163 he predicted confidently. This audacity was encouraged by the U.S.’s “exaggerated idea of the importance” of their cotton to Britain, which was “really ludicrous,” thought Bunch. This exaggeration was filtered through their “disliking us violently” because of “our hostility to slavery,” which made them believe that “humiliating” London was “too tempting to be allowed to slip.”164 Although this attitude was profoundly flawed, Bunch knew that Dixie was united while the North was “greatly divided,” which gave the former an imponderable advantage.165 Though Bunch favored abolition, like many in Britain, he found it to be “poetic justice” that Dixie had chosen to privateer, targeting the North. This was the “favourite weapon” of Washington, “which they had declined previously to surrender,” despite considerable pressure from the “Great Powers of Europe.”166 194

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Undeterred, Dixie reminded London that Washington was not committed to abolition, thus meriting “no sympathy” in Britain. At the same time Dixie’s foe was considering unleashing “servile war,” which would be utterly cynical, and—in any potent case—would be an ominous signal to Jamaica and the Caribbean.167 Dixie’s reminder that Washington was hardly committed to abolition was confirmed by British diplomats who visited Ohio and points west.168 Lord Lyons was baffled that there had been “no serious attack upon France” after Paris’s intervention in Mexico, “while the press has teemed with abuse of England.” Paris’s man in Washington said this was because there was a perception that London was “jealous and afraid” of the “greatness” of the U.S. and “desires their ruin,” while Paris “wishes them to be great in order to oppose them to England”—a principle stretching back to the 1776 revolt169 and confirmed by Robert Bunch.170 For more reasons than one, this planned invasion of Canada remained stillborn, not least as it would have probably doomed the union to defeat on two fronts: Canada and Dixie. Africans in particular had reason to agree, for it was during the Civil War that racist pogroms were unleashed in Detroit, causing them to flee across the border. William Jones, an African residing in Canada, was attempting to escape a burning building set alight by racists when he was assaulted by U.S. soldiers and others with sticks and stones. “Kill the nigger, kill the nigger, kill the nigger,” they yelled. These infuriating epithets were bound to reignite the fury that had caused so many in Southern Ontario to align with John Brown in the first place.171 In similar vein, Washington’s begrudging concessions to the despised Negro during the war were shaped indelibly by a desire to win sympathy abroad—particularly in London—helping to convert what had been a war to preserve the union into an abolitionist war.172 Dixie did not help its cause with its maltreatment of British subjects. There was an attempt at conscripting them that proceeded quite roughly. “There is no protection whatever for British subjects residing in the Confederate States,” declared the consul in Mobile. “[T]hey are here in large numbers daily appealing to me for protection.”173 In neighboring Mississippi subjects were “thrown into jail and shamefully used.” More “severe measures of retaliation” were expected from this “semi-barbarous state,” since the Britons were deemed insufficiently respectful.174 There was a “vast number of British subjects residing in this state,” said the consul in New Orleans, and they were being forced “to take part in a contest in which they have no direct interest.”175 But like many secessionist initiatives, this one too backfired, for this consul began organizing Canada Invades—or Civil War in the U.S.?

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effectively among the consuls of Spain, France, Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Belgium, and Italy—all of whose nationals had been treated in similar harsh fashion—thus further isolating the slaveholders and foreshadowing their ignominious defeat.176 Finally, the irrepressible conflict had exploded. What had commenced in Haiti in 1804 was to conclude in Appomattox in 1865.

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14 A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

The Foreign Office was underwhelmed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Days after Lincoln’s words were unveiled, a “confidential” analysis found a “total lack of consistency in this measure,” as it freed the enslaved in areas where he had no control and allowed bondage to persist in areas where he did have control. Concern was expressed as to the “practical effect of declaring emancipation, not as an act of justice and benevolence” but as an “act of punishment and retaliation.” Wouldn’t that simply invite continuing retaliation by the slaveholders and their descendants against the (formerly) enslaved Africans and their descendants? Would it not lead to “acts of plunder, of incendiarism and of revenge”1 stretching over generations?2 Sour views3 of the Emancipation Proclamation were de rigeur among London’s diplomats.4 In Charleston, Robert Bunch knew that some Northerners, notably in New York, “derived such enormous advantage” from the slave system that they too would be upset.5 In Manhattan, E. W. Archibald, the consul, said the decree was “regarded by the labouring population of the North as letting loose an overwhelming competition with white labour,” which could “invigorate” secessionist sentiment.6 A diplomat who had just returned from the region surrounding Ohio felt that the decree had increased secessionist sentiment in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.7 With a realism then rare among those residing in the republic,8 Lord Lyons saw abolition as a tool of retribution, a sword in an elite battle for power between Dixie and its sectional antagonists.9 Lord John Russell in London found it all “very curious.”10 But even well-meaning Londoners might not have recognized that it would not be easy to reverse course and pursue freedom sincerely when a credible argument could be made that the republic itself was founded on the principle of resisting freedom for the African. Assuredly, the uncompensated expropriation of private property in what had |

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been the slaveholders’ republic—which left this “property” and their progeny amidst those made the poorer—was not a prescription for harmony. Secretary of State Seward ineffectually sought to rebut this argument.11 As the dream of abolition seemed to come closer to reality, there was a growing discontent in Britain with the way Washington was handling this potent declension.12 Edward Blyden, a farsighted African leader, helped to fan these flames. Born in the Virgin Islands in 1832, he was refused admittance to college in the U.S. because of his ancestry. He migrated to West Africa and studied Arabic. His worldliness led him, like so many other Africans, to become a passionate Anglophile.13 While in Washington, which was then contemplating the allegedly grand Emancipation Proclamation, Blyden may have given the London-based William Gladstone, the future prime minister of Britain, an even more negative view of the republic by recounting to him that he saw “no fewer than ten coloured persons [who] were handcuffed and carried back into slavery; and this, too, while boastful declarations about the freedom of American institutions were being made at the Capitol.” Because he was a “black man,” Blyden said he “was not allowed to enter the House of Representatives.” The words of this leading Pan-Africanist to a leading British politician encapsulated the angry distaste for the republic harbored by Africans and Londoners alike and demonstrated why the independence of both sections of the nation was in jeopardy. Blyden denounced the republic’s “pretensions” and argued that “both sections of the country are Negro-hating and Negrocrushing” and would have been even worse but for “European sentiment.” He argued strenuously against recognizing the Confederacy, since they were “openly and boastfully wicked.”14 Simultaneously there was enormous pressure on London to recognize the secessionist state—Blyden’s remonstrance aside-—though its very existence contradicted the abolitionism then animating the monarchy. Why? When Lord Lyons visited Manhattan in late 1862 he found “among Englishmen and Canadians here” a “stronger desire for the immediate recognition by Europe of the South, than I was at all prepared for,” driven by “fear” that a reunited republic would “forthwith turn its arms against England and in particular invade Canada.”15 At the same time, after the Battle of Antietam the consul in Baltimore, Frederic Bernal, encountered a “good many wounded Confederate officers and privates” residing in “private homes in this city” and found an unbridled resentment against London: “[T]hey cannot understand how she can help seeing that ‘its to her interest that the South should achieve its independence.’”16 Similar sentiments were detected in Philadelphia as well.17 198

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Though the Confederacy did receive support within the Empire and though splitting a growing republican rival was as appealing to London as splitting the Soviet Union was to republicans in 1990, the “Wilberforce party” prevailed. Like any power, London sought to take advantage of the republic’s hamhandedness—particularly the enthusiasm with which Washington embraced the notion of deporting the Africans—by accomplishing another long-held dream: attracting U.S. Negroes to its colonies. At the same time as the promulgation of the vaunted Emancipation Proclamation, Seward told Charles Francis Adams, his delegate in London, to engage in urgent consultations there about Negro migration to British possessions. This plan would be voluntary, those to be moved would not be slaves, and all would be governed by treaty.18 Belize, facing aggressive claims on its none-too-densely-populated territory from neighboring Guatemala, was more than willing19 to accept Washington’s discards.20 And some U.S. Negroes were similarly seeking to depart the republic.21 When Charles Swett arrived there he was surprised to find William Owens, an “American citizen of African descent,” brought there by a presumed Confederate—who had designs of their own on this site.22 As so often happened when Confederate exile occurred, white Southerners were startled to find Africans in positions23 of influence.24 Beginning with the Fugitive Slave Act, the authorities in Jamaica were coordinating with their counterparts in Belize in an attempt to bring U.S. Negroes to Central America. Downing Street thought it would be “advantageous both to themselves and to the colonies.” Thus a “bounty” would be “payable to each immigrant” to “encourage” this migration.25 Still, for all their Negrophobia, these republicans feared that allowing thousands if not millions of Africans to depart would only serve to strengthen their rival: the Crown.26 Thus, although Belize was only seven days’ sail from New York, this colony seemed destined to retain a population of a mere 25,000— less than 200 being of European descent.27 There were other obstacles.28 Consul Leas noticed that “some southerners or rebels” who had soured on the fortunes of the Confederacy and were “deeply embittered against the U.S. government” were arriving regularly.29 Leas was also wary about this influx since one notable former republican had “become a British subject” and “proved himself the bitterest reviler and calumniator of our government.”30 Dixie had sought— mostly for naught—to utilize Belize as a prime node in its blockade running.31 Still, the considerable blockade running launched from British soil, that aided Dixie, makes the success of the “Wilberforce party” all the more remarkable. A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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Similarly, in Nassau, Barbados, and the Windward Islands more generally, there were concerns about Confederate blockade runners.32 There was much traffic between Dixie and Cuba, some of which spilled over into Key West and the Bahamas.33 New York, it seemed, played a crucial role in keeping the Confederacy alive.34 But Bermuda, in a sense, may have been even more important, as it relived its role, stretching back at least to 1812, of being a mortal danger to the republic.35 Conciliation of slaveholders ultimately had placed the entire U.S. enterprise in serious peril, as it was from Bermuda that extreme forms of warfare against Washington were plotted.36 In the naval citadel that was Halifax, Nova Scotia, officers of the Confederate Navy were occasional visitors,37 as was the well-known rebel adventurer, Matthew Fontaine Maury.38 It was in Halifax that “secessionist” plans were “secretly” devised in 1864 that, Seward was told, involved “setting fire to the principal cities in the northern states on the day of the presidential election.”39 Perhaps because the African presence was relatively small, there was more secessionist activity in British Canada, as opposed to the British possessions further south.40 Yet there was a mass migration in the opposite direction as tens of thousands from the British possessions fought to destroy the Confederacy. Among them was Augustus Sullivan, a police magistrate in the Turks Islands. He was sufficiently high-minded to not allow the rejection of his fellow Africans to sour him on Washington. He was no neophyte, as he informed the Secretary of War: “[F]or six consecutive years from December 1855 to November 1861 I served in Her Majesty’s 1st West India Regiment” as an officer: finally, these feared fighters, who had long since sent frissons of fear coursing through Dixie, were now zeroing in on the final conflict with slavery in North America.41 He was on the same team as the Negro physician, A. R. Abbott, born in Toronto in 1837, who joined the U.S. army in 1863, rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and together with two other Canadians of African descent, helped establish Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., a continuing institution.42 A little-known challenge to the alleged abolitionist bona fides of the republic occurred in Hispaniola, as the island was wracked with unrest, sparked in part by U.S. interference stretching back to the 1840s. U.S. Negroes had migrated to Haiti in the 1820s, but like George W. Bush in the northwest, found that by the 1860s they were residing in a different jurisdiction: that of the Dominican Republic, which was retaken by Spain in 1861. They petitioned the White House, noting that they had “acquired large properties” but now there was a plan to “expel them from the land,” leading to 200

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“heavy pecuniary losses.”43 They billed themselves as “citizens of the United States” and denounced Spain. Yet the U.S. authorities refused to supply them with passports, since they “did not wish to offend the government who were opposed to people of colour.” Hundreds of people were in jeopardy. They had no choice but to appeal to the British, who responded favorably right away.44 What could fairly be called Haitian Hispaniola remained a bastion of abolitionism, containing by 1860 an army of 40,000 men—routinely described as one of the largest on the planet in proportion to the population. Hostility toward Haiti explained this militarization, which drained funds away from spending on education and health care and thereby deformed the nation. “It is the fear of the United States” which drove this militarization, said one sympathizer of the African Republic, “a fear which our refusal to recognize Haiti keeps alive.”45 Such ghastliness fueled migration there from the U.S. that strengthened Port-au-Prince: by 1860 the most prosperous baker was a Negro from New Orleans; one of the best cabinet makers was a Negro from Philadelphia; the principal sail maker was also a Negro from the City of Brotherly Love. Symbolic of an alliance that had yet to perish was the presence of English Wesleyan churches and schools in Haiti’s five principal towns. The former U.S. Negroes had a Methodist Church of their own in the capital.46 James Redpath, John Brown’s comrade, found that the only hotel in a major city was run by “Madame Johnson, an American Black.” In courts there “the code of our Southern States is reversed: there the testimony of a black against a white is refused; here the evidence of a white against a black is void.” Wisely, Redpath recognized that the former was the by-product of racist exploitation, while the latter was a severe reaction to this crime, “the offspring of an indubitable necessity  .  .  . provoked by fourteen years of slaughter and two centuries of the foulest oppression.”47 It was also a reaction to maltreatment in the U.S. itself.48 Redpath began recruiting for Haiti as civil war commenced. Echoing common British opinion, he argued that U.S. Negroes were “threatened with extinction” and faced a “future” of “annihilation” [emphasis in the original]. Virginia, he said, feared a strong Haiti just as much as she “dreaded the rifles of John Brown.” Haiti, he thought, “could produce sugar enough to drive Louisiana out of every market in the world.” He posted agents in New Orleans and Boston in order to facilitate this emigration.49 Redpath demonstrated his devotion to Haiti when he dedicated his book on Harpers Ferry to that nation’s leader.50 When the Negro abolitionist James Theodore Holly said that, compared to the revolution in Haiti, the 1776 revolt was a “tempest A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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in a teapot,” he signaled yet another reason why Negroes were considering departing the U.S.51 As was true at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it would have been folly for Washington to have underestimated Haiti. Shedding Dixie allowed the U.S. to recognize the African Republic. In that context, Senator Charles Sumner mentioned that while only 88 vessels were employed in the U.S. trade with Russia, 490 were involved with Haiti. Haiti, said this abolitionist, “in this scale of commerce and navigation stands above Sweden, Turkey, Central America, Portugal and Papal States, Japan, Denmark, Prussia and Ecuador.”52 Haiti’s neighbor Jamaica, the most populous British colony in the region, deeply influenced Belize. In Kingston too there was a desire to attract U.S. Negroes, a desire shared by “both the Government and the people,” Seward was told. It was a subject of public meetings and newspaper articles, the prevailing idea being that these migrants could be a savior to a colony longing for more prosperity. “[S]o great has been the excitement,” it was reported, “that offers have been here made of free leases of large tracts of land.”53 By 1863 the U.S. consul thought that “fifty thousand immigrants” would arrive soon in Jamaica and “if successful in the case of this island the example will be followed by others of the West Indies.”54 By October 1862 Downing Street was told that “very large public meetings” about this topic were occurring with increasing frequency, as “expectations have been excited” about “the benefits to be derived.”55 The local press erupted in joy at the mention of the prospect.56 Enthusiasm soared in Kingston as the authorities volunteered to pay “the entire passage” of those willing to migrate. Why? Because U.S. Negroes were of such “industrious habits and superior as a class to the present peasantry of the West Indian islands,”57 it was said. Thus, even before the war commenced, Kingston was attempting to attract “large numbers of the free blacks” then in Louisiana as a first step to courting Africans in “other slave states that might be induced to emigrate to Jamaica.”58 Like the Haitian authorities and Charles Leas in Belize, the emissary in neighboring Kingston did not seem too displeased with the prospect of the arrival of more Africans from the U.S. The same was true for the U.S. representative in Antigua, as he inquired with emphasis in 1863 “whether the recently emancipated Negroes of the U.S. would not be a preferable substitute for the Coolie immigration” then contemplated. The “expense” of the latter, he said enticingly, would be “a great deal heavier,” since Washington and the “American Colonization societies” would provide a subsidy for the Negro. Like a salesman brandishing his wares, he stressed that the Negro was “not 202

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only superior in strength and muscle to the enervated Oriental,” but he was “English speaking.”, The U.S. consul underscored that “the Coolie is the very incarnation of treachery and vice,” while the Negro was “certainly ignorant of those abominable habits of the Orientals.” The “American Negro professes Christianity,” he enthused, “his soul is imbued by it from early childhood,” unlike Asians, whom he contrasted negatively with the American Negro.59 For various reasons thousands did not arrive in Antigua. Seward was told that, other than Jamaica, London found its Caribbean colonies “valueless,” excepting Antigua, which, because of its dockyard, was important for the projection of naval power. The “surrounding heights” were “dominating,” making this site “impregnable,” but, the Antiguan agent asserted confidently, “they could be taken by a coup de main.” Speaking as the Civil War ground on bloodily, he assured the reader that he was not “clamorous for war with England.” But his weak assertion was a sign that Washington was coming to see the dispatching of Negroes as a kind of Trojan horse, which was making them less attractive to London.60 Presumably Barbados was one of these “valueless” islands. But since it was known as “Little England” and had the largest resident British population in the region, this seemed unlikely. It was true, however, that the Civil War, which dramatically affected trade with the republic, “exposed us to great privation in the article of food alone,” said the Governor.61 He added that the food supply had “fallen” with “severity” on this densely populated isle.62 Yet instead of sending its African population northward, Barbados too entertained the idea of bringing many U.S. Negroes southward, mostly to its twin: the island off Demerara. Again bounties were to be paid for each migrant and the Elgin settlement in Canada was looked to for guidance.63 A special64 “Ambassador” from Georgetown was sent to Washington to negotiate the removal,65 with the consul urging a “thousand brought here to commence with,”66 and more to come. Apparently Seward “did not propose to limit the contemplated migration.”67 Like latter-day baseball executives, Washington, Copenhagen, and London were discussing trades of Africans that involved Saint Croix and Barbados: those in Saint Croix seemed most desirous of attracting the U.S. Negroes68 (and cooperating with Confederates for that matter).69 By August 1862 it was announced in Demerara that Washington was ready to dispatch free Negroes abroad.70 The governor in Georgetown, like a political strategist cum rural sociologist, was considering various statuses for these potential emigrants from the republic. He seemed to settle on a situation not unlike that of the “poor whites of Barbados” where they would receive land at the A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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end of an indentured tenure.71 The governor of Barbados, who established himself as the middleman for those who wanted to obtain the suddenly wellregarded U.S. Negroes, was also speaking for his counterpart in Grenada, who was interested in “procuring 1000 labourers from the government of the United States.72 A constraint was how this would be viewed in Dixie, since some of the Africans winding up in the Caribbean might have been considered the “property” of some Southerners.73 Downing Street was enthusiastic. Sir Frederic Rogers thought the idea of moving thousands of U.S. Negroes to British possessions held “advantages” that were “almost too obvious to require comment.” He was mulling over the nice round figure of 100,000.74 London was immersing itself in the details, demanding the inclusion of a “certain proportion of women” and noting, “where married Negroes are taken their wives and families should accompany them.”75 But again, the Trojan horse scenario intervened as the London authorities had shifted to worrying about “defensive operations” in “the event of war.”76 Just in case this happened, nervous Barbadians were storing thousands of rounds of ammunition and bolstering the Volunteer Rifle Corps and the Brigade of Volunteer Artillery, both staffed with Africans.77 Such arming was taking place throughout the British possessions, as if they continued to think that a diversionary attack there by the republicans could lead to sectional reconciliation.78 Similarly, in Washington all of a sudden, said Lord Lyons, the White House began to wonder how its encouragement to the U.S. Negroes to migrate would be seen by the “Coloured Troops” they were so desperately seeking to raise.79 By early September 1862 the legation in Washington was engaged in intensive discussions with Seward and found that a shift in opinion had taken place, though varying opinions remained within the Cabinet. The “Coloured Troops” and their families, it was said, had “objections” to departing. Given Washington’s increasing reliance on these Negroes with guns, their opinions—contrary to the previous centuries of slavery—were hard to dismiss.80 Yet a few days later, even as Lincoln was drafting the transformative words of the Emancipation Proclamation, the legation reported that he was “still anxious to carry out the scheme” as long as the relevant governments were “interested.” The “Governments of Guatemala and San Salvador” had “remonstrated against the importation of any Negroes” and “had urged other Governments to do the same,” their “objection being—and Mr. Seward appears to consider it a reasonable one—that the Negro Race would soon outnumber 204

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the whites and would moreover completely demoralize the social condition of that region.” Paris, on the other hand, seemed “anxious to obtain a share of any Negro Emancipation” and was assured by Washington that whatever London was offered, France would be offered as well. It came clear that Denmark was brought into the fray in order to break the impasse stemming from London-Paris competition.81 Then Downing Street echoed the U.S.’s cry that the “free consent of the Negro to emigrate” was an “indispensable condition,” which would not be simple to obtain82—and Seward concurred.83 The mutual checkmating continued when London invoked the Clayton-Bulwer accord as a legal bar to sending these Negroes to Central America; Seward then distinguished “New Granada,” or what is now Colombia, as it was not envisioned by this treaty. Thus, they could be shipped there.84 The hemming and hawing continued, suggestive of how Washington was torn. It wished to rid itself of a “problem” for all time, but had to consider restraining factors, such as how the Negroes with guns—probably more so in the hemisphere—would react. By late September 1862 Seward seemed ready to pull the trigger and oust from the republic a sizeable number of Negroes.85 Then London got cold feet, worrying that Dixie might view this deal with Washington as “a common act of hostility.” Besides, it could encourage the already proliferating problem of slave flight, as escape to the sunny Bahamas would always seem more attractive than bonded labor in Mississippi.86 It was apparent that Washington was hamstrung. The Africans had been essential to building the republic, and had provided a negative example in terms of the construction of “whiteness,” a racial identity that smoothed contradictions between and among Europeans (English versus Irish; British versus French; and so on). Would their removal foment squabbling between and among these European ethnicities, re-creating the Old World in the New? Washington was also quite familiar with the West India regiments and had to consider whether these emigrants would return to the republic, weapons in hand, eager to settle scores. Why run the risk of strengthening the British Empire, an already strong rival? Seward must have suspected what Lord Lyons was telling London that when the warring parties made peace, they would have collectively a “large army to provide with employment and an immense amount of popular dissatisfaction and humiliation to find a safety valve for.” This meant that “Canada in particular” would be in jeopardy. So why should the republic preemptively aid the Crown’s defense with a generous gift of potential soldiers?87 Even as the war proceeded, the Crown was receiving enslaved Africans in Bermuda escaping the Confederacy,88 who could easily be enlisted in military regiments. A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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By December 1862, as some were marking the Emancipation Proclamation, Lord Lyons was huddling with Seward “at some length” about removing a considerable number of Africans from the republic. But he found their talks “not very encouraging.” London, wanting to get on with it, was eager to send agents to New York and Boston to solicit potential subjects. Seward pontificated, pointing out that “men [of] very great weight and indeed the President himself inclined to the opinion that the most desirable thing for both races was to separate them and to reserve North America exclusively for the whites.”89 If slavery were the cause of the war, why not get rid of the slaves, and thereby get rid of the problem? Even after the historic date of January 1, 1863, Lord Lyons, possibly grown cynical from the enervating process, reported, “[T]he President told me the other day that he wanted to have an informal talk with me.” Yes, he sighed, “the subject of the talk will no doubt be his hobby—the deportation of the contrabands.”90 It had dawned on some in the American Colonization Society that sending Africans in the republic back to Africa could serve as an advance guard for a U.S. colonial project.91 But if they made their way to Sierra Leone and British jurisdictions, would this wind up strengthening the Crown? And even if this “deportation” were to take place, there were other major problems. An emigration agent in Cleveland wondered if Africans sailing “under American colors” who might be blown by accident or stress into a southern port, could be returned to slavery, given the onerous application of the Negro Seamen’s Acts.92 This could not be ignored, since some U.S. Negroes were clamoring to depart sooner rather than later.93 In some ways, London seemed more concerned about the Africans in the republic than Washington: it was the consul in Manhattan who insistently raised “precautions” in this venture, warning of “kidnapping and other abuses” by citizens with “no scruples” preying upon understandably disoriented Africans in transition from slavery to a form of freedom.94 While republicans and monarchists wrestled over the fate of the U.S. Negro, more of them continued to trickle into Canada. According to Alexander Milton Ross, the militant Canadian abolitionist (he thought the enslaved had a right to kill their captors) who spied on the Confederacy at Lincoln’s behest, this U.S. president wanted U.S. Negroes to move to Canada—and they seemed to be accepting his advice.95 By 1864 it was estimated that 40,000 of their number resided there. Their presence not only strengthened the Crown but also promoted a Canadian identity distinct from that south of the border, which would continue to make annexation difficult at best. When John Brown’s 206

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comrade, Samuel Gridley Howe, toured Canada during the war, he could not avoid noticing that “the American people are charged with prejudice against the Negroes; and our English cousins especially denounced it as a proof of our innate depravity,” of which they wanted no part.96 Finally, it seemed that rough diplomatic reality had trumped racial chauvinism. By mid-1863, Lord Lyons proclaimed that Washington was “refusing to encourage emigration at this moment” because of the “desire to obtain recruits for the Army from among the Negro population.”97 Yet he continued trying to “get as many ‘contrabands’ as possible safe out of this country—for I do not think that, at best, their condition in the Northern States will ever be a happy one—and they would, in all probability, be sacrificed without scruple, if the North and South should ever come to an understanding.”98 This was a reasonable prognostication of what followed the sectional reconciliation of 1876. Meanwhile, the pressure for slaving continued. As the Emancipation Proclamation was being announced, the U.S. consul in Zanzibar observed that “all foreigners here have strongly sympathized with the Southern Rebellionists [sic],” which should not have been surprising in this haven for slave trading.99 But the continual prodding of the Royal Navy and the battering Dixie was beginning to receive on the battlefield, not least at the hands of Africans, was having an impact on ambitious plans for slaving. It was not long before Seward was informed that the “American trade with Zanzibar is nearly extinguished.”100 This momentous change, fruits of the copious blood shed on the battlefield, resulted from the realization in Washington that the slave trade was of no help to their cause. This realization finally led to their decision to crack down. Lord Lyons was elated. It was on April 8, 1862 that he remarked happily that “yesterday was the anniversary of my arrival three years ago at Washington. I celebrated it by signing the treaty for the suppression of the Slave Trade,” and since “Congress is undoubtedly more decidedly anti-slavery at the moment [than] either the President, W. Seward or the country in general,” he was confident of its complete ratification.101 “I hardly expected to obtain so much,” he said of his negotiations with Seward.102 A few months later Lord Lyons was surprised to ascertain that this treaty was “met with much more general approval than I expected.” Senator Sumner was “moved to tears when he came to tell me that it had passed unanimously” in his body.103 Finally realizing that bowing to racist excess was serving only those who eagerly sought his demise, Seward—and the republic he represented— capitulated in a presentiment of the better known constitutional amendments (though hardly less sweeping).104 A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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Meanwhile, in Victoria, Africans from the U.S. continued to play a leading role in this western territory, as the vanguard of an armed militia. No doubt they perked up when Confederates began showing up in their town. They were plotting “expeditions,” said the U.S. consul, of a “revolutionary” nature.105 These reactionaries held a meeting of 100 men with the object of raising a corps six times that size. They were destined for Mexico with unknown purposes—though the burst of activity in neighboring Belize and the well-known desire of the rebels to establish a Confederate base just south of Texas hinted at their intentions.106 Sir James Douglas and his armed band of Africans were not inactive in the face of these threats. By December 1861 he had outlined a plan for the invasion of Puget Sound and the seizure of all Washington’s territory to the Columbia River. He maintained a naval base at Esquimalt, adjacent to Victoria, while due south no adequate coastal defense batteries had been established, though a small naval squadron was scattered from San Francisco to Panama. (The three major entering points to the heartlands of the Pacific Coast—Puget Sound, the Columbia River, and the San Francisco Bay—were completely vulnerable to attack.)107 Sir James had reason to keep his powder dry as Confederates were suspected of wanting to raid Canada for Africans so they could be converted into slaves—and what greater prize would there be than himself?108 The Confederates, who were under siege in the Caribbean, were able to better set up shop in Canada. In Toronto they were in direct touch with Jefferson Davis himself in Richmond—or so said the U.S. consul there.109 Their presence was hardly incompatible with the long-held desire south of the border for annexation and Seward’s related desire to deflect sectional antagonism by rallying against British Canada.110 Not calming111 was the repeated presence north of the border of the notorious Confederate sympathizer, Clement Vallandigham.112 Then there were the suspicious trunks and boxes belonging to John Wilkes Booth, which were found in Quebec shortly after the fateful month of April 1865.113 Despite their ability to conspire in British Canada, the Confederates did not take mercy on the Britons in their midst.114 As ever, there were repeated complaints about the maltreatment of African seafarers on British-flagged vessels docking in Dixie’s ports115—not the kind of policy needed for a Confederacy seeking diplomatic support. Old habits die hard, irrespective of the stakes, and by August 1861 the sheriff in New Orleans was instructing London’s consul that it was “illegal” for African mariners to “be discharged” in his town since “free coloured people brought here in vessels, must be imprisoned.”116 208

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Even in Richmond, where it might be thought that diplomatic sensitivities were primary, British subjects faced another kind of confinement: forcible enlistment in the Confederate military, a huge and continuing problem which occupied a considerable amount of the besieged consul’s time.117 By 1864, the consul in Charleston himself had to fend off an aggressive attempt to have his diplomatic status overridden and to be drafted.118 There were similar complaints in Baltimore.119 Even the eminent Lord Lyons had to fend off Seward, who had the “foolish habit of asking to see dispatches written by me.”120 The conscription measures were occurring after the Emancipation Proclamation, when it might be thought that sensitivities about restraints on liberty were more prevalent. Interestingly, despite this troublesome issue, by early 1864 the Richmond consul, George Moore, thought that though Dixie was “estranged” from London, their relationship was recoverable and “not lost.” As for Washington, he said, “we shall always be disliked” despite the preconception that the Republican Party had more in common with Britain. In Richmond he found a “respectable minority” who were willing to ink a treaty mandating “the gradual abolition of slavery in the distant future,” while “with the North no such agreement could ever be contemplated.”121 Robert Bunch in Charleston was still musing in July 1861 about the “hatred” toward abolitionism he had noticed,122 though this was hardly conducive to winning diplomatic support. Washington, which seized the opportunity to take over “much British property,” as Bunch put it, was hardly better.123 This too was questionable, since Lord Lyons had made it clear that the “sympathies of an Englishman are mutually inclined toward the North” and “my feelings against slavery might lead me to desire to cooperate with them,”124 a common view among British diplomats.125 Consuls126 seemed to think127 that the Emancipation Proclamation, instead of being seen in Washington as a down payment on a stiffer abolition, was a revenge-seeking measure against those seeking to destroy the union. It was driven by a republic that remained hotly jealous of London and hardly forthcoming to the African. In the South, a truer slaveholders’ republic was sufficiently desperate to negotiate away its raison d’etre—or at least to buy time by leaving that vague impression. Above all, London had to consider whether the war-torn republic might seek to heal its divisions by an all-out assault on the Crown. London well knew that the French saw their perch in Mexico as potential leverage against Belize which could perhaps be extended all the way to typically unsettled Quebec. In March 1861 Lord Lyons met with Seward “confidentially” and they discussed Brazil recognizing the ConfederA Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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acy—their “community of feeling on slavery” being decisive. Then they had dinner with the French and Russian ministers and chewed over the impact of a possible blockade by Washington, Seward “getting more and more violent and noising” all the while. “England and France should act in concert,” were Lord Lyons’s final words in this dispatch.128 But this seemed more of a hopeful aspiration than anything else.129 Washington, he thought, was trying to get “France to unite with them against us.”130 For Lord Lyons recognized that “the hope of the anti-English party”—which in the republic crossed sectional lines—“is that she will try and engage us in difficulties here, and then leave us in the lurch, and play her own game in Europe.”131 Even as 1865 was about to dawn, London was complaining bitterly after Seward downgraded the status of British diplomats, while not doing the same for French ones—compelling the former to pay taxes. This was viewed as a crude attempt to sow discontent between the European powers.132 Vengeance on London was the pressing matter for them, thought Lord Lyons, while ousting France from Mexico was a sideshow.133 The Russian Minister in Washington, who felt “war between England and the United States must inevitably break out,” agreed with him—though, understandably, the Czar’s delegate “took some pains to deny to me the truth of the rumours as to an alliance” between his nation and the republic. Even while embroiled in civil war, Lord Lyons thought Washington was still eagerly seeking an opportunity to attack London. “[T]here can little doubt,” he opined.134 But again, Lord Lyons had more than one tool in his kit, for both sides were seeking loans and succor in London.135 Yet early in the war, the so-called “Trent Affair”—when U.S. officials removed Confederate officials from a British ship—almost brought about that dreaded “foreign war” which would ensnare London.136 Lord Lyons was heartened that Paris informed Seward not to expect aid from France. So moved, he felt confident in placing the unpalatable choices of “surrender or war” before Seward. It “will have a very good effect on them,” he mused. Making a shrewd deduction, he worried that Washington would retaliate with a “filibustering expedition of the Irish on the frontier of Canada.” Seward, he thought, was in a “very painful dilemma” involving the “humiliation of yielding to England” versus the “extreme danger of refusing our terms.”137 In Charleston—in some ways the heart of Dixie—Robert Bunch found many were “very much dissatisfied” with London, the scapegoat “for their own folly,” responsible for “their own want of common sense.” That “we were right and they wrong” did not diminish their displeasure.138 Bunch was appalled by the “increasing captiousness” he witnessed. “From the goodwill 210

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of the new Confederacy we have nothing to hope,” he said as early as July 1861. “Hating us, as it does, for many reasons, but principally for our opposition to slavery, it will gladly hail any opportunity of humbling or of embarrassing us.”139 The advent of the Emancipation Proclamation seemed to give jet propulsion to Dixie’s resentment of the Crown. “All persons in this locality,” the consul said of Charleston in reference to Euro-Americans, “have of late been in the habit of giving utterance” to this “bitterness.” It “renders my own position one of great difficulty.”140 Though141 London found the Emancipation Proclamation rather tepid, it was no less stunned by the vituperative response to it, particularly in Charleston. Bunch forwarded to London Jefferson Davis’s forebodingly intemperate remarks that this decree could “lead to but one of three possible consequences: the annihilation of the slaves, the exile of the whole white population from the Confederacy or the absolute and total separation of these States from the United States.”142 London’s emissaries, watching the mass slaughter that was taking place in their field of vision, seemed to be wilting, willing to accept—even embrace— the kind of abolitionism proposed by the White House, sensing that more robust measures would incite ever more extremely violent responses. The Charleston consul seemed stunned to witness “in the course of five hours” a contingent of Negro troops “destroy  .  .  . by fire” a number of “plantation settlements. They burned the dwelling house of the planters, with their contents, furniture, books, wines, etc., also the dwellings of the overseers and the Negroes, the mills and other buildings.” Then “they took away with them many of the Negroes by whom these plantations had been cultivated,” which was about “five or six hundred” persons.143 “This war [may] become one of extermination,” cried Bunch: it was “indiscriminate bloodshed and rapine.”144 A “war of eventual extermination” might occur, he warned, as the Emancipation Proclamation was rumored.145 By mid-1863, speaking of Vicksburg, Lord Lyons shrank in horror at the “painful” and “retaliatory executions,” adding that “if the Negro regiments are organized and taken to the South, we may look for a series of horrors” with some of these armed men “made slaves.”146 As early as 1861, Bunch foresaw that there was “no doubt that if the slaves were armed and their passions stimulated by the enemy, they would constitute a fearful addition to the forces of the United States.”147 Submitted to London was a copy of a Confederate mandate arguing that since in Louisiana secession opponents had “organized and armed Negro slaves for military service against their masters, citizens & this Confederacy,” those responsible should be treated as “outlaws” and be held “in close confinement for execution as a felon.”148 A Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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What was unfolding may have been neither the feared servile insurrection nor a replay of Haiti. But London could hardly ignore the ripples these events might send southward toward their own colonies where Africans were doing well only in comparison to their persecuted counterparts in the republic.149 Yet the nervousness in London about the huge baskets of blood being spilled and the deleterious effects of the weak-kneed Emancipation Proclamation seemed to reach a zenith in Manhattan in mid-1863 with the draft riots in New York. The apprehension among some that they were being drafted to rescue the despised African was at the center of this raging convulsion. Staring from his window, consul E. W. Archibald witnessed “the cruel beating of two or three Negroes by a mob of infuriated men.” Alarmingly, British vessels—routinely staffed heavily by Africans—were invaded, he said, by “gangs of men armed with clubs.” Thus, he urgently requested that a “man-of-war” be dispatched to the region in order to “receive and protect Black British crew.” It was possible that this could ignite the diversionary war against the Crown that some in the republic had long desired (that London was seeking to protect Africans, while local authorities sashayed aside and winked at their beating, was hard to ignore). But—alarmingly, for republicans—an armed French vessel “volunteered to receive for protection on board” these hounded mariners: bringing Paris and London together could disrupt the plan to turn one against the other. Nevertheless, on Bastille Day 1863, Archibald composed his latest missive: at 4 A . M . he could still see “crowds of idle and excited men throng the wharves and docks” with the expectation that a “mob” would again set upon British subjects—who happened to be African.150 The next day, Charles Felix Millard, a shipmaster from Nassau then trapped in New York, recalled the bloodcurdling events of 48 hours earlier. A mob had invaded his ship and was “killing his crew,” who were mostly African. He was stunned to see one of his mates “lying on the quarter deck with his arm broken in two places and his skull laid open and bleeding profusely.” A local clergyman, Charles Thomas Conant, was that evening taking the ferry to Brooklyn from lower Manhattan and from the “rigging” of this vessel he could see clearly “forty or fifty men and boys armed with heavy clubs” who sought to board a British schooner. Soon they were violently beating British subjects who were African. Somehow Conant left the ferry and reached the assaulted schooner. There he saw “among the men on the deck,” a “man respectably dressed and of respectable appearance but without any weapon in his hand.” He seemed to be in charge, directing the hectic and murderous traffic.151 The bloodshed continued. Archibald found that the “most lamentable feature of these riots is the brutal persecution of the Negroes of whom many 212

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have been murdered in cold blood, numbers maimed and beaten and nearly all have been driven from their homes in despair.” He seemed hurt when he wrote that “the rioters here have been almost entirely Irish,” and appeared to connect their acts to a local Archbishop who had condemned what was termed “British despotism in Ireland.”152 This penultimate pogrom—though it occurred in New York—did not benefit the Confederacy. Ironically, it may have sealed the fate of the enhanced racism its success portended. So, the Confederacy was ultimately thrashed. This presented a radically different environment for Africans in the hemisphere. Teachers from Barbados, for example, began migrating to Kentucky to ply their trade.153 Interestingly, James Rapier became the first Negro to gain admittance to the medical school in Ann Arbor. But he did so in the 1860s by listing Kingston, Jamaica, as his residence, while a light-skinned Detroiter was turned away when he showed up, suggesting the continuing valence of London in the republic.154 So boosted, this man with Canadian roots became the first Negro congressman in Alabama; he shared this valuable trait of Canadian background with Isaac Shadd, the first Negro Speaker of the House in Mississippi.155 Conversely, Africans from the republic began heading in the other direction. In 1858, Sarah Parker Remond, born in Massachusetts, traveled to Britain, where she was lionized in Liverpool on an abolitionist mission—when addressing women she emphasized the sexual assault on her gender. After the war ended, she moved to Florence, became a physician, and renounced whatever remained of her U.S. nationality.156 She was joined by Ira Aldridge, born in the republic, who ascended great heights as a thespian.157 Pointedly, he chose the year of alleged emancipation—1863—to become a British subject, the culmination of a long effort to distance himself from an identity as a U.S. national.158 The end of the war and slavery’s extinction led to a more normalized relationship between the republic and the Crown,159 which had been on the verge of war almost continuously since the birth of the U.S. Though bandied about, the decades-long attempt by the republic to annex Canada suffered a slow death.160 President Ulysses Grant joined the historic stampede driving those who coveted Canada. Even Senator Sumner was said to have informed London in 1866 that there could be no hope of genuine friendship between the nations until Canada was ceded161—a replay of his party’s platform which in 1864 continued to demand annexation.162 But this inordinate pressure helped to forge a more cohesive dominion, as a defensively direct result.163 One giddy republican intoxicated by the prospect that his nation and the monarchy were finally in accord on abolition, foraged beyond mere annexA Paradise for U.S. Negroes in the British West Indies?

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ing of Canada and proposed that the two principals be reunited, then “dictate terms to the world.”164 This was not necessarily good news for indigenes and Africans, who progressively lost a foreign friend, a process that led to more seizing of the land of the former in the 1860s,165 just as the Civil War seemed to promise a new birth of freedom. Africans too did not necessarily profit from the normalizing of relations between Washington and London, even as they morphed into a citizenship status they could claim more legitimately. Yet, as British diplomats had predicted—with insight that eluded many in the republic—their stigmatized status prepared the ground for decades of lynching and persecution, until the rise of Japan and later that of the Soviet Union created more external pressure for the demise of Jim Crow.166 To be sure, the role of Canada as a backstop for African Americans did not disappear totally. As the historian David Levering Lewis pointed out in reference to the Niagara Movement spearheaded by W. E. B. Du Bois: “[T]here was irony in the fact that [the] first collective attempt by AfricanAmericans to demand full citizenship rights in the twentieth century (without even indirect support of influential whites) had been forced to spring to life on Canadian soil.”167 Following Blyden, a prominent Liberian was among those who yearned for a closer alliance with London.168 Following Dickens, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among the legions who kept alive the British tradition of sweeping critique of the upstart republic.169 They were following in the footsteps of antebellum Negroes who would not accept the idea that the worsening of their plight was a step forward for humanity in the aftermath of the epochal events of 1776, and who viewed the anticolonial bona fides of these events in the same light that Africans in Rhodesia viewed the revolt against London in 1965. They no more viewed the extension of rights for men of European descent as an advance for themselves, as did Nelson Mandela in 1948. Yes, 1776 involved a revolt against monarchy—but so did the less celebrated events in Rhodesia in 1965.170 Consequently, this tendency of Negroes in the U.S. to seek leverage abroad against their domestic foes did not end in 1865 but continued in the twentieth century in quests in Mexico,171 Japan,172 India,173 the Soviet Union,174Africa,175 and China.176 These overseas adventures, militant self-assertion and implicit stiffarming of U.S. sovereignty may be the continuation of the dirty secret of Negro advance and progress in a pattern that predates the founding of the republic. The two hundredth anniversary of the formal abolition of the African Slave Trade, which was marked at the highest level in London and barely noticed 214

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in Washington, was capped off with an acknowledgment of the high cost absorbed by Britain when the slaveholders were compensated.177 About 30 years earlier, I had traveled (as an attorney) to Georgetown, Guyana, for the trial of historian and political activist Walter Rodney—a trial he did not survive, as he was murdered subsequently by the government. What struck me at the time and which I had difficulty comprehending was the continuing fondness of many Guyanese for London across a good deal of the political spectrum. Now I understand that in part this was a by-product of an era when London was seen as protecting Africans against the rapacious republic. Meanwhile, in the republic, African Americans continue to be perceived by many as being less patriotic than others—though the precise reason seems to escape detection.178

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Notes

Introduction 1. At this moment Florida was under Spanish rule though U.S. hegemony was soon to come; as a result, the now normative term “African American,” as it is now understood, would be inapposite. In this book, various terms will be used to denote the population of African descent in the U.S., including African, Negro, black, “of color,” colored, and, when appropriate, African American. 2. James Covington, “The Negro Fort,” Gulf Coast Historical Review, 5 (1990): 78–91, 81, 85. See also Canter Brown, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1991; Canter Brown and David Jackson, eds., Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida’s African American History, Tampa: University of Tampa Press, 2005; Jane Landers, “Slave Resistance on the Southern Frontier: Fugitives, Maroons, and Banditti in the Age of Revolution,” Escribano, (1995): 12–24. 3. Stephen R. Poe, “Archaeological Excavations at Fort Gadsden, Florida,” Notes in Anthropology, 8 (1963): 1–35, 2. See also Nathaniel Millett, “Defining Freedom in the Atlantic Borderlands of the Revolutionary Southeast,” Early American Studies, 5 (Number 2, 2007): 367–394. 4. In speaking of dominant British interests as reflected in government policies, a synecdoche—London—will be employed; the same holds true for Washington and the U.S. 5. Letter from Sir Alexander Cochrane, 27 April 1812, Viscount Melville Papers—Huntington Library, San Marino–California. 6. Simms to General Rob Young, Alexandria, 26 August 1814, HR13A-D15.3, House Select Committee Making Inquiry into the Success of the Enemy against Washington and Alexandria and into the Destruction of Public Buildings and Property and the Senate Committee on Military Affairs’ Investigation of the Defense of Maryland, Sen 13A-G3, National Archives and Records Administration–Washington, D.C. 7. “Report of His Excellency Governor Barbour to the Council of State,” 12 May 1812, in H. W. Flournoy, Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts from January 1, 1808 to December 31, 1835, Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1892, 131–142. 8. John P. Hungerford, Westmoreland County, to Adjutant General, 5 August 1814, in Flournoy, Calendar, 367–369. 9. Alexander Cochrane to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Earl of Bathurst, 12 July 1814, in Michael Crawford, ed., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, Volume III, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 2002, 131 10. George Cockburn to Alexander Cochrane, 10 May 1814, in Crawford, Naval War, 63. Aware of the fear of armed Africans within the republic, as war approached London

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began recruiting soldiers in Africa: Lord Palmerston to George Harrison, Treasurer, War Office, 4 January 1812, “Further Papers Relating to Captured Negroes Enlisted, and to the Recruiting of Negro Soldiers in Africa for the West India Regiments, House of Commons, 30 July 1814,” Schomburg Center–New York Public Library. See also G. Bayley to Lavinia Bayley, 24 August circa 1814, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. Stoking the flames of fear was the republican allegation that armed Africans raped Euro-American women in Hampton, Virginia, during the war: Major Crutchfield to Governor Barbour, 20 June 1813, and undated letter to “Enquirer” in George Hay, “An Oration Delivered on the ThirtySeventh Anniversary of American Independence at the Request of ‘Society of Friends fo the Revolution,’ in the Capitol of Richmond, 1813,” University of Virginia. 11. Zachary F. Smith, The Battle of New Orleans Including the Previous Engagements between the Americans and the British, the Indians and Spanish which Led to the Final Conflict on the 8th of January 1815, Louisville: Morton, 1904, 3. 12. A Narrative of the Life and Death of Lieut. Joseph Morgan Willcox Who was Massacred by the Creek Indians on the Alabama River (Miss. Ter.) on the 13th of January 1814 Compiled from Various Publications and Letters Written by His Friends and Brother Officers on the Occasion, Marietta, Ohio: Prentiss, 1816, University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. 13. W. Z. Nixon, “A Pioneer of the Townsend-Woodhouse Townline: George Edward Foster,” no date, MSS Biographical Sketches, Foster MU 133, Archives of Ontario–Toronto. 14. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2007, 197. See also The Colored American, 14 September 1839. Jehu Jones of Toronto, who had just moved from the U.S., announces that in his new home, “there is a regiment composed entirely of colored men” who were “stationed on the Frontier. Great confidence is reported in this regiment and they have the most important post, in consequence of their acknowledged loyalty to the British Crown.” 15. Katherine Du Pre Lumpkin, “’The General Plan Was Freedom’: A Negro Secret Order on the Underground Railroad,” Phylon, 28 (Spring 1967): 63–77, 73. 16. The Trial Record of Denmark Vesey, Boston: Beacon, 1970, 54. Apparently, Nat Turner in his epoch revolt of the enslaved in Virginia, felt that London would somehow aid them: Herbert Aptheker, Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, New York: Humanities Press, 1966, 53; see also Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, 221. See also Henry Cunningham, 1759–1842, Volume 7, Savannah Biographies—Armstrong Atlantic University, Savannah: Educated at Oxford, this “free man of color” migrated to Savannah where he was accused of circulating the incendiary words of the fierce abolitionist David Walker. 17. Deposition of Alexander McArthur, circa 1833, and M. B. Robinson et al., to “Your Excellency,” circa 1833, Record Group 56-26, Box 198, Michigan State Archives–Lansing. 18. William W. Smith, Sketch of the Seminole War and Sketches during a Campaign by a Lieutenant of the Left Wing, Charleston: Dowling, 1836, 36. 19. M. M. Cohen, Notices of Florida and the Campaigns, Charleston: Burges & Honour, 1836, 72. 20. Vertical File, Afro-Am, Oregon Population, Oregon Statesman, 28 July 1857, Oregon Historical Society–Portland. 21. Statement signed by Robert Ensor, Z. Gifford, Lucius Stevens, Blinn Curtis, 17 November 1841, FO84/423, Slave Trade Materials for Ashburton Mission to United

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States, January–December 1842, National Archives of United Kingdom–London (hereinafter denoted as NAUK). 22. Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Murray, 5 March 1831, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives of Bahamas-Nassau: 165 slaves from U.S. freed after their ship wrecked near Abaco. 23. Remarks of Frederick Douglass, 1842, in John Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates and Interviews, Volume I: 1841–1846, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, 156. 24. Joseph Whelan, Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress, New York: Public Affairs, 2008, 193. 25. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, 117. 26. Thaddius di Lusignan to Earl of Aberdeen, 12 April 1844, FO881/152/29, NAUK. 27. Earl of Aberdeen to Thaddius di Lusignan, 4 May 1844, FO881/152/31, NAUK. London was also collaborating with Mexico to bar U.S. expansion to California: John Yates, “California and the British in the 1800s,” Newsletter, circa 1972, California Historical Society-San Francisco. By 1851 Washington was in charge in California and began targeting British subjects—notably Australians—for persecution: Ned McGowan, Judges and Criminals: Shadows of the Past, History of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, California, with the Name of Its Officers, San Francisco: Printed by the Author, 1858, 12. In this regard, see also George Aikin to John McDougal, 13 June 1851, MS 869, Great Britain Consulate General, California Historical Society–San Francisco. See also Robert K. Stevens, “Nova Scotian Forty Niners: A List of Persons Born in Nova Scotia in the 1850s Census of California,” 1988, in Misc. Ms. Collection, MG 100, Volume 81,, #107, Public Archives of Nova Scotia–Halifax. See also Terrence M. Punch, “Nova Scotians to Australia—1852,” The Nova Scotain Genealogist, 4 (Number 1, 1986): 16–19. Uniting the Negro and London was the fact that the former were also persecuted in San Francisco. As one besieged woman put it, “the war of complexional distinction is upon us.” These Negroes fled for what became British Columbia, seeking succor under the British flag and thereby strengthening London in a tense confrontation with the republic. See Malcolm Edwards, “The War of Complexional Distinction: Blacks in Gold Rush California & British Columbia,” California History, 56 (Number 1, 1977): 34–45, 43. Upon arriving in Victoria, they were greeted effusively by Sir James Douglas, a man of African ancestry with roots in British Guiana and described by his biographer as being of “dark complexion.” There these Negro refugees were allowed to vote—if they became subjects—and bear arms, which they did by forming a militia as London-Washington relations plummeted: John Adams, Old Square Toes and His Lady: The Life of James and Amelia Douglas, Victoria, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 2001, 121, 122. On the arming of Victoria, B.C., during this tense era, see CAA 30.1, M58, Box 14, Location: 54203, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. At this same site, see also F. W. Howay, “The Negro Immigration into Vancouver Island in 1858,” 1935. There see also “Correspondence Relative to the Question of Disputed Right to the Oregon Territory on the North-West Coast of America Subsequent to the Treaty of Washington of August 9, 1842,” Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, London: T. R. Harrison, 1846; “Treaty between Her Majesty and the United States of America for the Settlement of the Oregon Boundary, Signed at Washington,” London: T. R. Harrison, 1846.

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28. E. N. Elliott, Cotton Is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe and Cartwright on this Important Subject, Augusta, Georgia: Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis, 1860, 239. 29. Biographical Sketch of Richard Realf, MS 11-0006, John Brown/Boyd Stutler Collection, West Virginia Division of Culture and History–Charleston. 30. Alexander Milton Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer, Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1893, 89, 96, 39. 31. Hugh Forbes, Manual for the Patriotic Volunteer on Active Service in Regular and Irregular War: Being the Art and Science of Obtaining and Maintaining Liberty and Independence, New York: Tinson, 1855. 32. John Brown to John Brown, Jr., 15 April 1857, John Brown/Boyd Stutler Collection. 33. Osborne P. Anderson, A Voice from Harper’s Ferry: A Narrative of Events at Harper’s Ferry; Incidents Prior to and Subsequent to Its Capture by Captain Brown and His Men, Boston: Anderson, 1861, Reel 13, #88, Black Abolitionist Papers, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. 34. David Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War and Seeded Civil Rights, New York: Knopf, 2005, 241. 35. Fred Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the John Brown Raid,” Journal of Negro History, 6(Number 2, April 1921): 174–182, 179. 36. James Redpath, The Roving Editor: Or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States, New York: Burdick, 1859, 157. 37. A. T. Jones, interviewed 1863, in John Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977, 430–432. See also Provincial Freeman, 8 March 1856. 38. See also Arnett G. Lindsay, “Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Great Britain Bearing on the Return of Negro Slaves, 1783–1828,” Journal of Negro History, 5 (Number 4, October 1920): 391–419. 39. Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979, 22, 140. 40. Genovese also accused his fellow historian, Herbert Aptheker, of “exaggerations” of slave rebelliousness. I suggest in the following pages that, if anything, the latter writer underestimated dissidence amongst Africans within the republic because of relative intention to diplomacy. See Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, New York: International, 1963. 41. See, e.g., Kinley J. Brauer, “The United States and British Imperial Expansion, 1815–1860,” Diplomatic History, 12 (Number 1, Winter 1988): 19–37. 42. Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, 362–364. 43. Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 44. Francois Furstenberg, Review of Graham Gao Hodges and Gary B. Nash, Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hall: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and a Tragic Betrayal of Freedom in a New Nation, New York: Basic Books, 2008, in Journal of American History, 96 (Number 1, June 2009): 193–194, 194. 45. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, New York: Ecco, 67. 220

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46. Alan Taylor, Review of Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, New York: NYU Press, 2008, in The New Republic, 240 (Number 4860, 3 June 2009): 47. 47. “Payment for Slaves. Speech of J. R. Giddings of Ohio on the Bill to Pay The Heirs of Antonio Pacheco for a Slave Sent West of the Mississippi with the Seminole Indians in 1848, Made in the House of Representatives, December 28, 1848 and January 6, 1849,” Washington: Buell & Blanchard, 1849, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. See also William G. Merkel, Review of Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008, in American Historical Review, 114 (Number 4, October 2009): 1074–1076, 1075. During the course of the 1776 revolt, “at least a fifth of the white population supported the British crown” and “at least that many tried to stay neutral, and if [African] and Indian opinion were taken into account, the American revolutionary cause reduces to a violent minority that used terrorist means to impose a disfavored solution on a reluctant populace.” 48. James Stanley, Emigration agent, Cleveland to “Sir,” 7 May 1860, CO137/350/96, NAUK. London cultivated similar relations with indigenes within the republic. See Timothy D. Willig, Restoring the Chain of Friendship: British Policy and the Indians of the Great Lakes, 1783–1815, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008; Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774–1815, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992. More Africans fought with redcoats in the aftermath of 1776 than with the rebels. See, e.g., Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, 3, 79. 49. Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, “Following the North Star: Canada as a Haven for Nineteenth-Century Blacks,” Michigan Historical Review, 25 (Number 2, Fall 1999): 91–126, 95, 116. 50. Thomas Likers, Interview, 1863, in John Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony, 395–396. 51. Vanessa D. Dickerson, Dark Victorians, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 3, 4, 70. William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, New York: Norton, 1991, 136–137. 52. Report on Douglass speech, 29 July 1846, in John Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, 312. 53. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings, 419. 54. R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983, 204. 55. Two Speeches by Frederick Douglass; one on West India Emancipation, Delivered at Canandaigua, 4 August and the other on the Dred Scott decision, Rochester: Dewey, 1857, Cornell University. 56. Elisa Tamarkin, Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, 180. 57. Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life, New York: Basic, 2004, 83, 84, 88. 58. W. B. Hartgrove, “The Story of Josiah Henson,” Journal of Negro History, 3 (Number 1, January 1918): 1–21, 11, 20. 59. Superintendent to Public Meeting, 20 July 1852, R Records, ID: 169, R. 20, p. 848–950, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. See also George Matthew to Lord Palmerston, 15 October 1851, FO 5/579/53, NAUK. 60. Earl of Clarendon to Mr. Alison, 3 February 1858, FO84/1434/113, NAUK.

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61. Boston Consul to Earl of Malmesbury, FO84/1434/140-141, NAUK. 62. Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 63. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 14 July 1863, FO5/903, NAUK. 64. Letter from Puerto Plata to Consul General, 8 September 1863, Roll 11, T446, Despatches from U.S. Consul in Turks Islands, National Archives and Records Administration– College Park, Maryland. (Hereafter denoted as NARA-CP.) 65. Minutes and Proceedings of the General Convention for the Improvement of the Colored Inhabitants of Canada, 16–17 June 1853, Reel 8, #297, Black Abolitionist Papers, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Apparently antebellum Negroes had a different view of today’s heroes of the 1776 revolt. See Mitch Kachun, “From Forgotten Founder to Indispensable Icon: Crispus Attucks, Black Citizenship and Collective Memory, 1770–1865,” Journal of the Early Republic, 29 (Number 2, Summer 2009): 249–286. Alternatively, the Prince of Wales was received rapturously by U.S. Negroes when he visited the republic in 1860. Ian Radforth, Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, 74. The progenitor of Pan-Africanism, Edward Blyden, in 1864 argued that the Emancipation Proclamation itself was due to London’s pressure—and “no thanks to the Federals,” he explained. C. Collyer, “Edward Wilmot Blyden, a Correspondent of William Ewart Gladstone,” Journal of Negro History, 35 (Number 1, 1950): 75–78, 78. 66. Nicholas M. Evans, “Shakespeare and Minstrelsy,” in Bernth Lindfors, ed., Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007, 157–179, 160. See also Naturalization Papers of Ira Aldridge, 1863, HO1/112/4215, NAUK. See, e.g., Dorothy B. Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician,” Journal of Negro History, 20 (Number 3, July 1935): 287–293, 287, 292. Naturalization Papers of Sarah Parker Remond, 1865, HO1/123/4809, NAUK. 67. Jacqueline Tobin and Hettie Jones, From Midnight to Dawn: The Last Tracks of the Underground Railroad, New York: Doubleday, 2007, 51–52. 68. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988, 107 [edited by Eugene Berwanger]. 69. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, New York: Norton, 2005, 170. 70. John M. Belohlavek, ‘Let the Eagle Soar’: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985, 54. Forrest McDonald has argued that “Scotsmen, Scotch-Irishmen, and Welshmen” disproportionately fled to Dixie and they continued to harbor ethnic resentment against the English—who supposedly were more likely to be sited in the U.S. Northeast: Forrest McDonald, “The Ethnic Factor in Alabama History: A Neglected Dimension,” The Alabama Review, 31 (Number 4, October 1978): 256–265, 260, 261. See also Ronald L. Lewis, Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; Anthony W. Parker, Scottish Highlanders in Colonial Georgia: The Recruitment, Emigration, and Settlement at Darien, 1735–1748, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Thus—arguably— abolition challenged both their property and their ethnic and national identity. Cf. Orville A. Park, “The Puritan in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 13 (Number 4, December 1929): 343–371, 344: “The early settlers of Georgia were German Protestants from Salsburg, Moravian missionaries, Scotch Highlanders, Portuguese Jews, French Hugenots and 222

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Englishmen”—while, says the author, the latter “constituted the majority.” But see Paul M. Pressly, “Scottish Merchants and the Shaping of Colonial Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 91 (Number 2, Summer 2007): 135–168, 136: The “arrival after 1750 of a number of Scots  . . . put a distinct stamp on colonial Georgia and provided much of the direction for its economic development.” There was evidently intense interest in the exploits of John Brown in northern England and southern Scotland. Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry Raid, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, 256. A major slave trader in Florida—who was of Scottish descent—acknowledged freely his “hatred” of the English, as “the Pole hates the Russians & the Greek, the Turk  . . . I am pure Scot, Scot all over.” See James Innerarity to John Innerarity, 8 May 1841, Box 1, Innerarity–Hulse Papers, University of West FloridaPensacola. What may have influenced his attitude was the reality that during the 1812 war, redcoats carted away some of his prized Africans. Draft of Document “Respecting the Deportation of Slaves,” 26 September 1853, Box 2, Innerarity–Hulse Papers. 71. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings, 61. See, e.g., Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, Volume 2, 7. This British visitor had never seen a slave before arriving in the U.S. and, upon doing so—despite his progressive instincts—he confessed, “For the first time in my life, I bless[ed] God for the whiteness of my skin.” 72. Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 19. 73. Ted Widmer, Martin Van Buren, New York: Holt, 2005, 16, 41. 74. Kenneth Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen, 110. See also Brief Sketch of the Life and Military Services of Arthur P. Hayne of Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia: T. K. & P. G. Collins, 1837, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. The prominent family of which Hayne was a part fought the British in 1776, then in 1812—and he was not alone in this category. 75. Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States, New York: Hill and Wang, 2007, 135. Cf Dispatch from H. L. Fox, 13 December 1843, FO881/152/4, NAUK. 76. Max Berger, “American Slavery as Seen by British Visitors, 1836–1860,” Journal of Negro History, 30 (Number 2, April 1945): 181–202, 181. See also Max Berger, The British Traveler in America, 1836–1860, New York: Columbia University Press, 1943, and Jack K. Williams, “Travel in Antebellum Georgia as Recorded by English Visitors,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 32 (Number 3, September 1949): 191–205. 77. Benjamin Quarles, “Antebellum Free Blacks and the ‘Spirit of ’76,’” Journal of Negro History, 61 (Number 2, April 1976): 229–242; Manisha Sinha, “To ‘Cast Just Obloquy’ on Oppressors: Black Radicalism in the Age of Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 64 (Number 1, January 2007):149–160. See also Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Evolution, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009, 376, 167. Charles Darwin’s critique of slavery rested near the heart of his revolutionary theses about the species. 78. F. W. Newman, “Character of the Southern States of America,” Manchester: Union and Emancipation Society Depot, 1863, Tulane University. In their focus on such issues, British analysts mirrored the thinking of their African counterparts, e.g., Mary Shadd, born in Wilmington, who became a leading journalist in Canada. See Provincial Freeman, 4 April 1857: “[S]trange and horrible features of United States slavery . . . human beings

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should be bred in certain states, to be sold as slaves in other states . . . attended by hideous licentiousness of the young women being compelled to become the concubines of their owners and being made to breed slaves to be sold for their own father’s profit!” Provincial Freeman, 16 February 1856: more on breeding. Provincial Freeman, 16 May 1857: “[S]lave breeding state of Virginia” a part of the “barbarian Republic of the United States.” 79. Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, Edinburgh, Volume 2: Edinburgh: Blackwood, 216. 80. James C. Simmons, Star-Spangled Eden: 19th Century America through the Eyes of Dickens, Wilde, Frances Trollope, Frank Harris, and Other British Travellers, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000, 118–119: During his visit in the 1840s, he spent three days in Virginia and on the train there he visited the Negro car and saw a woman and her child crying because they had been sold away from her husband and the child’s father. On a Richmond bridge he saw a notice against fast driving that read in part: “’penalty for whites, five dollars; for slaves, fifteen stripes.’” 81. Charles Dickens on Slavery in America from “Union and Emancipation Society, Manchester,” 1842, Phillips Library-Salem, Massachusetts. Arguably, the hatred of slavery as displayed in the republican U.S. undermined republican challenges to monarchy in London: See, e.g., William Caleb McDaniel, “Our Country Is the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2006, 327. 82. Allan Nevins, ed., America through British Eyes, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1968, 197. 83. Robert Bechtold Heilman, America in English Fiction, 1760–1800: The Influences of the American Revolution, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1937, 382, 384. 84. Matthew W. Mason, Slavery and Politics, 105. 85. Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. 86. Francis Grund, ed., Aristocracy in America. From the Sketchbook of a German Nobleman, Volume II, London: Bentley, 1839, 77, 78. One Euro-American “even imitated the bad English accent when speaking French, though he could speak the language tolerably well, when he wanted to shine.” See also Thurlow Weed, Letters from Europe and the West Indies, 1843–1852, Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1866, 107. 87. Chart, 1821, FO352/8/5, NAUK. Out of 2,532 seafarers arriving in the U.S. in 1821, 301 defected, with most deserting in Louisiana—while none chose New England. In 1843, the consul in Mobile reported that “almost all the British merchants here have become nationalized Americans.” Consul to “My Lord,” 20 January 1843, FO5/396/100, NAUK. In 1846, in Charleston out of 58 arriving British ships, 183 men deserted for the U.S. Consul to “My Lord,” 25 January 1847, FO5/474/2/9, NAUK. Yet, these defections of mariners particularly, meant that London had to rely even more on African sailors, strengthening abolitionism. This caused the Crown to oppose adamantly “Negro Seamen Acts” in Dixie that sought to penalize arriving African seamen—to a degree unmatched in the northern U.S., though they too were affected. Philip M. Hamer, “British Consuls and the Negro Seamen Acts, 1850–1860,” Journal of Southern History, 1 (Number 2, May 1935): 138–168. In 1851 the consul in New Orleans hired lobbyists to push for repeal of this legislation. Letter from H. L. Bulwer, “separate and secret,” 11 April 1851, FO5/579/23, NAUK. In Charleston, the consul hired one of the city’s most distinguished attorneys to provide legal advice for a challenge to similar legislation. George Matthews, Charleston Consul to L. Petigru, 2 April 224

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1851, FO5/579/23, NAUK. When British seamen of African descent found themselves in southern ports, their open and notorious revolt against local folkways caused local elites— e.g., in Charleston—to reconsider their admittance, harming commerce and complicating bilateral relations with the Crown. J. H. Hammond to Senate and House of South Carolina, 30 November 1843, FO5/579/267, NAUK. Moreover, the hunger for British trade in Dixie meant that in 1849 Mobile sought to facilitate the arrival of the “Royal West India Line of Steamers.” Yet this imperative clashed with the overriding concern about quarantining the assumed contagion thought to arrive from the Caribbean. Resolution, 20 January 1849, Interesting Transcriptions from the City Documents of the City of Mobile for 1815–1859, Prepared from Original Data by the Municipal and Court Records Project of the Works Progress Administration, 1939, Mobile Public Library. Thus, by 1858 as a direct result of the weight of Britain, 73 “colored seamen” from the Empire entered Charleston and 61 were “left altogether unmolested”—12 were immediately deported—and not one was jailed, as had been the custom. Consul, Charleston to Earl of Clarendon, 1 January 1858, FO5/698/217, NAUK. 88. Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. 89. William E. Van Vugt, British Buckeyes: The English, Scots, and Welsh in Ohio, 1700–1900, Kent: Kent State University Press, 2006, 192. 90. E. Molyneaux to Lord Lyons, 9 February 1861, FO5/786/401, NAUK. 91. Speech of Mr. Douglass [sic] of Illinois, 27 January 1846, Oregon State Library–Salem. 92. Robert Harrison to State Department, 24 July 1833, Roll 2, T31, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica-NARA-CP. 93. Robert Harrison to State Department, 23 May 1840, Roll 6, T31, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 94. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 13 April 1845, Roll 9, T31. 95. Robert Harrison to State Department, 1 November 1842, Roll 7, T31. 96. Robert Harrison to State Department, 28 April 1841, Roll 7, T31. Apparently the British agent, David Turnbull, in pursuit of a plan to dismember the U.S. in 1846—as tensions with the republic rose—conspired with Haiti to rally the enslaved, beginning in New Orleans. See Robert L. Paquette, Sugar Is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires Over Slavery in Cuba, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988, 247–248. 97. Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View, volume 2, New York: Appleton, 1850, 434. 98. Speech of John Quincy Adams on the Joint Resolution for Distributing Rations to the Distressed Fugitives from Indian Hostilities in the States of Alabama and Georgia, Delivered in the House of Representatives, Wednesday, May 25, 1836, Washington: National Intelligencer, 1836, University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. 99. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994; Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987; David Beck Ryden, West Indian Slavery and British Abolition, 1783–1807, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009; Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. 100. Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View; or a History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years from 1820 to 1850  . . . Volume 2, New York: Appleton, 1850, 156.

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101. Julius Scott, “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1986. 102. Andrew Stevenson, U.S. Minister in U.K. to Lord Palmerston, 27 February 1841, objects to Haiti declaring the Slave Trade to be piracy. U.S. Congress. 27th Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 34. House of Representatives. Seizure of American Vessels—Slave Trade. Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting a Communication from the Secretary of State in Relation to the Seizure of American Vessels by British Armed Cruisers, Under the Pretense that They Were Engaged in the Slave Trade, Schomburg Center-NYPL. At the same site, see also Correspondence with Foreign Powers Not Parties to Conventions Giving Right to Search of Vessels Suspected of the Slave Trade, from January 1st to May 10th 1840, London: Clowes and Sons, 1840. 103. Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade, New York: NYU Press, 2007. 104. James Stephen, The Opportunity or Reasons for an Immediate Alliance with St. Domingo, London: Hatchard, 1804. 105. Philippe R. Girard, “Black Talleyrand: Toussaint Louverture’s Diplomacy, 1798– 1802,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66 (Number 1, January 2009): 87–124, 91, 92. 106. In stressing global and transnational forces in bringing about emancipation, I do not intend to denigrate the “agency” or self-assertion of the enslaved themselves in attaining this result. But more was needed for this result to occur—otherwise abolition would have occurred decades (if not centuries) earlier. In assessing the relation between “agency” and the transnational, I think it is time for historians to rebalance the equation in favor of the latter. 107. David Geggus, “The British Government and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt: 1791–93,” English Historical Review, 96 (1981): 285–305, 285; David Patrick Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. See also Reverend S. W. Hanna, Notes of a Visit to Some Parts of Haiti, January, February 1835, London: Seeley, 1836, xl: “[T]he amount indeed of British blood (we say nothing of British treasure) expended in the attempt to subjugate the people of Haiti, is scarcely to be estimated.” 108. Captain G. R. Pechell, A Visit to the Capital and Chief Ports of the Isle of St. Domingo in 1821, in One of His Majesty’s Ships: Being a Sketch of What Has Occurred since the Death of King Christophe and of the Present State of Affairs Under the Government of President Boyer, Portsmouth: Motley and Harrison, 1824, 19. 109. Reverend S. W. Hanna, Notes of a Visit to Some Parts of Haiti, January, February 1835, London: Seeley, 1836. 110. John Candler, Brief Notices of Hayti: With Its Conditions, Resources, and Prospects, London: Ward, 1842, 92. 111. Undated Clipping quoting Charles MacKenzie, James Redpath Scrapbook–Schomburg Center, NYPL. 112. Notes on the Citadel, Undated, Box 5, Mildred Stock Papers–Schomburg Center, NYPL. 113. Steven Mintz and John Stauffer, eds., The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007. 114. Leara Rhodes, “Haitian Contributions to American History,” in Doris Y. Kadish, ed., Slavery in the Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000, 75–90. 226

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115. Reverend S. W. Hanna, Notes of a Visit to Some Parts of Haiti, 47. 116. Daniel Webster to R. M. Walsh, 18 January 1851, and R. M. Walsh to Daniel Webster, 31 March 1851, in U.S. Congress. 32nd Congress, 1st Session. Senate Ex.Doc. No. 113, Message from the President of the United States Communicating in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, the Correspondence of R. M. Walsh, Esq., while Acting as a Special Agent of the United States in the Island of St. Domingo, 27 August 1852, Schomburg Center, NYPL. 117. Anthony M. Brescia, ed., “The Naval and Military Strength of the British West Islands in 1842: A Report by Secret Agent Albert Fitz.” Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History, 6 (1994): 194–206, 202. 118. Barry Gough, “Bermuda, Naval Base of the Early Pax Brittanica; Origins, Strategy and Construction,” Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History, 5 (1993): 135–148. 119. Whitebrook B. Seamarsh, A Concise View of the Critical Situation and Future Prospects of the Slave-Holding States, in Relation to Their Coloured Population, Charleston: Miller, 1825. On his tenure as governor, see Charleston News and Courier, 16 July 1851. 120. Cuyler W. Young, Greatness Renewed or the Rise of the South; with a Southern National Air and the Song of the Cuba Invaders. A Poem. Savannah: CWY, 1851, Georgia Southern University–Statesboro. 121. Gelien Matthews, Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. For a glimpse of a hysterical reaction to a slave conspiracy in a British possession in 1807, see Thomas St. Clair, A Residence in the West Indies and America, Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2009 [originally published 1834], 148–149. 122. Memorandum to “My Lord,” 26 September 1857, COL2/1/13, Barbados Department of Archives. Here grave concern was expressed about the impact of unrest in India on Africans in Barbados. 123. Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986; Gerald Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994. Actually, U.S. Negroes were more critical of its London ally than U.S. elites were of their Moscow ally during the 1941–1945 era. See, e.g., “Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th, and 8th 1853,” Rochester: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1853, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. A stringent critique was made here of British policy in Southern Africa. 124. See also J. William Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man’s Encounter with Liberty, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009; Cf. Troy Bickham, Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press, De Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009. One of the central ironies of the past two hundred years of history is that in the 20th century, the republican U.S. charged repeatedly—and to great effect—that the existence of the Soviet Union discredited socialism, while in the previous century, British monarchists charged repeatedly—and to great effect—that the existence of the U.S. discredited republicanism. It is similarly striking that just as U.S. abolitionists were often portrayed as tools and dupes of London, twentiethcentury fighters against Jim Crow were often portrayed as tools and dupes of Moscow.

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C ha p t e r 1 1. Rayford W. Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941, 34, 35. See also Letter from Richard Creech, 14 July 1798, Lewis Malone Ayer Papers, University of South Carolina–Columbia. In Virginia there were reports of slave uprisings in three counties and in the cities of Norfolk and Petersburg in 1792 and 1793. See also Douglas R. Egerton, “The Tricolour in Black and White: The French Revolution in Gabriel’s Virginia,” in Doris Y. Kadish, ed., Slavery in the Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 91–105, 101. 2. Letter from Fitzwilliam, 7 September 1734, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. 3. Mark M. Smith, Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, xiii. 4. Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 68. See George Livermore, “An Historical Research Respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens and as Soldiers,” Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1863, Rhode Island Historical Society–Providence. 5. John W. Pulis, ed., Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World, New York: Garland, 1999, xiv. 6. Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, 33; John W. Pulis, “Bridging Troubled Waters: Moses Baker, George Liele, and the African American Diaspora to Jamaica,” in John W. Pulis, ed., Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World, New York: Garland, 1999, 183–221. 7. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, 113. See also Sylvia R. Frey, “Between Slavery and Freedom: Virginia Blacks in the American Revolution,” Journal of Southern History, 49 (Number 3, August 1983): 375–398. 8. David K. Wilson, The Southern Strategy: Britain’s Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775–1780, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005, 3. 9. Sara Connors Fanning, “Haiti and the United States: African American Emigration and the Recognition Debate,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 2008, 157. For a British view, see Edward H. Tatum, ed., The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe, 1776–1778, San Marino: Huntington Library, 1940, 249; and John F.S. Stuart, A Tour in the United States of America, Volume II, London: Robinson, 1784, 410, 412. 10. John Wain, Samuel Johnson, New York: Viking, 1974, 284. For a British view of the revolt against London’s rule, see 1776: The British Story of the American Revolution, Greenwich: Sunday Times and Barclay’s Bank, 1976, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. See also Dora Mae Clark, British Opinion and the American Revolution, New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. 11. Americans against Liberty: Or an Essay on the Nature and Principles of True Freedom, Shewing that the Designs and Conduct of the Americans Tend Only to Tyranny and Slavery, London, 1775, Buffalo Public Library. 228

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12. T. K. Hunter, “Publishing Freedom, Winning Arguments: ‘Somerset,’ Natural Rights and Massachusetts Freedom Cases, 1772–1836,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2005. 13. “A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies,” London: Griffin, 1772, Cornell University–Ithaca, New York. 14. William Renwick Riddell, “Interesting Notes on Great Britain and Canada with Respect to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History, 13 (Number 2, April 1928): 185–198, 189. See also List of Slaves Taken by the British, 1779, Philip Porcher Papers, University of South Carolina–Columbia. See also Wallace Brown, “The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras during the Era of the American Revolution,” Belizean Studies, 18 (Number 2–3, 1990): 4–63. 15. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 24. See also William Renwick Riddell, “The Fugitive Slave in Upper Canada,” Journal of Negro History, 5 (Number 3, July 1920): 340–358. 16. John P. Kaminski, ed., A Necessary Evil? Slavery and the Debate over the Constitution, Madison, Wisconsin: Madison House, 1995, 59. Arline Ruth Kiven, “Then Why the Negroes: The Nature and Course of the Anti-Slavery Movement in Rhode Island, 1737–1861,” Rhode Island Historical Society–Providence. 17. Malcolm Bell, Jr., Major Butler’s Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987, 170. 18. “Aspects of Slavery: Part II, A Booklet to Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery,” 1984, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. See also John M. Goggin, “The Seminole Negroes of Andros Island, Bahamas,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 24 (January 1946): 201–206. 19. Andrew Symmer to Hillsborough, 12 November 1770, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. 20. Whittington B. Johnson, Race Relations in the Bahamas, 1784–1834, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000, 70. 21. “A Source List of Documents from an Exhibition at the Bermuda Archives, 12 June–30 September 2008,” Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 22. A Particular Account of the Commencement and Progress of the Insurrection of Negroes in St. Domingo, which Began in August 1791, Being a Translation of the Speech Made to the National Assembly the 3rd of November 1791, by the Deputies from the General Assembly of the French Part of St. Domingo, London: Sewell, 1792, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland; An Inquiry into the Causes of the Insurrection of the Negroes in the Island of St. Domingo, to which Are Added Observations of M. Garran-Coulon on the Same Subject, Read in His Absence by M. Guadet Before the National Assembly, 29th February 1792, London: Johnson, 1792, Johns Hopkins University–Baltimore. See also Francis Alexander Stanislaus, Baron de Wimpffen, A Voyage to Saint Domingo in the Years 1788, 1789, and 1790, London: Caddell, Jr. and Davies, circa 1817, Cleveland Public Library. 23. To “Sir,” 29 November 1793, Record Series 41.14, Letter Books, 1793–1849, Navigable Commission for Delaware River and Its Navigable Tributaries, Port of Philadelphia–Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg. 24. Ibid., Navigable Commission, Alexander Hamilton to Governor of Pennsylvania, 18 July 1794. 25. Ibid., Navigable Commission, U.S. State Department to Governor of Pennsylvania, 16 April 1795.

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26. Ibid., Navigable Commission, Thomas Mifflin to Master Warder of the Port of Philadelphia, 27 June 1798. 27. Douglas R. Egerton, “The Tricolour in Black and White,” 96. 28. Thomas Fiehrer, “Saint-Domingue-Haiti: Louisiana’s Caribbean Connection,” Louisiana History, 30 (Number 4, Fall 1989): 419–437, 431. See also Paul F. Lachance, “The 1809 Immigration of Saint-Domingue Refugees to New Orleans: Reception, Integration, and Impact,” Louisiana History, 29 (Number 2, Spring 1988): 109–141; Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 29. Aspasia Mirault, Volume 22, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. See also Janice I. Sumler-Edmond, The Secret Trust of Aspasia Cruvillier-Mirault: The Life and Trials of a Free Woman of Color in Antebellum Georgia, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008. 30. Matthew Pratt Guterl, American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008, 43. See also Walter Charlton Hartridge, “The Refugees from the Island of St. Domingo in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 96 (Number 4, Winter 2001): 485–489. 31. Mary Granger, ed., Savannah River Plantations, Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1947, 429–430. 32. A. Izard to Mrs. Manigault, 13 January 1808, Manigault Family Papers, University of South Carolina–Columbia. 33. Althea de Puech Parham, ed., My Odyssey: Experiences of a Young Refugee from Two Revolutions, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959, 99, 113, 132. 34. Bernard Constantine, Volume 1, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University–Savannah. 35. Edward Coppee, Volume 21, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University–Savannah. 36. Betsey Baptiste, Volume 25, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. 37. Ruth Scarborough, The Opposition to Slavery in Georgia Prior to 1860, Nashville: Peabody College, 1933, 100. In Louisiana, a similar law was passed forbidding Haitian Negroes from entering Louisiana: see Jack D. L. Holmes, “The Abortive Slave Revolt at Point Coupee, Louisiana, 1795,” 359. 38. M. Foster Farley, “The Fear of Negro Slave Revolts in South Carolina,” 203. 39. Letter of Rusticus, 20 June 1794, Letters from Rusticus, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 40. Pierce Butler to John Bee Holmes, 5 November 1793, Pierce Butler Letterbook. 41. Joseph Manigault to Gabriel Manigault, 8 September 1789, Manigault Family Papers– University of South Carolina–Charleston. 42. P. J. Laborie, The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo; with an Appendix, London: Cadell and Davies, 1798. 43. Letter from Darling Peeples, December 1802, Lewis Malone Ayer Papers-University of South Carolina–Columbia. 44. U.S. Consul to James Madison, 14 March 1803, Roll 1, T191, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Cape Town, NARA–College Park, Maryland. 45. U.S. Consul to James Madison, 10 September 1804, Roll 1, T191, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Cape Town. 230

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46. U.S. Consul to State Department, 19 March 1806, Roll 1, T191. 47. Thomas Usher Pulaski Charlton, 1779–1835, Volume 17, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. At the same site, see also in Volume 16 the biography of Andrew Telfair, 1789–1832, a son of a governor in Georgia whose mother was from a wealthy Savannah planter family. He graduated from Princeton. See also Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies: A Record of Treason, Insurrection, Rebellion in the United States of America, from 1760 to 1860, New York: Torrey, 1863. 48. Andrew Bryan, 1716–1812, Volume 19, Savannah Biographies. 49. Governor William C. C. Claiborne to James Madison, 12 July 1804, in Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Volume IV, The Border Colonies and the Southern Colonies, New York: Octagon, 1965, 663. 50. Donald E. Everett, “Emigres and Militiamen: Free Persons of Color in New Orleans, 1803–1815,” Journal of Negro History, 38 (Number 4, October 1953): 377–402. 51. J. Leitch Wright, Britain and the American Frontier, 1783–1815, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975, 9, 145, 150. 52. Joseph T. Hatfield, William Claiborne: Jeffersonian Centurion in the American Southwest, Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1976, 176–187. 53. Gregory E. O’Malley, “Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619–1807,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66 (Number 1, January 2009): 125–168. See also Barbara W. Brown, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650–1900, New London: New London County Historical Society, 2001. 54. See Lathan A. Windley, compiler, Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History from the 1730s to 1790, Westport: Greenwood, 1983: see, e.g., 30–31. 55. Ray Crook, et al., Sapelo Voices: Historical Anthropology and the Oral Tradition of Gullah-Geechee Communities on Sapelo Island, Georgia, Sapelo Island: S. I. Cultural and Revitalization Society, 2003, 17. 56. Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, 41. 57. Neville Connell, “A Short History of Barbados,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 27 (Number 1, November 1959): 7–29, 22. See also May Lumsden, The Barbados American Connection, London: Macmillan, 1988. 58. J. M. Toner, ed., The Daily Journal of Major George Washington in 1751–1752, Kept While on Tour from Virginia to the Island of Barbados, with His Invalid Brother, Albany: Munsell, 1892. See also David L. Kent, Barbados and America, Arlington, Virginia: C M Kent, 1980. 59. Richard C. Youngken, African Americans in Newport: An Introduction to the Heritage of African-Americans in Newport, Rhode Island, 1700–1945, Newport: Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, no date, Rhode Island Historical Society–Providence. See also Martha Putney, “Black Merchant Seamen of Newport, 1803–1865: A Case Study in Foreign Commerce,” Journal of Negro History, 57 (Number 2, April 1972): 156–168. 60. Robert C. Cottrol, The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era, Westport: Greenwood, 1982, 131, 142. See also Herbert Weaver, “Foreigners in the Antebellum Towns of the Lower South,” Journal of Southern History, 13 (Number 1, February 1947): 62–73. 61. Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge, Providence: Albro, 1838, 12. See also Elleanor’s Second Book, Providence: Albro, 1839, Rhode Island Historical Society–Providence.

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62. See, e.g., Cato Pearce, A Brief Memoir of the Life and Religious Experience of Cato Pearce, a Man of Color, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1842, 1. See also W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. 63. Franklin A. Dorman, Twenty Families of Color in Massachusetts, 1742–1998, Boston: New England Genealogical Society, 1998, 1, 5, 193; see also Adelaide M. Cromwell, The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class, 1750–1950, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994. 64. Norman McRae, “Blacks in Detroit, 1736–1833: The Search for Freedom and Community and Its Implications for Educators,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1982, 43. 65. Jeremy D. Popkin, ed., Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, 164, 337–338, 339; See also Mary Hassal, Secret History; Or the Horrors of St. Domingo in a Series of Letters Written by a Lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, Philadelphia: Bradford & Inskeep, 1808. 66. Edmund Ruffin, The Political Economy of Slavery; or the Institution Considered in Regard to Its Influence on Public Wealth and the General Welfare, 1857, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 67. James Stephen, The Opportunity or Reasons for an Immediate Alliance with St. Domingo, 31–32, 39, 42, 73, 106, 115, 117, 125–127. See also M. Dubroca, The Life of Toussaint Louverture, London: Symonds, 1802. 68. Marcus Rainsford, An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti: Comprehending a View of the Principal Transactions in the Revolution of Saint Domingo and Its Ancient and Modern State, Albion Press, 1805, University of Maryland–College Park. See also David Geggus, “British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti, 1791–1805,” in James Walvin, ed., Slavery and British Opinion, 1775–1846, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982, 123–149. 69. William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies; Including a Particular Report of Hispaniola, or the Spanish Part of Santo Domingo; with a General Survey of the Settlements on the South Continent of America  . . ., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1810, 225. 70. Grenville to Liston, 19 January 1799, in Bernard Mayo, ed., Instructions to the British Ministers to the United States, 1791–1812, New York: Da Capo, 1971, 169. 71. “The Speech of the Right Hon. Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, the 19th of April 1791, Concerning the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” Kingston upon Hull: Printing Office, 1791, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. 72. Pierce Butler to Tench Coxe, 17 June 1791, Pierce Butler Letterbook, University of South Carolina–Columbia. 73. Pierce Butler to John Allston, 25 March 1794, Pierce Butler Letterbook. See also William Ray, Horrors of Slavery: Or the American Tars in Tripoli, Troy, New York: William Ray, 1808. 74. Pierce Butler to G. C. Richards, 19 November 1791, Pierce Butler Letterbook, University of South Carolina–Columbia. 75. Corey Robinson, The Iron Thorn: The Defeat of the British by the Jamaican Maroons, Kingston: LMH, 2007. 76. Oliver Herring to “My Dear Mary,” 16 April 1796, Herring–Middleton Papers, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 232

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77. George Izard to Henry Izard, 16 May 1809, Manigault Family Papers, University of South Carolina–Columbia. 78. A Narrative of the Insurrection in the Island of Grenada, which Took Place in 1795, by John Hay, an Inhabitant of the Colony and One of the Prisoners Taken by the Insurgents, London: Ridgway, 1823, 14, 21. 79. Timothy James Lockley, ed., Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009, 62. 80. Ruth Holmes Whitehead to Dr. Alex Moore, Director, SCHS, 4 January 1996, Vertical File—African Americans (Migration to Canada), South Carolina Historical Society. See also John N. Grant, “Black Immigrants into Nova Scotia, 1776–1815,” Journal of Negro History, 58 (Number 3, July 1973): 253–270, 264 and Migration of Negroes during the American Revolution, MG 15, Volume 16, #1, Reel 15109, Public Archives of Nova Scotia– Halifax. At the latter site, see also Notes on Dress of Black Loyalists, MG 15, Volume 19, #42, Reel 15108; Afro-Nova Scotian Exhibition, 1600–1900, Ethnic Groups Collection, MG 15, Volume 20, #29-84, Reel 15109; Negro and Maroon Settlement, NY, 1783, RG 1, Volume 423, Reel 15465; Bishop of Nova Scotia to Sir Jack Kempt, Negro and Maroon Settlement, RG 1, Volume 422, #35, Reel 15463; F. W. Harris, “The Negro Population of Annapolis,” MG 100, Volume 102, #32-32A, Reel 15161; Papers re: Black Man, Frederick, Prince de Bundo, MG 100, Volume 115, #2, Reel 15170; Papers of the Black and Maroon Immigrations & Settlement, RG1, Volume 470, Reel 15491; Africville, MG 100, Volume 100, #44, Reel 9253. 81. Bridgal Pachai and Henry Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Halifax: Nimbus, 2006, 10. 82. Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860, Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2006, 113. See also James W. Walker, “The Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone,” Ph.D. dissertation, Dalhousie University, 1973. 83. Granville Militia, MG 100, Volume 161, #36A, 1808; and Twentieth Battalion of Militia, MG 100, Volume 161, #36, 1808, Public Archives of Nova Scotia–Halifax. 84. “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, Written by Himself, during his Residence at Kingswood School,” 1798, Vertical File—African Americans (Migration to Canada), South Carolina Historical Society. 85. “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, Written by Himself, during his Residence at Kingswood School,” 1798, Vertical File—African Americans (Migration to Canada), South Carolina Historical Society. 86. Pierce Egan, “Bill Richmond: A Man of Colour and a Native of America,” Staten Island Historian, 17 (Number 1, Summer–Fall 1999): 2–5, 8–9. 87. J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilization of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, 20. 88. Thomas Staunton St. Clair, A Residence in the West Indies and America, 144, 148–149. 89. “A Source List of Documents from an Exhibition at the Bermuda Archives, 12 June–30 September 2008,” Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 90. Book of Miscellanies, 1 March 1796, 310-320, CS/2001/03, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton.

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91. Petition of James Darrell and Jacob Pitcarn, no date, DAP/04/10(2), Fay & Geoffrey Elliott Collection, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 92. Ibid., “A Source List of Documents from an Exhibition at the Bermuda Archives.” 93. Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, “Arming Slaves in the American Revolution,” in Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, 180–208, 197. 94. Nemata Amelia Blyden, West Indians in West Africa, 1808–1880, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2000. 95. George Edward Brooks, “The Providence African Society’s Sierra Leone Emigration Scheme, 1794–1795,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8 (Number 2, 1974): 183–202, 183. 96. Carol Thompson, “Richard Richardson,” Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University–Savannah, 1988 (16). 97. Robert C. Cottrol, The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era, Westport: Greenwood, 1982, 42. 98. Acts of the Assembly, 8 August 1806, HA/1002/1806 (7), Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 99. Printed Journals, House of Assembly, 7 August 1806, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 100. Printed Journals, House of Assembly, 4 July 1807, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 101. Wallace Brown, “The American Loyalists in Bermuda,” Bermuda Historical Quarterly, 33 (Number 4, Winter 1976): 80–85, 83. See also George Atkinson, ed., Journals and Letters of the Late Samuel Curwen, Judge of Admiralty, etc., a Loyalist-Refugee in England, during the American Revolution, to Which Are Added Illustrative Documents and Biographic Notices of Many Prominent Loyalists and Other Eminent Men, London: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. 102. Acts of the Assembly, 8 August 1806, HA/1002/1806 (9), Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. At the same site, for material on further restrictions on free Negroes, see Acts of the Assembly, HA/1002/1806 (8). 103. Printed Journals, House of Assembly, 18 July 1806, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 104. Book of Writs and Forms, 31 December 1806, CS/1601/2, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. At the same site, for further data on this point, see also the Berkeley Papers and the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection. 105. Clarence Maxwell, “Black Bermuda after Emancipation,” in Rosemary Jones, ed., Bermuda: Five Centuries, Hamilton: Panatel VDS Ltd., 2004, 92–93. 106. Motion, 2 August 1806, Printed Journals, House of Assembly, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 107. Notes, 9 December 1813, Minutes of Magistrates & Public Meeting, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. See also Major Sir John Alder Burdon, ed., Archives of British Honduras, Volume I: From the Earliest Date to AD 1800, London: Sifton Praed, 1931. 108. “Speech of the Right Hon. George Canning, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs  . . . on  . . . Negro Slaves in the West Indies, on Wednesday, the 17th of March 1824,” London: Relfe, 1824, Cleveland Public Library. 109. Tipton R. Snavely, “George Tucker Was among Foremost Antebellum Scholars,” Bermuda Historical Quarterly, 18 (Numbers 3&4, 1961): 7–81. Attached to this article is the “Autobiography of George Tucker,” 82–159, 108–109: on the Slave Conspiracy in 234

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Richmond in 1800, he says, “I was induced by this exciting event to make an experiment in authorship—and the form of a letter to a member of assembly on the recent conspiracy, I proposed a plan for the colonization of the people of colour, on some part of the continent beyond the limits of the United States . . .. [M]y little pamphlet was reprinted in Baltimore and I was at once ranged in the class of men of letters.” On page 98 the author writes: “I was 5 feet 10 inches in height and tho’ somewhat slender  . . . my face being somewhat of a feminist cast, I was more than once prevailed upon by girls to dress myself as a woman and one night at a private ball in St. George’s, Governor Hamilton—who assumed the privilege of doing pretty much as he pleased—on my putting on a turban and dancing a country dance in it.”

C ha p t e r 2 1. John Boone De Saussure, “Account of an Incident Relative to the Declaration of War with Great Britain,” 28 June 1858, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 2. Archibald S. Bulloch, Volume 18, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. 3. “Message from the President of the United States Communicating a Report to the Secretary of State Respecting New Principles Interpolated into the Laws of Nations,” 27 January 1806, Washington City: Duane and Son, 1806, Cornell University. 4. Thomas Clarkson, Letters on the Slave Trade and the State of the Natives in Those Parts of Africa, Which Are Contiguous to Fort St. Louis and Goree, Written at Paris in December 1789 and January 1790, London: James Phillips, 1791. It seems that there were also those in London who felt that French abolitionists were to blame for the turmoil in Hispaniola: see, e.g., An Inquiry into the Causes of the Insurrection of the Negroes in the Island of St. Domingo, to Which Are Added Observations of Mr. Garran-Coulon on the Same Subject, Read in His Absence by M. Gaudet before the National Assembly, 29th February 1792, London: Johnson, 1792. 5. Ralph Izard to Mathias Hutchinson, 20 November 1794, Ralph Izard Papers, University of South Carolina–Columbia. 6. Consul to Lord Grenville, 29 March 1797, FO5/19, NAUK. At the same site, see also Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 1 June 1802, and Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 3 May 1802, FO5/36. 7. Timothy Dwight, “A Discourse in Two Parts Delivered July 23, 1813, on the Public Fast, in the Chapel of Yale College . . .Published at the Request of the Students and Others,” New Haven: Howe and Deforest, 1812, Detroit Public Library. 8. Phineas Bond to Viscount Nowick, 28 March 1807, FO5/53, NAUK. See also “Reflections on the War of 1812, with Tables Shewing [sic] the Numerical Force of the Enemy, When He Entered Russia, and the Losses He Sustained in the Subsequent Battles and Actions from the Commencement of the Campaign to the 1st of January 1813, Founded upon Official Documents, by Colonel Tchuykevitch Attached to the Staff, and in the Suite of His Russian Imperial Majesty.” Translated from the Russian by Mr. Eustaphieve, Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1813. 9. Letter from Michael Lazarus, 4 August 1809, Lewis Malone Ayer Papers, University of South Carolina.

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10. Letter from Michael Lazarus, 2 October 1809, Lewis Malone Ayer Papers. 11. “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Documents & Papers Relative to Complaints by the Government of France, against the Commerce Carried on by American Citizens to the French Island of Saint Domingo, in the Senate of the United States, January 10, 1806,” Washington City: Duane and Son, 1806, Cornell University. “Message from the President of the U. States Transmitting Copies of Certain Documents Obtained from a Secret Agent of the British Government, Employed in Fomenting Disaffection to the Constituted Authorities, and in Bringing about Resistance to the Laws: and Eventually in Concert with a British Force to Destroy the Union of the United States,” 9 March 1812, Washington City: Weightman, 1812, Johns Hopkins University. 12. Correspondence between John Quincy Adams, Esquire, President of the United States and Several Citizens of Massachusetts Concerning the Charge of Design to Dissolve the Union Alleged to Have Existed in That State, Boston: Boston Daily Advertiser, 1829, Tulane University. 13. John Lowell, The Impartial Inquirer; Being a Candid Examination of the Conduct of the President of the United States in Execution of the Powers Vested in Him, by the Act of Congress on May 1, 1810; to Which Is Added Some Reflections upon the Invasion of the Spanish Territory of West Florida, Boston: Russell & Cutler, 1811. See also “An Address to the Government of the United States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French; and On the Late Breach of Treaty by the Spaniards: Including the Translation of a Memorial, on the War with St. Domingo, and Cession of the Mississippi to France, Drawn Up by a French Counsellor of State,” Philadelphia: Maxwell, 1803, Cornell University. See also “Mr. [Samuel] White’s Speech in the Senate of the United States on the Bill Interdicting All Intercourse between the United States and the Island of St. Domingo,” 20 February 1806, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. There is a copy of the same speech at the Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. 14. Robert Walsh, An Inquiry into the Past and Present Relations of France and the United States of America, London: Hatchard, 1811. 15. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 4 April 1802, FO5/36, NAUK. 16. A. Izard to Mrs. Manigault, 22 July 1801, Manigault Family Papers. 17. John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during  . . . 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802, London: Ostell, 1803, 92, 93, 98, 99, 100. 18. Charles William Janson, The Stranger in America: Containing Observations Made during a Long Residence in That Country on the Genius, Manners, and Customs of the People of the United States . . .and the Slave Trade, London: Cundee, Albion, 1807, v, ix, 359, 360, 361, 382, 383: note that at Syracuse University where I read this book, the author’s name in the library catalogue is listed as “Johnson.” 19. Priscilla Wakefield, Excursions in North America, Described in Letters from a Gentleman and His Young Companion, to their Friend in England, London: Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1810, 76: “A young Negro named Caesar obtained a pension from the state of South Carolina, for discovering the method of assuaging the pain and swelling of the bite of a rattle-snake, by the application of a tobacco leaf steeped in rum. In order to prove the efficacy of his remedy, Caesar, with Roman fortitude, provoked one of those dangerous animals to bite him, and then prevented the baneful effect, by dressing the wound after the manner he had recommended.” See also Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Return’d from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America, Where He Had Been Sent by 236

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the Wicked Contrivances of His Cruel Uncle. A Story Founded on Truth and Addressed Equally to the Head and Heart, London: Freeman, 1743, Buffalo Public Library. 20. Louisiana Gazette, 14 February 1809. See also “Speech by Samuel W. Dana, Representative in Congress, of a Resolution Concerning Francis J. Jackson, Minister Plenipotentiary from Great Britain to the [U.S.],” Washington, 1810, Tulane University. 21. Louisiana Gazette, 19 January 1810; Louisiana Gazette, 26 January 1810. 22. The United States and England: Being a Reply to the Criticism on Inchiquin’s Letters Contained in the Quarterly Review for January 1814, New York: Inskeep, 1815, 34, 10, University of Virginia. 23. The Diary of Simeon Perkins, 1804–1812, Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1978, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. At the same site, see also F. W. Howay, “A Yankee Trader on the Northwest Coast,” Washington Historical Quarterly, 21 (Number 2, 1930), NWP 970r h 853. 24. Minutes of Magistrates & Public Meeting, 3 March 1812, Belize Archives and Record Service–Belmopan. 25. John Marshall to Rufus King, 26 February 1801, Box II, Folder 11, John Marshall Papers, College of William and Mary. 26. “Three Letters Written and Originally Published under the Signature of a South Carolina Planter. The First, on the Case of Jonathan Robbins . . .the Second on the Recent Capture of American Vessels by British Cruisers, Contrary to the Law of Nations and the Treaty between the Two Countries, the Third on the Right of Expatriation,” Philadelphia: Aurora, 1799. South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 27. See, e.g., “An Examination of the Conduct of Great Britain, Respecting Neutrals, since the Year 1791,” Boston, 1808, Tulane University. See also “Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting Copies of a Late Correspondence between the British Minister and the Secretary of State Affording Further Evidence of the Hostile Policy of [London].” Washington City, 1812, Cornell University. See also Bernard Mayo, ed., Instructions to the British Ministers to the United States, 1791–1812, Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1941. See also “Robert Smith’s Address to the People of the United States,” Baltimore, 1811, Tulane University. 28. Softly, Brave Yankees!!! Or the West Indies Rendered Independent of America; and Africa Civilized, London: Jordan and Maxwell, 1807 [see also back cover], Cornell University. 29. Macall Medford, Oil Without Vinegar, and Dignity Without Pride: On British, American, and West India Interests Considered, London: Richardson, Cornhill, 1807, 60, 65, 66. 30. Edward Matthew to W. W. Grenville, 11 December 1890, CO101/31/60, NAUK. 31. Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Redcoats, 28. 32. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men: African-Americans and the War of 1812, Put-in-Bay, Ohio: The Perry Group, 1996, 90. 33. Thomas Smallwood, “A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood (Coloured Man): Giving an Account of His Birth—the Period He Was Held in Slavery—His Release—and Removal to Canada, etc.” Toronto: Stephens, 1851, New York Historical Society—Manhattan. For similar sentiments, see, e.g., Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada & England, London: Snow, 1855, 39. 34. G. W. Jordan, The Claims of the British West India Colonists to the Right of Obtaining Necessary Supplies from America and of Employing the Necessary Means of Effec-

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tively Obtaining Those Supplies under a Limited and Duly Regulated Intercourse, Stated and Vindicated, in Answer to Lord Sheffield’s Strictures, London: Cadell, 1804. 35. Consul to Lord Grenville, 4 February 1797, FO5/19, NAUK. 36. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 4 March 1802, FO5/36, NAUK. 37. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 18 June 1802, FO5/36, NAUK. 38. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 26 June 1802, FO5/36, NAUK. 39. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 12 January 1804, FO5/43, NAUK. 40. Phineas Bond to Lord Hawkesbury, 5 June 1804, FO5/43, NAUK. 41. “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Monroe on the Subject of the Attack on the Chesapeake; the Correspondence of Mr. Monroe with the British Government, also Mr. Madison’s Correspondence with Mr. Rose on the Same Subject,” 23 March 1808, City of Washington: A & G Way, 1808, Boston Public Library. 42. Claire Pauline Phelan, “In the Vise of Empire: British Impressment of the American Sailor,” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Christian University, 2008. 43. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 11 June 1792, FO5/104, NAUK. 44. “An Address by Members of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to Their Constituents, on the Subject of the War with Great Britain,” Baltimore: Alexandria, 1812, University of South Carolina. 45. Pierce Butler to John Allston, 25 March 1794, Pierce Butler Letterbooks. 46. “Mr. Pickering’s Speech in the House of Representatives of the U. States on Saturday the 26th and Monday the 28th of February 1814; the House Being in a Committee of the Whole on the Bill to Authorize a Loan of Twenty-Five Millions of Dollars,” Georgetown: Alleson, 1814, University of South Carolina. At the same site, see also “An Address of Members of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to their Constituents on the Subject of War with Great Britain,” Alexandria: Snowden, 1812. 47. James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998; James G. Cusick, The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003; J. C. A. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the SpanishAmerican Frontier, 1776–1821, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. 48. Frank L. Owsley, Jr., “British and Indian Activities in Spanish West Florida during the War of 1812,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 46 (Number 2, October 1967): 111–123. Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr. and Gene A. Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800–1821, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997. See also J. Leitch Wright, “British Designs on the Old Southwest: Foreign Intrigue on the Florida Frontier,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 44 (April 1966): 265–284. 49. Rembert W. Patrick, Florida Fiasco: Rampant Rebels on the Georgia-Florida Border, 1810–1815, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954, 155, 184. 50. Frances J. Stafford, “Illegal Importations: Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws along the Florida Coast, 1810–1828,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 46 (Number 2, October 1967): 124–133. 51. Edmund Doyle to John Forbes, 1 September 1811, in “The Panton-Leslie Papers: Letters of Edmund Doyle, Trader,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 16 (Number 2, October 1937): 251–264, 257. 238

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52. Unsigned letter to Peter Grievous, 11 July 1811, Box 1 Folder 2, Innerarity-Hulse Papers, University of West Florida–Pensacola. 53. General John Floyd, Volume 16, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic State University. 54. Nathaniel Millett, “Britain’s 1814 Occupation of Pensacola and America’s Response: An Episode of the War of 1812 in the Southeastern Borderlands,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 84 (Number 2, Fall 2005): 229–255, 252. 55. Lt. Colonel Smith to Governor Mitchell, 20 June 1812, in T. Frederick Davis, “United States Troops in Spanish East Florida, 1812–1813,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 9 (Number 2, October 1930): 96–116, 101. 56. Colonel Smith to General Flournoy, 10 October 1812, in T. Frederick Davis, “United States Troops in East Florida, 1812–1813, Part III,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 9 (Number 3, January 1931): 135–155, 145. 57. Colonel Smith to Major Thomas Bourke, 25 October 1812, in T. Frederick Davis, “United States Troops in Spanish East Florida, 1812–1813,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 9 (Number 4, April 1931): 259–278, 261. 58. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 136. 59. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, 220–228, 237, 381. See also John D. Milligan, “Slave Rebelliousness and the Florida Maroon,” Prologue: Journal of the National Archives, 6 (Number 1, Spring 1974): 4–18. 60. “On the Past Relations between Great Britain and the United States,” London: Sidney, 1813, Nw327. 42 058, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. See also J. C. A. Stagg, “James Madison and the Coercion of Great Britain: Canada, the West Indies, and the War of 1812,” in Brian Tennyson, ed., Canada and the Commonwealth Caribbean, Lanham: University Press of America, 1988, 51–104. See also Select British Documents on the Canadian War of 1812, Toronto: Champlain Society, 1920, Columbia University. 61. Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Negroes and the East Florida Annexation Plot, 1811–1813,” Journal of Negro History, 30 (Number 1, January 1945): 9–29. See also Paul Kruse, ed., “A Secret Agent in East Florida: General George Matthews and the Patriot War,” Journal of Southern History, 18 (Number 2, May 1952): 193–217. 62. T. Frederick Davis, “Elotchaway, East Florida, 1814,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 8 (Number 3, January 1930): 143–155, 146, 150, 151. 63. David Thompson, History of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States of America, Niagara, Canada: Sewell, 1832. See also A True Picture of the United States of America Being a Brief Statement of the Conduct of the Government and People of That Country Towards Great Britain from the Peace Concluded in 1783 to the Present Time, London: Jordan and Maxwell, 1808, University of Virginia. 64. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 167. 65. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, xv. 66. Peter P. Hill, Napoleon’s Troublesome Americans, 173. See also Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies, New York: Knopf, 2010. 67. Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, 49, 64. 68. “Speech by William Renwick Riddell, A Canadian’s View of the Battle of Plattsburgh, 1915,” “A Canadian’s View of the Battle of New Orleans,” “Speech at Oberlin College,” 2 February 1915, Tulane University.

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69. John C. Calhoun to Robert Creswell, 10 March 1812, in Robert Merriwether, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume I, 1801–1817, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959, 92–93. 70. Speech by John C. Calhoun, 6 May 1812, in ibid., Robert Merriwether, 80–81. 71. George Hay, “An Oration Delivered on the Thirty-Seventh Anniversary of American Independence at the Request of the ‘Society of Friends of the Revolution’ in the Capitol of Richmond,” 1813. 72. Peter P. Hill, Napoleon’s Troublesome Americans, 134. 73. “An Address by Members of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to Their Constituents, on the Subject of War with Great Britain,” Baltimore: Alexandria, 1812, University of Rochester. 74. Alexander James Dallas, “An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the War,” Washington: Weightman, 1815, University of Virginia. 75. Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, 407. 76. Alexander James Dallas, “An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the Late War between the United States and Great Britain,” Middlebury, Vermont: Slade, 4 July 1815, New York Historical Society. 77. J. S. Pott, A Plain Statement of Facts, in Which Appears a Question of International Law of Great Importance to Colonial Proprietors, Arising out of the Claims of the Inhabitants of East and West Florida on the British Government, for Aggressions Committed by the British Forces during the War with the United States of America in 1814; Showing Also Their Subsequent Treatment under the Conventions with Spain of 1823 and 1828, London: Cunningham & Salmon, 1838, 3. 78. Matthew Mason, “The Battle of the Slaveholding Liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly, 59 (Number 3, July 2002): 665–696, 665. 79. Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border, 35. 80. Bridglal Pachai & Henry Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Halifax: Nimbus, 2006, 2. 81. John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African-American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794–1861, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, 148. 82. Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx, New York: Arno Press, 1968. See also Henry Carey Baird, “General Washington and General Jackson on Negro Soldiers,” Philadelphia: HCB, 1863, New York Historical Society. 83. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 20, 28, 32. See also William H. Masterson, Tories and Democrats: British Diplomats in Pre-Jacksonian America, College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1985. 84. Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border, 35. 85. Jon Latimer, 1812, 348, 362. 86. Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the A.M.E. Church, and the Black Founding Fathers, New York: NYU Press, 2009. 87. Proceedings of the Committee of Defence, New York City, 1814–1815, 29 August and 13 August 1814, New York Historical Society. See also George Lockhart Rives, ed., Selections from the Correspondence of Thomas Barclay, Formerly British Consul-General at New York, New York: Harper & Bros., 1894. 240

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88. R. S. Guernsey, New York City and Vicinity during the War of 1812–’15, Being a Military, Civic, and Financial Local History of That Period with Incidents and Anecdote Therefore. New York: Woodward, 1889, Volume I, 29, 48. See also George W. Wingate, “The Truth in Regard to the War of 1812 and the Necessity of Our Knowing It,” New York: North American Review, 1909, New York Historical Society. 89. Sir James Yeo to First Lord of the Admiralty, 19 February 1813, Edward Parsons Collection–University of Texas. 90. Bolling Hall to “Brother Dunn,” 6 November 1814, Bolling Hall Letter, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. 91. Captain Philip Cook to Captain Jones, 6 September 1813, Folder 2, William Jones Papers–Georgia Historical Society. 92. “In Reference to the Defence of Craney Island in this state, when attacked by the British forces on the 22nd of June 1813,” Document Number 75, Report of the Select Committee, Virginia House of Delegates, University of Virginia. 93. Apparently it did surprise the leading judge, John Marshall. See John Marshall to James Monroe, 25 June 1812, Box II, Folder 4, John Marshall Papers, College of William and Mary–Williamsburg, Virginia. 94. Sir Alexander Cochrane to Viscount Melville, 27 April 1812, Viscount Melville Papers–Huntington Library, San Marino, California: New Orleans, he said, was “the mart for the production of all that vast country laying on Mississippi, Ohio and other rivers—whoever has possession of the mouth of the river, must have the inhabitants of the interior more or less under his control. Self-interest is ruling principle of the Americans, those in the interior will join the party who pays for their produce and as New Orleans is the only outlet for it, particularly flour, and the British West India islands, the only market of which they will be in a great measure deprived by the embargo, I have not a doubt but that they would separate from the Atlantic states.” Virginia was similarly vulnerable and “particularly accessible to a moving force” with “its numerous rivers being navigable to a great distance” and meant “Washington itself is not free from a surprise.” See also Frank A. Updyke, The Diplomacy of the War of 1812, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1915.

C ha p t e r 3 1. Amanda L. Brooks, “Captain Paul Cuffe (1759–1817) and the Crown Colony of Sierra Leone: The Liminality of the Free Black,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1988, 172, 176, 181, 189. 2. For a typical view, see Speech of Mr. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, Washington: Gideon, 1847, Georgia Historical Society. 3. Lamont D. Thomas, Paul Cuffe: Black Entrepreneur and Pan-Africanist, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 91. 4. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian during Thirty Years at Sea and Traveling in Foreign Lands, 1839, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. 5. Rosalind Cobb Wiggins, ed., Captain Paul Cuffe’s Logs and Letters, 1808–1817: A Black Quaker’s “Voice from Within the Veil,” Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996, 131.

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6. “Address of Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia before the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, on the Evening of the 23rd of February 1852 in Commemoration of the Birthday of Washington,” Georgia Historical Society. 7. Albert Gallatin to William Crawford, 21 April 1814, William Crawford Papers-Georgia Historical Society. “An Address of Members of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to Their Constituents on the Subject of the War with Great Britain,” Poughkeepsie, 1812, Syracuse University. 8. J. E. D. Ship, Giant Days or the Life and Times of William H. Crawford, Embracing Also Excerpts from His Diary, Letters, and Speeches, Together with a Copious Index of the Whole, Americus, Georgia: Southern Printers, 1909, 225, 226. See also “Proceedings of the Convention of the State of New York Held at the Capitol in the City of Albany,” Albany, 1812, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. 9. “Public Documents Containing Proceedings of the Hartford Convention of Delegates; Report of the Commissioners while at Washington; Letters from Massachusetts Members in Congress; Letters from the Governor of Pennsylvania; Report and Resolutions of Pennsylvania State; Letter of Governor of New Jersey, including Sundry Papers; Letter of Governor of New York, inclosing papers, relating to amendments of the Constitution, proposed by Massachusetts  . . . the delegates from the legislatures of the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut. and Rhode Island and from the counties of Grafton and Cheshire in the state of New Hampshire and the county of Windham in the state of Vermont, assembled in Convention, beg leave to report the following result of their conference, ” Boston, 1815, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. 10. William Ellery Channing, “A Sermon Preached in Boston, July 25, 1812, the Day of the Publick Fast, Appointed by the Executive of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in Consequence of the Declaration of War against Great Britain,” University of Rochester. See also “An Oration Commemorative of American Independence Delivered at the Presbyterian Church in Savannah, by Alexander Telfair, Esq. on the Fourth of July 1812 at the Request of a Committee of Citizens,” Savannah, 1813, Georgia Historical Society. 11. Robert C. Cottrol, The Afro-Yankees, 63, 76, 77, 94. 12. “Speech of the Hon. William Hunter in Secret Session of the Senate of the United States, February 2nd, 1813. On the Proposition for Seizing and Occupying the Province of East Florida, by the Troops of the United States,” Newport: Rousmaniere & Barber, 1813, Rhode Island Historical Society. Senator Hunter was gravely concerned that London or Madrid or both could make persuasive appeals to U.S. Negroes to the republic’s severe detriment. 13. “Report of the Subcommittee Appointed on the Twenty-Third of September Last to Inquire into the Causes and Particulars of the Invasion of the City of Washington by the British Forces in the Month of August 1814,” 29 November 1814, Washington: A and G. Way, 1814, George Washington University–Washington, D.C. 14. Perpetual War, the Policy of Mr. Madison. Being a Candid Examination of His Late Message to Congress, So Far as Respects the Following Topics, viz., the Pretended Negotiations for Peace, the Important and Interesting Subject of a Conscript Militia; and the Establishment of an Immense Standing Army of Guards and Spies, Under the Name of a Local Volunteer Force, by a New England Farmer, London: Longman, Hurst, 1813, 5, 39, 44, 88, University of South Carolina. 15. Memorandum, 25 August 1812, Record Group 26, Series 9, Volume 8, Executive Minute Books, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. 242

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16. Alexandra Lee Levin, “How Commander Joshua Barney Outwitted the British at Norfolk,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 73 (Number 2, Summer 1978): 163–167, 164. 17. Sir John Beresford to Viscount Melville, December 1813, Viscount Melville Papers. 18. Sir David Milne to Viscount Melville, 12 December 1814, Viscount Melville Papers. 19. William Franklin to Viscount Melville, 22 August 1812, Viscount Melville Papers. See also Sir George Larpent, BART, ed., The Private Journal of F. Seymour Larpent, JudgeAdvocate General, Attached to the Headquarters of Lord Wellington during the Peninsular War from 1812 to Its Close, London: Bentley, 1853. 20. John to Viscount Melville, 13 April 1813, Viscount Melville Papers. 21. Anonymous to Viscount Melville, 15 September 1812, Viscount Melville Papers. 22. Thomas Acheson to Governor Simon Snyder, 6 September 1814, Record Group 26, Roll 11, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Executive Correspondence, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. 23. Peter L. Berry to “Dear Sir,” 10 September 1814, Record Group 26, Roll 11, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Executive Correspondence. 24. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 98, 106. See also Franklin Hanford, American and British Vessels to the Genesee River, 1809–1814, Rochester: Genesee Press, 1911. 25. Jacqueline L. Tobin and Hettie Jones, From Midnight to Dawn, 154. See also Ernest Cruikshank, Queenston Heights, Niagara Falls, Canada: Record Printing Office, 1891; Solomon Van Rensselaer, A Narrative of the Affair of Queenstown: In the War of 1812, New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1836. 26. Daniel G. Hill, The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada, Agincourt, Canada, 1981, 114. See also Martha Anderson, “Black Pioneers of the Northwest, 1800-1918,” NW 979 A548 1980, Provincial Archives of British Columbia-Victoria. 27. Melvin E. Banner, The Black Pioneer in Michigan, Midland, Michigan: Pendell, 1973, 18–19. See also Revolutionary Services and Civic Life of General William Hull; Prepared from His Manuscripts by His Daughter Mrs. Maria Campbell Together with the History of the Campaign of 1812, and Surrender of the Post of Detroit by His Grandson James Freeman Clarke, New York: Appleton, 1848. 28. George Pinkard, Notes on the West Indies, Including Observations Relative to the Creoles and Slaves of the Western Colonies, and the Indians of South America, London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1816, Volume I, 101, 102, 298, 356. 29. Gerard T. Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 118. 30. Mary Bullard, Cumberland Island: A History, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003, 120. See also Mary R. Bullard, Black Liberation on Cumberland Island in 1815, De Leon Springs, Florida: Painter, 1983. See also Negro and Maroon Settlements, RG1, Volume 419 (1790–1834); Volume 420 (1813–1816), (1816–1818); Volume 422 (1818–1839); Volume 423 (1783–1784): Reels 15462-15465, Public Archives of Nova Scotia-Halifax. At the same site, see also “Slaves Sent to Halifax during War of 1812,” Manuscript: MG 100, Volume 44, #1-4 and “List of Negroes Settled at Preston,” MG 15, Volume 20, #58, Reel 15109. 31. Charles J. Johnson, Mary Telfair: The Life and Legacy of a Nineteenth-Century Woman, Savannah: Beil, 2002, 40, 42. See also Levin Winder to Brigadier General Caleb Hawkins, 11 November 1813, S1075-11, 1796–1818, Letter Book, Governor and Council, Maryland State Archives–Annapolis. 32. A. Auchinleck, A History of the War between Great Britain and the United States of America during the Years 1812, 1813 and 1814, Toronto: Maclean, 1855, 356, 357.

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33. C. B. Fergusson, A Documentary Study of the Establishment of the Negroes in Nova Scotia between the War of 1812 and the Winning of Responsible Government, Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1948, 1. See also “Migration of Negroes during American Revolution,” MG 15, Volume 16, #1, Reel 15109, Public Archives of Nova Scotia. At the same site, see also Message to Lieutenant Governor from General Assembly, 24 February 1815, Legislative Assembly Files, RG1, Volume 305, #3, Reel 15387-7. 34. Jon Latimer, 1812, 393, 169. See also Petition of a Black Man, circa 1815, MG 100, Volume 144, #1, Reel 15190, Public Archives of Nova Scotia–Halifax. See also Statement by David Hardgrave, 26 May 1814 in H. W. Flournoy., ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts from January 1, 1808 to December 31, 1835, Richmond: Virginia State Library, 333–334. See File on Desertions in Military Records, Miscellaneous War Papers, 1787–1861, Militia Records, Delaware Public Archives–Dover. 35. G. Auchinleck, The War of 1812: A History of the War between Great Britain and the United States of America, during the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814, Toronto: W.C. Chewett, 1862, 356. See also George Laval Chesterton, Peace, , and Adventure: An Autobiographical Memoir, Volume I, London: Longman, 1853, 117, 129, 130, 213, 216; William James, A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States of America, London: Egerton, 1817; Cf. William M. Marine, The British Invasion of Maryland, 1812–1815, Baltimore: Society for the War of 1812 in Maryland, 1913. 36. George Chalmers to Viscount Melville, 3 August 1812, Viscount Melville Papers. See also Norfolk Gazette & Public Ledger, 9 July 1814, University of Virginia. 37. Memorandum to Viscount Melville, 1812, Viscount Melville Papers: There were 7 frigates and 11 sloops in Halifax; 8 frigates and 19 sloops in Jamaica; and 35 sloops and 18 frigates in Barbados. See also Official Letters, with Comments and Observations Relative to the Capture of the President, American Frigate, St. George, Bermuda: Edmund Ward, 1815, New York Historical Society. 38. Robert Bowie to Governor of Pennsylvania, 3 August 1812, S1075-11, 1796–1818, Letter Book, Governor and Council, Maryland State Archives. 39. Letter from Alexander Magruder, 10 April 1813, S1075-11, 1796–1818, Maryland State Archives. 40. Levin Winder to Thomas M. Forman, 1 June 1813, S1075-11, 1796–1818, Letter Book, Governor and Council. 41. U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. “Barbarities of the Enemy Exposed in a Report of the House of Representatives of the United States, Appointed to Enquire into the Spirit and Manner in Which the War Has Been Waged by the Enemy and the Documents Accompanying Said Report,” Troy, New York: Francis Andacourt, 1813, New York Historical Society 42. Donald G. Shomette, Flotilla: The Patuxent Naval Campaigns in the War of 1812, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, 186, 179, 232. 211. See also Henry B. Dawson, Battles of the United States by Sea and Land, New York: Johnson, Fry, 1858. 43. Sherman W. Pratt, “Northern Virginia in the War of 1812,” Arlington Historical Magazine, 12 (Number 2, October 2002): 45–54. 44. Bryan Prince, A Shadow on the Household: One Enslaved Family’s Incredible Struggle for Freedom, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2009, 22. See also Letter from Levin Winder, 20 August 1813, S1075-11, 1796–1818, Letter Book, Governor and Council, Maryland State Archives–Annapolis. 244

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45. Levin Winder to Brigadier General Caleb Hawkins, 27 August 1813, S1075-11, 1796–1818. 46. John Turberville to “Dear Sir,” 4 November 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 284. 47. William Middleton to John Turberville, 6 November 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 284. 48. Christopher Tompkins to Governor Barbour, 8 March 1814, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 307. 49. List and Related Documents, 13 September 1814, Series F, Part 3, Reel 43, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War–University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 50. Beresford, Commodore & Commander of the British Squadron in the Mouth of the Delaware to “Sir,” 16 March 1813, Military Records, Miscellaneous War Papers, 1793–1895, Militia Records, Delaware Public Archives–Dover. 51. Elias Darnell, A Journal Containing an Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships, Sufferings, Battles, Defeat, and Captivity of those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars, Commanded by General Winchester, in the Years 1812–1813, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1854, 78. 52. Christopher George, Terror on the Chesapeake: The War of 1812 on the Bay, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane, 2000, 80. 53. Stuart Butler, “Slave Flight in the Northern Neck during the War of 1812,” Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Magazine, 57 (December 2007): 6821-6843, 6824, 6827, 6836, 6838, 6842. 54. C. B. Fergusson, A Documentary Study of the Establishment of the Negroes in Nova Scotia between the War of 1812 and the Winning of Responsible Government, Halifax: Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1948, no page number. 55. Lusia Toepfer Mitchell, “The Recognition of Necessity: Afro-American Migration, 1813–1816,” Michigan State University, 1980, Reel 9238, Volume 36, #4, Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Evidently, London understated the number of enslaved who departed on British vessels, thereby reducing compensation claims by slaveholders. Thus, one estimate is that 4,000 slaves were seized by British forces in Georgia and Florida (then not under the U.S. flag) alone. In any event, this game of numbers does not take into account the enslaved who took advantage of the flux brought by war to flee to, e.g., Spanish Florida or other lands not under Washington’s jurisdiction. See, e.g., Michael Thurmond, Freedom: Georgia’s Antislavery Heritage, 1733–1865, Atlanta: Longstreet, 2002, 83. 56. John Minor to Dr. John Brokenbrough, 17 March 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 203–204. 57. W. Allen (Lt. Colonel, 71st Regiment) to Governor Barbour, 10 July 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 252. 58. Christopher Tompkins to Governor Barbour, 12 March 1814, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 308–309. See also Captain Robert Barrie to Rear Admiral George Cockburn, 7 December 1814, in Michael J. Crawford, ed., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, Volume III, 1814–1815, Chesapeake Bay, Northern Lakes and Pacific Ocean, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 2002, 341. 59. R. E. Parker, Lieutenant Colonel, 111th Regiment to Governor Barbour, 11 June 1814, in H. W. Flournoy, 338–339. 60. John P. Hungerford to Governor Barbour, June 1814, in H. W. Flournoy, 362–363.

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61. Rear Admiral George Cockburn to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, 7 July 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 154. 62. Rear Admiral George Cockburn to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, 4 August 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 160. 63. John P. Hungerford to Adjutant General, 5 August 1814, in H. W. Flournoy, 367–369. 64. Robert Taylor to Governor Barbour, 2 July 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 241. 65. Robert Greenhow to Lieutenant Governor, 8 September 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 279. 66. Thomas Griffin and Robert Lively to Major Commandant, 4 July 1813, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 242–244. 67. Robert Greenhow to Governor Barbour, 24 February 1814, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, 304–305. 68. Thomas Bayley, Lieutenant Colonel, 2nd Regiment, to Governor Barbour, 31 May 1814, in H. W. Flournoy, 334–337. 69. Charles Johnston to Benjamin Hatcher, 16 September 1814, in H. W. Flournoy, 387–388. 70. Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812; or Illustrations by Pen and Pencil of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the Last War for American Independence, New York: Harper & Bros., 1868, 689–690. 71. Proclamation of Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, PANS: Miscro: Misc.: Blacks, Folder III, #18, Public Archives of Nova Scotia–Halifax. 72. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to Rear Admiral George Cockburn, 1 July 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 129. 73. George Laval Chesterton, Peace, War, and Adventure: An Autobiographical Memoir, Volume I, London: Longman, 1853, 123. 74. Rear Admiral George Cockburn, RN to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, RN, 2 April 1814, in Michael J. Crawford, ed., The Naval War of 1812; A Documentary History, Volume III, 1814–1815, Chesapeake Bay, Northern Lakes and Pacific Ocean, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 2002, 43. 75. Proclamation from Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, 2 April 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 60. 76. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, 12 July 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 131. 77. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to Rear Admiral George Cockburn, 21 July 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 141. 78. Rear Admiral George Cockburn to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, 10 May 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 63. 79. Rear Admiral George Cockburn Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, 25 June 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 111. 80. Rear Admiral George Cockburn to Admiral Sir John B. Warren, 13 April 1814, in ibid., Michael J. Crawford, 46. 81. Journal of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 9 December 1813, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. 82. Journal of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas, 23 November 1814, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. See also Correspondence re: U.S. Prisoners at Halifax, War of 1812, MG1, Volume 1892, #10, Public Archives of Nova Scotia–Halifax. 246

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83. Minutes of Executive Council, 20 August 1812, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 84. Letter from Elijah Broughton, circa January 1815, Lydia Broughton Papers, Georgia Historical Society. 85. Minutes of Executive Council, 15 July 1812, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 86. Subject File—Slavery: Martha Turner, Associate Professor, Georgia College, Milledgeville, Georgia, to Helen Rowe, Archivist, Bermuda Archives, 18 August 1987, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 87. Cyril Outerbridge Packwood, Chained on the Rock: Slavery in Bermuda, Hamilton, Bermuda: Island Press, 1993, 51. 88. Barry Gough, “Bermuda, Naval Base of the Early Pax Brittanica: Origins, Strategy, and Construction,” Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History, 5 (1993): 135–148, 136, 140. 89. Minutes of Legislative Council, 14 July 1813, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 90. Minutes of Legislative Council, 13 August 1813, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 91. Message from Governor James Cockburn, 15 October 1814, Minutes of Legislative Council, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 92. Minutes of Legislative Council, 16 August 1813, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton.

C ha p t e r 4 1. Paul Jennings, “Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison,” Brooklyn: Beadle, 1865, Reel 15, #0631, Black Abolitionist Papers–University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. See also John S. Williams, History of the Invasion and Capture of Washington and of the Events which Preceded and Followed, New York: Harper & Bros., 1857, 269. This author denies that British troops devoured Madison’s meal after forcing him to flee. 2. George Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 26 September 1814, CO37/72/66, NAUK. See also W. Nicholas, Richmond Council Chambers to Secretary of War, 29 December 1814, Reel 13, Executive Letter Book of the Governor. 3. George Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 18 March 1814, CO37/72/66, NAUK. 4. New York Times, 8 August 2009. 5. Secretary of Navy William Jones to Joshua Barney, 20 July 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry into the Success of the Enemy against Washington and Alexandria. See also Mary Barney, ed., A Biographical Memoir of the Late Commodore Joshua Barney from Autobiographical Notes and Journals, Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1832, 275. 6. William Jones to Joshua Barney, 27 July 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry. 7. Christopher George, Terror on the Chesapeake, 189, 112. See also “Letter from Patrick Magruder, Clerk of the House of Representatives to the Speaker Detailing Facts in Relation to the Destruction of the Office of the House,” 22 September 1814, Washington: Way, 1814, Georgetown University. 8. Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, Newtown, Connecticut: American Political Biography Series, 1971, 334, 335. 9. Frank A. Cassell, “Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay Area and the War of 1812,” Journal of Negro History, 57 (Number 1, January 1972): 144–155, 145, 148. See also Statement from St. Mary’s County, circa 1814, Box 26, Folder 17, Maryland Province Archives–Georgetown University.

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10. Statement by John Stavely, 9 June 1813, in U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. “Barbarities of the Enemy Exposed in a Report  . . . and the Documents Accompanying Said Report,” 1813, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. 11. “Report of the Trial of John Hodges, Esq. on a Charge of High Treason, Tried in the Circuit Court of the United States for Wayland District at the May Term 1815,” Maryland, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. At the same site, see also “Resolutions Passed at a Meeting of the Citizens of Anne Arundel County Assembled for the Purpose of Taking into Consideration the State of Public Affairs at the Present Crisis,” 9 June 1812. 12. Admiral Henry Hotham to Sir Alexander Cochrane, 19 August 1814, MF3.3, Reel 3, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Maritime Museum, Williams Research Center–Historic New Orleans Collection. 13. Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia as a Slave, Pittsburgh: Shryock, 1853, 56. See also William C. Nell, Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812, Boston: Wallcut, 1852. 14. Letter from Duncan MacDougall, May 1861, Box 1, Folder 8, Robert Ross Collection, George Washington University. See also Adjutant P. M. Davis, The Four Principal Battles of the Late War Being a Full Detailed Account of the Battle of Chippeway, Fall and Destruction of the City of Washington, Battles of Baltimore and New Orleans, Harrisburg: Jacob Baab, 1832. 15. G. Auchinleck, The War of 1812: A History of the War between Great Britain and the United States of America, during the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814, Toronto: W.C. Chewett, 1862. See also Alan Lloyd, The Scorching of Washington: The War of 1812, Washington: Luce, 1974. 16. Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History in and around Washington, D.C., Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 2007. See also “The Diary of a Private Soldier in the Campaign of New Orleans,” Vertical File— “Battle of New Orleans,” 1898, Tulane University. 17. Joseph Dorst Patch, “When the British Captured Washington,” circa 1950. Historical Society of Washington, D.C. See also John C. Hildt, ed., “Letters Relating to the Capture of Washington,” South Atlantic Quarterly, January 1907, George Washington University. The U.S. performance during the epochal plundering of their capital received significant attention over the years with many choosing to ignore the role of the enslaved in this debacle. See, e.g., B. J. Lossing, “Scenes in the War of 1812,” Harper’s, March 1864, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. This neglect occurred despite the fact that subsequently this sacking was termed “the most humiliating experience in our nation’s history.” See Washington Star, 22 August 1954. Some U.S. writers have chosen to portray enslaved Africans as anti-indigene, pro-U.S., and—in the attempt to bestow a weird form of patriotism upon them—pro-enslavement. See Dunbar Rowland, Mississippi and the War of 1812, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishers, 1968. See also Edward Ingraham, A Sketch of the Events Which Preceded the Capture of Washington by the British on the Twenty-Fourth of August 1814, Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1849. 18. “Statement of Loss and Damage at the Navy Yard, Washington, by Fire of 24th and th 25 August 1814,” HR 13A-D15.3, House Select Committee Making Inquiry into the Success of the Enemy against Washington and Alexandria and into the Destruction of Public Buildings and Property and the Senate Committee on Military Affairs’ Investigation of 248

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the Defense of Maryland, NARA–Washington, D.C. See also “An Enquiry Respecting the Capture of Washington by the British on the 24th August 1814; with an Examination of the Report of the Committee of Investigation Appointed by Congress,” Spectator: Washington City, February 1816, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. 19. Henry S. Robinson, “Some Aspects of the Free Negro Population of Washington, D.C.,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 64 (Number 1, Spring 1969): 43–64, 43. See also M. I. Weller and James Ewell, M.D., “Unwelcome Visitors to Washington, August 24, 1814,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 1 (Number 2, December 1895): 55–118. 20. Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998, 20, 151. John M. Stahl, The Invasion of Washington, Argos, Indiana: Van Trump, 1918. See also W.B. Bryan, ed., “Diary of Mrs. William Thornton. Capture of Washington by the British,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 19 (1916): 172–182, 181. 21. Ray Irwin, ed., “The Capture of Washington in 1814, as Described by Mordecai Booth.” Americana, 28 (1934): 7–27, 19, 22, 25, Virginia Historical Society–Richmond. Strikingly, an uncomplaining British officer, after his plunder had been completed, “passed the night in a Negro hut, exceedingly small.” George Laval Chesterton, Peace, War, and Adventure: An Autobiographical Memoir, 130. See also “Authentic Account of the Capture of Washington,” from the “Baltimore Patriot” of 26 August 1814, New York Historical Society. 22. Carole L. Herrick, August 24, 1814: Washington in Flames, Falls Church, Virginia: Higher Education, 2005, 138. See also Joseph W. Whitehorne, The Battle for Baltimore, 1814, Baltimore: National & Aviation Publishing, 1997, 53, 54, 134. 23. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings, 114, 406. See also Journal of James Stuart, 1814, South Carolina Historical Society. 24. General James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times, Volume I, 732, 763. See also “Letter from George W. Campbell, Esq., Late Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Causes and Particulars of the Invasion of the City of Washington and the Neighboring Town of Alexandria, in the Month of August Last, January 2, 1815.” Washington City: Roger C. Weightman, 1815, Huntington Library– San Marino, California. 25. William Jones to Joshua Barney, 19 August 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry. 26. Joshua Barney to William Jones, 20 August 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry. 27. Joshua Barney to William Jones, 20 August 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry. 28. Stephen Belknap to James Monroe, 24 March 1813, in Angela Kreider, et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, Volume 6, 8 February–24 October 1813, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 153–154. See also J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. 29. “William Dawson to James Monroe on British War Plans in 1814,” New York Public Library Bulletin, 6 (July 1902): 246, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. 30. Margaret Bayard to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, August 1814 and 11 September 1814, in Galliard Hunt, ed., The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Portrayed by the Family Let-

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ters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (Margaret Bayard) from the Collection of Her Grandson, J. Henley Smith, New York: Scribner’s, 1906, 110, 112, 115. Suggestive of the republican crisis was the fact that Charles Carroll, signatory to the Declaration of Independence and described routinely as the wealthiest man in North America, had curious contacts with British agents in 1812, and by 1813 remained unconvinced about his nation prevailing in the war. See, e.g, Charles Carroll to Charles Carroll, Jr., 12 March , and Charles Carroll to Charles Carroll, Jr., 5 December 1813, Carroll Collection–John Hopkins University. 31. Samuel Cortland to Andrew Mack, 16 March 1817, Mss 4193, University of Virginia–Charlottesville. 32. Memorandum, circa 1812, Reel 11, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 33. Governor Barbour to “Sir,” 12 May 1812, Reel 11, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. See also “War in the Lower Chesapeake & Hampton Roads Areas, 1812–1815 as Reported in Norfolk Newspapers,” University of Virginia–Charlottesville. 34. Joseph Causten to James Causten, 26 September 1814, Box 1, Folder 14, Causten Family Papers–Georgetown University. 35. John M. Stahl, The Invasion of the City of Washington: A Disagreeable Study in and of Military Unpreparedness, No city: Van Trump, 1918, 94, Historical Society of Washington, D.C. See also Report of William Lambert, 25 July 1813, M588, Reel 6, War of 1812 Papers, NARA–College Park, Maryland. 36. Governor Barbour to House of Delegates, 22 December 1813, Reel 13, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. See also Charles L. Perdue, Jr., et al., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976. 37. Governor Barbour to the Senate and House of Delegates, 30 November 1812, Reel 12, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 38. Governor Barbour to Senate, 19 May 1813, Reel 12, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 39. Governor Barbour to Mayor Crutchfield, 7 July 1813, Reel 12, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 40. Charles B. Mallory to Sheriff, Beckley County, 23 October 1813, Reel 12, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 41. Governor Barbour to Senate and House of Delegates, 6 December 1813, Reel 13, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 42. Governor Barbour to Secretary of War, 19 July 1814, Reel 13, Executive Letter Book of Governor of Virginia. 43. Governor Simon Snyder to Senate and House of Representatives, 10 December 1813, Record Group 26, Series 9, Volume 8, Executive Minute Books, Pennsylvania State Archives– Harrisburg. See also “Memo of Occurrences When the Enemy Entered and [Burned] the Capitol,” War of 1812. Uselma Clarke Collection, William Jones Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania–Philadelphia. 44. Governor Simon Snyder to “The General Committee of Defense,” 8 September 1814, Record Group 26, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Executive Correspondence, Roll 11, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. See also Major Mordecai Myers, Reminiscences 1780 to 1814, Including Incidents in the War of 1812-–, Washington, D.C.: Crane, 1900. 45. Martha Putney, “The Slave Trade in French Diplomacy, from 1814 to 1815,” Journal of Negro History, 60 (Number 3, July 1975): 411–427. 250

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46. Governor James Cockburn to Legislative Council, date unclear, circa 1814, Minutes of Legislative Council–Bermuda Archives, Hamilton. 47. Norman McRae, “Blacks in Detroit, 1736–1833,” 102. 48. Report, 1814, ADM101/96/6, NAUK. At the same site, see also West India Regiments, 1812–1813, WO12/11246, NAUK. 49. Gary Hart, James Monroe, New York: Times Books, 2005, 65. 50. Allen P. Stouffer, The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992, 12. See also John N. Grant, The Maroons in Nova Scotia, Halifax: Formac, 2002. 51. Robert S. Allen, His Majesty’s Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774–1815, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992, 120. See also Ernest Cawcroft, “The American Invasion of Canada,” no date, NWP 972 C383, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 52. William Hodge, “A Buffalo Boy of 1813: His Recollections of the War of 1812 and the Burning of Buffalo,” Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, 9 (1906): 349–359, 349. See also British Materials on the War of 1812, Microfilm Reel 3172, Roll 188, Volume 679, RG 8, Series C, Library and Archives of Canada–Ottawa. See also “Memoir of the Campaign on the Niagara,” 1814, Duke University. On the importance to Canada of alliance with indigenes which saved this vast land from being swallowed by its neighbor, see, e.g., John C. Parish, ed., The Robert Lucas Journal of the War of 1812 during the Campaign under General William Hull, Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1906; Fred Hamil, Michigan in the War of 1812, Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1960; Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 or the History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain, New York: Putnam’s, 1907; John Brannan, ed., Official Letters of the Military and Naval Officers of the United States during the War with Great Britain in the Years 1812, 1813, 1814 & 1815, Washington City: Way & Gideon, 1823. 53. Edward Coles to Thomas Jefferson, 31 July 1814, Edward Coles Papers, College of William and Mary. 54. See “Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams, Late President of the United States and the Late William Cunningham, Esq., Beginning in 1803 and Ending in 1812,” Boston: E.M. Cunningham, 1823, University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. See also Richard Lee Archer, “New England Federalism and the Hartford Convention,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California–Santa Barbara, 1968; Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970. 55. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen, 111. See also Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States, Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1812. See also “Report. Or Manifesto of the Causes and Reasons of War with Great Britain, Presented to the House of Representatives by the Committee on Foreign Relations,” 3 June 1813, “Read and Ordered to Lie on the Table,” Washington: A & G. Way, 1812, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 56. J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland, Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties from the Earliest Period to the Present Day, Volume I, Baltimore: Regional, 1968 [originally published 1882], 184. 57. House of Delegates of Maryland to President Madison, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 3 February 1814, in ibid., House Select Committee Making Inquiry into the Success of the Enemy . . .Committee on Military Affairs, Sen 13A-G3.

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58. Lawrence J. Burpee, “Influence of the War of 1812 upon the Settlement of the Canadian West,” NWP 971 b967i, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. See also T. W. Paterson, Canadian Battles and Massacres: 300 Years of Warfare and Atrocities on Canadian Soil, Langley, British Columbia: Stagecoach, 1977. 59. William Gilpin to Lord Castlereagh, 20 August 1812, FO5/89/71, NAUK. 60. Daniel G. Hill, The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada, Agincourt, Canada: Book Society of Canada, 1981, 18. See also Robin Winks, Blacks in Canada: A History, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. On the simmering conflict between London and Washington that implicated Canada, see, e.g., “Documents Accompanying the Message of the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress at the Commencement of the Third Session of the Eleventh Congress,” 5 December 1810, Washington: A and G. Way, 1810, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 61. William Dunlop, Recollections of the War of 1812, Toronto: Historical Publishers, 1908, 19. 62. Michael Power and Nancy Butler, Slavery and Freedom in Niagara, Niagara-on-theLake, Ontario: Niagara Historical Society, 1993, 44. See also Billy D. Higgins, A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum America, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 14. 63. Charles Carroll to Charles Carroll, Jr., 26 August 1814, Carroll Collection. 64. Adjutant P. M. Davis, “The Four Principal Battles of the Late War. Being a Full Detailed Account,” Harrisburg: Baab, 1832, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. 65. Paul A. Gilje, “’Le Menu Peuple’ in America: Identifying the Mob in the Baltimore Riots of 1812,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 81 (Number 1, Spring 1986): 50–66, 50. See also “Interesting Papers Relative to the Recent Riots at Baltimore,” Philadelphia, 1812, John Hopkins University (this document can also be found at the New York Historical Society). 66. Richard Chew, “The Origins of Mob Town: Social Division and Racial Conflict in the Baltimore Riots of 1812,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 104 (Number 3, Fall 2009): 272–301, 282. 67. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane to First Lord of the Admiralty Viscount Robert Saunders Dundas Melville, 17 July 1814, in Michael J. Crawford, ed., The Naval War of 1812, 133. See also Letter from Simon Snyder, 10 December 1814, in Gertrude Mackinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Ninth Series, Volume 6, 1814–1818, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. 68. Memorandum, 21 February 1813, MF3.3, Reel 3, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Maritime Museum–Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection. 69. “Interesting Papers Relative to the Recent Riots at Baltimore,” Philadelphia, 1812, John Hopkins University. 70. Letter from Simon Snyder, 10 December 1814, in Gertrude Mackinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, Ninth Series, Volume 6, 1814–1818, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. 71. See, e.g., Sarah McCulloch Lemmon, North Carolina and the War of 1812, Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1971. 72. J. A. Cameron to William Hawkins, 22 May 1812, Letterbook of Governor William Hawkins North Carolina State Archives–Raleigh. 73. General Thomas Love to William Hawkins, 15 June 1812, Letterbook of Governor William Hawkins. 252

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74. Dan Carthy et al. to William Hawkins, 10 November 1813, Letterbook of Governor William Hawkins. 75. Rob Cochran to William Hawkins, 28 May 1814, Letterbook of Governor William Hawkins. 76. Rob Carthy, President of Committee of Safety, Wilmington, to William Hawkins, 8 September 1814, North Carolina State Archives. 77. Letter to Benjamin Moodie, 20 March 1812, FO5/89/58, NAUK. 78. Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansionism, New York: Knopf, 2008, 120. 79. Frank I. Owsley, Jr., “British and Indian Activities in Spanish West Florida during the War of 1812,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 46 (Number 2, October 1967): 111–123, 112, 117, 118, 119. See also Nathaniel Millett, “Britain’s 1814 Occupation of Pensacola and America’s Response: An Episode of the War of 1812 in the Southeastern Borderlands,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 84 (Number 2, Fall 2005: 229–252; Cecilia Gaines, “’When the British Want War’: ‘Mangy Dogs’ and Runaway Slaves in the Fall of 1812,” 1992, University of West Florida–Pensacola. 80. Report to Andrew Jackson, 9 November 1814, in John Spencer Bassett and Sidney Bradshaw Fay, eds., Major Howell Tatum’s Journal While Acting Topographical Engineer (1814), Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College Studies in History, 7 (Numbers 1–3, October 1921–April 1922): 5-138, 82, New Orleans Public Library. See also Sir Alexander Cochrane to Chiefs of Indian Nations, 1 July 1814, Reel 19, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company, University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. Robert B. McAfee, History of the Late War in Western Country, Lexington, Kentucky: Worsley & Smith, 1816. 81. Arsene Lacarriere Latour, Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814–1815, edited by Gene A. Smith, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999, 136, 137, 148, 29, 45. See also Stanley Clisby Arthur, The Story of the West Florida Rebellion, St. Francisville Democrat, 1935, University of Texas–Austin. See also Proclamation from Sir Alexander Cochrane, 5 December 1814, New York Historical Society. H. S. Halberd and T. H. Ball, The Creek War of 1813 and 1814, Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1895. 82. N. Floyd McGowin, “Some Aspects of Waning British Influence in the Middle Gulf Region,” Alabama Review, 9 (Number 3, July 1956): 163–175, 163. 83. Richard S. Lackey, compiler, Frontier Claims in the Lower South: Records of Claims Filed by Citizens of the Alabama and Tombigbee River Settlements in the Mississippi Territory for Depredations by the Creek Indians during the War of 1812, New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977, xi, 43. 84. Frank Owsley, “The Fort Mims Massacre,” Alabama Review, 24 (Number 3, July 1971): 192–204, 202. See also Eron Rowland, Andrew Jackson’s Campaign against the British or the Mississippi Territory in the War of 1812: Concerning the Military Operations of the Americans, Creek Indians, British, and Spanish, 1813–1815, New York: Macmillan, 1926, 104–105: The Fort Mims Massacre, it is said, contrary to the record but consistent with wishful thinking, displayed “the Negro Hester’s devotion to the white race” while “the red race of America was at all times slow to receive civilization of any nature.” But note: according to another account, an enslaved African brought warning of the impending massacre but was disbelieved and whipped. Henry Trumbull, History of the Discovery of America: Of the Landing of Our Forefathers at Plymouth and of Their Most Remarkable Engagements with the Indians in New England from Their First Landing in 1620,

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until the Final Subjugation of the Natives in 1679. To Which Is Annexed the Particulars of Almost Every Important Engagement with the Savages at the Westward to the Present Day. Including the Defeat of Generals Braddock, Harmer, and St. Clair by the Indians at the Westward; the Creek and Seminole War, Boston: George Clark, 1835, 191. This point is echoed elsewhere. See Albert James Pickett, History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the Earliest Period, Charleston: Walker and James, 1851, Volume II, 269. 85. Andrew Jackson to Thomas Pinckney, 16 November 1814, University of West Florida– Pensacola. See also Lois Virginia Meacham Gould, “In Enjoyment of Their Liberty: The Free Women of Color of the Gulf Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, 1769– 1860,” Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 1991. 86. Sir Alexander Cochrane to Mateo Gonzalez Manrique, 5 December 1814, Reel 19, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company. 87. Sebastian Kindeland to George Cockburn, January 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company. 88. A Narrative of the Life and Death of Lieut. Joseph Morgan Willcox Who Was Massacred by the Creek Indians on the Alabama River (Miss. Ter.) on the 13th of January 1814 Compiled from Various Publications and Letters Written by His Friends and Brother Officers, on the Occasion, Marietta, Ohio: Prentiss, 1816, 5, University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa. 89. Niles Weekly Register, 17 October 1812. 90. Niles Weekly Register, 14 October 1812. See also Tommy R. Young II, “The United States Army and the Institution of Slavery in Louisiana, 1803–1813,” Louisiana Studies, 13 (Number 3, Fall 1974): 201–222, 210. 91. Letter from W. C. Claiborne, 24 October 1814, Records of the City Council, Letters, Petitions, and/or Decrees, City of New Orleans, #599, New Orleans Public Library. See also Charles Patton, Chalmette: The Battle for New Orleans and How the British Nearly Stole the Louisiana Territory, Bowling Green, Kentucky: Hickory Tales, 2001; Robin Reilly, The British at the Gates: The New Orleans Campaign in the War of 1812, New York: Putnam, 1974; Major P. M. Davis, An Official and Full Detail of the Great Battle of New Orleans Which Closed the Late War with Great Britain and Her Dependencies, New York: The Proprietor, 1836. 92. General Robert McAfee, History of the Late War in the Western Country, Lexington: Worsley & Smith, 1816, 493. See also Charles Gordon Atherton, “An Oration Delivered on the Fourteenth Anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans at Goffstown, January 8, 1829,” Concord: Sherburne, 1829, Tulane University. 93. Harry Smith, Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America, Grand Rapids: West Michigan Printing, 1891, 15. 94. Letter from Chandler Price, 27 February 1814, Historical Society of Pennsylvania–Philadelphia. 95. Robert Remini, ed., “Andrew Jackson’s Account of the Battle of New Orleans,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 26 (Spring–Winter 1967): 23–42, 34. 96. “Gen. Jackson’s Proclamation. Headquarters, Seventh Military District, Mobile, September 21, 1814,” University of Maryland–College Park. 97. Narrative of James Roberts, Box 7, Mildred Stock Papers, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. See also George Coggeshall, History of the American Privateers and Letters-of-Marque during Our War with England in the Years 1812, ’13, and ’14, Interspersed 254

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with Several Naval Battles between American and British Ships-of-War, New York: Evans, 1856. A U.S. officer landed his vessel in France at “I’lle Dieu” and asserted, “I took with me as one of the boat’s crew, the large black man, Philip. I was astonished to see the curiosity expressed here at the sight of a Negro. He was followed at every step by a crowd of men, women and children ... and I soon received a pressing message from the Governor’s lady to see him.” The Negro, tiring of being gawked at, asked to leave and the officer then put an indigene on display, “but to my surprise there appeared but little curiosity on the part of the inhabitants to see the savage.” 98. Jeremiah Asher, Incidents in the Life of the Rev. J. Asher, Pastor of Shiloh (Coloured) Baptist Church, Philadelphia, U.S. and a Concluding Chapter of Facts Illustrating the Unrighteous Prejudice Existing in the Minds of American Citizens Toward Their Coloured Brethren with an Introduction by Wilson Armistead, Esq., London: Gilpin, 1850, 18. 99. Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1969, 11. 100. Matthew Warshauer, Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law: Nationalism, Civil Liberties, and Partisanship, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006, 31.

C ha p t e r 5 1. Remembrances of Eliza Chotard Gould, 1814 (written 17 September 1868), Tulane University. See also Andrew Jackson, “Report on the Battle of New Orleans,” 1815, New Orleans Public Library. 2. Letter from James Moore, circa 1812, Hutchison Family Papers, University of South Carolina. 3. Letter from James Moore, 28 August 1814, Hutchison Family Papers. See also Hugh F. Rankin, ed., The Battle of New Orleans: A British View, the Journal of Major C. R. Forrest, New Orleans: Hauser Press, 1961. 4. Common Routes: St. Domingue, Louisiana, New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2006, 8, 112. See also Joseph B. Cobb, The Creole: Or Siege of New Orleans. An Historical Romance Founded on the Events of 1814–1815, Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1850. 5. Carson I. A. Ritchie, “The Louisiana Campaign,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 44 (Numbers 1 and 2, January–April 1961): 13–103, 91. See also Valerie McNair Scott, Lady Peckenham, Major-General Sir Edward M. Pakenham, New Orleans: Battle of New Orleans, 150th Anniversary Committee of Louisiana, 1965. 6. Benson Earle Hall, Recollections of an Artillery Officer: Including Scenes and Adventures in Ireland, America, Flanders, and France, London: Bentley, 1836, 318. See also “The Battle of New Orleans: A British View, the Journal of Major C. R. Forrest, Assistant Quarter Master General, 34th Regiment of Foot,” New Orleans: Hauser Press, 1961, American Antiquarian Society. A version of this document can also be found at the New Orleans Public Library. 7. Captain John Henry Cooke, A Narrative of Events in the South of France and the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815, London: Boone, 1835, 279. See also Alexander Walker, Jackson and New Orleans. An Authentic Narrative of the Memorable Achievements of the American Army under Andrew Jackson, before New Orleans in the Winter of 1814, ’15, New York: Derby, 1856.

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8. Junius P. Rodriguez, “Always ‘En Garde’: The Effects of Slave Insurrection upon the Louisiana Mentality, 1811–1815, ” Louisiana History, 33 (Number 4, Fall 1992): 399–416, 410. 9. A. La Neuville to Jacque Philippe Villere, 12 September 1813, Folder 1, Jacques Philippe Villere Papers, Williams Research Center–Historic New Orleans Collection. See also Sidney Louis Villere, Jacques Philippe Villere: First Native Born Governor of Louisiana, 1816–1820, New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 1981. 10. Letter to Adjutant General, 1 October 1813, Folder 2, Jacques Philippe Villere Papers. 11. Letter to Adjutant General, 12 August 1814, Folder 7, Jacques Philippe Villere Papers. In the same collection, see also J. Toutant to Jacques Philippe Villere, circa 1814, Folder 17, and Letter to Mr. Elig, 19 October 1814, Folder 20. At the same site, see also Letter from Andrew Jackson, 15 April 1816, Folder 17 (and prefatory material in same collection), SteGeme Family Papers. 12. J. Toutant to Jacques Philippe Villere, circa 1814, Folder 17, and Letter to Mr. Elig, 19 October 1814, Folder 20, Jacques Philippe Villere Papers. 13. See letter from Andrew Jackson, 15 April 1816, Folder 17 (and prefatory material in same collection), Ste-Geme Family Papers, Williams Research Center. 14. Isidro A. Beluche Mora, “Privateers of Cartagena,” 1957, 83, New Orleans Public Library. See also Stanley Faye, Privateers of the Gulf, 1803–1820, Hemphill, Texas: Dogwood Press, 2001. 15. Albert Thrasher, On to New Orleans! Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt, New Orleans: Cypress Press, 1995, 74, 75, 78, 283. See also Louisiana Courier, 18 November 1814. 16. Junius Peter Rodriguez, “Ripe for Revolt: Louisiana and the Tradition of Slave Insurrection, 1803–1865,” Ph.D. dissertation, Auburn University, 1992, v, 4, 24, 40, 52, 113. 17. Sir James Yeo to First Lord of the Admiralty, 19 February 1813, Edward Parsons Collection, University of Texas–Austin. 18. Daniel E. Walker, No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 19. Gerard Altoff, Amongst My Best Men, 149, 165. 20. James Ewart’s Journal, Cape Town: Struik, 1970, 116, 119. On these regiments, see, e.g., Reports, 1812–1813, WO12/11246, NAUK. 21. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 173. See also Roger Norman Buckley, Slaves in Redcoats, 179. On Jamaica as an embarkation point, see Memorandum, 5 November 1814, MF 4.1, Reel 7, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Library of Scotland, Alexander Cochrane Papers–Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection. 22. Diary of Benjamin Story, December 1814, Tulane University. At the same site, see also Vertical File, Battle of New Orleans, “Copied from Record in Louisiana State Museum Library,” copy of a manuscript belonging to J. H. Pelletier, 1909: “Colored Battalion of St. Domingo . . .made up of 260 men” at the 1815 battle. 23. Memorandum from Sir Edward Pakenham, 7 January 1815, MF3.3, Reel 3, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Maritime Museum, Historic New Orleans Collection. 24. John K. Mahon, “British Command Decisions Relative to the Battle of New Orleans,” Louisiana History, 6 (Number 1, Winter 1965): 53–76, 53. 25. Boston Patriot, 14 December 1814. 256

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26. “Speech of the Hon. Richard Stockton Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States on the 10th December 1814 on a Bill to Authorize the President of the United States to Call upon the Several States and Territories Thereof for Their Respective Quotas of Eighty Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty Militia for the Defence of the Frontiers of the United States against Invasion,” Georgetown: Richards & Mallory, 1814, Schomburg Center–New York Public Library. 27. Gene A. Smith, ed., A British Eyewitness at the Battle of New Orleans: The Memoir of Royal Navy Admiral Robert Aitchison, 1808–1827, New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection Press, 2004, 86. On the cold weather in New Orleans, see also Admiral Henry Hotham to Sir Alexander Cochrane, 14 February 1815, MF3.3, Reel 3, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents. See also Captain John Henry Cooke, A Narrative of Events in the South of France and of the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815, London: Boone, 1835. See also Alexander Walker, Jackson and New Orleans, an Authentic Narrative of the Memorable Achievements of the American Army, under Andrew Jackson before New Orleans in the Winter of 1814, ’15, New York: Derby, 1856, 356. 28. Alexander Dickson, “Journal of Operations in Louisiana, 1814 and 1815,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 44 (Numbers 3 and 4, July–October 1961): 1–110, 19. 29. Sir James Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 17 February 1815, CO37/73, NAUK. 30. Sir James Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 17 February 1815, CO37/73, NAUK. 31. The National Era, 17 July 1851. 32. William J. Brown, The Life of William J. Brown of Providence, Rhode Island with Personal Recollections of Incidents in Rhode Island, Providence: Angell, 1883, 174. 33. Governor James Cockburn to Legislative Council, 3 March 1815, Minutes of Legislative Council, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 34. Captain John Henry Cooke, A Narrative of Events in the South of France and the Attack on New Orleans in 1814 and 1815, London: Boone, 1835, 279. See also Alexander Walker, Jackson and New Orleans. An Authentic Narrative of the Memorable Achievements of the American Army under Andrew Jackson, before New Orleans in the Winter of 1814, ’15, New York: Derby, 1856. 35. Deposition of Samuel Chew, 9 May 1813, Maryland Historical Society. See also “American Prisoner from Barbados. American Captives at Barbados or Celebration of the 4th of July on Board an English Prison Ship,” Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1813, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts; U.S. Congress. House of Representatives, “Barbarities of the Enemy Exposed in a Report  . . . and the Documents Accompanying Said Report,” 1813, Maryland Historical Society. See also Minutes of Magistrates & Public Meeting, 21 August 1812, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 36. G. Bayley to Lavinia Bayley, 24 August circa 1813, Maryland Historical Society–Baltimore. See also Charles Calvert Egerton, The Journal of an Unfortunate Prisoner on Board the British Ship Loyalist in Jamaica, Baltimore: The Author, 1813, University of Michigan– Ann Arbor. In similar vein, see also “Log of Jeduthon Upton, Jr., Captain of the Privateer ‘Polly,’” circa 1814, University of West Florida. 37. Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed., The Yarn of a Yankee Privateer, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1926, 1. 38. Lord Palmerston to Brevet Major Wingfield, 8th West India Regiment, 4 March 1812, in “Further Papers Relating to Captured Negroes Enlisted, and to the Recruiting of Negro Soldiers in Africa for the West India Regiments, House of Commons, 30 July 1814,”

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Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. See also “Journal of the House of Assembly of the Bahamas,” 23 November 1814, Department of Archives–Nassau; See also “The Humble Petition of Thomas Bradley, Esq., Formerly the Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd West India Regiment, to the Honorable Commons of Great Britain and Ireland in the Parliament Assembled 1825,” Tulane University. 39. John Grant, “The 1821 Emigration of Black Nova Scotians to Trinidad,” Nova Scotia Historical Quarterly, 2 (Number 3, 1972): 283–292. See also John C. Fredriksen, ed., War of 1812: Eyewitness Accounts, An Annotated Bibliography, Westport: Greenwood, 1997. 40. Cyril Outerbridge Packwood, Chained on the Rock: Slavery in Bermuda, 52. 41. Arthur Raymond Kooker, “The Antislavery Movement in Michigan, 1796–1840: A Study in Humanitarianism on an American Frontier,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1941, 49. 42. Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860, 88. For an exemplar of a Canadian screed quite hostile to the U.S., see, e.g., William F. Coffin, 1812: The War and Its Moral: A Canadian Chronicle, Montreal: Lovell, 1864. 43. “Printed Journals, House of Assembly,” 13 August 1813, Bermuda Archives–Hamilton. 44. Remarks on the Insurrection in Barbados. And the Bill for the Registration of Slaves, London: Ellerton, 1816, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. 45. Sara Connors Fanning, “Haiti and the U.S.: African American Emigration and the Recognition Debate,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 2008, 69. 46. “Printed Journals, House of Assembly,” 6 August 1819 and 12 November 1819, Bermuda Archives. 47. “Printed Journals, House of Assembly,” 30 June 1823, Bermuda Archives. 48. Captain G. R. Pechell, A Visit to the Capital and Chief Ports of the Isle of St. Domingo in 1821, in One of His Majesty’s Ships: Being a Sketch of What Has Occurred since the Death of King Christophe and of the Present State of Affairs under the Government of President Boyer, Portsmouth: Motley and Harrison, 1824, iii, 7, 9, 19, 23, 24, 29. See also Amicus Mundi, Defence of the Colonies; With Remarks on the French District of St. Domingo, and Other Political References, London: AM, 1816. 49. “The Trial of Governor T[homas] Picton for Inflicting the Torture on Louisa Calderon, a Free Mulatto and One of His Britannic Majesty’s Subjects in the Island of Trinidad, Tried before Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough and a Special Jury and Found Guilty. Taken in Short Hand during the Proceedings on the 24th of February 1806,” London: Dwick & Clarke, 1806, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library. See also Memoirs of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton ... Including His Correspondence, London: Bentley, 1835. 50. Letter to Thomas Barker, 27 July 1802, ADM97/128/, NAUK. 51. However, note this reference in a U.S. newspaper: The National Era, 13 March 1851: After the war, “a number of runaway slaves were received on board of British vessels of war on the coast” and “of those who were sent to Bermuda, a body of fine men entered the British service and were formed by Admiral Cockburn into a battalion of royal marines.” Others moved to Trinidad “where lands were given them and where  . . . they also became comfortably situated.” 52. George Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 10 February 1816, CO37/74/9, NAUK. 53. From Royal Mariners to Sir James Cockburn, August 1815, CO37/73/58, NAUK. 258

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54. George Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 7 July 1816, FO881/1362/42, NAUK. For more on this controversy, at the same site, see also CO37/74/46. See also Memorandum to George Harsford, Bermuda, 14 August 1814, MF4.1, Reel, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Library of Scotland, Alexander Cochrane Papers, Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection: on Reel 7 of this collection, see the copious documentation denying and refuting allegations of U.S. Negroes being sold into slavery by the British. 55. G. Aunchinleck, The War of 1812, 356. But see Report by James Monroe, 28 December 1815, 1990 S 5.13, Yale University: “Proof of any traffic carried on in the West Indies by the sale of Negroes taken from the United States by the British forces since the war  . . . such proof was transmitted to the executive by the Hon. St. George Tucker, in the form of an affidavit of Captain Williams, from which it appeared that he had been a prisoner in Bahama [sic] islands and that whilst there he had been present at the sale of Negroes taken from the vicinity of Norfolk and Hampton.” See also “Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting a Report from the Acting Secretary of State in Compliance with a Resolution of Twenty-Fourth Last, Requesting the President of the United States to Lay before the Senate  . . . the Proof of Any Traffic Carried on in the West Indies, by the Sale of Negroes, Taken from the United States by the British Forces since the Present War,” 2 March 1815, Washington City, 1815, University of South Carolina. 56. Letter from William Smith, 29 November 1816, T1/4323, NAUK. 57. See, e.g., Earl of Bathurst to Sir Alexander Cochrane, 26 October 1814, MF4.1, Reel 1, Louisiana and War of 1812 Related Documents from the National Library of Scotland, Alexander Cochrane Papers, Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection. 58. John McNish Weiss, “Free Black American Settlers in Trinidad, 1815–1816,” London: McNish & Weiss, 1995, 1, 7, 8, 11, National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, Port-of-Spain. 59. Governor Ralph Woodford to the Earl of Bathurst, 6 June 1815, Dispatches from Governor, Trinidad, National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, Port-of-Spain. 60. Governor Ralph Woodford to the Earl of Bathurst, 5 August 1815, Dispatches from Governor, Trinidad. 61. Governor Ralph Woodford to Earl of Bathurst, 28 August 1816, Dispatches from Governor, Trinidad. 62. Governor Ralph Woodford to Earl of Bathurst, date unclear, circa 1815, Dispatches from Governor, Trinidad. 63. Governor Ralph Woodford to Earl of Bathurst, 10 November 1816, Dispatches from Governor, Trinidad. 64. John Milton Hackshaw, The Company Villages: A Brief History, Diamondville, Diego Martin, Trinidad: Pan Caribbean Research Institute, 1999, 9. 65. Governor Ralph Woodford to Earl of Bathurst, 31 July 1817, T1/4323, NAUK. 66. Letter from Ralph Woodford, 5 May 1818, T1/4323, NAUK. See also A Statistical, Commercial, and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita, and Tobago: Containing Various Anecdotes and Observations  . . .from the French of M. Lavaysse, London: Whittaker, 1820, Cleveland Public Library. 67. Michael Anthony, Anaparima: The History of San Fernando and the Naparimas, Volume I, 1595–1900, San Fernando, Trinidad & Tobago: San Fernando, 2001, 11. 68. “An Address to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies Relative to the Claims Which the Coloured Population of Trinidad

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Have to Same Civil and Social Privileges with Their White Fellow-Subjects. By a Free Mulatta,” London, 1824, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also “Free Labourers and Manumitted Slaves, Trinidad, Return to an Address of the Honourable House of Commons, Dated 3rd June 1829  . . . Colonial Department  . . . Printed via House of Commons, 12 June 1829.” 69. “Andres” de Aranjo to “Member of the British Parliament,” circa May 1822 (no date), CO385/1/107, NAUK. 70. William Hardin Burnley, Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad, and the Actual State of the Experiment of Negro Emancipation, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1842, 20, 21. 71. The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies; or an Enquiry into the Objects and Probable Objects on the French Expedition to the West Indies and Their Connection with the Colonial Interests of the British Empire. To Which Are Subjoined, Sketches of Plan for Settling the Vacant Lands of Trinidad [sic]. In Four Letters to the Right Hon. Henry Addington, Chancellor of the Exchequer, London: Hatchard, 1802, 68, 80, 86, 113, 114, 122, 154–155, 195, 197, Schomburg Center. 72. The Baron de Vastey, Political Remarks on Some French Works and Newspapers, Concerning Hayti, London: King’s Printing Office, 1818, 17, 30. See also David Barry Gaspar and David Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. 73. W. W. Harvey, Sketches of Hayti; From the Expulsion of the French to the Death of Christophe, London, 1827, Tulane University. See also James Franklin, The Present State of Hayti (Saint Domingo), London: Murray, 1828; Jonathan Brown, The History of and Present Condition of St. Domingo, Philadelphia: Marshall, 1837. 74. Thomas McKenney, “Reply to Kosciusko Armstrong’s Assault upon Col. M. C. Kenney’s Narrative of the Causes that Led to General Armstrong’s Resignation of the Office of Secretary of War in 1814,” New York: Graham, 1847. Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. At the same site, see also “Remarks on a Pamphlet Entitled ‘An Enquiry Respecting the Capture of Washington by the British, on the 24th of August 1814  . . . by Spectator,” Baltimore: Robinson, 1816. 75. Adam Hodgson, Remarks during a Journey through North America in the Years 1819, 1820, and 1821 in a Series of Letters, New York: Whiting, 1823, 190, 102. See also James Flint, Letters from America Containing Observations on the Climate and Agriculture of the Western States, the Manners of the People, the Prospects of Emigrants, etc., Edinburgh: W & C. Tait, 1822; James A. Bear, Jr., ed., Jefferson at Monticello: Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967. 76. Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America Written during a Tour in the United States and Canada, London: Hurst, Robinson, 1824, 247–248. See also Adlard Welby, A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois with a Winter Residence at Philadelphia, London: Drury, 1821. See also A British Traveller, The Colonial Policy of Great Britain, Considered in Relation to Her North American Provinces and West India Possessions; Wherein the Dangerous Tendency of American Competition Is Developed  . . . and Strictures on the Treaty of Ghent, Philadelphia: Carey, 1816, 25, 29. 77. William Archibald Dunning, The British Empire and the United States: A Review of Their Relations during the Century of Peace following the Treaty of Ghent, New York: Scribner’s, 1914. 260

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78. Report by James Buchanan, Consul in New York, 1 February 1819, FO5/144/41, NAUK. 79. John Dougan to “The Prince Regent,” 13 March 1816, FO50/213 and PC1/4111, NAUK. 80. Sir Alexander Cochrane to Treasury, 30 March 1816, PC1/4109, NAUK. 81. James Monroe to Andrew Jackson, 5 February 1815, MSS 3930, University of Virginia. See also “Speech of Robert G. Harper, Esq. at the Celebration of the Russian Victories at Georgetown, Columbia, on the 5th of June 1813,” Baltimore, 1813, Tulane University. See also M. De Pradt, The Congress of Vienna, Philadelphia: Carey, 1816, 114–115. 82. Sir Alexander Cochrane to Mateo Gonzalez Manrique, 10 February 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company. 83. Benjamin Hawkins, Amelia Island, to Edward Nicolls, 12 June 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie. 84. John Powers, Dauphin Island, to Andrew Jackson, 30 March 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie. 85. Notes on John Innerarity, no date, Box 1, James K. Polk Papers, University of West Florida. On a family with a similar background, see Beth Bland Engel, The Middleton Family (Including Myddelton and Myddleton): Records from Wales, England, Barbados, and the Southern United States, Jesup Sentinel, 1972 (no city or nation), Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. 86. Draft of Document “Respecting the Deportation of Slaves,” 26 September 1853, Box 2, Folder 9, Innerarity–Hulse Papers, University of West Florida Papers. 87. Deposition by Jacques Villere, 17 May 1821, MS199, Slave Evaluation Report, Williams Research Center–Historic New Orleans Collection. See also U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 14th Congress, 2nds Session, No. 345, “Indemnity for Waste on Villiers’ Plantation during the Defence of New Orleans in 1814 and 1815,” 3 February 1817, Columbia University. 88. Ibid., Supporting Deposition by Bernard Marigny, 19 May 1821, MS199. 89. Ibid., Deposition by Pierre Denis De Laronde, 4 June 1821, MS 199. 90. Jon Latimer, 1812, 403. 91. Daniel Meaders, ed., Advertisements for Runaway Slaves in Virginia, 1801–1820, New York: Garland, 1997, 169–263 (given that the entire book is only 329 pages, that almost one hundred pages is devoted to the 1812–1815 period is telling). 92. David Thomas, Greatfield, New York, to Gerrit Smith, 29 May 1854, Gerrit Smith Papers–Syracuse University. 93. See Kent County Recorder of Deeds, Manumissions, 1767–1865, Delaware Public Archives–Dover. 94. See Manumission Records, C-109-2, 1807–1816, Anne Arundel County Court Manumission Records, Maryland State Archives–Annapolis. 95. The First Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States; and the Proceedings of the Society at Their Annual Meeting in the City of Washington on the First Day of January 1818, Washington City: Rapine, 1818, University of South Carolina. 96. Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, 28. 97. Nicholas Guyatt, “’The Outskirts of Our Happiness’: Race and the Lure of Colonization in the Early Republic,” Journal of American History, 95 (Number 4, March 2009): 986–1011.

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98. Sara Connors Fanning, “Haiti and the U.S.,” 1, 22, 42. See also Peter Wheeler, Chains and Freedom: Of the Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living, New York: E.S. Arnold, 1839, 20. Born a slave in 1789 in New Jersey, he became a sailor who visited Bristol in Britain, Guadeloupe—and Haiti. 99. T. K. Hunter, “Publishing Freedom, Winning Arguments: ‘Somerset,’ Natural Rights and Massachusetts Freedom Cases, 1772–1836,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2005, 235. See also “General Address to the Freemen of New Hampshire or the General Government and the Leaders of the New England Opposition Contrasted,” 1816, Detroit Public Library: The Federalists, more friendly to London and thus favored by free Negroes, also tended to decline in the aftermath of the war, which impacted the trajectory of free Negroes particularly. 100. Jacqueline Bacon, Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington, 2007, 37, 231. See also Chris Dixon, African Americans and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century, Westport: Greenwood, 2000. 101. Walter Holladay and James M. Bell to the Governor, 1 March 1815, in ibid., H. W. Flournoy, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 433–436. 102. R. Blanding to “My Dear Cousin,” 4 July 1816, William Blanding Papers, University of South Carolina. 103. R. Blanding to Cousin, 25 July 1816, William Blanding Papers. 104. James A. Bayard to C. A. Rodney, 28 October 1814, Military Records, Volume V, Part 2, 805, Delaware Public Archives–Dover. 105. U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 19th Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 122. Commissioners under the Ghent Treaty. Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the Information Required by a Resolution  . . . Relating to the Proceedings of the Joint Commission on Indemnities. Due under the Award of the Emperor of Russia, for Slaves and Other Private Property Carried Away by the British Forces in Violation of the Treaty of Ghent, March 8, 1826. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1826, Schomburg Center. See also Convention, Final Settlement of Claims Arising from Article I of the Treaty of Ghent, Signed at London by U.S. and U.K., 19 November 1826, FO93/8/13, NAUK. 106. U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 20th Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 190. Slaves Captured in the Late War. Memorial of August Neale, Agent for Claimants, before the Commissioners to Award Indemnity for Slaves, and Other Property, under the Treaty of Ghent. March 10, 1828. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1828, Schomburg Center. See also Report on Compensation Paid by Britain for Slaves Removed from U.S., circa 1822, FO84/1437, NAUK. 107. Richard Rush, Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, Philadelphia: Key and Biddle, 1833, 57. 108. “Russia and U.S. Convention, 1st Article on the Treaty of Ghent of 24th December 1814, Signed at Petersburg, 30 June–12 July 1822,” FO93/8/11, NAUK. For claims for the state of Georgia against Britain, see Report, 1815–1821, PC4/4111, NAUK. At the same site, see also Report on Arbitration by Russia between Great Britain and the United States, 10 January 1823, FO94/7, NAUK. 109. Accord, 6 February 1827, FO94/8, NAUK. See also “Documents Furnished by the British Government under the Third Article of the Convention of St. Petersburg of 30 June–12 July 1822,” Washington, 1827, New York Historical Society 262

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110. “Treaties between Great Britain and the United States,” Treaty of Ghent, 24 December 1814, FO881/2291, NAUK. See also Andrew Mitchell, “The Second Crisis of American or a Cursory View of the Peace Concluded between Great Britain and the United States, by a Citizen of Philadelphia,” New York, 1815, New York Historical Society. 111. Jerome Reich, “The Slave Trade at the Congress of Vienna—A Study in English Public Opinion,” Journal of Negro History, 53 (Number 2, April 1968): 129–143. Decades later, Virginians remained outraged at British actions. See Minutes, 17 March 1854, Society of Soldiers of the War of 1812, Virginia Second District, Record Book, Virginia State Library– Richmond: “[T]hat war was waged [by] our enemy with a fierce and vindictive spirit,” using “a system of predatory warfare on our seaboard.” Like veterans of the recently concluded war against Mexico, they now demanded “full bounty of one hundred and sixty acres of land,” which, if granted, would come at the expense of indigenes. 112. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 51, 96. See also Depositions, circa 1815, Box 1 and Box 778, Record Group 48, List of Depositions Related to Slaves and Other Property Plundered by the Enemy during the Late War, 1812–Virginia State Library: The departing Africans were often described as strong and strapping.

C ha p t e r 6 1. Richard Rush, Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, Philadelphia: Key and Biddle, 1833. See also U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 16th Congress, 1st Session, No. 496, “Slave Killed in Military Service,” 31 December 1819, Columbia University. 2. C. Edward Skeen, Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. 3. Marion Gleason McDougall, Fugitive Slaves (1619–1865), Boston: Ginn, 1891, 25. Jackson denied that he had exceeded his brief in Florida. See Andrew Jackson to James Monroe, 19 August 1818, in Correspondence between Gen. Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, President and Vice-President of the U. States on the Subject of the Course of the Latter, in the Deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe, on the Occurrences in the Seminole War, Washington: Duff Green, 1831, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. 4. Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, “Following the North Star: Canada as a Haven for Nineteenth-Century Blacks,” Michigan Historical Review, 25 (Number 2, Fall 1999): 91–126, 112, 114, 121, 122, 123. Cf. Robin Winks, “The Canadian Negro: A Historical Assessment: The Negro in the Canadian-American Relationship,” Journal of Negro History, 53 (Number 4, October 1968): 283–300. 5. Henry Bradshaw Fearon, Sketches of America, a Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America, London: Longman, 1818, 57, 58, 61, 168–169, 243, 191, 268,-269, 271, 285, 287–289, 293–294, 325–326, 374, 376, 406. 6. John M. Duncan, Travels through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819. Volume II, Glasgow: Hurst, Robinson, 1823, 254. 7. Isaac Holmes, An Account of the United States of America, Derived from Actual Observation, during a Residence of Four Years in That Republic Including Original Communications, London: Canton Press, 1823, 323, 328, 334. 8. William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States, Principally Undertaken to Ascertain, by Positive Evidence, the Condition and

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Probable Prospects of British Emigrants; Including Accounts of Mr. Birbeck’s Settlement in the Illinois and Intended to Show Me and Things as They Are in America, Volume I, London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1823, 71, 147. See also Jack K. Williams, “Georgians as Seen by Antebellum British Travelers,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 32 (Number 3, September 1948): 158–174. 9. William Faux, Memorable Days in America, Volume II, 88. See also Adlard Welby, A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois with a Winter Residence at Philadelphia, London: Drury, 1821. See also James Palmer, Journal of Travels in the United States of North America, and in Lower Canada, Performed in the Year 1817; Containing Particulars Relating to the Land and Provisions  . . . of Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Albany, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Lexington, Quebec, Montreal, London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1818. 10. Charles Sealsfield, The Americans as They Are; Described in a Tour through the Valley of the Mississippi, London: Hurst, Chance, 1828, iii, 19, 132–133. 11. British Traveler, The Colonial Policy of Great Britain, Considered with Relation to Her North American Provinces and West India Possessions, Where the Dangerous Tendency of American Competition Is Developed, London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 1816, xxiv–xxv, 6, 53–54, 56–60, 165, 185, 201, 211. 12. Foreign Office to James Buchanan, 4 December 1816, FO5/116/73, NAUK. 13. Boston Consul to “My Lord,” 7 November 1818, FO5/135/162, NAUK. 14. James Buchanan to Under Secretary of State, 10 March 1819, FO5/144/62, NAUK. See also Matthew Mason, “The Battle of the Slaveholding Liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and Slavery in the Early Nineteenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly, 59 (Number 3, July 2002): 665–696, 665. The author stresses how London used abolitionism to club Washington and “thus constituted an important milestone in the international politics of slavery.” 15. Nathaniel Claiborne, Notes on the War in the South, Richmond: Ramsay, 1819, 50, 85. 16. Robert Walsh, Jr., An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain Respecting the United States of America, Philadelphia: Mitchell, Ames and White, 1819, v, xvi. 17. “Resolution of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of the Mississippi Territory, Relative to the Propositions of the British Ministers at Ghent,” 21 January 1815, Washington City: Weightman, 1815, 1990 S 5.13, Yale University. 18. John Quincy Adams to British delegation, 26 September 1814, U.S. Department of State, “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Communications from the American Ministers at Ghent.” 1 December 1814, Washington A& G. Way, 1814, Yale University. See also Robert J. Taylor, ed., Diary of John Quincy Adams, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. 19. Kenneth W. Porter, The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom Seeking People, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996, 15. 20. Reverend G. R. Gleig, The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans, 1814–1815, London: John Murray, 1879, 143. 21. William B. Hart, “Black ‘Go-Betweens’ and the Mutability of Race: Status and Identity on New York’s Pre-Revolutionary Frontier,” in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 88–113, 103. 264

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22. Governor Munnings to Earl of Bathurst, 30 September 1819, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. 23. Governor Munnings to Earl of Bathurst, 30 November 1819, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives–Nassau, Bahamas. 24. Samuel Perkins, General Jackson’s Conduct in the Seminole War Delineated in a History of That Period, Affording Conclusive Reasons Why He Should Not Be the Next President, Brooklyn: Advertiser Press, 1818, 6, Boston Public Library. 25. Laurence Foster, “Negro-Indian Relationships in the Southeast,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1935, 24. On contestation between London and Washington in Florida, see, e.g., “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting the Correspondence between the United States and the Government of Spain Relative to the Subjects of Controversy between the Two Nations,” 2 February 1817, Washington: Davis, 1817, Nw 975.9 u58, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. See also Theodore Lyman, The Diplomacy of the United States, Being an Account of the Foreign Relations of the Country, from the Treaty with France in 1778 to the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 with Great Britain, Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1826. See also “U.S. Department of State. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Report from the Acting Secretary of State on Our Relations with the Continental Powers of Europe. October 3, 1814.” Washington City: Weightman, 1814, 1990, S 5.13, Yale University. 26. Ferdinand Louis Amelung to Andrew Jackson, 14 June 1816, in Harold Moser et al., eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IV, 1816–1820, Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1994, 39–40. 27. Diary of Edward Randolph, Copied from the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Summer 1818, University of West Florida–Pensacola. 28. James Innerarity to John Forbes, 12 August 1815, in “The Panton-Leslie Papers,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 12 (Number 3, January 1934): 123–134, 128. See also John Quincy Adams, The Duplicate Letters, the Fisheries, and the Mississippi. Documents Relating at the Negotiation of Ghent, Washington: Davis and Force, 1822, Buffalo Public Library. 29. Dudley W. Knox, “A Forgotten Fight in Florida,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 62 (1936): 507–513, 507. See also William S. Coker et al., eds., Anglo-Spanish Confrontation on the Gulf Coast during the American Revolution, Pensacola: Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference, 1982, University of West Florida. 30. Andrew Jackson to Pensacola Governor, 23 April 1816, Reel 20, Papers of PantonLeslie and Company. 31. James Monroe to Military Committee, 23 December 1812, 1990, S 5.13, Yale University. See also James Monroe, The Autobiography of James Monroe, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1959. 32. James Innerarity to John Forbes, 12 August 1815, in “The Panton-Leslie Papers,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 12 (Number 3, January 1934): 123–134, 128. See also John Quincy Adams, The Duplicate Letters, the Fisheries, and the Mississippi. Documents Relating at the Negotiation of Ghent, Washington: Davis and Force, 1822, Buffalo Public Library. 33. Kenneth W. Porter, “Notes on Seminole Negroes in the Bahamas,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 24 (July 1945): 56–60, 57. For more on the “Negro Fort,” see M. J. Kenan, Secretary to the Mission, Crabtree Creek Nation, Georgia, to Major Edward George Washing-

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ton Butler, 3 July 1824, Folder 236, Butler Family Papers, Williams Research Center-–Historic New Orleans Collection. In the same collection, see also Andrew Jackson to William Hambly, 8 September 1825. 34. James Covington, “The Negro Fort,” Gulf Coast Historical Review, 5 (1990): 78–91, 79. 35. Isaac Hill, “An Address Delivered at Concord, New Hampshire, January 8, 1828, Being the Thirteenth Anniversary of Jackson’s Victory at New Orleans,” Concord, New Hampshire: Manahan, Hoag, 1828, Tulane University. 36. Vincente Sebastian Pintado to Jose de Soto, 29 March 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company–University of Alabama. See also William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson, Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1986, 304, 316, 320. 37. Thomas Sidney Jessup to “Sir,” 21 August 1816, Thomas Sidney Jessup Collection, Duke University. 38. Philip Coolidge Brooks, Diplomacy in the Borderland: The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, Berkeley: University of California, 1939, 21. 39. Ernest F. Dibble and Earle W. Newton, eds., Spain and Her Rivals, Pensacola: Historic Pensacola Preservation Board, 1971. See also D. C. Corbitt, “The Establishment of an Early Express from Pensacola to Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 19 (Number 2, June 1935): 161–163. 40. U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on the Seminole War. Report. Washington, 1819. Correspondence from Major General Edmund Gaines, 5 February 1817, CE 83.817 U 53, Yale University. 41. Nathaniel Millett, “Defining Freedom in the Atlantic Borderlands of the Revolutionary Southeast,” Early American Studies, 5 (Number 2, 2007): 367–394, 377, 378, 381, 382, 386, 390. 42. Mark F. Boyd, “Events at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River, 1808–1818,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 16 (Number 2, October 1937): 55–96, 75. See also Robert L. Anderson, “The End of an Idyll,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 42 (July 1963): 35–47. 43. Joshua Giddings, The Exiles of Florida or the Crimes Committed against the Maroons Who Fled from South Carolina and Other Slave States, Seeking Protection under Spanish Laws, Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster and Company, 1858, 32. 44. James Grant Forbes, Sketches, Historical and Topographical of the Floridas: More Particularly of East Florida, New York: Van Winkle, 1821, 200. See also “List of the Crops & Other Articles Belonging to the Negroes Going to Apalachicola,” 8 June 1811, Box 1, Folder 2, Innerarity–Hulse Papers. 45. Hugh Young, “Excerpts from the Topographical Memoir of East and West Florida with Itineraries,” in James McGovern, ed., Andrew Jackson and Pensacola, Volume II, Pensacola: Pensacola Bicentennial Series, 1974, 26–33, 29. 46. “Letter from the Secretary of the Navy  . . . Sundry Documents Relating to the Destruction of the Negro Fort in East Florida in the Month of July 1816,” Washington, D.C.: E. De Krafft, 1819, Huntington Library–San Marino, California. 47. Benjamin Hawkins to Mauricio Zuniga, 24 May 1816, in C. L. Grant, ed., Letters, Journals, and Writings of Benjamin Hawkins, Volume II, 1802–1816, Savannah: Beehive, 1980, 789. 48. Benjamin Hawkins to Edward Nicolls, 12 June 1815, Reel 20, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company–University of Alabama. 266

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49. Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire, 74. See also “Strictures on Mr. Lacock’s Report, in the Senate of the U. States on the Seminole War,” 1819, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 50. James Grant Forbes, Sketches, Historical and Topographical of the Floridas; More Particularly of East Florida, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1964, originally published 1821, 201–204. 51. J. Leitch Wright, “A Note on the First Seminole War as Seen by the Indians, Negroes, and their British Advisers,” Journal of Southern History, 34 (Number 4, November 1968): 565–595, 589, 572, 573. See also Jesse Denson, The Chronicles of Andrew Jackson Containing an Accurate and Brief Account of General Jackson’s Victories in the South, over Creeks, Also His Victories over the British at New Orleans with a Biographical Sketch of His Life, no date, unclear provenance, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 52. “Debate in the House of Representatives of the United States on the Seminole War in January and February 1819,” Washington, D.C.: Office of the National Intelligencer, 1819, University of Texas–Austin. The same tiny script in a 591-page document can be found at the Western Historical Society in Cleveland. 53. Alexander Arbuthnot to Fort Gaines, 3 March 1817, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company–University of Alabama. 54. Alexander Arbuthnot to Charles Bagot, British Minister, circa 1817, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie and Company. 55. Alexander Arbuthnot to E. Nicholls, 20 August 1817, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie. 56. Alexander Arbuthnot to E. Nicholls, 30 January 1818, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie. 57. Alexander Arbuthnot to John Arbuthnot, 2 April 1818, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie. 58. Andrew Jackson to Jose Masot, 23 May 1818, Reel 21, Papers of Panton Leslie. 59. Alexander Arbuthnot to His Son, John, 2 April 1818, in Narrative of a Voyage to the Spanish Main, in the Ship “Two Friends”; the Occupation of Amelia Island by M’Gregor, &C.—Sketches of the Province of East Florida and Anecdotes Illustrative of the Habits and Manners of the Seminole Indians; with an Appendix Containing a Detail of the Seminole War and the Execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, London: Miller, Burlington Arcade, 1819, Appendix, American Antiquarian Society–Worcester, Massachusetts. See Deborah A. Rosen, “Wartime Prisoners and the Rule of Law: Andrew Jackson’s Military Tribunals during the First Seminole War,” Journal of the Early Republic, 28 (Number 4, Winter 2008): 559–595, 561. See also Erin Rowland, Andrew Jackson’s Campaign against the British or the Mississippi Territory in the War of 1812: Concerning the Military Operations of the Americans, Creek Indians, British, and Spanish, 1813–1815, New York: Macmillan, 1926, 16. The author contends that while in Natchez, Jackson was a “’Negro trader,’ a business that usually met with harsh disapproval and contempt in the community.” 60. Alexander Arbuthnot to Charles Cameron, no date, in ibid., Narrative of a Voyage. 61. “Power of Attorney,” 17 June 1817, in ibid., Narrative of a Voyage. 62. “Petition of the Chiefs of the Lower Creek Nation to Governor Cameron,” no date, in ibid., Narrative of a Voyage. 63. Trial of Arbuthnot, Fort St. Marks, 27 April 1818, in ibid., Narrative of a Voyage. See also The Trials of A. Arbuthnot & R. C. Ambrister, Charged with Exciting the Seminole Indians to War against the United States of America. From the Official Documents Which Were Laid by the President before Congress, London: Ridgway, 1819.

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64. John Lee Williams, A View of West Florida, Embracing Its Geography, Topography, &c., with an Appendix, Treating of Its Antiquities, Land Titles, and Canals and Containing a Map, Exhibiting a Chart of the Coast, a Plan of Pensacola, and the Entrance of the Harbour, Philadelphia: Tanner, 1827, 101. 65. John Overton, A Vindication of the Measures of the President and His Commanding Generals, in the Commencement and Termination of the Seminole War, Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1819, 21, 53, 56. See also Memoirs of Andrew Jackson Together with the Letter of Mr. Secretary Adams in Vindication of the Execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Bridgeton, New Jersey: Simeon Siegfried, 1824. 66. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to Minister of Spain in the U.S., 28 November 1818, in ibid., Narrative of a Voyage. See also Samuel Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, New York: Knopf, 1949. 67. John Lee Williams, A View of West Florida, 101. 68. Narrative of a Voyage to the Spanish Main, in the Ship “Two Friends”; The Occupation of Amelia Island by M’Gregor, &c—Sketches of the Province of East Florida and Anecdotes Illustrative of the Habits and Manners of the Seminole Indians; with an Appendix Containing a Detail of the Seminole War, and the Execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, London: Miller, Burlington Arcade, 1819, 125, 178, 187, American Antiquarian Society–Worcester, Massachusetts. 69. Rufus Kay Wyllys, “The Filibusters of Amelia Island,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 12 (Number 4, December 1926): 297–325, 303, 305, 309, 310, 31l, 312. 70. T. Frederick Davis, “MacGregor’s Invasion of Florida, 1817, Together with an Account of His Successors Irwin, Hubbard, and Aury on Amelia Island, East Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 1928, University of Virginia–Charlottesville. 71. Kenneth W. Porter, “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1817–1818,” Journal of Negro History, 36 (Number 3, July 1951): 249–280, 254, 257, 266, 272, 276. 72. Ibid., Isaac Hill, “An Address Delivered at Concord, New Hampshire.” 73. Letter from James Bankhead, 6 February 1818, in W. Edwin Hemphill, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume II, 1817–1818, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1963, 111. 74. Andrew Jackson to John C. Calhoun, 28 November 1818, in W. Edwin Hemphill, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume III, 1818–1819, 313. See also S. Putnam Waldo, Memoirs of Andrew Jackson, Major-General in the Army of the United States; and Commander-in-Chief of the Division of the South, Hartford: Silas Andrus, 1818. 75. Billy D. Higgins, A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum America, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004, 14. 76. Letter from James Buchanan, 6 April 1818, FO5/116/17, NAUK. 77. Thomas Clarkson to Prince “Sanders,” 3 February 1819, Thomas Clarkson Papers, Huntington Library. 78. Haytian Papers. A Collection of the Very Interesting Proclamations and Other Official Documents; Together with Some Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Kingdom of Haiti, with a Preface by Prince Saunders, Esq., Agent for the Haytian Government, London: Reed, 1816, ii. 79. Jean Pierre Boyer to Loring Dewey, 30 April 1824, in Loring Dewey, ed., “Correspondence Relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the Free People of Color in the United States Together with the Instructions to the Agent Sent Out by President Boyer,” New York: Mahlon, 1824, Huntington Library. 268

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80. Jean Pierre Boyer to Charles Collins, 25 May 1824, in Loring Dewey, ed., “Correspondence Relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the Free People of Colour in the United States. Together with the Instructions to the Agent Sent Out by President Boyer,” New York: Mahlon Day, 1824, Cornell University. See also Harry Reid, Platform for Change: The Foundations of the Northern Free Black Community, 1775–1865, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994; Patrick Rael, ed., African-American Activism before the Civil War: The Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North, New York: Routledge, 2008. 81. Ibid., Remarks by “Citizen J. Granville,” 17 June 1824, in Loring Dewey. 82. Elizabeth Rauh Bethel, The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities, New York: St. Martin’s, 1997, 145. 83. Matthew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a Residence Among the Negroes in the West Indies, London: Murray, 1845, 139. 84. “Speech of Mr. Hayne, Delivered in the Senate of the United States on the Mission to Panama, March 1826,” Washington City: Gales & Seaton, 1826, University of South Carolina. See also Andrew Cleven, “The First Panama Mission and the Congress of the United States,” Journal of Negro History, 13 (Number 3, July 1928): 225–254. 85. Robert Tinker, James Hamilton of South Carolina, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004, 12. 86. James Stephen, England Enslaved by her Own Slave Colonies: An Address to the Electors and People of the United Kingdom, London: Hatchard, 1826. 87. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 747. 88. The Correspondence between John Gladstone, Esq., M.P. and James Cropper, Esq. On the Present State of Slavery in the British West Indies and in the United States of America; and on the Importation of Sugar from the British Settlements in India, Liverpool: West India Association, 1824, Cornell University. 89. “Communication from Sir Charles Brisbane, K.C.B., Governor of Saint Vincent to the House of Assembly of that Colony. Including Lord Bathurst’s Dispatch of the 9th of July with the Joint Reply of the Council and Assembly and a Letter Depicting the Alarm and Danger Elicited by the Insurrection in Demerara, September 1823,” Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also Joshua Bryant, Account of an Insurrection of the Negro Slaves in the Colony of Demerara, Which Broke Out on the 18th of August 1823, Demerara: Stevenson, 1824. Also noted here is the revolt by the enslaved in Barbados in 1816. 90. Timothy James Lockley, ed., Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009, 100. 91. Charles Mackenzie, Notes on Haiti: Made during a Residence in That Republic, Volume I, London: Frank Cass, 1971 [first edition 1830], 30, 56, 89, 106–107, 146, 161, 196. 92. Charles Mackenzie, Notes on Haiti, Volume II, 121. 93. Henry S. Robinson, “Some Aspects of the Free Negro Population of Washington, D.C.,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 64 (Number 1, Spring 1969): 43–64, 43. 94. Letter, 30 June 1827, in The Rural Code of Haiti, Literally Translated from a Publication of the Government Press; Together with Letters from That Country, Concerning Its Present Condition by a Southern Planter, Buffalo Public Library. 95. Loring Lyman to Reverend Orange Lyman, 11 February 1825, Loring Lyman Collection, University of Alabama. See also Address of the Board of Managers of the Haytian

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Emigration Society of Coloured People, to the Emigrants Intending to Sail to the Island of Hayti, in the Brig De Witt Clinton, New York: Mahlon Day, 1824, Cornell University.

C ha p t e r 7 1. James Hamilton, Jr., Negro Plot. An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection among a Portion of the Blacks of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, Boston: Joseph W. Ingraham, 1822, 11. 2. “Denmark Vesey,” Atlantic Monthly, 1861, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. (Hereafter denoted as SCHS.) 3. The Trial Record of Denmark Vesey, Boston: Beacon, 1970, 42, 43, 54, 59, 62, 72, 83, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, SCHS. At the same site, see also An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection among a Portion of the Blacks of This City, Charleston: Miller, 1822. 4. “Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina,” circa 1822, SCHS. 5. Confession “Made by John the Slave of Mr. Enslow the Cooper,” circa 1822, Henry Ravenel Papers, SCHS. 6. Mary Beach to Elizabeth Gilchrist, 5 July 1822, Mary Beach Papers–SCHS. 7. Mary Beach to Elizabeth Gilchrist, 23 July 1823, Mary Beach Papers. 8. W. H. Perkins to the Governor, 15 July 1829, in H. W. Flournoy, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 568. 9. Christian Tompkins to the Governor, 18 July 1829, in H. W. Flournoy, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 569. 10. Letter from Moses Benbow, 16 September 1830, Stephen Decatur Miller Papers, SCHS. 11. See also David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles Together with a Preamble of His Life by Henry Highland Garnet. And Also Garnet’s Address to the Slaves of the United States of America. New York: J.H. Tobitt, 1848. This famous abolitionist tract also praised London’s antislavery record. 12. Samuel Warner, Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical [sic] Scene Which Was Witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on Monday the 22nd of August Last When Fifty-Five of Its Inhabitants (Mostly Women and Children) Were Inhumanly Massacred by the Blacks! No city: Warner & West, 1831, 5. See also Henry Irving Tragle, ed., The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971. 13. G. P. R. James, The Old Dominion; or the Southampton Massacre, New York: Harper, 1856, 38, 76. 14. J. E. Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches, Comprising Visits to the Most Interesting Scenes in North and South America and the West Indies with Notes on Negro Slavery and Canadian Emigration, Volume II, London: Bentley, 1833, 19, 24: This British military officer—coincidentally—was in New Orleans when a rebellion of the enslaved was uncovered. 15. Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, 44, 146, 148, 172. See also “A Memorial to the Congress of the United States, on the Subject of Restraining the Increase of Slavery in New States to Be Admitted into the Union. Prepared in Pursuance of a Vote of the Inhabitants of Boston and Its Vicinity, Assembled at the State House, on the Third of December A.D. 1819,” Boston: Sewell Phelps, 1819, Boston Public Library. 270

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16. Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, “A Concise View of the Critical Situation and Future Prospects of the Slaveholding States in Relation to Their Coloured Population,” Charleston: Miller, 1825, SCHS. On Colombia during this era and why it may have bothered Seabrook, see “Incidents in the Life of John Edsall,” Catskill: J.E., 1831, University of South Carolina. Arriving in Cartagena, he observed, “[T]he company at this place was very much upon the Fanny Wright or leveling system. Thieves, robbers, pirates, runaway slaves and honest men (if any could be found) enjoyed equal rights, privileges and immunities.” 17. William Caleb McDaniel, “Our Country in the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2006, 36. 18. Freedom’s Journal, 23 March 1827. In that same year, see also the editions of 6 April, 14 September, 30 November, and 7 December. See also 4 July 1828 and in that same year, see also the edition of 11 July. See also 7 March 1829 and in that same year, see also 29 August, 19 September, and 21 November. 19. Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War, Baton Rouge, 2008, 102. See also Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 20. Thomas F. Harwood, “British Evangelical Abolitionism and American Churches in the 1830s,” Journal of Southern History, 28 (Number 3, August 1962): 287–306, 298, 305. 21. Report from Beverly Chew, 17 April 1818, in “Extracts from Documents at the Department of State, of the Treasury and of the Navy, in Relation to the Illicit Introduction of Slaves into the United States,” Washington, D.C.: E. De Kraff, 1819. Boston Public Library. 22. Captain Charles Morris to the Secretary of Navy, 7 January 1820, in “Letters from the Secretary of the Navy, Transmitting Information in Relation to the Introduction of Slaves into the United States,” Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1820. Boston Public Library. 23. “Papers Relating to the Slave Trade, Second Enclosure in No. 2, Annex B to the Protocol of the Conference of the 4th of February 1818, Queries Proposed by Viscount Castlereagh to, and Answers of, the African Society in London.” Boston Public Library. 24. Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah: 1788–1864, 88. 25. “Information Concerning the Present State of the Slave Trade,” 1824, Boston Public Library. 26. Paul Dean, “A Discourse Delivered before the African Society at Their MeetingHouse in Boston, Mass. On the Abolition of the Slave Trade by the Government of the United States of America, July 14, 1819,” Boston: Coverly, 1819, Boston Public Library. See also U.S. Congress. 19th Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 121. House of Representatives. Slave Ships in Alabama. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting the Proceedings of the Court and Marshall to U. States for the District of Alabama, in Relation to the Cargoes of Certain Slave Ships, etc. 8 March 1826. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1826, University of Alabama: The concern here was ships traveling from Mobile to Cuba for enslaved Africans. 27. Captain John Henley to Secretary of Navy, 24 January 1818, in ibid., Letters from the Secretary of the Navy. 28. William I. McIntosh, Collector’s Office, District of Brunswick, Georgia, Port of Darien, to Hon. William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, 14 March 1818, “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting in Obedience to a Resolution of the

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House of Representatives of the 31st Ultimo, Information in Relation to the Illicit Introduction of Slaves into the United States,” Cornell University. 29. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, New York: International, 1974, 266. 30. Stratford Canning to “My Dear Ellenborough,” 10 October 1821, FO 352/7/5, NAUK. At the same site, see John Quincy Adams to Stratford Canning, 24 June 1823, FO352/8/2. 31. William Gilpin to Under Secretary, 9 January 1821, FO5/161/101, NAUK. 32. Gilbert Robertson to Stratford Canning, 16 January 1823, FO352/8/7, NAUK. 33. “Negro Slavery; or a View of Some of the More Prominent Features of that State of Society, as It Exists in the United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, Especially in Jamaica, London: Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions,” 1824, Cornell University. 34. “Addresses and Memorials to His Majesty from the House of Assembly at Jamaica. Voted in the Years 1821 to 1826 inclusive; and Which Have Been Presented to His Majesty by the Island Agent. Printed by Order of the House of Assembly of Jamaica,” circa 1827, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also U.S. Congress. 20th Congress, 1st Session. Document Number 262. Africans at Key West. Message from the President of the United States Relative to the Disposition of the Africans Landed at Key West from a Stranded Spanish Vessel. April 30, 1828. Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1828: 121 Africans in a Spanish vessel were pursued by a British armed schooner. 35. “Documents Furnished by the British Government under the Third Article of the Convention of St. Petersburg of 30 June–12 July  . . . and Bayly’s List of Slaves, and of Public and Private Property, Remaining on Tangier Island, and on Board HBM’s Ships of War after the Ratification of the Treaty of Ghent,” Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1827, Schomburg Center. 36. “In the Senate of the United States, January 8, 1821, Mr. Pleasants from the Committee on Naval Affairs, to Whom was Referred the Petition of John Gooding and James Williams  . . . Report.” Cornell University. 37. Bernard H. Nelson, “The Slave Trade as a Factor in British Foreign Policy, 1815– 1862,” Journal of Negro History, 27 (Number 2, April 1942): 192–209. 38. “Tour of Harper’s [sic] Ferry,” 4 July 1821, FO352/7/5, NAUK. 39. In this vein, see also Diary entries, 18 June 1830, 22 November 1830, 8 December 1830, William Ogilvy Journal, SCHS. 40. “African Colonization. Proceedings of a Meeting of the Friends of African Colonization, Held in the City of Baltimore, on the 17 October 1827,” Schomburg Center. 41. “An Address Delivered to the Colonization Society of Kentucky, at Frankfort, December 17, 1829, by the Hon. Henry Clay, at the Request of the Board of Managers,” Lexington: Smith, 1829, Johns Hopkins University. 42. “Joint Resolution for Abolishing the Traffick in Slaves and the Colonization of Free People of Colour of the United States,” 11 February 1817, Cornell University. At the same site, see also “Report on Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States, February 11, 1817.” 43. Thomas Hopkins to Gerrit Smith, 2 April 1827, Gerrit Smith Papers–Syracuse University. 44. Edward Bickersteth, Church Missionary Society, London, to Gerrit Smith, 25 October 1826, Gerrit Smith Papers. 272

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45. “Resolutions of the Legislature of Georgia in Relation to the American Colonization Society,” Washington: Duff Green, 1828, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. At the same site, see also U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee of Foreign Relations, 28 April 1828. “Report on Colonization by Mr. Tazewell.” 46. Clericus, Facts Designed to Exhibit the Real Character and Tendency of the American Colonization Society, Liverpool: Smith, 1833. See also British Opinions of the American Colonization Society, Boston: Garrison & Knapp, 1833, 28, Buffalo Public Library. 47. “Negro Slavery; or, a View of Some of the More Prominent Features of That State of Society, as It Exists in the United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, Especially in Jamaica, London: Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions,” 1824, Cornell University. 48. “Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the People of Colour Held by Adjournments in the City of Philadelphia, from the Sixth to the Eleventh of June, Inclusive, 1831,” Philadelphia: Committee of Arrangements, 1831, Johns Hopkins University. See also “Constitution of the American Society of Free Persons of Color, for Improving Their Condition in the United States, for Purchasing Land; and for the Establishment of a Settlement in Upper Canada, Also the Proceedings of the Convention with Their Address to the Free Persons of Colour in the United States,” Philadelphia, 1831, in Howard Holman Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864, New York: Arno Press, 1969. 49. “Minutes and Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention, for the Improvement of the Free People of Color in These United States, Held by Adjournments in the City of Philadelphia from the 4th to the 13th of June Inclusive, 1832,” in ibid., Howard Holman Bell. See also Nikki M. Taylor, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802–1868. 50. Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007, 6, 14. 51. Allen P. Stouffer, The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992, 17, 44. 52. Fred Landon, “The Buxton Settlement in Canada,” Journal of Negro History, 3 (Number 4, October 1918): 36-–366, 360. 53. Henry Clay to Albert Gallatin, 19 June 1826, Correspondence between Britain and the U.S. on the “Mutual Surrender of Fugitive Slaves and Deserters,” CO23/92/ 192, NAUK. 54. Albert Gallatin to Henry Clay, 1 December 1826, CO23/92/193, NAUK. 55. Albert Gallatin to Henry Clay, 26 September 1827, CO23/92/193, NAUK. 56. Henry Clay to Mr. Barbour, 13 June 1828, CO23/92/194, NAUK. 57. James Barbour to Henry Clay, 2 October 1828, CO23/92/194, NAUK. 58. William Gilpin to Under Secretary, 10 January 1821, FO5/161/117, NAUK. 59. Reverend Peter Williams, “Discourse Delivered in St. Philip’s Church for the Benefit of the Community of Wilberforce in Upper Canada, on the Fourth of July 1830,” New York: Bunce, 1830, Schomburg Center. 60. Isaac McCoy, History of the American Baptist African and Haytien Missions for the Use of Sabbath Schools, Boston: Sabbath School Union, 1831, 64, 66. 61. “At a Meeting of the West India Planters and Merchants Resolved,” 1784, Georgia Historical Society. 62. William Higginbotham to John Quincy Adams, 16 December 1819, T-262, Roll 1, Consular Despatches, Bermuda, Bermuda Archives.

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63. “Addresses and Memorials to His Majesty from the House of Assembly at Jamaica. Voted in the Years 1821 to 1826 Inclusive; and Which Have Been Presented to His Majesty by the Island Agent. Printed by Order of the House of Assembly of Jamaica.” Circa 1828, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also Marly, or a Planter’s Life in Jamaica, Glasgow: Griffin, 1828, and “Notes in the Defence of the Colonies. On the Increase and Decrease of the Slave Population of the British West Indies. By a West Indian, Jamaica, 1826.” 64. William Higginbotham to “Sir,” 12 December 1819, T262, Roll 1, Consular Despatches. 65. William Higginbotham to John Quincy Adams, 7 March 1821, T262, Roll 1. See also Jonathan Elliot, ed., Diplomatic Code of the United States of America: Embracing a Collection of Treaties and Conventions between the United States and Foreign Powers from the Years 1778 to 1827, Washington: Elliot, 1827. 66. Louisiana Gazette, 5 October 1821. 67. J. C. Herries, Treasury to Commissioners of Customs, 2 August 1826, CO325/6, NAUK. 68. Antoinette S. Marwitz, “The United States Consulate in Barbados: A Brief History, 1823–1966,” Bridgetown: U.S. Embassy, 1992, Barbados Department of Archives. See also F. Leen Benns, The American Struggles for the British West India Carrying Trade, 1815– 1830, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1923. 69. Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, 25. 70. Anthony Baker to Lord Castlereagh, 3 July 1820, FO352/7/4, NAUK. 71. Robert Harrison to John Quincy Adams, 4 November 1823, T327, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Antigua, NARA-CP. 72. William Higginbotham to Henry Clay, 1 July 1826, T262, Roll 1. 73. Josiah Stoddard Johnson, “Speech  . . . on the Bill to Regulate the Commercial Intercourse between the United States and the British Colonies,” Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1827, Tulane University. See also “Speech of Mr. James Johnston of Louisiana on the Bill to Regulate the Commercial Intercourse between the United States and the British Colonies, Delivered in the Senate of the United States,” 23 February 1827, Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1827, Cornell University. 74. Smith Thompson to U.S. President, 27 December 1820, “Message from the President of the United States Transmitting  . . . Information in Relation to Naval Protection Afforded to the Commerce of the United States in the West India Islands,” Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1821, Cornell University. 75. Gilbert Robertson to Stratford Canning, 21 April 1823, FO352/8/7, NAUK. 76. George Cockburn to Earl of Bathurst, 12 June 1816, FO881/1362/36, NAUK. 77. John Houston to Stratford Canning, 25 January 1823, FO352/8/2, NAUK. 78. “Memorial of Sundry Masters of American Vessels Lying in the Port of Charleston, South Carolina, 19 February 1823, Referred to Committee on the Judiciary,” Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1823, Schomburg Center: Seamen, some of whom are free persons of color from the U.S., object to these laws. 79. Philip M. Hamer, “Great Britain, the United States, and the Negro Seamen Acts, 1822–1848,” Journal of Southern History, 1 (Number 1, February 1935): 3–28, 16. 80. See a Georgia law similar to that of its neighbor, 22 December 1829, FO5/79/249, NAUK. 81. Carol Wilson, Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994, 41. 274

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82. See Peter Petrie to Mr. Hukisson, 20 January 1824, and Charles Vaughan to Martin Van Buren, 26 December 1830, in U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 27th Congress, 3rd Session. Report No. 80, 1843, Massachusetts Historical Society–Boston. 83. Whittington B. Johnson, Post-Emancipation Race Relations in the Bahamas, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006, 65. 84. South Carolina Association to Senate, circa 1823, in Loren Schweninger, ed., The Southern Debate over Slavery, Volume I: Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 1778–1864, Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001, 78–83, 79. 85. James Calder to Benjamin Moodie, 15 January 1823, “Correspondence Relative to the Prohibition against the Admission of Free Persons of Colour into Certain Ports of the United States, 1823–1851,” FO5/79/241, NAUK 86. See South Carolina Law on Coloured Seamen, 21 December 1822, FO5/79/242, NAUK. 87. William Hukisson to “My Dear Planta,” 4 February 1824, FO5/79/243, NAUK. 88. Letter from British Consul in Savannah, 13 May 1830, FO5/262/ 119, NAUK. 89. British Consul to John Bidwell, 7 April 1832, FO5/276/165, NAUK. 90. Charles Bankhead to Lord Palmerston, 12 November 1831, FO5/579/255, NAUK. 91. Julian Rammelkamp, “The Providence Negro Community, 1820–1842,” Rhode Island History, 7 (Number 1, January 1948): 20–33, 27–28. 92. Committee Report on 21–24 September 1831 Riot, Rhode Island Historical Society–Providence. At the same site, see also John Crouch, “Providence Newspapers and the Racist Riots of 1824 and 1831,” 1999. 93. William Ogilby to Lord Palmerston, 5 January 1833, NAUK. 94. William Ogilby to Lord Palmerston, 23 January 1833, FO5/284/230, NAUK. 95. Memorandum from 10 Downing Street, 31 May 1831, T1/3555, NAUK. 96. Report, 28 May 1831, CO23/92/187, NAUK. 97. Memorandum to the Lords’ Commissioners, 9 March 1831, T1/3555, NAUK. 98. See various reports, memoranda, etc., 1831–1832, CO23/92/95-146, NAUK. See also Consul to State Department, 24 January 1831, Microcopy T475, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 99. Memorandum from Consul in New Orleans, 29 June 1831, CO/23/9/158, NAUK. 100. Nathan Morse to Secretary of State Edward Livingston, 7 October 1831, CO23/9/174, NAUK. 101. Sworn Statement, 17 December 1830, CO23/92/190, NAUK. 102. Henry Clay to Albert Gallatin, 19 June 1826, Correspondence between Britain and the U.S. on the “Mutual Surrender of Fugitive Slaves and Deserters,” CO23/92/192, NAUK. 103. “Petition from Provincial Assembly of the Bahamas,” 14 January 1831, CO23/92/124, NAUK. 104. Royal Gazette, 5 March 1831, CO23/92/134, NAUK. 105. A. Vail to Lord Palmerston, 4 April 1833, CO23/92/198, NAUK. 106. Lord Palmerston to “My Lords,” 10 May 1834, CO23/92/206, NAUK. 107. Consul to State Department, 1 February 1833, Microcopy T475, Roll 1. 108. Consul to State Department, 23 July 1834, Microcopy T475, Roll 1. 109. Consul to State Department, 15 December 1832, Microcopy T475, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas.

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110. “Order of His Majesty in Council of the Second of November 1831,” T262, Roll 1, Consular Despatches, Bermuda, Bermuda Archives. 111. Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Murray, 15 January 1830, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 112. Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 2 July 1831, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. See also “Letter from the Secretary of State, of 26th July 1833, Communicating Copies of Such of the Arretes of the French Government, or Authorities, Prohibiting Intercourse with the Revolted Parts of St. Domingo, as Are on File in the Department of State,” Cornell University. 113. A. Izard to Mrs. Manigault, 20 August 1820, Manigault Family Papers–University of South Carolina. 114. Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 6 March 1832, Governor’s Despatches. 115. Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 10 August 1831, Governor’s Despatches. At the same site and collection, see also Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 12 December 1831. 116. Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 3 August 1831, Governor’s Despatches. 117. Governor Sir James-Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 4 May 1832, Governor’s Despatches. 118. Letter to Superintendent, 9 January 1832, ID: 3159, Title: Defence Naval D R9B p. 109–117, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 119. Herbert Aptheker, Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion, New York: Humanities Press, 1966, 71. See also Henry Whiteley, “Three Months in Jamaica in 1832,” Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1 (Number 2, July 1833): 19–25. 120. Lord Balfour to Stanley, 5 August 1833, Governor’s Despatches. 121. Governor William Vesey Munnings to Earl of Bathurst, 27 February 1826, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas: A French slave brig detained near Cuba with 93 Africans brought to Nassau. At the same site in the same collection, see also Governor Munnings to Earl of Bathurst, 30 May 1826 (an account of presumed enslaved Africans captured by the Royal Navy and condemned in Vice-Admiralty court). Statement on seizure of U.S. slaves who had escaped to Bahamas, 21 June 1828; Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 5 July 1831: capture of slaver with 150 Africans aboard, received at Nassau, with the passengers settled at South West Bay; Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 18 November 1831: 157 Africans on Portuguese slaver captured and settled at South West Bay; List of Africans captured and liberated by Vice-Admiralty court, 6 November 1832; Lord Balfour to Stanley, 21 June 1834: arrival in Bahamas of 205 Africans taken from Portuguese slaver. 122. Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 5 February 1831, Governor’s Despatches. 123. Lord Balfour to Stanley, 18 February 1834, Governor’s Despatches. 124. Lord Balfour to Stanley, 17 March 1834, Governor’s Despatches. 125. Governor Sir James Carmichael-Smyth to Viscount Goderich, 2 August 1832, Governor’s Despatches. 126. Lord Balfour to Spring Rice, 21 September 1834, Governor’s Despatches. 127. Lord Balfour to Stanley, 3 August 1833, Governor’s Despatches. 128. Lord Balfour to Spring Rice, 17 October 1834, Governor’s Despatches. 276

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129. Letter, 4 August 1831, in “The Bahamian American Connection,” Archives Exhibition, 1976, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 130. Whittington B. Johnson, Post-Emancipation Race Relations in the Bahamas, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006, 144. 131. Larry Eugene Rivers, Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000, 8. 132. John Murchison, Volume 3, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic University. 133. Miss Hart, Letters from the Bahama Islands. Written in 1823–24, Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1827, 106. 134. John Melish, “A Description of East and West Florida and the Bahama Islands,” Philadelphia: Palmer, 1813, Tulane University. See also Peter T. Dalleo, “Baltimore-Bahamian Trade before the Civil War: Samuel R. Keene, the ‘James Power,’ ‘Emily Ann Thompson,’ and ‘Milton,’” Maryland Historical Magazine, 88 (Number 1, Spring 1993): 26–37. The Bahamas had long been viewed as a challenge to U.S. national security. 135. Minutes of Magistrates and Public Meeting, 6 August 1814, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 136. Superintendent to Governor General, Guatemala, 8 July 1822, ID: 3156, Title: Defence, D, R4b, p. 31, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 137. Superintendent to Commandant, 9 August 1834, ID: 4576, Title: Guatemala— Slaves—Runaways, D, R8c, pp. 113-114, Belize Archives and Records Service. 138. Letter from Superintendent, 18 February 1825, ID: 4569, Title: Guatemala—Slaves— Runaways, D, R4c, pp. 110–116, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 139. Marion H. Reynolds, “Instances of Negro Slavery in California,” Harvard University, 1914, University of California–Berkeley. 140. Letter from Foreign Office, 28 December 1827, ID: 1214, Title: Buenos Aires— Pirates, D R5b, pp. 206–215, Belize Archives and Records Service.

C ha p t e r 8 1. William Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, 111–120. See also Facts and Documents Connected with the Late Insurrection in Jamaica and Violations of Civil and Religious Liberty Arising Out of It, London: Teape, 1832, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also Jamaica: Slave Insurrection, Return to an Address to His Majesty, Colonial Department, June 1832 and Reverend William Knibb and Peter Borthwick, Colonial Slavery. Defence of the Baptist Missionaries from the Charge of Inciting the Late Rebellion in Jamaica, London: Tourist Office, 1832. 2. Henry H. Breen, St. Lucia: Historical, Statistical and Descriptive, London: Longman, 1844, 170, 173, 178. 3. Steven Heath Mitton, “The Free World Confronted: The Problem of Slavery and Progress in American Foreign Relations, 1833–1841,” Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2005, 141. See also Joe Bassette Wilkins, Jr., “Window on Freedom: The South’s Response to the Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies, 1833–1861,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1977, 107. 4. James Macdonald to “Sir,” 28 December 1831, and Mr. Barrett to “Sir,” 3 January 1832, in West India Colonies: Slave Insurrection. London: House of Commons, 1832, Schomburg

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Center. See also Henry Bleby, “Speech of the Reverend Henry Bleby, Missionary from Barbadoes, 1858, on the Results of Emancipation in the British West India Colonies. Delivered at the Celebration of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Held at Island Grove, Abington, July 31st 1858, ” Boston: Wallcut, 1858, Detroit Public Library: “I am old enough to have been present during the insurrection to which you have referred, and which was one of the principal events which hastened on the crisis of the movement of West India Emancipation and constrained the British government to ‘let the oppressed go free’  . . . in the beginning of 1832 that fifty thousand slaves in the island of Jamaica had made an effort for liberty . . .. I happened to be stationed in the island of Jamaica . . .. I knew the person with whom the insurrection originated very well . . .. I was an eye-witness to the cruelties and slaughter . . .. Sam Sharp was a very handsome Negro, a perfect model man; and more than that, he had learned to read  . . . he persuaded a large number of them [slaves] to believe that the British government had made them free, and that their owners were keeping them in slavery in opposition to the wishes of the authorities in England. It so happened, sir, that just at that time, the planters themselves were  . . . holding meetings through the length and breadth of the island, protesting against the interference and threatening that they would transfer their allegiance to the United States, in order that they might perpetuate their interests in their slaves . . .. [Thus] insurrection was one of the events which hastened the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.” 5. Robert Harrison to State Department, 10 April 1832, T31, Roll 2, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica, NARA-CP. 6. Robert Harrison to State Department, 24 July 1833, ibid., T31. On the response to the plan for abolition in the Bahamas, see Lord Balfour to Stanley, 5 September 1833, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. See also Sylvester Hovey, Letters from the West Indies; Relating Especially to the Danish Island St. Croix and to the British Islands, Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica, New York: Gould and Newman, 1838, 122. 7. Lewis Clarke, A Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke during a Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years among the Algerines in Kentucky, Boston: Ela, 1845, 82. See also W. R. Hayes to Gerrit Smith, 20 September 1836, Gerrit Smith Papers. 8. Robert Harrison to State Department, 18 August 1833, ibid., T31, Roll 3. 9. Robert Harrison to Sate Department, 10 January 1834, ibid., T31, Roll 3. 10. Robert Harrison to State Department, 14 November 1833, ibid., T31, Roll 3. 11. Report by U.S. Consul, circa 1835 (including article from Bahamas Royal Gazette, 28 January 1835), Microcopy T475, Roll 3, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, Bahamas, NARA-CP. See also Wilbur Henry Siebert, “The Legacy of the American Revolution to the British West Indies and the Bahamas,” Ohio State University Bulletin, 17 (Number 27, April 1913): 16–50. 12. Robert Harrison to State Department, 23 October 1834, T31, Roll 4. See also Thomas Staunton St. Clair, A Residence in the West Indies and America, with a Narrative of the Expedition to the Island of Walcheren, London: Bentley, 1834. 13. American Freeman, 2 July 1839, University of Michigan. 14. James Stuart, Three Years in North America, Volume II, Edinburgh: Cadell, 1833, 54, 59, 74, 75. 15. U.S. Congress. 24th Congress, 1st Session. U.S. Senate. Report by John C. Calhoun, 4 February 1836. Detroit Public Library. See also John Williamson Crary, Sr., Reminiscences of the Old South from 1834 to 1866, Pensacola: Perdido Bay Press, 1984, 55, 56. 278

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16. “The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D., Charged with Publishing Seditious Libels, by Circulating the Publications of the American Anti-Slavery Society, before the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Held at Washington in April 1836, Occupying the Court the Period of Ten Days,” New York: Piercy, 1836, Detroit Public Library. 17. J. C. Furnas, The Road to Harper’s Ferry, New York: William Sloane, 1959, 289. See also Edward B. Rugemer, “The Southern Response to British Abolitionism: The Maturation of Proslavery Apologetics,” Journal of Southern History, 70 (Number 2, May 2004): 221–248. 18. Letter from Haiti, 13 September 1835 and 12 October 1835, in The Rural Code of Haiti, Literally Translated from a Publication of the Government Press; Together with Letters from That Country, Concerning Its Present Condition; by a Southern Planter, New York: Vale, 1838, Buffalo Public Library. 19. The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy Including His Journeys to Texas and Mexico; with a Sketch of Contemporary Events and a Notice of the Revolution in Hayti, Philadelphia: Parris, 1847, 29, Syracuse University. 20. T. S. Rice, Downing Street to Governors, 4 November 1834, in Subject File— “Enterprize,” Bermuda Archives. See also C. F. Frey to Gerrit Smith, 9 June 1827, Gerrit Smith Papers, and John M. Duncan, Travels through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, Volume II, Glasgow: Hurst, Robinson, 1823, 254. 21. Bermuda Royal Gazette, 24 February 1835. 22. Nellie E. Musson, Mind the Onion Seed: Black “Roots” in Bermuda, Hamilton, Bermuda: Musson’s, 1979, 66. 23. Nellie Eileen Musson, “Children of the Enterprise,” 1979, Bermuda Archives. 24. Bermuda Royal Gazette, 7 April 1835. 25. Lydia Lewis Cadiz, editor, The Anti-Slavery Intelligencer and Coloured Men’s Advocate, 15 April 1835, Harrison County, Ohio, Johns Hopkins University. 26. Manifest for 78 Slaves, circa 1835, CO37/95/204, NAUK. 27. Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, 28 February 1835, CO37/95/192, NAUK. 28. Earl of Aberdeen to William Gladstone, 13 April 1835, CO37/95/196, NAUK. 29. Minutes of Privy Council, Response of Friendly Institution in the Name of Richard Tucker, 19 February 1835, CO37/95/216, NAUK. 30. Minutes of Privy Council, 18 February 1835, CO37/95/213, NAUK. 31. Aaron Vail to Lord Palmerston, 11 May 1835, CO37/96/264, NAUK. 32. Ibid., Nellie Musson, Mind the Onion Seed, 57. 33. Joseph Pease to Gerrit Smith, 1 November 1839, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University. 34. Petition, 8 July 1834, Printed Journals, House of Assembly, Bermuda Archives. 35. Petition, 4 August 1834, Printed Journals, House of Assembly, Bermuda Archives. 36. Aaron Vail to Lord Palmerston, 20 September 1834, in U.S. Congress. 24th Congress, nd 2 Session. Correspondence on “Seizure of Slaves on Board the Brigs ‘Encomium’ and ‘Enterprise,’” 1837, Bermuda Archives. 37. Aaron Vail to Lord Palmerston, 20 September 1834, CO23/92/ 219, NAUK. 38. Report by U.S. Consul, Bahamas, 12 February 1834, CO23/92/239, NAUK. 39. C. Nesbitt to U.S. Consul, 13 February 1834, CO23/92/249, NAUK. 40. Loren Schweninger, ed., The Southern Debate over Slavery, Volume I, Petitions to Southern Legislatures, 148–150. See also U.S. Congress. Senate. 24th Congress, 2nd Session.

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Andrew Jackson to Senate, 13 February 1837. Includes Correspondence on “Seizure of Slaves on Board the Brigs ‘Encomium’ and ‘Enterprise.’” Bermuda Archives. 41. “Speech of Mr. Giddings of Ohio, on His Motion to Reconsider the Vote Taken upon the Final Passage of the ‘Bill for Relief of the Owners of Slaves Lost from on Board the ‘Comet’ and ‘Encomium,’” House of Representatives, 13 February 1843, Cornell University. 42. Papers on the “Comet” and “Encomium,” February 1839, T1/3556, NAUK. 43. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 1 August 1835, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 44. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 18 October 1835, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. At the same site and collection, see also Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 21 March 1836: arrival of Portuguese slaver with 230 Africans aboard; Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 19 November 1836: arrival of vessel from Havana with liberated Africans aboard. 45. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 12 March 1836, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. At the same site and collection, see also Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 10 December 1836; Vincent Wully to C. R. Nesbitt, 24 August 1836: enlistment of 50 African recruits for the Second West India Regiment. 46. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 15 November 1836, Governor’s Despatches. 47. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 30 August 1836, Governor’s Despatches. 48. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 4 December 1835, Governor’s Despatches. 49. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 15 December 1835, Governor’s Despatches. 50. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 8 July 1836, Governor’s Despatches. 51. Lord Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 28 July 1836, Governor’s Despatches. 52. Letter, 13 May 1837, ID: 2782, Title: Crabbe Island, DR13, p. 24, Belize Archives and Records Service. 53. New York merchant to Secretary of State John Forsyth, 18 April 1835, T475, Roll 3, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, Bahamas. 54. Consul to Secretary of State, 10 April 1835, T475, Roll 3. See attached newspaper clipping, 12 November 1834: note substantial cargo of condemned U.S. brig. See also List of U.S. vessels arriving in Bahamas from 1 July–31 December 1835: 5 to Abaco: 2 from Philadelphia, 2 from Key West, 1 from Charleston. To Eleuthera, 2 from New York City, 1 from Charleston; to Exuma, 1 from New Hampshire, 1 from New York and to various islands in the archipelago, including Freeport, numerous U.S. ships. See also Consul to Secretary of State, 19 September 1838, T475, Roll 4: Vessels “totally lost at Abaco.” 55. John M. Duncan, Travels through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, Volume II, Glasgow: Hurst, Robinson, 1823, 258. 56. An Authentic Exposition of the “K.G.C.” “Knights of the Golden Circle”; or a History of Secession from 1834 to 1861. by a Member of the Order, Indianapolis: Perrine, 1861, Johns Hopkins University. 57. See, e.g., U.S. Congress. 23rd Congress, 1st Session. House of Representatives. Report Number 368, “Inhabitants: East Florida,” 26 March 1834, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. See also George F. Pearce, The U.S. Navy in Pensacola: From Sailing Ships to Naval Aviation (1835–1930), Pensacola: University Press of Florida, 1980. 58. Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Negroes and the Seminole War, 1835–1842,” Journal of Southern History, 30 (Number 4, November 1964): 427–450, 427, 428, 449. 280

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59. Gary R. McDonough, The Florida Negro: A Federal Writers’ Project Legacy, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993. 11. 60. Larry Eugene Rivers, Slavery in Florida, 253. See also U.S. Congress. 24th Congress, 2nd Session. House of Representatives. Document No. 154, “Hostilities with Creek Indians. Message from the President of the United States.” 14 February 1837. University of Alabama. Kenneth Wiggins Porter, “Abraham” Phylon, 2 (Number 2, 1941): 105–116. 61. Woodburne Potter, The War in Florida: Being an Exposition of Its Causes and an Accurate History of the Campaigns of Generals Clinch, Gaines, and Scott, Baltimore: Lewis and Coleman, 1836, 45. 62. Thomas S. Jessup to R. K. Call, Governor of Florida, 18 April 1837, in U.S. Congress. 28th Congress, 3rd Session. House of Representatives. Document Number 225, “Negroes  . . . Captured from Indians in Florida . . .. Letter from the Secretary of War.” 27 February 1839, Tulane University. 63. Mary Telfair to Mary Few, 30 January 1836, in Betty Wood, ed., Mary Telfair to Mary Few: Selected Letters, 1802–1844, Athens: University of Georgia, 2007, 157. 64. General Duncan Clinch Letterbooks, 1834–1836, Series C, Part 2, Reel 1, #0081, Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War–University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. 65. “Remarks of Mr. Bynum of North Carolina on the Bill Making a Partial Appropriation for the Suppression of Indian Hostilities for the Year 1838, Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 24, 1838,” Washington, D.C.: Globe, 1838, Cleveland Public Library. 66. John Innerarity to James Innerarity, 13 August 1816, in “Letters of John Innerarity and A. H. Gordon,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 12 (Number 1, July 1933): 37–41, 38. 67. Canter Brown, Jr., “The Florida Crisis of 1826–1827 and the Second Seminole War,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 73 (Number 4, April 1995): 419–442, 428. 68. George Klos, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821–1835,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 68 (Number 1, July 1989): 55–78, 69. See also William S. Coker, ed., The Military Presence on the Gulf Coast, Pensacola: Gulf Coast History and Humanities Center, 1978; Major General George A. McCall, Letters from the Frontiers: Written during a Period of Thirty Years’ Service in the Army of the United States, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1868. 69. John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1967, 128. See also “Correspondence between General Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, President and Vice-President of the U. States on the Subject of the Course of the Latter, in the Deliberations of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe on the Occurrences in the Seminole War,” Washington: Duff Green, 1831, University of Virginia. 70. Andrew Jackson to Thomas S. Jessup, 2 August 1836, Andrew Jackson Collection, Duke University. See also Osceola; or Fact and Fiction: A Tale of the Seminole War. By a Southerner, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838, Boston Public Library. See also Edward C. Coker and Daniel L. Schaffer, “A West Point Graduate in the Second Seminole War: William Warren Chapman and the View from Fort Foster,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 1990, 463, University of Texas–Austin: Seminoles “had long been endeavoring to induce the Negroes of the South and the Cherokees to combine with them against the whites.” See also Patricia Riles Wickman, Osceola’s Legacy, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006, 160–161: Osceola also may have had African ancestry.

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71. Erwin Craighead, Mobile: Fact and Tradition, Mobile: Powers, 1930, 64. See also Samuel E. Morrison to Kenneth Porter, 28 April 1952, Box 27, Kenneth Porter Papers, Schomburg Center: “[T]hat renegade Englishman who called himself ‘Tastenagy’ or Chief of the Creek Indians ... I found a number of letters from him in the French Archives, showing that he was trying to hook up with the French Revolutionary authorities and make trouble on our southern frontier in case of war.” 72. Ibid., Gary W. McDonough, The Florida Negro, 8. See also Mark F. Boyd, “AsiYaholo or Osceola,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 33 (January–April 1955): 4–63. 73. Daniel Blanchard, An Authentic Narrative of the Seminole War; Its Cause, Rise, and Progress and a Minute Detail of the Horrid Massacres of the Whites, by the Indians and Negroes in Florida in the Months of December, January, and February, Providence: Blanchard, 1836, University of Virginia. 74. Joshua R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida or the Crimes Committed against the Maroons, who Fled from South Carolina and Other Slave States, Seeking Protection under Spanish Laws, Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster and Co., 1858, 89. See also Richard Newman et al., eds., Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790–1860, New York: Routledge, 2001. 75. “Osceola at Fort Moultrie,” 15 June 1968, SCHS. 76. The Colored American, 23 February 1839. 77. James F. Sunderman, ed., Journey into Wilderness: An Army Surgeon’s Account of Life in Camp and Field during the Creek and Seminole Wars, 1836–1838 by Jacob Rhett Motte, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1963, 210–211. 78. Daniel F. Blanchard, An Authentic Narrative of the Seminole War; Its Cause, Rise, and Progress and a Minute Detail of the Horrid Massacres of the Whites, by the Indians and Negroes in Florida in the Months of December, January, and February, Providence: Blanchard, 1836, University of Virginia. 79. Sketch of the Seminole War and Sketches during a Campaign by a Lieutenant of the Left Wing, Charleston: Dowling, 1836, 37, 38, 61, South Carolina Historical Society–Charleston. See also John Campbell, “The Seminoles, the ‘Bloodhound War’ and Abolitionism, 1796–1865,” Journal of Southern History, 72 (Number 2, May 2006): 259–302. 80. Woodburne Potter, The War in Florida, 106, 25. 81. A Veteran of Four Wars. The Autobiography of F. C. M. Boggess, a Record of Pioneer Life and Adventure and Heretofore Unwritten History of the Florida Seminole Indian Wars, Arcadia, Florida, 1900, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. At the same site, see also “Payment for Slaves. Speech by J. R. Giddings of Ohio on the Bill to Pay the Heirs of Antonio Pacheco for a Slave Sent West of the Mississippi with the Seminole Indians in 1848. Made in the House of Representatives, December 28, 1848 and January 6, 1849,” Washington: Buell & Blanchard, 1849. 82. “Speech of John Quincy Adams on the Joint Resolution for Distributing Rations to the Distressed Fugitives from Indian Hostilities in the States of Alabama and Georgia. Delivered in the House of Representatives, Wednesday, May 25, 1836,” Washington: National Intelligencer Office, 1836, University of Alabama. See also William Roan Tipton, “The Removal of the Creek Indians from Alabama to the Indian Territory in 1836,” M.A., University of Alabama, 1921. 83. See Kevin Mulroy, The Seminole Freedmen: A History, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. Note: The Seminoles also are referred to as the “Igana-nok-salgi” but for narrative clarity I use the popular English version of their designation. 282

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84. “Speech of W. O. Butler of Kentucky, in Committee of the Whole in Reply to Mr. Biddle and Hunt, upon the Appropriation for Suppressing Hostilities in Florida, Delivered in the House of Representatives, June 11, 1840,” Washington: Blair and Rives, 1840, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 85. Francis M. Carroll, “The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary along the Michigan Frontier, 1819–1827: The Boundary Commissions under Articles Six and Seven of the Treaty of Ghent,” Michigan Historical Review, 30 (Number 2, Fall 2004): 77–104. See also Francis M. Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the CanadianAmerican Boundary, 1783–1842, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. 86. Captain Yule, Remarks on the Disputed Northwestern Boundary of New Brunswick, Bordering on the United States of North America with an Explanatory Sketch, London: Ridgway and Sons, 1838, Cleveland Public Library. At the same site, see also Horne, “What Shall We Do with Canada?” no date (apparently from Leeds). See also Joshua Smith, Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006, 116. 87. March L. Harris, “The Meaning of Patriot: The Canadian Rebellion and American Republicanism, 1837–1839,” Michigan Historical Review, 23 (Number 1, Spring 1997): 33–69, 35. 88. Elizabeth Campbell to Sophia Biddle, 5 December 1838, Sophia Biddle Papers, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Note that the city that became Toronto was once called York—though for sake of clarity, I will refer to it as Toronto. 89. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 275. 90. Melody Brown, “Blacks and the Rebellion of 1837,” in “1837 Rebellion Remembered,” Willowdale, Ontario: Ontario Historical Society, 1988, 113–116, City of Toronto Archives. 91. Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, 195. 92. “Correspondence between Viscount Palmerston & Mr. Stevenson Relative to the Seizure and Destruction of the Steam-Boat ‘Caroline’ in the Niagara River on the Night of the 29th of December 1837,” FO881/9, NAUK. (See depositions of William Hinton, “coloured man” and cook; James Wilson, “coloured man” and engineer; and John Johnson, “coloured man” and fireman.) 93. Memorandum by Sir Francis Head, circa 1838, CO537/139, NAUK. 94. M. A. Reynolds to W. L. Mack, 6 October 1838, Reel 3, MacKenzie-Lindsey Fonds, Archives City of Toronto–Canada. 95. City Council Minutes, 30 October 1837, City of Toronto Archives. 96. Lieutenant Governor to City Council, City Council Minutes, 25 October 1838, City of Toronto Archives. 97. City Council Minutes, 24 December 1838, City of Toronto Archives. 98. City Council Minutes, 31 December 1838, City of Toronto Archives. 99. City Council Minutes, 15 November 1838, City of Toronto Archives. 100. Edith G. Firth, ed., The Town of York, 1815–1834: A Further Collection of Documents of Early Toronto, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966, 333. See also “The Seventh Report from the Select Committee of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada on Grievances; to Whom Were Referred Lord Viscount Goderich’s Despatch to His Excellency Sir John Colborne of the 8th November 1832,” University of Rochester. 101. William R. Lount to W. L. MacKenzie, 13 July 1838, Reel 3, MacKenzie-Lindsey Fonds.

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102. Stephen B. Brophy to William MacKenzie, 4 August 1839, Reel 3, MacKenzie-Lindsey Fonds. See also “William MacKenzie’s Call to Arms,” Broadside, 1837, Toronto Reference Library. At the same site, see also William MacKenzie, “Proclamation,” 13 December 1837. 103. William MacKenzie, Sketches of Canada and the United States, London: Effingham Wilson, 1833, 24. 104. Margaret Fairley, ed., The Selected Writings of William Lyon MacKenzie, 1824– 1837, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960, 173. 105. James MacKenzie to W. L. MacKenzie, 25 August 1839, F37, M516, MacKenzieLindsey Family Fonds. 106. Thomas Gibbs Ridout to Matilda Ridout, 24 November 1838, MS 537, Reel 2, Thomas Ridout Family Fonds. 107. David Strang to W. L. MacKenzie, 23 July 1838, Reel 3, MacKenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds. 108. War with England. The Case Fairly Stated; with an Address to President Van Buren and the Members of Congress; with Whom Rests the Power of Preventing that Calamity. By an Advocate for Peace, New York, 1838, University of South Carolina. 109. Letter to General Van Rensselaer, 28 December 1837, Reel 2, Mackenzie-Lindsey Fonds, Archives of Toronto–Canada. 110. Ernest Green, “Upper Canada’s Black Defenders,” Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, 27 (1931): 365–391, 371. 111. Karolyn Smardz Frost, “Communities of Resistance: African Canadians and African Americans in Antebellum Toronto,” Ontario History, 99 (Number 1, Spring 2007): 44–63, 52, 53. 112. S. F. Wise, ed., Sir Francis Head: A Narrative, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969, 172. See also Fred Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the Rebellion of 1837,” Journal of Negro History, 7 (Number 4, October 1922): 377–379. 113. Memorandum from Sir Francis Head, 19 December 1837, in ibid., S. F. Wise, 150. 114. Sir Francis B. Head, The Emigrant, New York: Harper & Bros., 1847, 140, 142, 143, 148, 183. 115. Silas Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan, Detroit: Gale, 1969 [originally published 1890], 301. 116. Robert B. Ross, The Patriot War, Detroit: Evening News, 1890, Western Reserve Historical Society. See also E. A. Theller, Canada in 1837–1838, Showing by Historical Facts, the Causes of the Late Attempted Revolution and of Its Failures, Philadelphia: Anners, 1841. 117. H. L. Fox to Lord Palmerston, 29 January 1838, FO97/12, NAUK. 118. H. L. Fox to Secretary of State John Forsyth, 6 February 1838, FO97/12/130, NAUK. 119. H. L. Fox to Lord Palmerston, 21 February 1838, FO97/12/151, NAUK. 120. H. L. Fox to John Forsyth, 4 January 1838, FO97/12/, NAUK. 121. H. L. Fox to Lord Palmerston, 13 January 1838, FO97/12, NAUK. 122. Statement by Robert Rhett, 8 January 1838, FO991/9, NAUK. 123. N. Garrow to President of U.S.A., 28 December 1837, FO991/9, NAUK. 124. Sir Francis Head to H. L. Fox, 30 January 1838, FO991/9, NAUK. 125. Remarks of Henry Clay, 9 January 1838, FO97/12, NAUK. 126. Remarks by Jonathan Cilley and Isaac Bronson, circa 1838, FO97/12, NAUK.

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127. Letters sent by Sir Francis Head to Lord Glenely, 26 December 1837 and 10 January 1838, FO 97/12, NAUK. 128. Jack K. Williams, “An Evaluation of Seventeen British Travelers to Ante-Bellum Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 35 (Number 4, December 1951): 307–318, 307. See also Herbert Weaver, “Foreigners in Ante-Bellum Savannah,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 37 (Number 1, March 1953): 1–17. 129. Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume I, London: Saunders and Otley, 1838, 244, 251. See also Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America, edited by Paul R. Baker, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963; Una PopeHennessey, Three English Women in America, London: Benn, 1929; Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, edited by Donald Smalley, New York: Knopf, 1949; Francis J. Grund, The Americans in Their Moral, Social, and Political Relations, London: Longman, 1837. See also Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839, edited by John A. Scott, New York: Knopf, 1961, 233. See also Mildred E. Lombard, “Contemporary Opinion of Mrs. Kemble’s ‘Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation,’” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 14 (Number 4, December 1930): 335–343. Robert B. Downs, Images of America: Travelers from Abroad in the New World, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. See also Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 183, American Travel Writers, 1776–1864, Detroit: Gale, 1997. 130. “Speech of Robert J. Breckenridge Delivered in the Court-House Yard at Lexington, Kentucky, on the 12th Day of October 1840, in Reply to the Speech of Robert Wickliffe, Delivered in the Court-House of Lexington on the 10th Day of August 1840.” Lexington: Finnell, 1840, University of Virginia. At the same site, see also Charles Stuart, The West India Question, New Haven: Hezekiah Howe, 1833. See also Sylvester Hovey, Letters from the West Indies; Relating Especially to the Danish Island, St. Croix and to the British Islands, Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica, New York: Gould and Newman, 1838, 38. 131. “Lord Broughham’s Speech in the House of Lords, Monday, January 29, 1838, upon the Slave Trade with an Abstract of the Discussion which Ensued,” London: Anti-Slavery Society, 1838, University of Virginia. At the same site, see also G. Hallam, Esq., Narrative of a Voyage from Montego Bay in the Island of Jamaica to England; by a Route Never Gone Before, or Since, across the Island of Cuba to Havana: From Thence to Charles Town, South Carolina, London: Rivington, 1831. 132. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, 13. 133. William Caleb McDaniel, “Our Country the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2006, 325. 134. “Slavery in America,” Great Britain, 1836, Johns Hopkins University. 135. The Canadian Crisis and Lord Durham’s Mission to the North American Colonies: With Remarks, the Result of Personal Observation in the Colonies and the United States on the Remedial Measures to Be Adopted in the North American Provinces, London: Rodwell, 1838, 9–10, 22, University of South Carolina. 136. J. W. Longuen, As a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life, Syracuse: Truair, 1859, 343–345, 336: the author adds, “[A]t Windsor where they were, the people talked French only and could not converse with them . . .. [B]ut they rejoiced and thanked God with warm hearts.”

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C ha p t e r 9 1. Three Years’ Female Anti-Slavery Effort, in Britain, and America: Being a Report of the Proceedings of the Glasgow Ladies’ Auxiliary Emancipation Society, Since Its Formation in January 1834. Glasgow: Ladies’ Auxiliary, 1837, Johns Hopkins University. Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, 63, 65, 67. Cf. James A. Thome and J. Horace Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies, a Six Months’ Tour in Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica in the Year 1837, New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839. 2. The Abolitionist, May 1834, Schomburg Center. (This volume is bound with the following: “Jamaica, Blessed with Freedom and the Gospel; as Described in the Speech of the Rev. W. Knibb, at Exeter Hall, May 22, 1840.”) See also Thomas Clarkson, “To the Christian and Well-Disposed Citizens of the Northern States of America,” 30 August 1844, Huntington Library. At the same site, see also Thomas Clarkson, “Letter to Such Professing Christians in the Northern States of America as Have Had no Practical Concern with Slave Holding and Have Never Sanctioned It by Defending It.” London: Macintosh, 1844. 3. Letters and Addresses by George Thompson during His Mission in the United States, from October 1st 1834 to November 27, 1835, Boston: Knapp, 1837, 31, 84, Johns Hopkins University. See also Gerrit Smith remarks, 4 May 1844, and Thomas Clarkson remarks, 25 February 1844, in “Gerrit Smith and Thomas Clarkson,” circa 1844, Huntington Library– San Marino, California. At the same site, see also Thomas Clarkson, “Reply to the Assertions of the Clergy of the Southern States of America, ‘that Abraham was the founder of slavery.’” 26 March 1845. See also Betty Fladeland, “’Our Cause Being One and the Same’: Abolitionists and Chartism,” in James Walvin, ed., Slavery and British Society, 1776–1846, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982, 69–99. Charles Stearns, Facts in the Life of General Taylor; the Cuba Blood-Hound Importer, the Extensive Slave-Holder and the Hero of the Mexican War, Boston: Stearns, 1848, Johns Hopkins University. 4. “Discussion on American Slavery between George Thompson, Esq., Agent of the British and Foreign Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World and Rev. Robert Breckenridge, Delegate from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, to the Congregational Union of England and Wales, [Held] in the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw’s Chapel, Glasgow, Scotland; on the Evenings of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th of June 1836,” Boston: Knapp, 1836, Phillips Library, Salem, Massachusetts. At the same site, see also William E. Channing, “An Address Delivered at Lenox, on the First of August 1842, the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies,” Lenox, Massachusetts: J.G. Stanly, 1842. Also there, see “Celebration of West India Emancipation at the Hingham and Weymouth Anti-Slavery Societies in Hingham,” 1 August 1842. See also The AntiSlavery Examiner-Extra, Emancipation in the West Indies in 1838, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. See also The Annual Report of the American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society, Presented at New York, 8 May 1845, with the Resolutions, and Addresses, New York: AFASS, 1849, Buffalo Public Library. At the latter site, see “Poem Dedicated to the Board of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, to the Women of Great Britain, in Commemoration of Their Untiring Efforts in the Cause of British West India, 1839.” See also “Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, London, Called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and Held in London from Friday June 12th to Tuesday, 23rd 1840,” London: BFASS, 1841, New York Historical Society. See also 286

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Frederick B. Tolles, ed., Slavery and “The Woman Question”: Lucretia Mott’s Diary of Her Visit to Great Britain to Attend the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, Haverford: Friends’ Historical Association, 1952, Massachusetts Historical Society–Boston. 5. See, e.g., Norfolk and Norwich Anti-Slavery Society, England, 12 March 1845, Mss. Acc. 1053, Boston Public Library. Resolutions expressed sympathy for those persons imprisoned in the U.S. for abetting the escape of slaves. At the same site, see also the similar resolution of the Antislavery Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 7 March 1845, Mss. Acc. 1045, and Auxiliary Antislavery Society of Darlington, England, 7 March 1845, Mss. Acc. 1049 and British and Foreign Antislavery Society, 6 March 1845, Ms. Acc. 1050. 6. “British Opinions of the American Colonization Society,” Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1833, Huntington Library. 7. Henry C. Wright, “American Slavery Proved to Be Theft and Robbery.” Edinburgh: Dalrymple, 1845, Huntington Library. 8. Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, Mission to England in Behalf of the American Colonization Society, Washington: Morrison, 1841, 45, 64, Syracuse University. 9. James Hammond, “Two Letters on Slavery in the United States, Addressed to Thomas Clarkson, Esq.,” Columbia, South Carolina: Allen, McCarter, 1845, Huntington Library. 10. Ezekiel Birdseye to Gerrit Smith, 20 January 1846, Gerrit Smith Papers. 11. “Speech of Mr. Rhett of South Carolina on the Protective or Prohibitory Policy, Delivered in the House of Representatives,” 22 December 1841, SCHS. See also George Bailey Loring, England Opposed to Slavery or Some Remarks upon “An Examination into the Real Causes of the War against the United States and an Appeal to the Other Powers of Europe against the Purposes of England,” Boston: Greene, 1842, Phillips Library; see also Boston Morning Post, 19 April 1842. The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists, Philadelphia: Manly, 1836. Cf. Achille Murat, A Moral and Political Sketch of the United States of North America with a Note on Negro Slavery by Junius Redidvivus, London: Effingham Wilson, 1833. 12. Merton Dillon, Benjamin Lundy and the Struggle for Negro Freedom, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966, 84–85. 13. J. S. Buckingham, A Journey through the Slave States of North America, Charleston, South Carolina: History Press, 2006 [originally published in 1842], 249. For more on British attitudes toward the U.S., see, e.g., Alfred R. Ferguson, “Charles Dickens in Ohio,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 59 (Number 1, 1950): 14–25, 14, 22. See also William Glyde Wilkins, Charles Dickens in America, New York: Haskell House, 1970. See also Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi, London: Bentley, 1836, dedicated to U.S. states where “slavery is abolished “or “never permitted.” See also “Account by George Featherstonehaugh,” 1835, Mobile Municipal Archives. 14. J. S. Buckingham, A Journey through the Slave States of North America, 54, 83, 98, 184. 15. Ezekiel Birdseye to Gerrit Smith, 17 October 1843, Gerrit Smith Papers. 16. Account by Thomas Hamilton in Walter Brownlow Posey, ed., “Alabama in the 1830s as Recorded by British Travelers,” Birmingham Southern College Bulletin, 31 (Number 4, December 1938): 3–47, 4. 17. James Grahame, Cursory Review of “American Apology for American Accession to Negro Slavery,” London: Smith, Elder, 1842, 5, 10, 36, 42, 46, 50, 58. See also David L.

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Child, “Oration in Honor of Universal Emancipation in the British Empire, Delivered at South Reading, August First, 1834,” Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1834, Phillips Library. 18. Ibid., Anthony M. Brescia, ed., “A Report by Secret Agent Albert Fitz . . .”, Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History, 6 (1994): 194–206, 202. 19. Alfred R. Ferguson, “Charles Dickens in Ohio,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 59 (Number 1, 1950): 14–25, 14, 22. See also Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi, London: Bentley, 1836. 20. Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1833, 212, 313, 320, 347–348. See also Armstrong Archer, “Compendium of Slavery as It Exists in the United States of America,” London: Archer, 1844, New York Historical Society. 21. Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, Volume 2, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1833, 142. See also “Jamaica, Blessed with Freedom and the Gospel; as Described in the Speech of the Rev. W. Knibb, at Exeter Hall, May 22, 1840,” London, 1840, Schomburg Center. 22. Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, Written during a Tour in the United States and Canada, Volume I, London: Hurst, Robinson, 1824, 16, 26, 153, 156, 158, 189, 190, 194, 195, 247–249. See also James Flint, Letters from America, Containing Observations on the Climate and Agriculture of the Western States, the Manners of the People, the Prospects of Emigrants, &c, Edinburgh: W.& C. Tait, 1822. See also “America and Her Slave System; or the Morals and Manners of the Americans as Exemplified by Their Conduct to Their Fellow Beings of the Coloured Race, Both Bond and Free,” London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1847, Cornell University. See also E. S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America, from April 1833 to October 1834, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 [originally published 1835], 363, 374, 370. James Buchanan to Ovid F. Johnston, 2 February 1837, James Buchanan Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg: the future U.S. president acknowledged the potency of British abolitionism within the republic. James Buchanan to Ovid F. Johnston, 2 February 1837, James Buchanan Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives–Harrisburg. 23. Francis Fry Wayland, Andrew Stevenson: Democrat and Diplomat, 1785–1857, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949, 183, 184, 115, 117. 24. Howard Temperley, “The O’Connell-Stevenson Contretemps: A Reflection of the Anglo-American Slavery Issue,” Journal of Negro History, 47 (Number 4, October 1962): 217–233, 218, 219, 221. See also Paul Knaplund, “Sir James Stephen: The Friend of the Negroes,” Journal of Negro History, 35 (Number 4, October 1950): 368–407. 25. Daniel O’Connell, “Upon American Slavery with Other Irish Testimonies,” New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, in Anti-Slavery Tracts, Westport: Negro Universities Press, 1970, Columbia University. 26. Daniel O’Connell, Upon American Slavery with Other Irish Testimonies, New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860 [speeches cover era from 1829–1838]. See “Letters of the Late Bishop England to the Hon. John Forsyth on the Subject of Domestic Slavery: To Which Are Prefixed Copies in Latin and English of the Pope’s Apostolic Letter, Concerning the African Slave Trade, with Some Introductory Remarks, etc. by W. George Mead,” Baltimore: Murphy, circa 1843, Georgia Historical Society. See also “Great Meeting of Irishmen at Philadelphia. The Call and Proceedings of the Naturalized Irish Citizens of 288

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Philadelphia City and County, in the State House Yard, August 6, 1832, to Adopt Measures to Prevent the Re-Election of Andrew Jackson, to the Presidency of the United States, because of His Utter Abandonment of Those Principles Which Had Induced Them Heretofore to Support Him. This Meeting Was Composed of Not Less than Five Thousand Natives of Ireland. Erin Go Bragh, 1832,” University of South Carolina. 27. Miriam L. Usery, “Charles Lenox Remond, Garrison’s Ebony Echo, World AntiSlavery Convention, 1840,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 106 (1970): 112–125, 1810–1873, 120, 121. See also Dorothy Burnett Porter, “The Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth-Century Family Revisited,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 95 (Part 2, 1985): 259–296, 264, 275, 277, 287. 28. Elizabeth Pease to Gerrit Smith, October 1839, Gerrit Smith Papers. 29. “Address of the ‘Irish Liberator’ to the Irish Repeal Association of Cincinnati, Ohio: With the Pope’s Bull on Slavery and the Slave Trade,” Dublin, 11 October 1843, Cornell University. At the same site, see also Right Hon. Stephen R. Lushington, Private Secretary to Lord Harris and Late Governor of Madras, The Life and Services of General Lord Harris, GCB, during His Campaigns in America, the West Indies, and India, London: Parker, 1840. 30. Michigan Freeman, 12 February 1840. See also Reverend George Lewis, Impressions of America and the American Churches, New York: Negro Universities Press [originally published 1848, Edinburgh], 1968, 127, 130, 146, 159, 173. 31. Michigan Freeman, 6 April 1840. 32. Israel Lewis to Gerrit Smith, 7 February 1831, Gerrit Smith Papers. 33. Sworn Deposition by Alexander McArthur, 17 June 1833, and M. B. Robinson et al. to “Your Excellency,” circa 1833, RG56-26, Box 198, Michigan State Archives–Lansing. 34. Detroit Courier Digest, 19 June 1833. 35. “The Colored People of Detroit: Their Trials, Persecutions, and Escapes Containing Sketches of the Riots of 1833, 1839, 1850, and 1863, with a Full Account of the Loss of Life and Burning of Negro Tenements in the Latter Year  . . .Together with Some Information Concerning the Concoction of John Brown’s Raid,” circa 1870, Detroit Public Library. See also Fred Landon, “Amherstburg, Terminus of the Underground Railroad,” Journal of Negro History, 10 (Number 1, January 1925): 1–9. 36. John Malvin, North into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro, 1795–1880, Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1966, 32. 37. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 244, 251. See also Lewis Clarke, A Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke during a Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years among the Algerines of Kentucky, Boston: Ela, 1845, 38. On enslaved Africans escaping to Canada, see John Thomson to Gerrit Smith, 5 July 1842, Gerrit Smith Papers. See also The Colored American, 9 June 1838. See also T. K. Hunter, “Publishing Freedom, Winning Arguments: ‘Somerset,’ Natural Rights, and Massachusetts Freedom Cases, 1772–1836,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2005, 235. See also Lecture by James McCune Smith, 26 February 1841, Box 5, Mildred Stock Papers, Schomburg Center. 38. Sir Francis B. Head to “My Lord,” 8 October 1837, in Sir Francis B. Head, A Narrative, London: Murray, 1839, 202, 203, 204. 39. Alfred D. Decelles, The ‘Patriotes’ of ’37, Toronto: Glasgow, Brook, 1920, 69. See also Orrin Edward Tiffany, The Relations of the United States to the Canadian Rebellion

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of 1837–1838, 1905, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. See also Robert Harrison to State Department, 20 June 1841, T31, Roll 7, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica, NARA-CP. 40. W. L. MacKenzie to John Neilson, 26 May 1846, Reel 8, MacKenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds. See also Peter H. Watson to W. L. MacKenzie, 3 August 1842, Reel 7, MacKenzieLindsey Family Fonds. 41. Henry Kalar to W. L. MacKenzie, 16 August 1841, Reel 6, MacKenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds. 42. Alexander L. Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-Evaluation,” Canadian Historical Review, 43 (Number 4, December 1962): 298–314, 313. See also Fred Landon, “The Anderson Fugitive Case,” Journal of Negro History, 7 (Number 3, July 1922): 233–242. See also “Papers Relating to Extradition Collected by Edward Blake,” F-2-2-8, B225577, Archives of Toronto. At the same site, see also Imper Blue Books, Box 13, 1842, Number 495, Great Britain, Colonial Office, Despatches Relative to the Surrender of Nelson Hackett and John Strachan to Reverend A. M. Campbell, 28 April 1840, F983-2, MS 35, Reel 10, Letterbooks of John Strachan. 43. See David Ruggles, “A Man of Color,” “The ‘Extinguisher’ Extinguished!” Johns Hopkins University. See also William Lloyd Garrison, “An Address Delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, August 1, 1838, by Request of the People of Color of that city in Commemoration of the Emancipation of 600,000 Slaves on That Day in the British West Indies,” Boston: Knapp, 1838, New York Historical Society. See also Henry Kalar, Niagara Falls, to W. L. MacKenzie, 14 August 1841, Reel 6, MacKenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds– Archives of Toronto. See also James A. Thorne and Horace Kimball, “Emancipation in the West Indies, a Six Months’ Tour in Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica in the Year 1837,” New York: Anti-Slavery Society, 1838, Series E, Part 4, Reel 62, #537, Cocke Family Papers, Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War–University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. 44. Freedom’s Journal, 9 January 1829. See also The Colored American, 22 September 1838. The heralded Wilberforce was a frequent topic of interest in the U.S. Negro press. See, e.g., Freedom’s Journal, 7 September 1827; 5 October 1827; 27 June 1828; 11 July 1828; 29 August 1828; 5 September 1828; 14 November 1828. See also Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 26 June 1851; 21 August 1851; 2 October 1851; 9 October 1851; 23 October 1851; 4 December 1851; 29 January 1852, 25 March 1852; 8 April 1852, 3 June 1852; Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition: Or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery, Boston: Knapp, 1838. John Hopkins University. At the same site, see also “Claims of Africa on the United States of America,” 1830, and “Correspondence between the Hon. F. H. Elmore, One of the South Carolina Delegation in Congress, and James G. Birney, One of the Secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society,” New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838. 45. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, New York: Arno Press, 1969, 89. 46. Canadian Reminiscences, Manuscript of Published Book by William Wye Smith, Toronto: Briggs, 1900, Mss. Miscellaneous, F775, MU 2125, B272775, City of Toronto Archives. See also Samuel Ward to Gerrit Smith, 18 April 1842, Gerrit Smith Papers. 47. Reverend Charles Stewart, A Short View of the Present State of the Eastern Townships in the Province of Lower Canada, Bordering on the Line 45 [Degrees], London: Hatchard, 1817, 12. 290

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48. Thomas Need, Six Years in the Bush, or Extracts from the Journal of a Settler in Upper Canada, 1832–1838, Simpkin, Marshall, 1838, 20, 21, 22, 23. 49. James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 31 July 1839, Gerrit Smith Papers. See also George Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” Journal of Negro History, 38 (Number 3, July 1953): 307–321, 308. See also Thomas Jervey Hall, 1778–1846, “A Narrative of Three Years,” circa 1837, SCHS. 50. Vanessa D. Dickerson, Dark Victorians, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 2, 53, 60, 61. 51. Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life, New York: Basic, 2004, 83, 84, 88. See also Fred Landon, “Fugitive Slaves in London before 1860,” London and Middlesex Historical Society (Part X, 1919): 35–38. 52. Irving Bartlett, From Slave to Citizen: The Story of the Negro in Rhode Island, Providence: Urban League of Rhode Island, 1972, 41–42. 53. Julian Rammelkamp, “The Providence Negro Community, 1820–1842,” Rhode Island History, 7 (Number 1, January 1948): 20–33, 30, 33. 54. Governor William Reid to “My Lord,” 24 August 1841 in Printed Journals, House of Assembly, Bermuda Archives. 55. Statement by Governor Reid, 16 August 1843, in ibid., Printed Journals. 56. Sian Rees, Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped the Slave Trade, Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2011, 308. 57. The Colored American, 9 May 1840. 58. Allen P. Stouffer, The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 58. 59. Reverend S. W. Hanna, Notes of a Visit to Some Parts of Haiti, January, February 1835, London: Seeley & Burnside, 1836, 10, 19. See also Brittanicus, The Dominican Republic and the Emperor Souloque: Being Remarks and Strictures on the Misstatements and a Refutation of the Calumnies of M. D’Alaux, in the Article above under the Title in the Revue des Deux Mondes: Preceded by a Concise Account of the Historical Events of the Dominican Republic and a Glance at the Peninsula Samana, Philadelphia: Collins, 1852, 11, University of Rochester: When the Haitian leader, Boyer, was toppled in 1843, he escaped to Jamaica on a British corvette—which hardly escaped the suspicious attention of the republic’s delegate in Kingston. Robert Harrison to State Department, 24 March 1843, T31, Roll 8, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica, NARA-CP; Robert Harrison to State Department, 14 June 1843, T31, Roll 8. 60. Report of Messrs. Peck and Price Who Were Appointed at a Meeting of the Free Colored People of Baltimore, Held on the 25th November 1839, Delegates to Visit British Guiana, and the Island of Trinidad and Other Information Showing the Advantages to Be Derived by Emigrating to Those Colonies, Boston: Tuttle, 1841, 4, Massachusetts Historical Society-Boston. 61. “Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British Guiana, Compiled from Statements and Documents Furnished by Mr. Edward Carbery, Agent of the ‘Immigration Society of British Guiana’ and a Proprietor in That Colony, by a Friend of the Colored People,” Boston: Kidder and Wright, 1840, Massachusetts Historical Society–Boston. 62. Moses Benjamin to Secretary of State John Forsyth, 8 July 1835, T336, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Demerara, NARA-CP.

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63. Foreign Office to “Sir,” 10 February 1843, CO318/158, NAUK. 64. H. L. Fox to Earl of Aberdeen, 9 August 1843, CO318/158, NAUK. 65. H. L. Fox to Earl of Aberdeen, 27 August 1843, CO318/158, NAUK. 66. Abel Upshur to H.L. Fox, 12 August 1843, CO318/158, NAUK. 67. Moses Benjamin to Secretary of State John Forsyth, 8 February 1840, T336, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Demerara. 68. Moses Benjamin to Secretary of State John Forsyth, 30 June 1842, T336, Roll 2, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Demerara. 69. Robert Harrison to State Department, 8 September 1837, T31, Roll 4, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 70. Robert Harrison to State Department, 20 June 1838, T31, Roll 5. 71. Robert Harrison to State Department, 27 August 1838, T31, Roll 5. 72. Robert Harrison to State Department, 9 January 1839, T31, Roll 6. 73. Robert Harrison to State Department, 5 February 1839, T31, Roll 6. 74. Robert Harrison to State Department, 2 April 1839, T31, Roll 6. 75. Robert Harrison to State Department, 23 May 1840, T31, Roll 6. 76. Robert Harrison to State Department, 28 April 1841, T31, Roll 7. 77. Robert Harrison to State Department, 20 May 1841, T31, Roll 7. 78. Robert Harrison to State Department, 10 June 1841, T31, Roll 7. 79. Robert Harrison to State Department, 24 March 1843, T31, Roll 8. 80. Robert Harrison to State Department, 30 October 1843, T31, Roll 8. 81. Robert Harrison to State Department, 22 August 1840, T31, Roll 6. 82. Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003, 121, 122. 83. H. S. Fox to James Baker, 22 October 1839, and H. S. Fox to James Buchanan, 4 November 1839, in “Correspondence with Foreign Powers Not Parties to Conventions Giving Right to Search of Vessels Suspected of the Slave Trade, from January 1st to May 10th 1840,” London: Clowes and Sons, 1840, Schomburg Center. 84. Robert Harrison to State Department, 28 December 1841, T31, Roll 7. 85. Robert Harrison to State Department, 5 September 1843, T31, Roll 8. 86. Robert Harrison to State Department, 1 November 1842, T31, Roll 7. 87. Robert Harrison to State Department, 24 March 1843, T31, Roll 8. 88. Ibid., Report of Messrs. Peck and Price. 89. The Colored American, 14 March 1840. 90. The Colored American, 16 November 1839. 91. The Colored American, 17 August 1839. 92. The Colored American, 31 August 1839. 93. The Colored American, 28 September 1839. 94. The Colored American, 12 April 1838. 95. The Colored American, 17 October 1840.

C ha p t e r 1 0 1. Report, circa 1842, FO84/423/78, NAUK. See also Suits Relating to the “Creole,” 1841–1842, Docket Numbers 4408, 4409, 4410, 4413, 4414, 4419, VCC291, Reel 1, Loui292

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siana, Commercial Court (Orleans Parish), New Orleans Public Library. See also Sandra Riley, Homeward Bound: A History of the Bahama Islands to 1850 with a Definitive Study of Abaco in the American Loyalist Plantation Period, Miami: Island Research, 1983. 2. Statement by Blinn Curtis et al., 2 December 1841, FO84/423/241, NAUK. See Consul John Bacon to State Department, 21 October 1840, T475, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas: “Schooner Hermosa  . . . lost on a reef near Spanish Key, Abaco, on the 19th instant, on a voyage from Richmond to New Orleans. Cargo cotton goods, tobacco and forty eight slaves.” On the “Hermosa,” see also Edward Everett to Earl of Aberdeen, 3 May 1842, FO84/423/314, NAUK. At the same site on the same topic, see also Notarized Statement by John Chattin, 16 January 1841, FO84/423/320, NAUK. 3. Statement of Lucius Stevens, 10 November 1841, FO84/423/213, NAUK. 4. See, e.g., Consul to State Department, 15 December 1832, T475, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas: “The American schooner ‘Cicero’ from the port of Charleston, S.C. bound to Mobile was totally lost on the island of Abaco.  . . . [A]mong [the] passengers were about fifty Irish laborers with five women.” At the same site in the same collection, see reports of similar incidents, e.g., Consul to State Department, 23 January 1840, Roll 5; Consul to State Department, 28 September 1840; Consul to State Department, 10 October 1840; Consul to State Department, 14 November 1840. See also The National Era, 11 November 1847: “[T]he transport ship ‘Empire’ with 15 officers and 375 soldiers on board, bound for Vera Cruz, was wrecked on a coral reef near Abaco.” 5. Letter from George Cockburn, 11 October 1843; Letter from Governor Charles Nesbitt, 30 May 1842, #1561, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas: Loss of U.S. ship “Empire” near Abaco. 6. Daniel McKinnen, A Tour through the British West Indies, in the Years 1802 and 1803, Giving a Particular Account of the Bahama Islands, London: White, 1804, 268–270. 7. Steve Dodge, Abaco: The History of an Out Island and Its Cays, North Miami: Tropic Isle Publications, 1983. 8. Whittington B. Johnson, Post-Emancipation Race Relations in the Bahamas, 26. See also Peter T. Dalleo, “Baltimore-Bahamian Trade before the Civil War: Samuel R. Keene, the ‘James Power,’ ‘Emily Ann Johnson,’ and ‘Milton,’ Maryland Historical Magazine, 88 (Number 1, Spring 1993): 26–37. 9. New York Commercial Advertiser, 7 November 1841 (in ibid., FO84/523). 10. Statement of Blinn Curtis, 10 November 1841, FO84/423/216, NAUK. 11. Statement of William Merritt, 9 November 1841, FO84/423/217, NAUK. 12. Howard Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977, 79. See also Howard Jones, “The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt,” Civil War History, 21 (Number 1, March 1975): 28–50. 13. Steven Heath Mitton, “The Free World Confronted: The Problem of Slavery and Progress in American Foreign Relations, 1833–1844,” Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2005, 33. 14. Report and H. L. Fox to Daniel Webster, 25 February 1842 and New York Commercial Advertiser, 20 December 1841, FO84/423/78, NAUK.

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15. Edward D. Jervey and C. Harold Huber, “The Creole Affair,” Journal of Negro History, 65 (Number 3, Summer 1980): 196–211, 197. 16. Stanley Harrold, The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004, 108. 17. Stanley Harrold, “Romanticizing Slave Revolt: Madison Washington, the ‘Creole’ Mutiny, and Abolitionist Celebration of Violent Means,” John R. McKivigan and Stanley Harrold, eds., Antislavery Violence: Sectional, Racial, and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum America, Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1999, 89–107, 90. 18. “To the Honorable Commissioners Appointed for the Settlement of Outstanding Claims between the United States of America and Her Brittanic Majesty,” Memorial of Edward Lockett of Savannah, owner of 41 of the [former] slaves, circa 1853, Box 1, Creole Affair Collection, Tulane University. See also Clifton H. Johnson, “The Creole Affair,” Crisis, 78 (Number 8, October 1971): 248–250. 19. Edward Eden, “The Revolt on the Slave Ship ‘Creole’: Popular Resistance to Slavery in Post-Emancipation Nassau,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society, 22 (October 2000): 12–20, 15. 20. John Bacon to State Department, 17 November 1841, T475, Roll 5. 21. John Bacon to State Department, 30 November 1841, T475, Roll 5. 22. “Minutes of the National Convention of Colored Citizens Held at Buffalo on the 13th, 16th, 17th and 19th of August 1843 for the Purpose of Considering the Moral and Political Condition as American Citizens,” New York: Piercy & Reed, 1843, Schomburg Center. 23. Address by Frederick Douglass in New York, 23 April 1849, in John Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 2: 1847–1854, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982, 148–158, 156. 24. Phillip Troutman, “Grapevine in the Slave Market: African American Geopolitical Literacy and the 1841 ‘Creole’ Revolt,” in Walter Johnson, ed., The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, 203–233, 221. 25. Account of Remarks by Frederick Douglass, 29 July 1846, in John Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debate,s and Interviews, Volume I: 1841–1846, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979, 308–316, 312. See also Leslie Friedman, “Violence as an Instrument of Social Change: The Views of Frederick Douglass,” Journal of Negro History, 61 (Number 1, 1976): 61–72. 26. The Colored American, 9 May 1840. 27. Wilbert Devereux Jones, “The Influence of Slavery on the Webster-Ashburton Negotiations,” Journal of Southern History, 22 (Number 1, February 1956): 48–58, 49, 58. 28. Robert Harrison to John C. Calhoun, 20 March 1845, Roll 9, Despatches of U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 29. Joe B. Wilkins, “Window on Freedom: The South’s Response to the Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies, 1833–1861,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1977, 193, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203. 30. Ibid., Steven Heath Mitton, 32, 34, 145. See also Paul A. Varg, Edward Everett: The Intellectual in the Turmoil of Politics, Selinsgrove: Susquehenna University Press, 1992. 31. Speech by John C. Calhoun on the Treaty of Washington, 19 August 1842, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVI, 1841–1843, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984, 404–405.

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32. John C. Calhoun, “Remarks on British Seizures of Slaves,” 22 December 1841, in ibid., Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVI, 12–15, 13. 33. Speech by John C. Calhoun, 13 March 1840, and John C. Calhoun to Mrs. Anna Maria Calhoun, 24 March 1840, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XV, 1839–1841, Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1983, 139, 159–160. See also John C. Calhoun, “Remarks on the ‘Creole,’” 3 February 1842, in ibid., Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVI, 100–103, 102. See also George Chalmers, An Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the American Colonies; a Comprehensive View of Its Origin, Derived from the State Papers Contained in the Public Offices of Great Britain, Boston: Munroe, 1845. See also Charles M. Wiltse, “A Critical Southerner: John C. Calhoun on the Revolutions of 1848,” Journal of Southern History, 15 (Number 3, August 1949): 299–310, 306. 34. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 557. See also Speech of Mr. Joshua Giddings of Ohio, U.S. House of Representatives, 13 February 1843, American Antiquarian Society–Worcester, Massachusetts. See also “Speech of Mr. Giddings of Ohio, on His Motion to Reconsider the Vote Taken upon the Final Passage of the ‘Bill for Relief of the Owners of Slaves Lost from On Board the Comet and Encomium,” House of Representatives, 13 February 1843, Cornell University. 35. Joshua R. Giddings, Speeches in Congress, Boston: Jewett, 1853, 21–31. 36. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 111. See also The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, North Carolina. Embracing an Account of His Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and His Banishment from the Place of His Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin, Published by Himself, Boston: Hewes and Watson’s, 1848. 37. Joseph Wheelan, Mr. Adams’ Last Crusade, 98. See also Alvin L. Duckett, John Forsyth: Political Tactician, Athens: University of Georgia, 1962, 182–185. 38. File on Creole from the Colonial Office, 7 January 1842, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 39. Fred Pollack, et al. to “My Lord,” 29 January 1842, CO318/154, NAUK. 40. Earl of Aberdeen to Edward Everett, 18 April 1842, FO84/423, NAUK. 41. William Ogilby to Earl of Aberdeen, 20 January 1842, FO5/579/ 263–264, NAUK. 42. “Speech of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina in Secret Session on the British Treaty,” no date, SCHS. See also Robert Phillimore, Oxford Advocate, “The Case of the Creole Considered in a Second Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Ashburton,” London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1842. See also Andrew Stuart, Succinct Account of the Treaties and Negotiations between Great Britain and the United States of America, Relating to the Boundary between the British Possessions of Lower Canada and New Brunswick, in North America and the United States of America, London: Stuart, 1838. 43. Abel Upshur to Tucker, 1 March 1841, in Lyon G. Tyler, ed., The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume II, Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1885, 227. 44. Lord Ashburton to Earl of Aberdeen, “Secret,” 29 June 1842, FO881/259, NAUK. 45. Lord Ashuburton to Earl of Aberdeen, 25 April 1842, FO84/423/25, NAUK. 46. Lord Ashburton to Earl of Aberdeen, 9 August 1842, FO881/259, NAUK. See also Joshua Smith, Borderlands and Smugglings: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783–1820, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006, 84.

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47. Daniel Webster to Lord Ashburton, 1 August 1842, FO881/259, NAUK. 48. H. L. Fox to Daniel Webster, 25 February 1842, FO84/423/78, NAUK. 49. Phillip Troutman, “Grapevine in the Slave Market: African American Geopolitical Literary and the 1841 ‘Creole’ Revolt,” in Walter Johnson, ed., The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, 203–233, 209, 205. See also Josephine K. Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 50. Timothy Darling, U.S. Consul to His Excellency, 9 August 1842, T475, Roll 6, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island. 51. New Orleans insurance policy on 32 enslaved Africans aboard a vessel sailing from Norfolk, Virginia, to New Orleans, 23 October 1822, HM451, Huntington Library (32 individuals valued at $370 each). At the same site, see also New Orleans insurance policy on 13 enslaved Africans aboard a vessel Georgia to New Orleans, 4 February 1822, HM 1936. 52. Alice Lee Anderson, “’The Creole Affair’: Climax of the British-American Fugitive Slave Controversy, 1831–1842,” M.A. thesis, Old Dominion University, 1971, 12, 30, 36, 49. See also Robert Paquette, “The Everett-Del Monte Connection: A Study in the International Politics of Slavery,” Diplomatic History, 11 (Number 1, Winter 1987): 1–23. 53. Statement signed by Robert Ensor, Z. Gifford, Lucius Stevens, Blinn Curtis, 17 November 1841, FO84/423/203, NAUK. 54. Statement by Z. Gifford, 9 November 1841, FO84/423/211, NAUK. 55. Statement by Lucius Stevens, 10 November 1841, FO84/423/211, NAUK. 56. Statement by William Merritt, 9 November 1841, FO84/423/231, NAUK. 57. Statement by William Woodside via John Bacon, 13 November 1841, T475, Roll 5, Despatches of U.S. Consuls in Nassau. 58. Statement by Z. Gifford and William Woodside via John Bacon, 13 November 1841, T475, Roll 5, Despatches of U.S. Consuls in Nassau. 59. Statement by Jacob Leitner, 15 November 1841, T475, Roll 5. Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau. 60. Edward Everett to Earl of Aberdeen, 1 March 1842, FO84/423/148, NAUK. See also Documents Respecting U.S. Nationals from “Creole” Held in Custody, 5 April 1842, #1493, Governor’s Despatches, Department of Archives, Nassau, Bahamas. 61. Statement by John Chattin, 3 December 1840, FO84/423, NAUK. 62. U.S. Consul to Secretary of State Abel Upshur, 30 November 1843, T475, Roll 6, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island: African seamen on a U.S. vessel headed for Wilmington, North Carolina, defect to the Bahamas. 63. William Harford, “The Man with the Branded Hand or a Short Sketch,” Muskegon, Michigan: Chornicle Steam Printing House, 1879, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. See also Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker at Pensacola, Florida, for Aiding Slaves to Escape Bondage with an Appendix Containing a Sketch of His Life, Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. 64. Mrs. Daniel Smith, “The Branded Hand,” Pensacola Historical Society Quarterly, 3 (Number 1, January 1967): 1–4. 65. The North Star, 4 February 1848. 66. The North Star, 31 March 1848. 67. Consul to State Department, 17 May 1843, Roll 6, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Nassau, New Providence Island. 296

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68. Pensacola Gazette, 29 January 1844, Box 1, James K. Polk Papers, University of West Florida. 69. Pensacola Gazette, 8 February 1845, Box 1, James K. Polk Papers. 70. Pensacola Gazette, 9 January 1841, Box 2, James K. Polk Papers. 71. Report of Walker Anderson, “Joint Select Committee  . . . Respecting Jonathan Walker,” Records of the States of the United States, 1839–1848, A Journal of the Proceedings of the Senate of the Territory of Florida, at Its Seventh [i.e., 23rd] Session, Held at the Capitol, Tallahassee, 1845, University of West Florida–Pensacola. 72. John Scoble to Jonathan Branch, 8 October 1844, and Governor John Branch to Walker Anderson, 25 October 1844, Correspondence of John Branch, Governor of Florida, 1844–1845, 1968–13, #138, Pensacola, Miscellaneous Items, Box 7, University of West Florida. See also British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, “American Slavery,” London, 1846, New York Historical Society. See also “Report of the Proceedings at a Public Meeting of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society Held in Queen St. Hall, on Friday the 28th December 1849,” Tulane University. 73. Niles Register, 8 March 1845, Box 2, James K. Polk Papers. On yet another incident involving the enslaved escaping to Nassau from Florida and causing anger in the republic, see, e.g., John C. Calhoun to Edward Everett, 7 August 1844, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XIX, 1844, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990, 528. On another roiling episode involving British aid to the enslaved of the republic, see, e.g., Andrew Welch, A Narrative of the Life of Benjamin Benson, Emancipated by the English Government, August 1, 1838, and Subsequently Sold as a Slave in the United States of America; with a Detail of His Severe Trials and Harships and Cruelties Inflicted upon Him by His Inhuman Persecutors, London: Andrew Welch, 1847, iii, 2 (included in Andrew Welch, A Narrative of the Early Days and Remembrances of Osceola Nikkanochee, Prince of Econchatti, Written by His Guardian, Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1977, xl [originally published 1841]. On yet another African in the republic thankful for British aid, see, e.g., Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America, Boston: Oliver Johnson, 1844, 5, 9, 44, 45, American Antiquarian Society–Worcester, Massachusetts. At the same site, see also Narrative of Henry Watson, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, Boston: Bela Marsh, 1848; Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, Written by Himself, Hartford: Press of Case, Lockwood, 1864; Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones: Who Was for Forty Years a Slave. Also the Surprising Adventures of Wild Tom, of the Island Retreat, a Fugitive Negro from South Carolina, Boston: Skinner’s, 1854; Jacob Stroyer, Sketches of My Life in the South, Salem: Salem Press, 1879; Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, Milwaukee: South Side, 1897; Ronald Killion and Charles Waller, ed., Slavery Time When I Was Chillun Down on Master’s Plantation, Savannah: Beehive, 1973. See also Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave from Kentucky Containing an Account of His Three Escapes in 1839, 1846, and 1848, Schomburg Center. 74. Robert Baird, Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849, Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1850, 10–11. 75. William Ogilby to Henry Unwin, Under-Secretary of State, 29 June 1843, FO5/395/ 196, NAUK. On yet another Euro-American slaveholder—this time of Scottish descent, with perhaps added incentive to abhor London—railing against British abolitionism, see, e.g., Draft of Document “Respecting the Deportation [of] Slaves,” 26 September 1853, and

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Statement by John Innerarity, 17 May 1854, Box 2, Folders 8–9, Innerarity-Hulse Papers, University of West Florida: Enslaved Africans taken by Lt. Col. Edward Nichols “of the British Royal Marines” include: Abraham “house carpenter” worth $1,000; Ben “a baker & his wife, an excellent house servant” worth $1,400; Ambrose a shoemaker worth $900; in the same box, see also John Innerarity’s deposition of 17 May 1854, where he proclaims that he is a “citizen of the United States of America” and adds that Nichols took 23 “valuable slaves belonging to him” to a “Fort constructed by his order on the River Apalachicola and there held them under his exclusive authority, subjection and command.” He also seized 46 barrels of gunpowder. James Innerarity to John Innerarity, 8 May 1841, Box 1, Folder 2, Innerarity-Hulse Papers. Dr. Hulse to James Potts, 8 December 1854, Box 2, Folder 8, Innerarity-Hulse Papers. Dr. Hulse to G.L. Gardeur, circa 1854, Box 2, Folder 10, Innerarity-Hulse Papers. 76. Charleston consul to Earl of Aberdeen, 26 June 1846, FO5/453/220, NAUK. 77. To “My Lord,” 6 July 1835, CO23/93/422, NAUK. 78. Sharon Wells, Forgotten Legacy: Blacks in Nineteenth-Century Key West, Key West: Historic Preservation Board, 1982. 79. Governor of Bahamas, William Colebrooke to Lord Glenelg, 7 July 1835, FO5/579/261, NAUK. 80. J. P. Baldwin to Governor Colebrooke, 2 July 1835, FO5/579/261–262, NAUK. 81. Thomas Thornely to Lord Palmerston, 15 January 1841, FO5/579/263, NAUK. 82. J. H. Hammon to Legislature of South Carolina, 30 November 1843, FO5/579/267268, NAUK. 83. John Crawford to “My Lord,” 6 May 1843, FO5/396/182, NAUK. 84. Consul to “My Lord,” 17 April 1847, FO5/476/55, NAUK. 85. Thomas Young to Lord Ashley, 27 November 1845, FO5/579/274, NAUK. 86. Memorandum, circa 1846, FO5/579/275, NAUK. 87. John Scoble to Lord Palmerston, 25 September 1846, FO5/579/277, NAUK. 88. James Stephen to Rt. Hon. E. J. Stanley, 15 January 1847, FO5/579/279, NAUK. 89. Charles Wake to R. Pakenham, 10 March 1847, FO5/579/281, NAUK. 90. Henry Louis Pinckney, “Address to the Electors of Charleston District, South Carolina, on the Subject of the Abolition of Slavery,” Washington, 1836, Schomburg Center. 91. See, e.g.. “Correspondence Relative to the Prohibition against the Admission of Free Persons of Colour into Certain Ports of the United States, 1823 to 1851,” FO881/205, NAUK. 92. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 15 January 1846, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 93. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 16 February 1846, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 94. Description of Roger Frisbie, no date, Roll 10, Despatches of U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 95. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 6 May 1846, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 96. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 18 May 1846, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 97. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 13 April 1845, Roll 9, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 98. Letter to John C. Calhoun, 9 September 1844, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XIX, 1844, 731–732. 298

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99. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 12 January 1846, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 100. Robert Harrison to State Department, 15 November 1847, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 101. Robert Harrison to State Department, 12 November 1847, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S Consuls in Jamaica. 102. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 18 November 1847, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 103. Robert Harrison to State Department, 20 March 1848, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 104. Robert Harrison to State Department, 31 August 1848, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 105. Robert Harrison to State Department, 1 July 1848, Roll 10, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Jamaica. 106. Sir C. E. Grey to Earl Grey, 5 August 1848, Correspondence re: Jamaica Colonial Office, Printed via House of Commons, 11 May 1849, Schomburg Center. 107. Case of Isaac Brown, The Archivists’ Bulldog: Newsletter of the Maryland State Archives, 19 (Number 2, February 15, 2005): 1–5, Pennsylvania State Archives. See also Baltimore Sun, 5 May 1847; Maryland Republican, 1 November 1845; Philadelphia Ledger, 25 May 1847. On yet another African in the republic with anger toward his homeland, see, e.g., George Henry, Life of George Henry. Together with a Brief History of the Colored People in America, Providence: Gould, 1894, 5, 17, 23–24. On yet another African who escaped from the republic to find freedom and joy on British soil, see Narrative of Henry Watson, a Fugitive Slave, Boston: Bela Marsh, 1850. 108. Richard J. M. Blackett, “The Hamic Connection: African-Americans and the Caribbean, 1820–1865,” in Brian L. Moore et al., eds., Before and after 1865: Education, Politics, and Regionalism in the Caribbean, Kingston: Ian Randle, 1998, 317–329, 318. See also James M. Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, Philadelphia: Campbell, 1843. Samuel May, Syracuse Pastor, “Emancipation in the British West Indies, August 1, 1834, an Address  . . .1845,” Cornell University. See also William Lloyd Garrison, “An Address Delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, August 1, 1838, by Request of the People of Color in That City in Commemoration of the Complete Emancipation of 600,000 Slaves on That Day in the British West Indies,” Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838, New York Historical Society. See also Ralph Waldo Emerson, “An Address Delivered in the Courthouse in Concord, Massachusetts on 1st August 1844 on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies,” Boston: Munroe, 1844, University of Virginia. American Freeman, 13 August 1839. Letter to “Sir,” 2 May 1834, Reel 4, Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society Papers–Pennsylvania State Archives—Harrisburg. 109. Letter to James Cropper, January 1834, Reel 4, Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society Papers. 110. Alexander Barclay, Commissioner of Emigration for Jamaica, from New York City, 24 July 1840, “Remarks on Emigration to Jamaica to the Coloured Class of the United States,” New York: James Van Norden, 1840, New York Historical Society. A copy can also be found at Johns Hopkins University. 111. “Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored People and Their Friends, Held in Troy, New York, on the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th October 1847,” Troy: Steam Press, 1847.

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See also Lucy Neal; or the Loves of Cesar Bobb & Lucy Neal, Scenes of Negro Life, Love, Fun & Misery. A Romance by the Honourable Miss Fitzclarence, New York: Elton & Vinton, circa 1840, p. 42, 44, Schomburg Center: notes slave insurrection in Jamaica, including “the march of insurgent slaves” and the “burning” of houses. At the same site, see also George Beck, ed., Jamaica: Enslaved and Free, New York: Lane & Tippet, 1846. 112. “Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, Called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and Held in London from Friday June 12th to Tuesday June 23rd, 1840, London: BFASS, 1841, Huntington Library. At the same site, see also Broadside, 13 September 1838, Daniel O’Connell on “American Slavery,” and Broadside, 13 October 1863, Daniel O’Connell on American Democracy. This literature issued in New York avers, “Irishmen! Hear What Daniel O’Connell says.” 113. “Three Years’ Female Anti-Slavery Effort in Britain and America: Being a Report of the Proceedings of the Glasgow Ladies’ Auxiliary Emancipation Society, since Its Formation in January 1834.” Glasgow: Aird & Russell, 1837, Johns Hopkins University. See also “Twenty Millions Thrown Away, and Slavery Perpetuated. Reprinted from the ‘Radical,’ weekly stamped newspaper,” London: Morgan, circa 1840s, Schomburg Center. 114. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 18 March 1852.

C ha p t e r 1 1 1. Ashbel Smith to John C. Calhoun, 19 June 1843, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVII, 1843–1844, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986, 252. 2. David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973, 15, 16, 17. See also Theodore Sedgwick, “Thoughts on the Proposed Annexation of Texas to the United States,” New York: Fanshaw, 1844, Houston Public Library. The author warned of “servile insurrection” stoked by London in Texas. 3. “Texas and the American Revolution,” San Antonio: Institute of Texas Cultures, University of Texas–San Antonio, 1975, University of Texas–Austin. 4. David Urquhart, “Annexation of the Texas, a Case of War between England and the United States,” London: James Maynard, 1844, University of Texas. 5. Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States, New York: Hill and Wang, 2007, 50. 6. Stuart Reid, The Secret War for Texas, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007, 20. 7. David Urquhart, Annexation of the Texas, a Case of War between England and the United States, London: Portfolio, 1844, 451. 8. By a Revolutionary Officer, Considerations on the Propriety and Necessity of Annexing the Province of Texas to the United States, New York: Hopkins, 1829, 29, University of South Carolina. 9. Justin H. Smith, The Policy of England and France in Reference to the Annexation of Texas, New York: Baker & Taylor, 1911, 382. 10. Ibid., David Urquhart, Annexation of the Texas, 498, 500, 508. 11. Frederick Douglass, “Farewell to the British People,” 30 March 1847, in Philip S. Foner, ed., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999, 55–75, 72. 300

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12. Memorandum, circa 1840, FO84/420, NAUK. 13. Ron Tyler, ed., The New Handbook of Texas, Volume IV, Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996, 468. 14. Mary Lee Spence, “British Impressions of Texas and the Texans,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 70 (Number 2, October 1966): 163–183, 170, 175. 15. Reuben Marmaduke Potter, 1802–1890 in the “Galveston Civilian,” 1845, Center for American History, University of Texas-Austin. David Urquhart, “Annexation of the Texas, a Case of War between England and the United States,” London: James Maynard, 1844, University of Texas. At the same site, see also Texas, an English Question, London: Effingham, Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1837, and Charles Louis Ternay Neu, “The Foreign Relations of the Republic of Texas, 1836–1848,” circa 1912. Daniel O’Connell backed the notion of a “colored colony” in the southwestern borderlands, which incensed slaveholders. Mary Lee Spence, “British Interests and Attitudes Regarding the Republic of Texas and its Annexation by the United States,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1957, iii, 2, 19, 194. See also Joseph Sturge, A Visit to the United States in 1841, London: Hamilton, Adams, 1842, 166. 16. William E. Channing, “The Duty of the Free States or Remarks Suggested by the Case of the ‘Creole,’” Boston: Crosby, 1842, New York Historical Society: Channing attacked fiercely Dixie’s view of this case and defended enthusiastically that of London. See also Letter from Newton Boley, 3 December 1841, MSS 12890, Slave Trade Letters, University of Virginia. See also Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. Dwight L. Dumond, ed., Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831–1857, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1966. 17. Resolutions of the General Assembly of Massachusetts, 23 January 1844, RG 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 28th Congress, Petitions and Memorials, Sen 28A-84.1, Committee on Finance, February 7, 1844–January 22, 1845, Sen 28A-G5, January 23, 1844–April 30, 1844, HM FY1997, Box 93, National Archives and Records Administration–Washington, D.C. On dissent from this view, see, e.g., Resolution from James L. Totten et al., 13 February 1844, in ibid., Records of the U.S. Senate, 28th Congress. Some in the U.S. thought annexation of Texas would counter London’s toehold in Central America: “Memorial of a Number of Citizens of New York Praying [for] the Annexation of Texas,” 14 February 1845, in ibid., Records of the U.S. Senate, 28th Congress, Box 94. 18. “Address of John Quincy Adams to his Constituents of the Twelfth Congressional District at Braintree, September 17th, 1842,” Boston: Eastburn, 1842, Cornell University. See also Lucia Rutherford Douglas, “John Quincy Adams and the Texas Question,” M.A. thesis, University of Texas–Austin, 1927. See also J. L. Worley, “The Diplomatic Relations of England and the Republic of Texas,” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 11 (Number 1, July 1905): 1–40. See also “Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates Chosen by the People of Massachusetts without Distinction of Party, and Assembled at Faneuil Hall in the City of Boston, on Wednesday, the 29th Day of January A.D. 1845 to Take into Consideration the Proposed Annexation of Texas to the United States,” Boston: Eastburn’s Press, 1845, Rice University. 19. John Quincy Adams, “Mr. Adams’ Speech on War with Great Britain and Mexico,” date unclear, Huntington Library. See also William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, London: Hastings, 1841. After the Texas republic was proclaimed, British subjects’ land was confiscated: Memorandum, 29 May 1839,

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FO83/238/2, NAUK. The republicans felt that Mexico—as between Washington and London—favored the latter’s rule in Texas: Ben Green to John C. Calhoun, 7 June 1844, Duff Green Papers, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. 20. Abel Upshur to John C. Calhoun, 14 August 1843, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVII, Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1986, 354. 21. Francis W. Pickens to John C. Calhoun, 24 November 1843, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVII, 564. 22. “Report of the Meeting on the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society, June 28th, 1837,” Detroit: Whitney, 1837, Cornell University. See also Benjamin Lundy, The War in Texas; A Review of Facts and Circumstances Showing That This Contest Is a Crusade against Mexico, Set on Foot and Supported by Slaveholders, Land Speculators, etc., in Order to Re-Establish, Extend, and Perpetuate the System of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1837, 38–39. The author cites at length abolitionist forces in Britain. See also J. Leighton Wilson, An American Missionary, the British Squadron the Coast of Africa, London: Ridgway, 1851. The author praises the British role in suppressing the slave trade where he is posted: “Gaboon” or Gabon. 23. “British and America United in the Cause of Universal Freedom: Being the Third Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society,” Glasgow: Aird & Russell, 1837, Cornell University. 24. London Patriot, 6 July 1836, quoted in Stuart Reid, The Secret War for Texas, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007, 20. 25. Ibid., Stuart Reid, 155. 26. Benjamin Lundy, A Circular Addressed to Agriculturalists, Manufacturers, Mechanics, &c. on the Subject of Mexican Colonization with General Statement Respecting Lundy’s Grant in the State of Tamaulipas; Accompanied by a Geographical Description of That Interesting Portion of [the] Mexican Republic, Philadelphia: Richards, 1835. 27. Joel Roberts Poinsett to Waddy Thompson, 29 May 1843, Thompson-Jones Family Papers. 28. U.S. Congress. Senate. 28th Congress, 1st Session. “Proceedings of the Senate and Documents Relative to Texas from Which the Injunction of Secrecy Has Been Removed.” 1844. New York Historical Society. 29. Statement by President John Tyler, 10 June 1844, FO881/152/ 105, NAUK. At the same site, see also Message of President Tyler, 22 April 1844, FO881/152/73. A similar viewpoint emerged in Dixie. See, e.g., Alexander Stephens, “Speech of the Joint Resolution of Texas,” Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1845, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. For further views on the Texas Question, see, e.g., “The Origin and True Causes of the Texas Insurrection, Commenced in the Year 1835,” Philadelphia, 1836, Johns Hopkins University. Michigan Freeman, 25 December 1839; John Scoble, Texas: Its Claims to Be Recognized as an Independent Power by Great Britain; Examined in a Series of Letters, London: Harvey and Brown, 1839, 3. Yale University. In response President James Polk, who assumed power in 1845, seemed to be preparing for war with the Empire throughout his tenure. Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk during His Presidency, 1845 to 1849, New York: Kraus, 1970. 30. Duff Green to President John Tyler, 31 May 1843, Duff Green Papers, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. See also “Secret History of the Intrigues and Corruptions of the Tyler Dynasty,” 1845, Johns Hopkins University. 302

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31. Duff Green to Abel Upshur, 17 October 1843, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVII, 575. 32. Duff Green to President John Tyler, 3 July 1843, Duff Green Papers. 33. Duff Green to “Dear Sir,” 31 May 1843, Duff Green Papers. See also Paul Hendricks, “Stephen Pearl Andrews,” September 1944, University of Texas. Andrews was a linguist, speaking 32 languages—and was chased out of Texas because of his abolitionism. Years later, some Texans continued to scorn him. See Houston Post, 28 April 1968. Andrews, who lived in what is now Houston from 1839 to 1843, was a “kook,” imbued with “charlantry” [sic]. San Angelo Standard-Times, 21 April 1968. Andrews was a “nut”—though the “strange thing is that just about all his nutty ideas have been accepted or retain enough validity to still be hanging around.” 34. Duff Green to “My Dear Son,” 29 August 1843, Duff Green Papers. 35. Mrs. William Cazneau, Eagle Pass or Life on the Border, Austin: Pemberton, 1966, 20 [originally published in 1852]. 36. “A Report and Treatise on Slavery and the Slavery Agitation, Printed by Order of the House of Representatives,” Austin: John Marshall, 1857, 14, 17, Houston Public Library. 37. Anson Jones, Memoranda and Official Correspondence Relating to the Republic of Texas, Its History and Annexation, New York: Arno Press, 1973, 80 [originally published in 1859]. 38. J. Pinckney Henderson to Anson Jones, 5 December 1838, in ibid., Anson Jones, 138–139. See also Littleton Tazewell, “Review of the Negotiations between the United States of America and Great Britain Respecting the Commerce of the Two Countries and More Especially Concerning the Trade of the Former with the West Indies,” London: John Murray, 1829, Virginia Historical Society–Richmond. See also George P. Garrison, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, Three Volumes, Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908. 39. Ashbel Smith, “Reminiscences of the Texas Republic: Annual Address Delivered before the Historical Society of Galveston,” 15 December 1875, Galveston: HSG, 1876, Columbia University. See also Jonathan W. Jordan, Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico and the Shaping of the American West, Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006, 6. 40. Elizabeth Silverthorne, Ashbel Smith of Texas: Pioneer, Patriot, Statesman, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982, 125. See also Harriet Smither, “English Abolitionism and the Annexation of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 32 (July 1928–April 1929): 193–205, 193. See also Charles Edward Lester, The Life of Sam Houston. The Hunter, Patriot, and Statesman of Texas (The Only Authentic Memoir of Him Ever Published), Philadelphia: Evans, 1860. 41. Memorandum from consul, 16 May 1842, FO5/382/351, NAUK. 42. Foreign Office to Colonial Office, 13 September 1843, CO318/158, NAUK. 43. North Texas Colonization Company, “A Freehold Farm,” London, 1848, Yale University. See also Graham Davis, Land! Irish Pioneers in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. 44. Charles Elliot to Earl of Aberdeen, 13 July 1843, FO 84/479/120, NAUK. 45. William Kennedy, Texas and California. Correspondence through the “Times” Newspaper, Showing the Danger of Emigrating to Texas and the Superior Advantages to the British Colonies, 1841, University of Texas.

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46. Advertisement from Civilian and Galveston Gazette, 4 May 1844, FO 84/532, NAUK. At the same site, see a similar advertisement: New Orleans Bulletin, 17 July 1844, FO84/532/243. 47. William Ogilby to George F. Holmes, 26 June 1844, George F. Holmes Papers, College of William and Mary. 48. Du Bois de Saligny, Texas, to Dalmatia, 19 January 1840, in Nancy Nichols Baker, ed., The French Legation in Texas, Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1971, 131. 49. Max Berger, “American Slavery as Seen by British Visitors, 1836–1860,” Journal of Negro History, 30 (Number 2, April 1945): 181–202, 191. 50. Earl W. Fornell, “The Abduction of Free Negroes and Slaves in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 60 (Number 3, January 1957): 369–380. 51. Report by William Kennedy, 30 May 1843, FO84/479/214, NAUK. 52. Charles Elliot to Earl of Aberdeen, 25 July 1843, FO84/479/135, NAUK. See also James L. Glass, “Africans and African-Americans in Harris and Contiguous Counties, 1807–1859: A Preliminary Survey of Ten Counties in Southeast Texas Providing an Alphabetical Index of 589 Individuals Notes in 33 Sources,” Rice University. By 1836, about 10 percent of Texas’s population was African; it featured numerous illegal imports, including from Guinea via Cuba, and the traders included Jim Bowie, a hero of the revolt against Mexico. 53. Nicholas Doran Maillard, The History of the Republic of Texas from the Discovery of the Country to the Present Time; and the Cause of Her Separation from the Republic of Mexico, London: Smith, Elder, 1842, iv. 54. William Kennedy to Earl of Aberdeen, 18 May 1844, FO84/532/229, NAUK. 55. Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic University-–Savannah. 56. “Treaty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade,” 24 January 1842, FO94/366, NAUK. At the same site, see also Foreign Office to Texas, 18 October 1840, FO84/330/275. See also W.B. Hodgson, The Foulahs of Central Africa and the African Slave Trade, Savannah, 1843, Georgia Historical Society. 57. Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 22 August 1842, FO94/341, NAUK. See also Frank M. Gill, “The Eighth Article of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty,” M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1971. 58. Gerald Horne, The Deepest South, passim. See also The Jamaica Movement, for Promoting the Enforcement of the Slave Trade Treaties, and the Suppression of the Slave Trade; with Statements of Fact, Convention, and Law, Prepared at the Request of the Kingston Committee, London: Gilpin, 1850. 59. Preceding remarks to be found in “The Anti-Texass [sic] Legion Protest of Some Free Men, States, and Presses against the Texas Rebellion against the Laws of Nature and of Nations,” Albany: Patriot Office, 1844, Rice University–Houston. 60. Robert Kaye Greville, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in the United States of America; and the Extent to Which the American Churches Are Involved in Their Support. Drawn up at the Request of the Committee of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society,” Edinburgh: Oliphant and Sons, 1845, Tulane University. See also “An Exposition of the African Slave Trade, from the Year 1840 to 1850, Inclusive. Prepared from the Official Documents and Published by Direction of the Representatives of the Religious Society of Friends in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware,” Philadelphia: Friends, 1851, Phillips Library–Salem, Massachusetts. 304

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61. Orville Dewey, A Discourse on Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, New York: Francis, 1844, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 62. “Send Back the Money. Great Anti-Slavery Meeting in the City Hall, Glasgow, Containing Speeches Delivered by Messrs. Wright, Douglass and Buffum, from America and by George Thompson, Esq. of London,” Glasgow: Gallie, 1846, Tulane University. See also Fionnghuala Sweeney, Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007. 63. Reply to “An American’s Examination” of the “Right of Search” with Observations on Some of the Questions at Issue between Great Britain and the United States and on Certain Positions Assumed by the North American Government by an Englishman, London: Rodwell, 1842, 14, 21, 33, 34, 35, 42, 47, 48, 52, 54, 57, 60, 64, 68, 69, 89, Tulane University. See also Francis J. Wyse, America, Its Realities and Resources; Comprising Important Details Connected with the Present Social, Political, Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial State of the Country, Its Laws and Customs, Together with a Review of the Policy of the United States That Led to the War of 1812 and Peace of 1814—the “Right of Search,” the Texas and Oregon Questions, etc., etc., London: Newby, 1846. 64. Willard Carl Klunder, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation, Kent: Kent State University Press, 1995, 105, 106, 107, 110, 117. See also Lewis Cass, An Examination of the Question, Now in Discussion, between the American and British Governments, Concerning the Right to Search, Baltimore: Hickman, 1842. 65. Lewis Cass, An Examination of the Question, Now in Discussion, between the American and British Governments, Concerning the Right to Search, Baltimore: Hickman, 1842. See also Henry Wheaton, Enquiry into the Validity of the British Claim to a Right of Visitation & Search of American Vessels Suspected to Be Engaged in the African Slave Trade, London: Miller, 1842. See also General Lewis Cass, 1782–1916, Privately printed, 1916, University of Virginia. 66. An Examination of the Question, Now in Discussion, between the American and British Governments Concerning the Right of Search, “by an American,” Paris: Fournier, 1842, x, Tulane University. 67. Army and Navy Chronicle, 8 September 1836, Pensacola Sources, West Florida Collection, No. 356, University of West Florida—Pensacola. 68. Earl of Aberdeen to Richard Pakenham, 26 December 1843, FO881/152/6, NAUK. 69. James Pinckney Henderson to Colonel James Morgan, 25 May 1838, James Morgan Papers, Rosenberg Library–Galveston, Texas. 70. Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat, 120. 71. William Kennedy to the Earl of Aberdeen, 6 September 1843, FO84/479/274, NAUK. Attached is Galveston Civilian, 1 April 1843, and New Orleans Republican, 3 July 1843. 72. “Confidential” Report, 15 January 1844, FO881/152/11, NAUK. 73. Report from Richard Pakenham, 14 April 1844, FO881/152/ 37, NAUK. 74. John Calhoun to Sir Richard Pakenham, 18 April 1844, FO881/152/ 58, NAUK. 75. Report from Charles Elliot, 14 November 1844, FO881/152/168, NAUK. 76. Ibid. Ron Tyler, ed., The New Handbook of Texas, Volume II, 828. 77. John C. Calhoun to “Mr. King,” 12 August 1844, FO881/152/ 183, NAUK. See also Memorandum from Ashbel Smith, 8 August 1843, FO84/479/135, NAUK. 78. Report, December 1844, FO881/152/250, NAUK. 79. Memorandum from Lord Cowley, 10 February 1845, FO881/152/249, NAUK.

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80. Secretary of State to Superintendent, 6 June 1838, IF: 1582, Title: Central American Republic. R 13 p. 109–114, Belize Archives and Records Service–Belmopan. 81. Justin H. Smith, The Policy of England and France in Reference to the Annexation of Texas, New York: Baker & Taylor, 1911, v. 393. See also William Archibald Dunning, The British Empire and the United States: A Review of Their Relations during the Century of Peace following the Treaty of Ghent, New York: Scribner’s, 1914. 82. Charles Elliot to Earl of Aberdeen, 15 January 1845, in Ephraim Douglass Adams, ed., British Diplomatic Correspondence Concerning the Republic of Texas, 1838–1846, Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1912–1917, 421–425. 83. Charles Elliot to Earl of Aberdeen, 3 July 1845 in ibid., Ephraim Douglass Adams. 84. “Texas Annexation Bill. Speech of Mr. Benton of Missouri in Reply to Mr. McDuffie,” 15 June 1844, Cleveland Public Library. See also “Speech of [Thomas Hart] Benton of Missouri Delivered in the Senate of the United States May 16, 18 and 20 in Secret Session on the Treaty for the Annexation of Texas (the Injunction of Secrecy Removed),” Washington, D.C.: Globe, 1844, University of South Carolina. 85. Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View; or a History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850 . . .. Volume I, 576, Volume II, 183, 277, 292, 433–434, 451–452, New York: Appleton, 1856. 86. “Speech of Mr. Buchanan of Pennsylvania, in Executive Session, in Favor of the Treaty for the Annexation of Texas to the United States. Delivered in the Senate of the United States, June 8, 1844,” Cleveland Public Library. See also Letter of General Mirabeau B. Lamar  . . . on the Subject of Annexation, Savannah: Purse, 1844, Georgia Historical Society. 87. Charles Jared Ingersoll to Waddy Thompson, 8 October 1842, Thompson-Jones Family Papers, University of South Carolina. 88. James Harvey to Waddy Thompson, 18 October 1842, Thompson-Jones Family Papers. 89. John C. Calhoun to Abel Upshur, 27 August 1843, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XVII, 381. 90. William Ogilby to Earl of Aberdeen, 29 March 1844, FO5/413/236, NAUK. 91. William Ogilby to Earl of Aberdeen, 22 April 1844, FO5/41/236/210, NAUK. 92. William Ogilby to Earl of Aberdeen, 24 May 1844, FO5/41/221, NAUK. Ogilby also found that Dixie embraced London as it looked forward to civil war and diplomatic support abroad. William Ogilby to Earl of Aberdeen, 26 January 1843, FO5/395/185, NAUK. 93. Extracts from Journal of Captain John Shepherd, circa 1848, California Historical Society–San Francisco. 94. Memorandum from William Kennedy, 29 March 1847, FO5/476/159, NAUK. Perhaps preparing for this eventuality, Mexican leaders—e.g., “General Santa Anna”— were in Jamaica at critical moments. Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 8 May 1848, Roll 1; Robert Harrison to State Department, 25 May 1848, Roll 11; Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 23 June 1848, Roll 11; Robert Harrison to James Buchanan, 10 November 1848, Roll 10. See also William Fitz-Er Burchell, Memoir of Thomas Burchell, Twenty Two Years a Missionary in Jamaica, London: Green, 1849. 95. Theodore Sedgwick, “Thoughts on the Proposed Annexation of Texas to the United States,” New York: Fanshaw, 1844, Cornell University. 96. Nova Scotian, 23 April 1849, 28 May 1849, 16 July 1849, and 17 September 1849. 97. Nova Scotian, 6 August 1849. 306

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98. Nova Scotian, 22 October 1849. 99. Nova Scotian, 16 July 1849; Times and Cape Breton Spectator, 17 March 1849. 100. Joseph Wheeland, Mr. Adams’ Last Crusade, 226. 101. “Letter of Mr. Walker of Mississippi Relative to the Annexation of Texas in Reply to the Call of the People of Carroll County, Kentucky, to Communicate His Views on That Subject,” Washington: Globe, 1844, University of Maryland. 102. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 8 October 1855, Roll 17. 103. H. Harris to Hon. Silas Wright, 9 July 1841, RG46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 27th Congress Petitions and Memorials, Sen 27A, 85.2, Committee on Finance, Various Subjects, August 2. 1841–January 27, 1843, Sen 27A-87,HM FY 1997, File Sen 27 A, Box 89, National Archives and Records Administration–Washington, D.C. 104. J. S. Hunter to Senators W. R. King and A. P. Bagby, 16 April 1842, in ibid., Records of the U.S. Senate, 27th Congress. 105. Thomas Clarkson, A Letter to the Clergy of Various Denominations in the Slave States of America, Second Edition, 1841, Cornell University. See also G. B. Stebbins, Facts and Opinions Touching the Real Origin, Character, and Influence of the American Colonization Society: Views of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Others and Opinions of the Free People of Color of the United States, Boston: Jewett, 1853, Buffalo Public Library. 106. John Candler, Brief Notices of Hayti: Without Its Condition, Resources, and Prospects, London: Ward, 1842, 82–83, 92, 107, 110, 132, 153–154, 165. See also A Glimpse of Hayti and Her Negro Chief, Liverpool: Howell, 1850, Schomburg Center. 107. U.S. Congress. 27th Congress, 3rd Session. Doc. No. 36. House of Representatives. Claims on Hayti. Message from the President of the United States Communicating Information in Regard to Claims of Citizens of the United States on Hayti. 31 December 1842, Schomburg Center. 108. Andrew Stevenson, U.S. Minister in Britain, to Lord Palmerston, 27 February 1841, in U.S. Congress. 27th Congress, 1st Session. Doc. No. 34. House of Representatives. Seizure of American Vessels—Slave Trade. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Communication from the Secretary of State in Relation to the Seizure of American Vessels by British Armed Cruisers, Under the Pretence That They Were Engaged in the Slave Trade, 14 July 1841, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also U.S. Congress, 29th Congress, 1st Session. Senate. Message from the President of the United States, Communicating  . . . Copies of the Correspondence between the Government of the United States and That of Great Britain on the Subject of the Right of Search; with Copies of the Protest of the American Minister at Paris against the Quintuple Treaty and the Correspondence Relating Thereto, 6 June 1846. 109. Andrew Stevenson to Daniel Webster, 14 May 1841, in ibid., “Seizure of American Vessels—Slave Trade,” Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also “Correspondence with Foreign Parties, Not Parties to Conventions, Giving Right of Search of Vessels Suspected of the Slave Trade, from January 1st to May 10th 1840,” London: Clowes and Sons, 1840, and “Correspondence with Foreign Parties, Not Parties to Conventions Giving Right of Search of Vessels Suspected of the Slave Trade, 1838–1839, May 1, 1838 to February 2, 1839, inclusive,” London: Clowes and Sons,, 1839. 110. Lord Palmerston to Captain Courtenay, Haiti, 27 January 1840, “Correspondence with Foreign Powers Not Parties to Conventions Giving Right to Search of Vessels Suspected of the Slave Trade, from January 1st to May 10th, 1840,” London: Clowes and Sons, 1840, Schomburg Center.

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111. Benjamin E. Green to John Clayton, 27 September 1849, U.S. Congress, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, Ex.Doc. No. 12, Senate, Message from the President of the United States in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, Information in Relation to the Claims of Citizens of the United States against Hayti and the Correspondence of the Special Agent in Hayti in 1849, Schomburg Center. 112. R. M. Walsh to Daniel Webster, 5 February 1851, in U.S. Congress, 32nd Congress, 1st Session. Senate, Ex. Doc. No. 113, Message from the President of the United States Communicating in Compliance with a Resolution of the Senate, the Correspondence of R. M. Walsh, Esq., while Acting as a Special Agent of the United States in the Island of St. Domingo, 27 August 1852, Schomburg Center. 113. R. M. Walsh to Daniel Webster, 31 March 1851, in ibid., Message from the President of the United States  . . . St. Domingo. 114. B. E. Smith to Daniel Webster, 5 October 1850, T446, Roll 3, Despatches from U.S. Counsels to Turks Islands, NARA-CP. 115. Ibid., J. B. Hayne to State Department, 24 October 1859, Roll 7. 116. Benjamin E. Green to John Clayton, 24 October 1849, in ibid., Claims of Citizens of the United States. 117. Robert Harrison to State Department, 13 July 1848, Roll 11. 118. R. M. Walsh to Daniel Webster, 5 February 1851, in ibid., Correspondence of R. M. Walsh. 119. B. C. Clark, “A Plea for Hayti, with a Glance at Her Relations with France, England, and the United States for the Last Sixty Years,” Boston: Easburn’s Press, 1853, University of Rochester. 120. J. Dennis Harris, A Summer on the Borders of the Caribbean Sea, New York: Burdick, 1860, 32, 34. 121. Joseph Crawford to Lord John Russell, 24 March 1861, FO72/1013/86, NAUK. 122. Provincial Freeman, 13 October 1855. 123. Report, 14 July 1835, CO714/157, NAUK. 124. Mrs. Carmichael, Domestic Manners and Social Conditions of the White, Coloured, and Negro Population of the West Indies, Volume II, London: Whittaker, Freacher, 1833, 75, 85, 198, 277. The list of the armed included the “Arima Pioneer Company,” the “First and Second Battalions Couva and Point-Pierre,” the “North Nassarima Cavalry and Infantry,” the “Savanna Rangers,” the “South Nassarima Calvary and Infantry,” and many more. 125. George Truman et al., Narrative of a Visit to the West Indies in 1840 and 1841, Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, 1844, 106, 107. 126. The Colored American, 12 April 1838. 127. The Colored American, 4 April 1840. 128. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 10 June 1852. 129. The National Era, 13 May 1858. 130. Charles Denison to Franklin Pierce, 20 October 1853, Roll 5, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Demerara. 131. Albert Orlando Colvin to State Department, 7 March 1860, Roll 6. 132. Albert Orlando Colvin to State Department, 31 March 1860, Roll 6. 133. U.S. Consul to State Department, 8 March 1860, Roll 6. 134. Albert Orlando Colvin to State Department, 31 March 1860, Roll 6. 308

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135. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 2 October 1851. 136. The National Era, 1 December 1853. 137. “Maryland General Assembly, House of Delegates, Document L, 19 April 1852, Report of the Committee on Colored Population,” Schomburg Center. See also Report of the Naval Committee to the House of Representatives, August 1850, in Favor of the Establishment of a Line of Mail Steamships to the Western Coast of Africa, and Thence via the Mediterranean to London; Designed to Promote the Emigration of Free Persons of Color from the United States to Liberia; also to Increase the Steam Navy, and to Extend the Commerce of the United States. With an Appendix Added by the American Colonization Society, Washington, D.C.: Gideon, 1850, Buffalo Public Library. 138. Reverend P. Slaughter, The Virginian History of African Colonization, Richmond: Macfarlane, 1855. 139. “Proceeding of the Colored National Convention Held in Rochester, July 6th, 7th and 8th 1853,” Rochester: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1853, Schomburg Center. 140. John F. Watson to Gerrit Smith, 1 June 1857, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University. At the same site, see also James McCune Smith, “A Lecture on the Haytien Revolutions; with a Sketch of the Character of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Delivered at the Stuyvesant Institute,” New York: Fanshaw, 1841. 141. Robert Harrison to State Department, 7 June 1850, Roll 12. 142. Robert Harrison to State Department, 9 December 1850, Roll 12. 143. Henry Bleby, “Speech of the Rev. Henry Bleby, Missionary from Babadoes, on the Emancipation in the British West India Colonies, Delivered at the Celebration of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Held at Island Grove, Abington, July 31st 1858,” Boston: Wallcut, 1858, Detroit Public Library.

C ha p t e r 1 2 1. Interview with Belle Bush Tuwhy, circa 1960s, Paul F. Thomas Papers, University of Washington–Seattle. See also K. Keith Richard, “Unwelcome Settlers: Black and Mulatto Oregon Pioneers,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, 84 (Number 1, Spring 1983): 29–55; K. Keith Richard, “Unwelcome Settlers: Black and Mulatto Oregon Pioneers, Part II,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, 84 (Number 2, Summer 1983): 173–191. See also “American Society for Encouraging the Settlement of the Oregon Territory,” 1831, G/Or3/AM3, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. His full name was George Washington Bush. 2. Paul F. Thomas, “George Bush,” M.A. thesis, University of Washington–Seattle, 1965, 6, 15, 23, 77. See also Marilyn Simpson with Karen Huntington, Living in Pioneer Washington, Bothell, Washington: ERN, 1995; Blacks in the Westward Movement, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975, Washington State History Research Center– Tacoma. See also Harriet Lane, “General Joseph Lane and His Relation to the History of Oregon between the Years 1849 and 1853,” B.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1909. 3. CORE, Seattle Chapter, “Washington’s First Negro Pioneer,” 1967, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 4. Howard Kushner, “’The Oregon Question Is  . . . a Massachusetts Question,’” Oregon Historical Quarterly, 75 (Number 4, December 1974): 317–335, 317, 320. See also “Last Letter of Mr. Buchanan to Mr. Pakenham on the American Title to Oregon,” Baltimore: Constitution, 1845, Washington State History Research Center–Tacoma.

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5. “Laws of a General and Local Nature Passed by the Legislative Committee and Legislative Assembly  . . . Salem: Bush, 1853,” Passed 19 December 1844, Amendment of a 26 June 1844 Act, Oregon State Archives–Salem. See also “Speech of John A. Dix of New York on a Bill to Establish a Territorial Government in Oregon, in the Senate of the United States,” 28 June 1848, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. See also David C. Duniway and Neil R. Riggs, ed., The Oregon Archives, 1841–1843, no date, circa 1971, Oregon State LibrarySalem. British Columbia Black Awareness Society, A Resource Guide on Black Pioneers in British Columbia, circa 1988, NW 305.896 R433, Provincial Archives of British Columbia– Victoria. Esther Hall Mumford, Seattle’s Black Victorians, 1852–1901, Seattle: Ananse Press, 1980, 20. See also Edgar L. Williams, “Report on the Question of Slavery in Oregon,” B.A. thesis, Portland, Oregon, 30 July 1858, Oregon Historical Society–Portland. At the same site, see the notes on slavery in MSS 1468, Jean B. Brownell Papers. See also Martha Anderson, Black Pioneers of the Northwest, 1800–1918, 1980, NW 979 A548, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. There was a fear that—like Florida–Africans and indigenes would ally with one another. Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940, Portland: Georgian Press, 1980, 30. See also Hazel H. Waterman, “Oregon’s Last Slave,” no date, MSS IW-2, Oregon State Library–Salem. For further manifestations of this fear, see, e.g., Statutes of a General Nature Passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon: At the Second Session Begun and Held at Oregon City, December 2, 1850 . . . Oregon City: Bush, 1851, 181–182, passed 26 September 1849, Oregon State Archives–Salem. There was a similar fear of such an alliance between Africans and Mexicans in the Texas borderlands. Bastrop Advertiser, 14 March 1857, Box 27, Kenneth Wiggins Porter Papers–Schomburg Center. See also William Jay, A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War, New York: Arno Press, 1969 [originally published 1849]. 6. Society of Friends in Great Britain and Ireland, to Territorial Legislature, circa 1849, “Provisional and Territorial Records,” Documents 9359-9674, Oregon State Archives–Salem. See also “Address of the Canadian Citizens of Oregon, to the Meeting at Champoeg, March 4th, 1843,” The Oregon Archives: Including the Journals, Governors’ Messages and Public Papers of Oregon  . . . Salem: Bush, 1853, Oregon State Library–Salem Typically, viewpoints of Africans in the region coincided with those of the British: Abner Hunt Francis to Frederick Douglass, 9 July 1855, Reel 9, #799, Black Abolitionist Papers–University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Advertisement from Mirror of the Times, 22 August 1857, Reel 10, #798, Black Abolitonist Papers. Abner Hunt Francis to Frederick Douglass, 22 July 1855, Reel 9, #814, Black Abolitionist Papers. 7. Ibid. 8. James Buchanan to Louis McLane, 13 December 1845 in “Executive Proceedings, Correspondence and Documents Relating to Oregon, from Which the Injunction of Secrecy Has Been Removed. 29th Congress, 1st Session, U.S. Senate, August 8, 1846,” Oregon State Library–Salem. Speech of Hon. Lewis Cass  . . . in Reply to Mr. Benton of Missouri, Senate, 2 April 1846, Oregon State Library–Salem. See also “General Lewis Cass, 1782–1916,” Privately Printed, 1916, University of Virginia. “Speech of Joseph P. Hoge, 30 January 1846, House of Representatives,” Oregon State Library–Salem. Thomas R. Dew to Benjamin Franklin Dew, 12 December 1845, Folder 2, 65 D51, Dew Family Papers–College of William and Mary–Williamsburg, Virginia. Esbe to Thomas Ritchie, 2 January 1846, Folder 417, Ritchie-Harrison Papers, College of William and Mary; R. J. Poulson to Thomas Ritchie, 15 April 1846, Folder 420, Ritchie-Harrison Papers; Ambrose Dudley Mann to Thomas Ritchie, 3 July 1847, Folder 310

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521, Ritchie-Harrison Papers. “Speech of Hon. William Allen of Ohio, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, February 10 and 11, 1846,” Cornell University. See also “The Oregon Controversy Reviewed, in Four Letters by a Friend of the Anglo-Saxons,” New York: Leavitt, Trow, 1846, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. “Occupation of Oregon, Speech of Mr. Owen, of Indiana, Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, January 23 and 24, 1844. On the Question of the Joint Occupancy by Great Britain with the United States of the Territory of Oregon,” Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. “Speech of Mr. Hilliard of Alabama on the Oregon Question, Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, January 6, 1846,” Washington: Gideon, 1846, Detroit Public Library. See also “Speech of the Hon. R. B. Rhett of South Carolina on the Oregon Territory Bill, Excluding Slavery from That Territory—the Missouri Compromise Being Proposed and Rejected. Delivered in the House of Representatives of the U.S., January 14, 1847,” SCHS. Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America, Volume I, New York: Harper, 1849, 221. “Speech of Mr. Douglass of Illinois, 27 January 1846,” on the Oregon Question, Oregon State Library–Salem. See also “Speech of Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia  . . . Admission of Oregon,” House of Representatives, 12 February 1859, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, The Life of Alexander H. Stephens, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1883, 193. 9. Carol Bleser, ed., Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, 13, 75, 146, 153. The disdain for the British parliament in Dixie in particular was not unique to Hammond. See Robert Toombs to Alexander Stephens, 21 June 1855: “[N]ight before last I went to Parliament and had the good luck to hear quite a number of their speakers—Palmerston  . . . Fred Peel and a score of others of lesser note. The speaking was poor, very poor  . . . perfectly insipid. You could not have stood it half an hour.” In Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, 1913, Georgia Historical Society–Savannah. 10. Edward P. Crapol, “The Foreign Policy of Antislavery, 1833–1846,” in Lloyd C. Gardner, ed., Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1986, 85–104, 85, 97. Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion, 177, 179, 183. See also “Letters of Albert Gallatin on the Oregon Question,” January 1846, Washington, Oregon State Library–Salem. See also Joseph Schafer, “The British Attitude toward the Oregon Question, 1815–1846,” American Historical Review, 16 (Number 2, January 1911): 273–299. 11. Allen P. Stouffer, The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833–1877, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992, 76. See also undated letter of Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, in Letters to the Southern People Concerning the Acts of Congress and the Treaties with Great Britain in Relation to the African Slave Trade, Charleston: Steam Power Press, 1858, 75–76: Cass pointed out that London had actual or potential antagonists in Vienna and Madrid and added threateningly: “[H] aving twice crossed weapons with her, we know the temper of her steel even better than the duplicity of her schemes and have fewer apprehensions of the one than the other.” He then denounces the “’right of search ... growing purely out of our stupid and impolitic efforts to suppress the slave trade.” Thus, the U.S. should “recall a portion of our African Squadron,” since “illicit traffic always has and always will exist.” See also Thomas Falconer, The Oregon Question; or a Statement of the British Claims to the Oregon

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Territory in Opposition to the Pretensions of the Government of the United States of America, New York: Taylor, 1845; Reverend C. G. Nicolay, The Oregon Territory: A Geographical and Physical Account of That Country and Its Inhabitants with Outlines of Its History and Discovery, London: Knight, 1846; Adam Thom, The Claims of the Oregon Territory Considered, London: Smith, Elder, 1844. See also Lenwood G. Davis, “Sources for History of Blacks in Oregon,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, 73 (Number 3, September 1972): 197–211. 12. Junius P. Rodriguez, “Always ‘En Garde’: The Effects of Slave Insurrection upon the Louisiana Mentality, 1811–1815,” Louisiana History, 33 (Number 4, Fall 1992): 399–416, 411. See also Clyde N. Wilson, ed., Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James Hammond of South Carolina, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1978, 40. This militant slaveholder warned that possibly “some Toussaint or Boyer would grasp the presidential wreath and wield the destinies of this great republic.” 13. Glynn Barratt, Russian Shadows on the British Northwest Coast of North America, 1810–1890, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983. See also Norman A. Graebner, “The Northwest Coast in World Diplomacy,” in David H. Stratton and George A. Frykman, eds., The Changing Pacific Northwest: Interpreting the Past, Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988, 1–22. On the conflict over furs between the republic and the monarchy, see, e.g., U.S. Congress, 24th Congress, 2nd Session, 1837, NW, p 970, U58d, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. See also Wilbur Devereux Jones, The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841–1861, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974. Support for Russia in Dixie was strong. See, e.g., Horace Perry Jones, “Louisiana Opinion on the Crimean War as Expressed in the Newspapers,” Louisiana History, 18 (Number 3, Summer 1977): 323–334. 14. Letter from John Bacon, 24 February 1859, Ball Family Papers Collection, University of South Carolina. Writing from St. Petersburg, this U.S. national reminded his readers, “[A]ll agitation as to the actual fact of importing them [Africans] at present should be avoided,” though [we should] annul [the] “treaty of 1819  . . . then we can proceed as policy and interest dictate.” In the same collection, see also Francis Wilkinson Pickens to Milledge Luke Bonham, 14 October 1859. Also writing from St. Petersburg, he denounced British abolitionism and its trans-Atlantic impact. His slaves saw the royal court’s “4 black men  . . . dressed in Oriental costume  . . . & they have called on Tom & Cinda  . . . & paid them great attention . . .. I traveled all through Europe with them [slaves] & it gave me extra attention but still they think that slavery with us is something horrible & barbaric.” 15. L. W. Spratt, The Foreign Slave Trade: The Source of Political Power of Material Progress of Social Integrity and of Social Emancipation to the South, Charleston, South Carolina: Steam Power Press, Boston Public Library. 16. Dr. James Davis to John C. Calhoun, 22 July 1848, in Clyde Wilson, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XXIV, 1846–1847, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998, 613. 17. Edward George Washington Butler to Judge Johnston, circa 1820s, Folder 32, Butler Family Papers. 18. Statford Canning to “My Lord,” 19 February 1822, D/A/g79/2, Foreign Office Correspondence, Great Britain, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria.

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19. Steven A. Anderson, “Steilacoom Farm: The British Colonization of Puget Sound, 1841–1849,” April 1993, n 979, 723, University of Washington–Seattle. 20. City Council Minutes, 25 May 1854, City of Toronto Archives. 21. “Speech of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina, on the Resolution Giving Notice to Great Britain of the Abrogation of the Convention of Joint Occupancy, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 16, 1846,” Cornell University. At the same site, see also Wyndham Robertson, Jr., Oregon, Our Right and Title, Containing an Account of the Condition of the Oregon Territory, Its Soil, Climate, and Geographical Position; Together with a Statement of the Claims of Russia, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States; Accompanied with a Map, Prepared by the Author, Washington, D.C.: Gideon, 1846. 22. M. M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk, 1845–1849, Volume I, Chicago: McClurg, 1910, 1, 397, 398, 337–338. See also John S. Galbraith, “The British and Americans at Fort Nisqually, 1846–1859,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 41 (Number 2, April 1950): 109–120. 23. Rubio, Rambles in the United States and Canada During the Year 1845, with a Short Account of Oregon, London: Ollivier, 1846, 3, 5, 22, 157–158, 161, Cornell University. See also Sir George Simpson, An Overland Journey Round the World, during the Years 1841 and 1842, Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1847. See also Travers Twiss, The Oregon Question Examined, in Respect to Facts and the Law of Nations, London: Longman, Brown, Green, 1846. 24. H. P. Scholte, “Will There Be War?” 1846, NWp 973.3 s368w, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. At the same site, see also “Substance of a Speech Delivered by Hon. Lewis Cass of Michigan in Secret Session of the Senate of the United States on the Ratification of the Oregon Treaty,” Detroit: Bagg & Harmon, 1846, NW 979.51, C343c. See also Lewis Cass, “Speech  . . . on the Oregon Question, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Monday, March 30, 1846,” Oregon State Library–Salem. 25. Charles Mackay, Life and Liberty in America: Or Sketches of a Tour in the United States and Canada in 1857–1858, Volume II, London: Smith, Elder, 1859, 73, 191. 26. “Speech of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the Oregon Bill, Delivered in the Senate of the United States,” 27 June 1848, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. (A copy of this speech can also be found at the University of South Carolina.) At the same site, see also “The Oregon Treaty and the Hudson’s Bay Company,” NW 971 h b262. 27. Laura A. White, “The South of the 1850s as Seen by British Consuls,” Journal of Southern History, 1 (Number 1, February 1935): 29–48, 32, 38, 40. See also Harral E. Landry, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Atlantic Diplomacy,” Journal of Southern History, 27 (Number 2, May 1961): 184–207. See also Commander A. H. Foote, The African Squadron: Ashburton Treaty: Consular Sea Letters, Philadelphia: Geddes, 1855. 28. Report by British Consul in New Orleans, 15 December 1857, CO37/174, NAUK. 29. Report by British Consul in New Orleans, 25 March 1857, and Memorandum to Lord Lyons, 31 March 1860, CO37/174, NAUK. Williams was not singular; at the same site, see also George Matthew to Governor David Reid of North Carolina, 27 March 1851, FO5/579/61. 30. George Matthew to Secretary of State, 28 May 1852, FO5/579/185, NAUK. 31. George Matthew to Secretary of State, 24 April 1852, FO5/579/161, NAUK. 32. Lord Palmerston to George Matthew, 15 November 1851, FO5/579/67, NAUK. 33. William Mure to the Foreign Office, 31 January 1861, FO5/788/61, NAUK.

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34. Consul to Lord John Russell, 23 March 1861, FO5/788/61, NAUK. 35. Consul to Foreign Office, 18 March 1861, FO5/788/61, NAUK. 36. William Mure to “Sir,” 1 May 1861, FO5/788/138, NAUK. 37. William Mure to Lord John Russell, 28 March 1861, FO5/788/106, NAUK. 38. Consul to Foreign Office, 14 March 1861, FO5/788/290, NAUK. 39. E. Molyneaux to Lord Lyons, 9 February 1861, FO5/786/401, NAUK. 40. Statement by Thomas Vaughan, circa February 1861, FO5/786/422, NAUK. 41. William Bulwer to Lord Palmerston, 10 March 1851, FO5/579, NAUK. 42. Francis Waring to John F. Crampton, 13 October 1851, FO5/579/ 46, NAUK. 43. William Mure to Lord Palmerston, 12 November 1851, FO5/579/69, NAUK. 44. William Mure to Earl of Malmersbury, 14 April 1852, FO5/579/152, NAUK. 45. Edmund Ruffin, The Political Economy of Slavery; or the Institution Considered in Regard to Its Influence on Public Wealth and the General Welfare, 1857, SCHS. 46. Letters to the Southern People Concerning the Acts of Congress and the Treaties with Great Britain in Relation to the African Slave Trade, Charleston: Steam Power Press, 1858, Johns Hopkins University. See also L. W. Spratt, Speech upon the Foreign Slave Trade before the Legislature of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina: Steam Power Press, 1858. 47. C. W. Miller, “Address on Reopening the Slave  . . . of South Carolina, to the Citizens of Barnwell, at Wylde-Moore,” 29 August 1857, Boston Public Library. 48. “The Reopening of the African Slave Trade,” 1860, Johns Hopkins University. At the same site, see also T. R. H. Thomson, M.D., The Brazilian Slave Trade and Its Remedy Shewing the Futility of Repressive Force Measures, Also, How Africa and Our West Indian Colonies May Be Mutually Benefited, London: Houston and Stoneman, 1850. 49. John E. Taylor to Lewis Cass, 22 July 1858, T438, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Sierra Leone, NARA-CP. 50. Ibid., Report by Henry Rider, 31 December 1861, Roll 1. 51. William Carrol to John Forsyth, 9 January 1841, T428, Roll 5, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in St. Helena–NARA-CP. 52. Ibid., William Carrol to John Forsyth, 5 August 1841, Roll 5. 53. Ibid., William Carrol to Mr. Anderson, 12 February 1849, T428, Roll 7. 54. Ibid., William Carrol to John Clayton, 30 May 1850, T428, Roll 7. 55. Ibid., William Carrol to Daniel Webster, 31 December 1850, T428, Roll 7. In Roll 8 at the same site, see also William Carrol to James Buchanan, 2 April 1849. A Philadelphia brig just “captured on the West Coast of Africa” by the British with a “full cargo of slaves.” 56. Isaac Chase to John Forsyth, 23 March 1835, T191, Roll 2, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Cape Town, NARA-CP: “[A] war is now in progress between the colonists of this country and a tribe of Caffres [sic] inhabiting an extensive territory at the South East about 800 miles from Cape Town. The Caffres invaded [sic] the colony with a force of 20,000 carrying destruction and devastation before them, killing the inhabitants, firing their houses, and carrying off their cattle and effects.” 57. Ibid. Deposition of George Washington Smith, 21 May 1846, T191, Roll 3. 58. George Abbot to Daniel Webster, 13 March 1851, M468, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Zanzibar-NARA-CP. 59. Ibid., Consul Charles Ward to George Abbot, M468, Roll 1, 18 March 1851. 60. Ibid., Consul Charles Ward to George Abbot, M468, Roll 1, 15 March 1851. 61. Ibid., John Webb et al. to John Aulick, 5 December 1851, M468, Roll 1. 314

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62. Ibid., W. G. Webb to Secretary of State, 11 May 1861, M468, Roll 1. 63. “List of Official Communications on the Subject of the Slave Trade, transmitted to the Foreign Office by Her Majesty’s Consul at New Orleans from the 1st January to 31st December 1857,” FO5/699/183, NAUK. 64. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 6 December 1859, PRO20/22/62, NAUK. 65. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 12 December 1859, PRO30/22/68, NAUK. 66. Audrey Fisch, American Slaves in Victorian England: Abolitionist Politics in Popular Literature and Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 33, 67. Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones: Who Was for Forty Years a Slave. Also the Surprising Adventures of Wild Tom of the Island Retreat, a Fugitive Negro from South Carolina, New York: Holbrook, 1854, 36, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 68. Morris Schappes, ed., “Ernestine Rose: Her Address on the Anniversary of West Indian Emancipation,” Journal of Negro History, 34 (Number 2, April 1949): 344–355, 346–347. 69. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 3 January 1860, PRO30/22/90, NAUK. 70. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 8 May 1860, PRO30/22/138, NAUK. See also Martin Crawford, “The Anglo-American Crisis of the Early 1860s: A Framework for Revision,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 82 (Number 4, Autumn 1983): 406–423. 71. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 12 November 1860, PRO30/22/218, NAUK. 72. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 25 November 1860, PRO30/22/229, NAUK. 73. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 26 December 1859, PRO30/22/68, NAUK. 74. Lewis Cass to Lord Lyons, 10 April 1860, PRO30/22/126, NAUK. 75. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 23 January 1860, PRO30/22/ 99, NAUK. 76. A Report and Treatise on Slavery and the Slavery Agitation, Printed by Order of the House of Representatives, Austin: Marshall, 1857, Schomburg Center. (Of course—and to repeat—there were those in London who sought to split asunder their growing rival and, as well, there were those who exalted the needs of Midlands’ cotton mills—and Dixie imports—over abolition.) 77. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 5 March 1860, PRO30/22/117, NAUK. See also Francis Wyse, America, Its Realities and Resources; Comprising Important Details Connected with the Present Social, Political, Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial State of the Country, Its Laws and Customs, Together with a Review of the Policy of the United States That Led to the War of 1812 and Peace of 1814—the “Right of Search,” the Texas and Oregon Questions, etc., Volume II, London: Newby, 1846, 69–71, The author, like many Britons, denounced the republic because of its role in “breeding and rearing Negroes for the supply of the South,” in addition to supposedly importing 15,000 Africans annually from the continent. This “dark spot on the national escutcheon is kept as much as possible out of view of every stranger.” The “transgressions of the United States against human liberty are so numerous.” 78. John Benwell, An Englishman’s Travels in America: His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States, London: Binns and Goodwin, 1853, 60, 86, 93–95, 111, 113, 172–173, 185: The author spent four years in the republic. He was outraged to witness in St. Louis a slaveholder beating a slave with a whip: “[M]y interference only added to his ungovernable rage . . .. [T]he blood soon flowed from the back, neck, and breast of the poor victim, whose cries, as she writhed, under the savage infliction, entered my soul.”

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There was “nothing extraordinary” about this, “for they are everyday occurrences and scarcely elicit a remark.” 79. William Chambers, American Slavery and Colour, London: Chambers, Paternoster Row, 1857, 3, 4, 35, 52, 54, 127. Like Dickens, William Thackeray was similarly unimpressed with the republic. Victor Irvin Harris, “Thackeray in America,” 1932, University of Virginia. See also A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, 1847–1855, New York: Scribner’s, 1887, Georgia Historical Society. Mr. Thackeray in Richmond, Descriptive Comments from a Letter Written by a Young Lady in 1853, after Meeting the Distinguished British Novelist, Richmond: Attic Press, 1955, University of Virginia. “How can one believe what a writer of fiction says,” said Elizabeth McClurg Wickham, though she added, “I would rather listen to him than fine music.” Still, she stressed, “[H]e was not lionized here at all” and “you will be amused to hear that the audience of Baltimore he declared to be the very worst.” 80. William Chambers, Things as They Are in America, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1854, 282. 81. William Chambers, American Slavery and Colour, London: Chambers, 1857, 4, 5, 11, 129, 165. 82. Isabella Lucy Bird, The Englishwoman in America, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966 [first published in London 1856], 171, 410–411. See also Charles Mackay, Life and Liberty in America: Or Sketches of a Tour in the United States and Canada in 1857–1858, Volume I, London: Smith, Elder, 1859, 311, 315; Volume II, 28, 38, 45. 83. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 13 October 1854. See also “Proceedings of the Colored National Convention, Philadelphia, October 16th, 17th, and 18th 1855,” Salem, New Jersey, National Standard Office, 1856, Schomburg Center. Douglass was among the most militant of the pro-London voices in Black America. See Frederick Douglass, “The Presidential Campaign of 1860,” in Philip S. Foner, ed., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999, 401–413, 403: “[I]t is really amazing how far into the regions of darkness and sorrow this knowledge of British feeling has penetrated. The most ignorant slave on the banks of the Red River has by some means or other come to learn that the English are the friends of the African race. Her ships are on the gold coast; they are in the Gulf of Mexico and along the coast of the Brazils in search of slave pirates, only secure from arrest when they hoist the American flag . . . [W]hile the British Government, with far less pretension to liberty than we, is wielding the mighty power and influence which her position and greatness give her  . . . the American Government is worse than winking at the slave trade and slavers are fitted out in sight of our business men’s prayer meetings.” 84. James W. C. Pennington to J. R. Baillie, 24 May 1850, MS Am. 2187, Boston Public Library. See also Herman E. Thomas, James W. C. Pennington: African American Churchman and Abolitionist, New York: Garland, 1995. 85. Leeds Antislavery Series No. 89, “Imprisonment and Enslavement of British Coloured Seamen,” no date, circa 1853, University of Texas: “[T]he usurpation of Nebraska, in open defiance of a treaty with the Indians  . . . if our attention is occupied with a European war, our transatlantic colonies may be tempted or threatened from their allegiance whenever it may seem most convenient . . .. [The republic] endangers all its free neighbors.” See also “The Nebraska Question Comprising Speeches in the United States Senate  . . . Together with the History of the Missouri Compromise.” New York: Redfield, 1854, Tulane University. 316

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86. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 650. African militancy escalated after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. See, e.g., Toronto Globe, 19 September 1850; Fred Landon, “The Negro Migration after the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,” Journal of Negro History, 5 (Number 1, January 1920): 22–36. “Speech of Hon. J. R. Giddings of Ohio on Cuban Annexation Delivered in the House of Representatives, December 14, 1852,” Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume II, Canada, 1830–1865, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986, 198. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 19 November 1852. North into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro, 1795–1880, Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1966, 17–18. 87. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 24 August 1855. 88. The National Era, 3 August 1854. 89. Martin Delany et al., “Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent,” Reel 8, #560, Black Abolitionist Papers, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. 90. “Minutes of the Proceedings of the General Convention for the Improvement of the Colored Inhabitants of Canada,” 16–17 June 1853, Amherstburg, Reel 8, #297, Black Abolitionist Papers. 91. Correspondence re: Case of John Anderson, 1853–1861, FO881/1083, NAUK. See also “Mission to the Fugitive Slaves in Canada. No. 5, Occasional Paper, West London Branch of the Colonial Church and Society, August 1856, Western Reserve Historical Society. See also Patrick Brode, Sir John Beverly Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. 92. Letter from James Buchanan, 26 February 1861, FO881/1083, NAUK. 93. George Dallas to S. J. Black, 16 January 1861, FO881/1083, NAUK. 94. Virginia. General Assembly. House. Report of the Select Committee Appointed under a Resolution of the House to Enquire into the Existing Legislation of Congress upon the Subject of Fugitive Slaves. Circa 1848. Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 95. The North Star, 2 June 1848. The Late Contemplated Insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina, with the Execution of Thirty-Six of the Patriots: The Death of William Irving, the Provoked Husband: and Joe Devaul, for Refusing to Be the Slave of Mr. Roach; with the Capture of the American Slaver Trading between the Seat of Government and New Orleans; Together with an Account of the Capture of the Spanish Schooner Amistad, New York: Publisher, 1850, Schomburg Center. See also “Influence of Slavery upon the White Population, by a Former Resident of Slave States,” New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855, Buffalo Public Library. 96. Cuyler W. Young, Greatness Reviewed, or the Rise of the South; With a Southern National Air and the Song of the Cuba Invaders, Savannah: CWY, 1851, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro. Young added: “[John] Bull’s blackamore was placed in Charleston’s jail, and lodged therein a while ere he set sail. When he got home, he went and told the Queen. That in the jail at Charleston he had been. Her Majesty gave heed to Cuffe’s tale, and sneered and snorted till she turned quite pale, and rang the bell for her Council sent, ‘to tell the wrongs which Cuffee underwent.’ By the first ocean mail to Washington, Orders were sent to John M. Clayton, that horrid law ‘gainst the letters were, from groaning citizens in Rio or in Ver; for that said Clayton hurried to apprize Her Majesty Brittanic that the wise men of the Union had left the little state of Carolina exposed to

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Cuffee’s hate; and that Cuffee and Queen both must appeal to Carolina for that law’s repeal ... while meanly old England stoop to gibber, and threaten us to justify a ‘Nigger.’” The republic sought continuously to counterbalance London’s appeal to Africans with their own appeal to the Irish, but the narrow-minded, e.g., Robert Harrison, consul in Jamaica, made that difficult. See, e.g., Robert Harrison to Daniel Webster, 27 January 1852, Roll 14. See also Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 10 December 1854, Roll 16. 97. Consul, New Orleans to “My Lord,” 12 June 1858, FO5/699/204, NAUK. 98. Laura A. White, “The South in the 1850s as Seen by British Consuls,” 47. 99. Robert Bunch to “My Lord,” 28 December 1858, FO5/698/217, NAUK. 100. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 31 January 1861, FO780/36, NAUK. 101. Joseph Stiles, Speech on the Slavery Resolutions Delivered in the General Assembly Which Met in Detroit in May Last, New York: Newman, 1850, Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also Aunt Sally; or the Cross the Way of Freedom. A Narrative of the SlaveLife and Purchase of the Mother of Rev. Isaac Williams, of Detroit, Michigan, Cincinnati: American Reform Tract and Book Society, 1858. 102. Russel H. Davis, Black Americans in Cleveland from George Peake to Carl B. Stokes, 1796–1969, Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1972, 32. 103. Charles Richard Weld, A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855, 155, 303, 318: Quite typically, the author visited a slave auction in Richmond—and was predictably nauseated (such an adventure was de rigeur for British travelers). 104. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 335. 105. C. Dorwin to Gerrit Smith, 8 July 1854, Gerrit Smith Papers. 106. Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Antislavery Labours in the United States, Canada & England, London: Snow, 1855, 153. 107. Philip N. Edmondson, “The St. Domingue Legacy in Black Activist and Antislavery Writings in the United States, 1791–1862,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2003, 295. 108. “Speech of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina, on the Oregon Bill, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, June 27, 1848,” SCHS. 109. “Proceedings of the United States Senate on the Fugitive Slave Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia, and the Imprisonment of Free Colored Seamen in the Southern Ports with the Speeches of Messrs. Davis, Winthrop and Others,” 1850, Detroit Public Library. See also Leeds Antislavery Series No. 89, “Imprisonment and Enslavement of British Coloured Seamen,” no date, circa 1853, University of Texas. “Has not our Government a right to insist that all its subjects should travel when they please, in the territories of our allies, as long as they keep the peace?... [A]s we turn American slaves into free men as soon as they touch our soil, these braggarts for independence turn our freemen into slaves. The air of the South poisons liberty.” In 1852 alone, “sixty-three colored seamen were imprisoned in South Carolina. Of these forty-two were British.” This “sets treaties at nought and seems to defy even the representatives of Queen Victoria,” and “it is our national habit, if we feel ourselves injured, to assume a warlike and even bullying position.” At the same site, see also W. W. Broom, “An Englishman’s Thoughts on the Crimes of the South and the Recompence of the North,” No. 84, New York; Loyal Publication Society, no date: Another denunciation of Dixie by a Briton.

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110. “Interesting Transcriptions from the City Documents of the City of Mobile for 1815–1859, Prepared from Original Data by the Municipal and Court Records Project of the Works Progress Administration,” 1939, 359, 7 April 1857, Mobile Public Library. 111. Philip M. Hamer, “British Consuls and the Negro Seamen Acts, 1850–1860,” Journal of Southern History, 1 (Number 2, May 1935): 138–168, 139, 144, 153. See also “The Law of Colored Seamen, from the Charleston Standard, December 5, 1851,” Schomburg Center. At the same site, see also “A Bill Concerning Free Negroes in North Carolina,” Raleigh: Lemay, 1850. See also Memorial Submitted by 150 Boston merchants, U.S. Congress, 27th Congress, 3rd Session. Rep. No. 80. House of Representatives. Free Colored Seamen— Majority and Minority Reports. January 20, 1843, Schomburg Center. 112. William Farmer and William Lloyd Garrison, 26 June 1851, Box 7, Mildred Stock Papers, Schomburg Center. Cf. Lucien B. Chase, English Serfdom and American Slavery: Or Ourselves—As Others See Us, New York: Long & Brother, 1854, Johns Hopkins University. See also Reverend G. Lewis, Impressions of America and the American Churches, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968 [originally published Edinburgh, 1848], 391: On a ship from the U.S. to Canada, the captain refused to allow a Haitian to dine with others, but the British passengers “drew up a remonstrance” since this was a “British vessel carrying Her Majesty’s mail. Most of the British and colonial passengers and several of the New Englanders signed,” but the “southerners contemptuously refused” and one from New Orleans “got up a counter petition”—the captain had acted in the first place since the “American passengers would not tolerate” the Haitian’s presence. 113. Incidents in the Life of the Rev. J. Asher, Pastor of Shiloh (Coloured) Baptist Church, Philadelphia, U.S. and a Concluding Chapter of Facts Illustrating the Unrighteous Prejudice Existing in the Minds of American Citizens toward their Coloured Brethren with an Introduction by Wilson Armistead, Esq., London: Gilpin, 1850, 1–2, 3, 5. 114. William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 24 January 1854, Gerrit Smith Papers. See also Speeches of Gerrit Smith in Congress, 1853–1854, Washington, D.C.: Buell and Blanchard, 1854, Johns Hopkins University. 115. Therese A. Donovan, “Difficulties of a Diplomat: George Mifflin Dallas in London,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 92 (Number 4, October 1968): 421–440, 429. See also John M. Belohlavek, George Mifflin Dallas: Jacksonian Patrician, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977. 116. Susan Dallas, ed., Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1892, 307, 400, 407–410. Dallas’s attitude was not aberrant. See A Citizen of North Carolina, Considerations Relative to a Southern Confederacy, with Letters to the North, on the Preservation of the Union, and a Note from the Secret History of the Emancipation in the English West Indies, Raleigh: Standard Office, 1860, Cornell University: The African is “inferior to the white man,” and that will be so until “the end of time, despite the combination of English and American abolitionists.” 117. Statement by Martin Delany, 1860, in Robert S. Levine, ed., Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 357–361. 118. B. C. Clark, “A Plea for Hayti, with a Glance at Her Relations with France, England, and the United States, for the Last Sixty Years,” Boston: Eastburn’s Press, 1853, University of Rochester. At the same site, see also H. F. S. Lee, Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo, Boston: Crosby, Nichols, 1854. See also Robert Harrison to Daniel

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Webster, 30 July 1852, Roll 14. The U.S. Consul in Jamaica also received this plea: “I have known that island from the First Revolution and am entirely acquainted with it,” as he spoke “French with fluency.”See also Elizur Wright, The Lesson of St. Domingo: How to Make the War Short and the Peace Righteous, Boston: Williams, 1861, Cornell University. 119. James T. Holly, A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government and Civilized Progress, as Demonstrated by Historical Events of the Haytian Revolution, New Haven: Afric-American Printing Company, 1857, 39. 120. Correspondence, 1848, FO47/1, NAUK. 121. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 20 June 1854, Roll 16. 122. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 3 November 1853, Roll 14. Other U.S. nationals there were not altogether reputable, thought Washington. See Assistant Secretary of State to Consul, Jamaica, 10 January 1857, Roll 19: “Dr. Francis Gray, my Vice-Consular agent at Montego Bay and ‘Famouth’ is perfectly insane, caused it is said by hard drinking.” 123. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 26 June 1854, Roll 16. 124. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 28 January 1856, Roll 17. Lord Lyons was echoing Harrison, interestingly enough. See, e.g., Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 11 July 1859, PRO30/22/34, NAUK 125. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 5 June 1855, Roll 16. 126. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 30 July 1855, Roll 17. 127. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 8 October 1855, Roll 17. 128. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 18 June 1856, Roll 17. 129. Robert Harrison to William Marcy, 31 July 1856, Roll 17. 130. Robert Harrison to Lewis Cass, 28 March 1857, Roll 19. 131. Affidavit of Thomas Smith, 20 January 1858, Roll 20. See also this concerned diplomat’s hysterical report about the implications of abolition. Robert Harrison to Abel Upshur, 11 October 1843, College of William and Mary–Williamsburg, Virginia. For an echo of Harrison’s view, see, e.g., John Campbell, Negro-Mania; Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Men, Philadelphia: Campbell & Power, 1851, 486: “openly avowed failure of West Indian emancipation.”

Chapter 13 1. “Addresses and Memorials Together with Articles, Reports, etc. from the Public Journals, upon the Occasion of the Retirement of Sir James Douglas, KCB, from the Governorship of the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1864,” New York Historical Society. 2. Malcolm Edwards, “The War of Complexional Distinction: Blacks in Gold Rush California & British Columbia,” California History, 56 (Number 1, 1977): 34–45, 39, 44. See also Philip Montesano, “Some Aspects of the Free Negro Question in San Francisco, 1849–1870,” San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1967, University of California–Berkeley. 3. Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, 249. 4. Letter from John Howell, no date, Box 1, Folder 8, MS 1277, William A. Leidesdorff Papers, California Historical Society–San Francisco: Leidesdorff, viewed widely as the leading Negro pioneer in San Francisco, was born in what was then the Danish island of Santa 320

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Cruz—or St. Croix—and naturalized in Mexico and served in California as an official of this nation. He died in San Francisco on 18 May 1848, a few days before the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe, signaling the Golden State’s accession to the U.S. 5. I. M. Peckham, “Notes of Vigilante Days,” reprinted from San Francisco Recorder, 7–14 October 1939, University of California–Berkeley. Ned McGowan, Judges and Criminals: Shadows of the Past. History of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, California with the Name of Its Officers, San Francisco: Printed by the Author, 1858, 10. Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume XXXVII, Popular Tribunals, Volume II, San Francisco: History Company Publishers, 1887, 17. 6. Robert M. Senkewicz, Vigilantes in Gold Rush California, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985, 12–13, 131, 78, 79, 80, 174. 7. James O’Meara, “The Vigilance Committee of 1856. By a Pioneer California Journalist,” in Doyce B. Nunis, ed., The San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856, Los Angeles: L. A. Westerners, 1971, 64–125, 101. George Aikin to Lord Palmerston, 14 June 1851, MS 869, Papers of Great Britain Consulate General–San Francisco, California Historical Society. The deceased was from one of England’s more distinguished families. George Aikin to Earl of Clarendon, 31 July 1856, MS869. For more on the persecution of British subjects in California, see, e.g., Captain George Wellesley to Phipps Hornsby, 31 August 1850, MS 869; George Aikin to John McDougal, 13 June 1851, MS 869; George Aikin to Lord Palmerston, 14 July 1851, MS 869; George Aikin to Lord Palmerston, 1 September 1851, MS 869; George Aikin to Lord Palmerston, 14 October 1857, MS869. 8. Lane Booker to Lord John Russell, 6 September 1859, MS869. 9. B. E. Lloyd, Lights and Shades in San Francisco, San Francisco: Bancroft, 1876, 58. 10. Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire, 186. See also “San Juan Island,” Vertical File, University of Washington–Seattle. Frederick Merk, The Oregon Question: Essays in AngloAmerican Diplomacy & Politics, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. 11. George F. G. Stanley, ed., Mapping the Frontier: Charles Wilson’s Diary of the Survey of the 49th Parallel, 1858–1862, While Secretary of the British Boundary Commission, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970, 66. 12. Hon. Isaac Stevens, Delegate from Washington, On the Washington and Oregon War Claims, Delivered in the House of Representatives, 31 May 1858, Washington: Lemuel Towers, 1858, Nw970. 56, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. At the same site, see also “Report of Decisions on the Commission of Claims under the Convention of February 8, 1853, between the United States and Great Britain Transmitted to the Senate by the President of the United States, August 11, 1856,” Washington, D.C.: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1856, NW341, 2C734E, Provincial Archives of British Columbia-Victoria. See also at the same site, Mr. Mason, U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations Refers Bill on Marking Boundary between the Territory of Washington and British Possessions, 29 July 1856, NWp 973.7. See also Allan B. Cole, ed., Yankee Surveyors in the Shogun’s Seas: Records of the United States Surveying Expedition to the North Pacific Ocean, 1853–1856, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947. 13. Sara Jane Richter, “Washington and Idaho Territories,” in Le Roy H. Fischer, ed., The Western Territories in the Civil War, Manhattan, Kansas: Journal of the West, 1977, 26–35, 27. 14. Granville O. Haller, “The San Juan Imbroglio (An Account of the Occupation of San Juan Island),” no date, University of California–Berkeley.

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15. George Aikin to Lord Palmerston, 21 May 1856, MS869. 16. Letter from George Aikin, 4 June 1856, MS869. 17. George Aikin to Earl of Clarendon, 19 June 1856, MS869. 18. David L. Dykstra, “The United States and Great Britain and the Shift in the Balance of Forces on the North American Continent,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1973. 19. George Aikin to Earl of Clarendon, 11 August 1856, MS869. Letter to Earl of Clarendon, 18 August 1856, MS869. On these efforts, see, e.g., “Knights of the Golden Circle, Original Documents, 1865,” MSS 468, Oregon Historical Society–Portland. “Opposition of the South to the Development of Oregon and of Washington Territory, Trace No. VI. Published by the Republican Association of Washington, under the Direction of the Congressional Executive Committee,” 1859, Johns Hopkins University. 20. Consul, San Francisco to Lord John Russell, circa 1861, FO5/785/118, NAUK. 21. Consul, San Francisco to Lord John Russell, 10 September 1861, FO5/785/181, NAUK. 22. Rudolph Lapp, Archy Lee: A California Fugitive Slave Case, Berkeley: Heyday, 2008. 23. “Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of California, Held in the City of Sacramento, December 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th,” San Francisco: J.H. Udell and W. Randall, 1856, Reel 10, #397, Black Abolitionist Papers, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. San Francisco Bulletin, 2 July 1858. 24. Victoria Scott and Ernest Jones, Sylvia Stark: A Pioneer, Seattle: Open Hand, 1991, 11, 41, 43. 25. Alvin Charles Glueck, “The Struggle for the British Northwest: A Study in Canadian-American Relations,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1953, 168. 26. British Columbia Black History Awareness Society, A Resource Guide on Black Pioneers in British Columbia, 31, Provincial Archives of British Columbia–Victoria. 27. Article, no date, circa 1950s, Book 94, Reel 5, Dunbar Scrapbooks, University of Washington. 28. Barry Gough, “Send a Gunboat! Checking Slavery and Controlling Liquor Traffic among Coast Indians of British Columbia in the 1860s,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 69 (Number 4, October 1978): 159–168, 159. 29. James William Pilton, “Negro Settlement in British Columbia, 1858–1871,” M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1951, 1, 92–93, 112, 124, 181. 30. S. W. Jackman, “The Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps: British Columbia, 1860–1866,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 39 (March 1961): 41–43, 42. 31. Pacific Appeal, 5 April 1862, Reel 14, #216, Black Abolitionist Papers. 32. Mifflin W. Gibbs, Shadow and Light: An Autobiography, New York: Arno, 1968, 63, 71, 88, 98–99. 33. “One Man’s Crusade,” “Daily Colonist” (Victoria, B.C.), 23 July 1974, “Biography,” Mifflin Gibbs, University of Washington–Seattle. For more on the boundary dispute, see Documents, 1842–1869, FO414/9, NAUK. 34. Life and Adventures of James Williams: A Fugitive Slave, San Francisco: Women’s Union Print, 1873, 9. 35. H. Keith Ralston, “John Sullivan Deas: A Black Entrepreneur in British Columbia Salmon Canning,” British Columbia Studies (Number 32, Winter 1976–1977): 64–78, 64, 67. See also F. I. Trotter and J. R. Loutzenliser, eds., Told by the Pioneers: Tales of Frontier Life as Told by Those Who Remember the Days of the Territory and Early Statehood of Washington, Three Volumes, Olympia: Hutchinson, 1936–1938. 322

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36. Abner Hunt Francis to Frederick Douglass, 5 November 1860, Reel 13, #165, Black Abolitionist Papers. 37. Edgar Fawcett, Some Reminiscences of Old Victoria, Toronto: William Briggs, 1912, 219. See also Robert Hamilton Coats and R. E. Gosnell, Sir James Douglas, Toronto: Morang, 1909, 146. 38. Abner Hunt Francis to Philip A. Bell, 1 December 1865, Reel 16, Black Abolitionist Papers. Cf. Noah Davis, Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis: A Colored Man, Baltimore: Weishampel, 1859. William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis, eds., William Johnson’s Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary of a Free Negro, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951. As the composition of the African population of Victoria suggested, the Free Negro grouping was rather cosmopolitan, which did not necessarily predispose them to align with the slaveholders’ republic. See Vertical File, Interview with Mrs. D. M. Sandi, formerly Lenora Robinson of Buffalo, 21 September 1985, Buffalo Public Library: “[M]y grandmother Grace’s grandfather was an African student studying in London and his father was an African chief from [the] west coast [of] Africa. He had been sent to university,” rare for an African. After finishing school, instead of returning home, he bought a ticket to the U.S. and aboard ship fell in love with a Dutch woman; they married and settled in Oswego, where they resided comfortably. 39. Mary Ann Shadd, “A Plea for Emigration: Notes of Canada West, in Its Moral, Social, and Political Aspect: with Suggestions Rspecting Mexico, West Indies, and Vancouver Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants,” Detroit: George W. Pattison, 1852, Library and Archives of Canada–Ottawa. 40. Lewis Cass to James Nugent, 2 August 1858, in U.S. State Department, “Papers and Correspondence of and Relating to John Nugent, Special Agent on the Pacific Coast, 1858,” D/A/Un3N, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. See also F. G. Young, ed., The Correspondence and Journals of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, 1831–1836, Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1899. 41. Letter from John Nugent, 6 October 1858, in ibid., John Nugent. 42. John Adams, Old Square Toes and His Lady: The Life of Sir James and Amelia Douglas, Victoria: Horsdal and Schubart, 2001, 158, 121–122, 48. See also Baley Smith, James Douglas: Father of British Columbia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. His mother was a free woman of color. 43. Ibid., George F. G. Stanley, 82. 44. Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940, Portland: Georgian Press, 1980, 13. 45. Joseph Franklin, Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land, African American Migration, Settlement, and Activity in Clark County and Vancouver, Washington, 1825–2000, Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 2004, 16. 46. Journal of Sir James Douglas, 1840–1841, University of California–Berkeley. 47. Sir James Douglas to Duke of Newcastle, 27 February 1854, FO881/2056, NAUK. He was also concerned with harassment of the members of the Church of Latter Day Saints in the region by republicans. Sir James Douglas to Secretary of State–Colonial Office, 6 April 1858, CO305/9/57, NAUK. 48. Sir James Douglas to Secretary of State, 6 April 1858, CO305/9/87, NAUK. 49. Letter from Sir James Douglas, 19 May 1858, CO305/9/87, NAUK. 50. Letter from Sir James Douglas, 19 June 1858, CO305/9/115, NAUK.

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51. Sir James Douglas to Rear Admiral Baynes, Commander in Chief of Her Majesty’s Pacific Forces, 12 May 1858, CO305/9/147, NAUK. 52. Letter from Sir James Douglas, 25 July 1858, CO305/9/157, NAUK. 53. Minutes of Council (Victoria), 29 March 1853, CO305/9/16, NAUK. 54. Victoria Gazette, 16 November 1858, CO305/9/198, NAUK. 55. Sir James Douglas to Governor Isaac Stevens, 26 April 1855, in Washington Historical Quarterly, 1 (October 1906–July 1907): 352–354. 56. Sir James Douglas to Duglad Mactavish, 20 August 1857, in Washington Historical Quarterly, 19 (Number 3, 1928): 214–216. 57. Resolution from Legislature, circa 1859, Film 24, Reel 53, Provisional and Territorial Records, Documents 4945-5309, #5099, Oregon State Archives–Salem. 58. John M’Duffee, Oregon Crisis, Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1970 [originally published 1848], 15. 59. Robert W. Johannsen, Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955, 26. See also James Tilton, 30 September 1860 to Honorable H. M. McGill, Acting Governor of Washington Territory, in Washington Historical Quarterly, 1 (October 1906–July 1907): 71. See also John R. Fleming, 1826–1875, E/B/F62, Correspondence Outward, Affidavit 1860: 26 September 1860, re: “Negro boy called ‘Charles’ the property” of man in Olympia, Washington; smuggles himself aboard ship heading to Victoria, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 60. Clarence Bagley, History of King County Washington, Volume I, Seattle: Clarke, 1929, 356. 61. Vertical File, Afro-Am, Oregon population, Medford Mail Tribune, 12 February 1984, Oregon Historical Society–Portland. See also James E. Hendrickson, Joe Lane of Oregon: Machine Politics and the Sectional Crisis, 1849–1861, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967; Sister M. Margaret Jean Kelly, The Career of Joseph Lane, Frontier Politician, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1942. 62. “Statutes of a General Nature Passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon at the Second Session, Began and Held at Oregon City, December 2, 1850,” University of Washington–Seattle. 63. Oregon Statesman, 28 July 1857; Vertical File, George H. Williams—Free State Letter, Oregon Historical Society–Portland. See also Martha Anderson, Black Pioneers of the Northwest, 1800–1918, Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1980, 161, 162. William Albert Bairpaugh was the son of an indigenous leader and an African woman. Born 22 March 1859, in the Montana Territory, he could well be called “Mr. Montana.” He could speak numerous indigenous languages. 64. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 4 February 1853. Douglass may also have had in mind the remarkable blood ties between those defined as “black” and those seen as “red.” See, e.g., Reverend M.M. Clark, Tract on American Slavery by the Rev. M. M. Clark, a Coloured Man, Now on a Visit to England from the United States of America, Bradford: Wardman, 1847, 3. He was born in Delaware and added: “[M]y mother was of Indian extraction and my father a mulatto; and my grandfather, on my father’s side was a Briton. My father was a planter.” This walking embodiment of the de facto alliance between and among indigenes, Africans and Britons also served as an abolitionist crusader in Britain. See also Andrew P. Canova, Life and Adventures in South Florida, Palatka, Florida: Southern Sun, 1885, 11. The author fought in the 1850s war against indigenes in Florida. 324

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65. David Turnbull, Travels in the West. Cuba; with Notices of Porto Rico and the Slave Trade, London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1840, 173–174. 66. Ronnie C. Tyler, “The Callahan Expedition of 1855: Indians or Negroes?” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 70 (April 1967): 574–585. See also The Life of Husti-ColucChee, a Seminole Missionary, as Delivered by Him in the Several Churches of the Cities of Pittsburgh & Allegheny, in December 1845, Scriba: Pittsburgh, circa 1846, 2, 12, 14, Detroit Public Library. “I am a Seminole Indian, and was born in Florida in 1822. My father was a chief over 500 and one of the wealthiest Indians of that tribe. The celebrated Osyohola (Osceola) was my uncle.” He became a sailor, traveled to London, then to New Orleans where he was told he was embarking on a voyage for mahogany, but instead went hunting for Africans to enslave. He objected strenuously and added: “The benevolence  . . . was cherished toward the poor African by my own tribe in giving them shelter and protection against their cruel enemies, the whites of Florida.” See also U.S. Congress. 32nd Congress, 2nd Session. Senate. Rep. Com. No. 379, 24 January 1853. In Relation to the Seminole Indians in Florida and Their Refusal to Abide by the Treaty for Their Removal West of the Mississippi, Boston Public Library. 67. “Speech of Hon. Edward Everett of Massachusetts, the Central American Treaty Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 21, 1853,” Washington, D.C.: Congressional Globe, 1853, University of Virginia. 68. St. John Robinson, Peopling Belize: Chapters in Migration, Belize City: National Institute of Social and Cultural Research, 2006. 69. Governor of Jamaica to Superintendent, ID: 3163, Title: Defence Naval D. 31.3.1847. R 24 p. 256–258. Belize Archives and Records Service. 70. Consul to James Buchanan, 29 July 1848, T334, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Belize, British Honduras, NARA-CP. 71. Charles Bankhead to Don Jose Maria de Lacunza, ID: 5526, Title: Indian Wars D/7.8.1850. R. 11 pp. 472–474. Belize Archives and Records Service. 72. J. Swasey to Superintendent, ID: 5179, Title: Indians—Slavery. D: 31.5.1849. R 29 p. 290, Belize Archives and Records Service. On Mexico’s denial of selling indigenes at the same site, see Consul, Cuba to Superintendent, ID 5181, Title: Indians—Slavery. D29.6.1849. R29 p. 302. 73. Governor to Lieutenant Governor. ID: 425, Title: Bay Islands—Emigration. D/6.12.1852. R. 45 p. 169. Belize Archives and Records Service. 74. See “Confidential” documents on this accord, 1854, FO881/573c, NAUK. 75. Narda Dobson, A History of Belize, London: Longman, 1973, 199. 76. Title—Bay Islands, Public Buildings. ID: 535, D/16.6.l1854. R. 46 pp. 113–116. Belize Archives and Records Service-Belmopan. 77. Superintendent to C. O. Garrison. ID 3102. Title: Defense. D/7.7.1848. R22b p. 304. Belize Archives and Records Service. 78. Lieutenant Governor to Governor, ID: 4938, Title: Honduras. D/6.2.1857. R. 46 pp. 246–249. Belize Archives and Records Service. 79. Report on William Walker’s invasion. ID: 4486, Title: Guatemala. No date. Belize Archives and Records Service. At the same site, see also Agreement Made between Commander Salmon and General Alvarez in Delivering up William Walker and A. F. Rudler, ID: 3556, Title: Filibusters—Black River. D/5.9.1860. R. 69 pp. 780–787. See also at the same site, Letter to His Excellency the Governor and Superintendent of Belize from Nor-

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berto Martinez, ID: 4874, Title: Honduras—Filibusters. D/22.6.1860. R. 69 pp. 549–550 and Thomas Prince to Mr. Hall, ID: 4883, Title: Honduras—Izabal. D/26.8.1860. 80. No War with America! An Address to His Countrymen by an Englishman, London: Smith, Elder, 1856, Cleveland Public Library. See also Charles Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980, 28, 229. 81. Report on William Walker’s invasion. ID: 4486, Title: Guatemala. No date. Belize Archives and Records Service. At the same site, see also Agreement Made between Commander Salmon and General Alvarez in Delivering up William Walker and A. F. Rudler, ID: 3556, Title: Filibusters—Black River. D/5.9.1860. R. 69 pp. 780–787. See also at the same site, Letter to His Excellency the Governor and Superintendent of Belize from Norberto Martinez, ID: 4874, Title: Honduras—Filibusters. D/22.6.1860. R. 69 pp. 549–550, and Thomas Prince to Mr. Hall, ID: 4883, Title: Honduras—Izabal. D/26.8.1860. 82. William Marcy to George Dallas, 24 November 1856, George Dallas Papers. Huntington Library 83. William Marcy to George Dallas, 6 February 1857, George Dallas Papers. At the same site, see also William Marcy to George Dallas, 9 February 1857: “[O]pposition to Central American treaty is formidable—too formidable I think to overcome.” Distinguish from “Clayton-Bulwer” and “Dallas Clarendon Convention.” See also Speech by Hon. A. G. Brown of Mississippi in the U.S. Senate, 12–13 March 1856, University of California–Berkeley. 84. William Marcy to James Buchanan, 9 June 1855, in U.S. State of Department, “The Enlistment and Central American Questions,” Washington, D.C., 1856, University of California–Berkeley. See also George Ballentine, Autobiography of an English Soldier in the United States Army, New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1853, 48–49. “Nigger” jokes were in his repertoire. 85. James Buchanan to Lord Clarendon, 6 July 1855, in ibid., “The Enlistment and Central American Questions.” 86. Lord Clarendon to James Buchanan, 16 July 1855, in ibid., “The Enlistment and Central American Questions.” 87. James Buchanan to William Marcy, 2 November 1855, in ibid., “The Enlistment and Central American Questions.” London remained concerned about the republic feeling manpower needs by dint of illegal slave trading. Port of Spain Gazette, 19 January 1861. 88. William Marcy to James Buchanan, 13 October 1855, in ibid., “The Enlistment and Central American Questions.” See also Robert S. Smith, ed., Memoirs of Giambattista Scala: Consul of His Majesty in Lagos in Guinea, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 5. 89. A. Josias Cloete, to “My Lord,” circa 1857, COL2/1/3, Barbados Department of Archives. Africans in Barbados were well aware of the Sepoy Revolt in India and became more feisty as a result. 90. M. A. Fouche to J. W. Fouche, 25 January 1863, Fouche Family Papers–University of South Carolina. Republicans had a similar fear, worrying that they would all be poisoned in Civil War South Carolina, for example, by their slaves. 91. William Tudor Tucker to State Department, 23 February 1854, T262, Roll 5. 92. William Tudor Tucker to State Department, 31 January 1852, T262, Roll 4. 93. Henry Brown to State Department, 22 November 1858, T262, Roll 5. A similar trend unfolded in Demerara: Alfred O. Colvin, 31 March 1860, T336, Roll 6.

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94. B. Everett Smith to State Department, 7 February 1851, T475, Roll 8. 95. Timothy Darling to State Department, 22 April 1852, T475, Roll 8. 96. John Bacon to State Department, 17 April 1854, T475, Roll 8: “[A]n unusual number of vessels have been wrecked on the Bahamas Banks during the last three weeks  . . . strong currents swamping them out of their course.” 97. John Bacon to State Department, 1 June 1856, T475, Roll 8. 98. Consul to State Department, 14 May 1857, T475, Roll 8. 99. Consul to State Department, 23 February 1858, T475, Roll 8. 100. John T. Pickett, U.S. Consul to Secretary of State James Buchanan, 4 November 1848, Roll 3, T446, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Turks Islands, NARA-CP. 101. Consul to State Department, 27 July 1854, Roll 3, T333, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Barbados, West Indies, NARA-CP. 102. John Bacon to State Department, 16 May 1854, Roll 8, T475. 103. Charles Denison to William Marcy, 30 October 1853, Roll 5, T336. 104. Charles Ward to George Abbot, 15 March 1851, Roll 1, M468: “[F]rom 8 to 10,000 slaves are brought from the coast for the yearly supply of the island; and they mostly come from Kilwa  . . . there was formerly a large English trade in Zanzibar but for the last two or three years it has been entirely stopped, while in this time the American trade has been steadily increasing.” 105. W. G. Webb to Secretary of State, Roll 2, M468. 106. “Report on the Committee of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia on the Subject of the Fisheries—Extracted from Journals—1837,” Roll 2, T469, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, NARA-CP. 107. Hugh Knocker, Royal Navy to “Sir,” 18 September 1854, Roll 7, T469. 108. Report on Public Meeting, 3 September 1852, Roll 6, T469. 109. Speech by William Tecumseh Avery, 24 January 1859, House of Representatives, University of California–Berkeley. See also “Documents Relative to Central American Affairs and the Enlistment Question,” Washington, 1856, University of Rochester. 110. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 18 December 1860, Fo414/17/11, NAUK. Per usual, British travelers echoed official London views. See, e.g., James Stirling, Letters from the Slave States, London: Parker, 1857, 49, 50, 51, 58. 111. David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, New York: Knopf, 2005, 90, 166. 112. Hugh Forbes, Manual for the Patriotic Volunteer of Active Service in Regular and Irregular War, Being the Art and Science of Obtaining and Maintaining Liberty and Independence, New York: De Witt & Davenport, 1855. 113. James Mackay, Allan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye, Edison, New Jersey: Castle, 2007, 63, 81, 84. It is striking to speculate on whether Pinkerston’s conspiratorial abolitionism prepared the way for his domestic espionage. 114. Evan Carton, Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America, New York: Free Press, 2006, 167. 115. “The Life, Trial, and Execution of Captain John Brown, Known as ‘Old Brown of Ossawatomie,’ with a Full Account of the Attempted Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry,” New York: Robert De Witt, 1859, Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection. See also Poems by Richard Realf, Poet, Soldier, Workman, with a Memoir by Richard

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Hinton, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898, xxi, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 116. U.S. Congress. 36th Congress, 1st Session. Senate. Rep. Com. No. 78, 16 June 1860, Select Committee on the Harper’s Ferry Invasion. Schomburg Center. Consider also William Hall, a Canadian of African ancestry with wide experience as a fighter, having been awarded the Cross of Victoria. Born in the 1820s he joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 18 and participated in the war against Mexico but in 1852—after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act—fought with the Crown in the Crimea, then served in India. Bridglal Pachai and Henry Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Halifax: Nimbus, 2006, 88. 117. William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States, Principally Undertaken to Ascertain by Positive Evidence, the Condition and Probable Prospects of British Emigrants; including Accounts of Mr. Birbeck’s Settlement in the Illinois and Intended to Show Men and Things as They Are in America, London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1823, 47. See also James Williams, Letters on Slavery from the Old World: Written during the Canvass for the Presidency of the United States in 1860, to Which Are Added a Letter to Lord Brougham on the John Brown Raid and a Brief Reference to the Result of the Presidential Contest and Its Consequences, Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1861. 118. Samuel F. B. Morse, “The Present Attempt to Dissolve the American Union,” New York: Author, 1862, Tulane University. At the same site, cf. George F. Train, Train’s Great Speeches in England on Slavery and Emancipation, Delivered in London on March 12th and 13th, 1862, also, His Great Speeches on the “Pardoning of Traitors,” Philadelphia: Peterson, 1862. 119. E. N. Elliott, Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright on this Important Subject, Augusta, Georgia: Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis, 1860, 239, 240. 120. Henry Wikoff, A Letter to Viscount Palmerston, K.G., Prime Minister of England on American Slavery, New York: Ross & Tousey, 1861. 121. Lynn M. Hudson, The Making of “Mammy Pleasant”: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. See also J. Ewing Glasgow, The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection: Being an Account of the Late Outbreak in Virginia and of the Trial and Execution of John Brown, Its Hero, Edinburgh: Macphail, 1860: “It so happened that nature gave me a colored skin.” Thus, “I was glad to escape a country in which I could not rise” and “flee to one consecrated not only by the genius of Universal Emancipation.” On returning to the republic, “I felt not patriotic sentiments but rather feelings of shame.” 122. Letter from John Brown, 14 May 1858, MD E.5.1. pt. 1, p. 26, Boston Public Library. 123. Ibid., Evan Carton, 257. See also “Argument of Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees of Terre Haute, Indiana. Delivered at Charlestown, Virginia, November 8, 1859, in Defense of John E. Cook, Indicted for Treason, Murder, and Inciting Slaves to Rebel at the Harper’s Ferry Insurrection,” University of Rochester: The speaker cites Joshua Giddings who said: “[W] hen the slaves shall rise in the South in imitation of the horrid scenes of the West Indies, when the southern man shall turn pale and tremble, when your dwellings shall smoke with the torch of the incendiary  . . . he will hail it as the approaching dawn of that political and moral millennium which he is well assured will come upon the world.” 124. U.S. Congress. 36th Congress, 1st Session, Senate, 16 June 1860. Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harper’s Ferry, 2, University of Maryland–College Park. 328

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125. “John Brown in Canada,” PAMPH #33, 1894, Archives of Ontario–Toronto. 126. Daniel G. Hill, The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada, Agincourt, Canada: Book Society of Canada, 1981, 21. 127. L. C. Baker, U.S. Department of War to “Sir,” 8 March 1864, CO880/5/442, NAUK. 128. Reverend W. M. Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, London: Tweedie, 1860, 71. 129. James Cleland Hamilton, “John Brown in Canada,” 1894, Archives of Ontario–Toronto. 130. Benjamin Drew, The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves, Toronto: Canadian Collection, 2000 [originally published 1856], 52, 82. 131. Katherine DuPre Lumpkin, “’The General Plan Was Freedom’: A Negro Secret Order on the Underground Railroad,” Phylon, 28 (Spring 1967): 63–77, 73. 132. Alexander Milton Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer, Toronto: Hunter, Rose, 1893, 64, 73. 133. Alexander Milton Ross, Recollections and Experiences of an Abolitionist from 1855 to 1865, Toronto: Rowsell and Hutchison, 1875, 7, 20, 28, 30, 36–37, 57–58. 134. Alexander Milton Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer, 96. See also James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860, 229: “[I]n the Canadian provinces there are thousands of fugitive slaves  . . . many of them are intelligent and rich; and all of them are deadly enemies of the South. Five hundred of them, at least, annually, visit the Slave States, passing from Florida to Harper’s Ferry, on heroic errands of mercy and deliverance.” Redpath, born in Scotland, was privy to Brown’s raid and was one of his key liaisons. 135. Ibid., David S. Reynolds, 342. See also G. W. Brown, M.D., “Reminiscences of Old John Brown: Thrilling Incidents of Border Life in Kansas with an Appendix,” Rockford, Illinois: Smith, 1880, Detroit Public Library. Richard Hinton, like “Redpath, Phillips and Realf was an Englishman.” Redpath made his first appearance in Kansas in June 1855 and “all his energies seemed directed to involve the extremes of the Republic, in a bloody collision  . . . engaged in the Haytian emigration business.” 136. Van Gosse, “’As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends’: The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World,” American Historical Review, 113 (Number 4, October 2008): 1003–1028, 1020. 137. “Address of Colored Citizens of Boston to the Prince of Wales, October 18, 1860,” in Annie Heloise Abel and Frank Klingberg, eds., A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839–1858: Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1927, 1, New York Historical Society. See also Charles Penrose, “British Royalty in North America, 1860,” New York: Newcomen Society, 1951, Virginia Historical Society–Richmond. 138. Andrew Ward, The Slaves’ War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008, 280. 139. Reverend W. M. Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, 155. 140. Richard J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. See also Correspondence of the Department of State in Relation to the British Consuls Resident in the Confederate States, Richmond: Sentinel, 1863, University of Virginia. 141. Fred Landon, “The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Number 1, January 1919): 33–40, 40. For the 50,000 figure, see Claire Hoy, Canadians

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in the Civil War, Toronto: McArthur, 2004, vi. See also Richard J. M. Blackett, “Pressure from Without: African Americans, British Public Opinion and Civil War Diplomacy,” in Robert E. May, ed., The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1995, 69–100. 142. Ernest Jones, Esq., “The Slaveholder’s War: A Lecture. Delivered in the Town Hall, Ashton-Under-Lyne,” Ashton-Under-Lyne Union and Emancipation Society, 1863, Tulane University: “[T]he meeting was most numerously attended, the large hall being densely crowded in every part.” At the same site, see James W. Massie, “The Case Stated: The Friends and Enemies of the American Slave,” London: Union and Emancipation Society, 1863. The author assails secession, which “must be broken in pieces.” See also Remonstrance from Scotland on U.S. slavery, 16 November 1852, 19 April 1853, MAP 97. This roll, 13 inches wide and almost 8 feet long, contains an endless number of tiny signatures, Boston Public Library. At this latter site, see also “Curiosity Visits to Southern Plantations by a Northern Man,” London: Mackintosh, 1863, appendix: Letter from Richmond, 23 March circa 1862: “[T]here is something saddening, I might almost say appalling, in the thought that the British Parliament, and upon every public platform in England, a speaker has only to express gratification that, as one result of this afflicting war, 100,000 Negroes have burst their bonds, in order to ensure from his audience rapturous applause.” Emma to Hattie, 9 May 1861, Edward S. Tennent Papers–University of South Carolina. 143. John Lewis Peyton, The American Crisis; Or Pages from the Notebook of a State Agent during the Civil War, London: Saunders, Otley, 1867, 258. For difficulties endured by Confederates in Bahamas, see, e.g., Henry Blun, 1833–1912, Savannah Biographies, Armstrong Atlantic University–Savannah. 144. Robbie L. Alford, Joseph Hayne Rainey, SCHS. At the same site, see also Cyril Outerbridge Packwood, Detour-Bermuda, Destination-U.S. House of Representatives: The Life of Joseph Rainey, Hamilton, Bermuda: Buxter’s, 1977. 145. Sadie Daniel St. Clair, “Slavery as a Diplomatic Factor in Anglo-American Relations during the Civil War,” Journal of Negro History, 30 (Number 3, July 1945): 260–275, 272. See also Speeches of John Bright, M.P., on the American Question, Boston: Little Brown, 1865, University of Virginia. See also Richard Cobden and John Bright, A Friendly Voice from England on American Affairs, New York: Bryant, 1862. 146. Henry Blumenthal, “Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities,” Journal of Southern History, 32 (Number 2, May 1966): 151–171. See also Charles G. Loring, Neutral Relations of England and the United States, New York: Appleton, 1863. 147. Joseph M. Hernon, Jr., “British Sympathies in the American Civil War: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Southern History, 33 (Number 3, August 1967): 356–367, 364. See also Kinley J. Brauer, “British Mediation and the American Civil War: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Southern History, 38 (Number 1, February 1972): 49–64. See also Anthony Trollope, North America, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1862, 358. 148. J. D. Tuel, “A Reply to Objections of the London Economist against the Memphis Convention of Southern Planters; Examination of Its Theory of Labor, as Illustrated in the White Free System of Europe and the Black Slave System of the United States,” New York: Pudney & Russell, 1853 (“to the Hon. Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War; this defense of Southern institutions against foreign misrepresentation is respectfully inscribed.”), Phillips Library–Salem, Massachusetts. At the same site, see also “Free Negroism; or Results of Emancipation in the North and the West India Islands, with Statistics of the Decay of Com330

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merce—Idleness of the Negro—His Return to Savagism and the Effect of Emancipation upon the Farming, Mechanical, and Laboring Classes.” New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1863: “[M]any people, perhaps, have no idea of the vast territory, which now lies an uncultivated waste, solely from the effects of removing the Negro from the control of the superior race. The entire continent of North and South America from the Rio Grande on the North to Brazil on the South, is today, little more than a desert waste.” See also Moses Sheppard, “African Slave Trade in Jamaica and Comparative Treatment of Slaves. Read before the Maryland Historical Society. October 1854,” Massachusetts Historical Society–Boston. 149. Samuel F.B. Morse, “The Present Attempt to Dissolve the American Union, a British Aristocratic Plot,” New York: Trow, 1862, Virginia Historical Society. Cf. The United States and Canada, as Seen by Two Brothers in 1858 and 1861, London: Stanford, 1862, Tulane University. 150. James Williams, Letters on Slavery from the Old World: Written during the Canvass for the Presidency of the United States in 1860, Nashville: Southern Methodist, 1861, 48, 49, 51. The author, a former U.S. Minister to Turkey, published this work under Confederate aegis and said: “[T]he ever present reality that the adversaries of the South are fighting the battle under the leadership of the political anti-slavery party of Great Britain,” meaning Washington’s victory would actually be London’s, for the “undeniable truth [is] that this party [Britain] is today the leader of the anti-slavery movement against the Southern States.” In New England, “they read English books, adopt English ideas, become imbued with English prejudice,” while there was a “tendency of slavery to produce equality in the dominant race.” See also William Kauffman Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Volume I: Toward Independence, October 1856–April 1861, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. 151. Letter from Duke of Newcastle, 25 March 1861, Reel A307, Library and Archives of Canada–Ottawa. At the same site, see also Speech by George Brown, 3 February 1863, Reel 1605, George Brown Papers. On Canadian annexation, see The New York Herald, 1 February 1861. See also Samuel Phillips Day, Down South; or an Englishman’s Experience at the Seat of the American War, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862. See also Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 22 April 1861, FO414/17/25, NAUK. Seward “alluded to the eventual acquisition of Canada as a compensation to the Northern States for any loss they might sustain in consequence of the disaffection of the Southern part of the Union.” 152. Lord Lyons to Sir E. Head, 19 April 1861, FO414/17/25, NAUK. 153. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 311. 154. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 17 November 1862, FO414/19/26, NAUK. 155. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 17 January 1861, PRO30/22/35, NAUK. He added that Seward was a “dangerous man,” since he felt that Britain was “good material to make political capital of ” and “may be safely played with without any risk of bringing on a war. He has even to me avowed his belief that England will never go to war with the United States.” Seward and Lincoln, he said, will “endeavour to divert the public excitement by a foreign quarrel.” 156. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 20 May 1861, FO414/17/39, NAUK. 157. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 10 June 1861, PRO30/22/ 101, NAUK. 158. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 24 June 1861, PRO30/22/131, NAUK. 159. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 1 July 1861, FO414/17/55, NAUK. Cf. New York Times, 28 June 1861.

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160. Robert Bunch to “My Lord,” 8 January 1861, FO5/780/36, NAUK. 161. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 12 February 1861, FO5/780/114, NAUK. 162. Consul to Foreign Office, 18 March 1861, FO5/788/66, NAUK. 163. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 28 February 1861, FO5/780/126, NAUK. 164. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 21 March 1861, FO5/780/ 147, NAUK. 165. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 19 April 1861, FO5/780/204, NAUK. 166. Robert Bunch to Lord John Russell, 15 May 1861, FO5/780/233, NAUK. 167. W. L. Yancey, P. A. Rost, and A. Dudley Mann to Lord John Russell, 14 August 1861, FO414/17/66, NAUK. 168. H. Percy Anderson to Mr. Stuart, 1 October 1862, FO414/19/21, NAUK. 169. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 18 November 1862, FO414/19/ 27, NAUK. 170. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 18 December 1862, FO 5/844/145, NAUK. 171. Andrew Sekou Quinn, “The Detroit Riot of 1863: Racial Violence and Internal Division in the Northern Society during the Civil War,” University of Michigan. At the same site, see also “A Thrilling Narrative from the Lips of the Sufferers of the Late Detroit Riot, March 6, 1863, with Hair Breadth Escapes of Men, Women, and Children and Destruction of Colored Men’s Property, Not Less Than 15,000.” See also Laura S. Haviland, A Woman’s Life Work: Labors and Experiences, Chicago: Waite, 1887 (details cross-border activism) 172. Wilbur Devereux Jones, “Blyden, Gladstone, and the War,” Journal of Negro History, 49 (Number 1, January 1964): 56–61, 60. See also Donald Bellows, “A Study of British Conservative Reaction to the American Civil War,” Journal of Southern History, 51 (Number 4, November 1985): 505–526. Abolitionists reminded London of Dixie’s putative antiBritish alliance with pre-1834 slaveholders in the Caribbean. “West India Emancipation. A Speech by William Lloyd Garrison,” delivered at Abington, Massachusetts, 1 August 1834, Boston: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1854, Phillips Library. At the same site, see also “Celebration of British West India Emancipation at Salem,” 1 August 1852. 173. Consul to “My Lord,” 5 August 1862, FO5/848/249, NAUK. 174. James Magee to “My Lord,” 17 November 1862, FO5/848/267, NAUK. 175. Consul to Earl Russell, 13 February 1862, FO5/848/267, NAUK. 176. Consul to Earl Russell, 19 February 1862, FO5/848/348, NAUK.

C ha p t e r 1 4 1. “Confidential” Report from Foreign Office, 13 October 1862, FO881/1114, NAUK. Neither London nor Washington were sufficiently perspicacious to promote reparations for the formerly enslaved. 2. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 29 November 1862, PRO30/22/35, NAUK. 3. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 2 January 1863, PRO30/22/37, NAUK. 4. Frederic Bernal, Consul in Baltimore to Lord John Russell, 23 September 1862, FO5/847, NAUK. 5. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 21 October 1862, FO844/41/77, NAUK. 6. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” July-December 1862, FO5/842, NAUK. 7. H. Percy Anderson to Mr. Stuart, 1 October 1862, FO414/19/21, NAUK. 8. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 2 February 1863, PRO30/22/13, NAUK. 9. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 16 September 1864, PRO30/22/107, NAUK. 10. Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, 17 January 1863, FO414/17/ 36, NAUK. 332

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11. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 17 February 1862, FO198/21, NAUK. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 10 March 1862, FO198/21; William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 13 March 1862, FO198/21; William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 8 April 1862, FO198/21; William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 17 February 1862, FO198/21. 12. Two Months in the Confederate States Including a Visit to New Orleans under the Domination of General Butler by an English Merchant, London: Bentley, 1863, 37, Schomburg Center. The author was struck in New Orleans by “taking away of arms, followed by the arming of Negro regiments,” and the “placing of Negroes on a level with white men in courts of justice, [and] as regards the horse-cars they should ride in.” Almost causing an “outbreak” was “the marching of a Negro regiment about 800 strong, down the whole length of Canal Street at noon on a fine Saturday with flags flying, bayonets fixed, drums beating.” James William Massie, America: The Origin of Her Present Conflict; Her Prospect for the Slave, and Her Claim for Anti-Slavery Sympathy; Illustrated by Incidents of Travel, during a Tour in the Summer of 1863, throughout the United States, from the Eastern Boundaries of Maine to the Mississippi, London: Snow, 1864. See also W. W. Broom, “An Englishman’s Thoughts of the Crimes of the South and the Recompence of the North,” New York: Loyal, 1865, New York Historical Society. A region “thus populated must become a mass of ignorance, of brutishness, of crime and of terror  . . . such are the facts in the American slave states.” See also Samuel Philipps Day, Down South; or an Englishman’s Experience at the Seat of the American War, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862. 13. Hollis Lynch, ed., Selected Letters of Edward Wilmot Blyden, New York: KTO, 1978, 4, 28–31. Blyden asserted, “[T]he love of languages is my predominating passion,” as he “acquired some knowledge of the Greek, Latin and Hebrew languages. Of modern languages I read, write and speak the French somewhat, the Spanish I read a little.” 14. C. Collyer, “Edward Wilmot Blyden—A Correspondent of William Ewart Gladstone,” Journal of Negro History, 35 (Number 1, 1950): 75–78, 75, 76, 78. 15. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 11 November 1862, PRO30/22/281, NAUK. 16. Frederic Bernal to Lord John Russell, 29 November 1862, FO5/847/103, NAUK. 17. Consul to Lord John Russell, 18 January 1864, FO5/974, NAUK. Henry Ward Beecher, “England and America,” 9 October 1863, Boston: Redpath, 1863, Detroit Public Library. For abhorrence of the Confederates in London, see, e.g., Henry David Thoreau, A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866. For the diplomatic calculations that barred recognition of the Confederacy by London, see, e.g., Howard Jones, Blue & Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010, 162, 179. 18. William Seward to Charles Francis Adams, 30 September 1862, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. 19. “Emigration and Colonization Proposals for the Establishment of Townships of Colored People,” in British Honduras, circa 1860s, 188t, William Seward Papers, University of Rochester. See also Letter from Frederick Seymour, 15 October 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. 20. Acting Colonial Secretary, Belize, to “Sir,” 9 December 1962, FO5/394, NAUK. 21. A. C. Burr to James Grant, 23 September 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. 22. Charles Swett, A Trip to British Honduras and to San Pedro, Republic of Honduras, New Orleans, 1868, 21, Belize Archives and Records Service. See also Mary Wilhelmine Wil-

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liams, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815–1915, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1965. 23. Donald Clyde Simmons, Jr., “Prominent Citizens of the Confederate Community in Belize City, 1865–1870,” Belizean Studies, 20 (Number 2, October 1992): 22–29. See also Donald C. Simmons, Jr., Confederate Settlement in British Honduras, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2001. See also Wallace Brown, “The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras during the Era of the American Revolution,” Belizean Studies, 18 (Numbers 2–3, 1990): 43–63. 24. Charles Babcock, “British Honduras: Central America, a Plain Statement to Colored People of the U.S. Who Contemplate Emigration,” Boston: Babcock, 1862, Phillips Library, Salem Massachusetts. See also “Report on the Bahamas, for the year 1864,” by Governor Rawson, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1866, 235a, University of Rochester. A “number of discharged soldiers, recruited in Africa, who have wanted the disposition, or the means, to return to their native country, swell this population” in Nassau. “For many years past the defenses of the islands have been limited to Nassau and New Providence, where the headquarters of a wing of one of the West India regiments, with a small detachment of artillery, have been maintained at the sole cost of the Imperial Government.  . . . [A] vessel of war has been stationed at the Harbour of Nassau more or less frequently.” There was also a militia of some note. See also “The Gospels Written in the Negro Patois of English with Arabic Characters by a Mandingo Slave in Georgia, 1857,” Georgia Historical Society–Savannah: William B. Hodgson, speaking in New York City on 13 October 1857, notes: “[T]here have been several educated Mohammedan slaves imported into the United States  . . . the Foulah African, Omar, or Moro, as he is familiarly called is still living in Wilmington, North Carolina.” 25. Circular, 16 October 1850 and Governor of Jamaica to Superintendent, ID: 5110, Immigration–Negro (U.S.), D/5.6.1851. R37, p. 103, Belize of Archives and Records Service. See also Wayne M. Clegern, British Honduras: Colonial Dead End, 1859–1900, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. 26. Charles Leas to State Department, 15 February 1863, T334, Roll 1. See also Castus S. Depp, “Advice to the Colored People of the United States with Remarks on the Progress of the Colored Population in the West India Islands,” Chicago: Hays & Thompson, 1854, New York Historical Society. 27. “Emigration and Colonization: Proposals for the Establishment of Townships of Colored People in British Honduras, Central America,” circa 1863, T334, Roll 1. 28. Charles Leas to William Seward, 25 October 1863, T334, Roll 1. 29. Charles Leas to William Seward, 10 March 1864, T334, Roll 3. 30. Charles Leas to William Seward, 13 October 1863, T334, Roll 2. 31. Charles Leas to William Seward, 6 September 1863, T334, Roll 2. 32. William Atherton et al. to Earl Russell, Rear Admiral Wilkes et al., 18 April 1863, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. At the same site and the same file, see also Downing Street to Governor Walker, 16 June 1863: “[C]oal in the opinion of Her Majesty’s Government, ought not to be supplied to a vessel of war of either belligerent. ... [C]ertain Federal and Confederate vessels of war had coaled at Barbados.” 33. Letter to Aubrey Butterfield, 17 June 1863, FO281/12, NAUK. 34. C. M. Allen to William Seward, 6 June 1863, T262, Roll 6, Consular Despatches Bermuda, Bermuda Archives: “[V]essels from New York come here, land their cargoes, and 334

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immediately take them on board and/or transfer them to citizens here without discharging and clear for Nassau or Matamoros.” At the same site and collection, see C. M. Allen to William Seward, 17 June 1863: “[L]arge quantities of merchandise are shipped from New York to these islands and here transshipped on board steamers for the blockaded ports.  . . . [A] large portion of the goods from here to Wilmington are from New York.  . . . [G]oods from New York [arrive in] most every vessel under various masks.” At the same site and collection, see also C. M. Allen to William Seward, 22 December 1863: “[C]rews and many of the officers of captured blockade runners are arriving here by most every vessel from the States and shipping again for the same purpose. Were it not for them it would be difficult for the blockade running steamers to get crews.  . . . [T]here is at these islands at the present time a large number of desperate men from the Southern States, some fifty having arrived from Halifax last week, one of which report says is John Morgan—about one hundred have been here for some time—their board is paid by Confederate agents. Some piratical scheme is evidently contemplated by them.” Also C. M. Allen to William Seward, 2 February 1864: “[I]t is a well known fact that a large portion of the merchandise imported from New York goes if not directly, indirectly into the hands of persons employed in running the blockade. There is not a merchant here that does not sell more or less to southern parties.” 35. C. M. Allen to William Seward, 16 November 1864, T262, Roll 7, Consular Despatches Bermuda: “[R]ebel armed vessel  . . . anchored off these islands.” The Chickamugua “had on board when she arrived here 171 men—about 70 of which deserted her.  . . . I am informed by one of her officers who left here that the the next port she will go into will be Barbados (doubtful). I am also informed by several who deserted her that it was their intention to destroy some of the lighthouses on Long Island and would have done so had not heavy weather come on.” 36. C. M. Allen to William Seward, 14 April 1865, T262, Roll 7: Pro-Confederate Dr. Blackburn of New Orleans arrived in Bermuda during yellow fever outbreak. His goal: “[C]ollect clothing from the dead of yellow fever to be sent to New York and other northern cities during the coming summer.” He “collected three large trunks full of such clothing.” This was a “diabolical scheme,” he said. 37. Consul to William Seward, 2 July 1862, T469, Roll 9, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Halifax, Nova Scotia, NARA-CP. See also Harry A. Overholtzer, Jr., “Nova Scotia and the United States’ Civil War,” M.A. thesis, Dalhousie University, 1965. 38. Consul to William Seward, 11 November 1862, T469, Roll 9. 39. Consul to William Seward, 1 November 1864, T469, Roll 10. 40. Consul to Seward, 15 December 1864, T469, Roll 10. See, e.g., John Newport to William Seward, 8 May 1865, T446, Roll 12, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in the Turks Islands, NARA-CP. Predictably, the descendants of the former slaveholding class in Nassau backed the rebels: Sam Whiting to State Department, 21 July 1861, T475, Roll 10. In Demerara, there was considerably less support for the Confederacy. T. D. Edwards to William Seward, 24 January 1862, T336, Roll 8. Belize had the special problem of being close to Mexico, then threatened by France. Charles Leas to William Seward, 18 February 1865, T334, Roll 2. This gave more impetus to the plan to attract more U.S. Negroes to Belize. Charles Leas to William Seward, 13 March 1865, T334, Roll 2. See also Charles Leas to William Seward, 26 March 1865, T334, Roll 2. Charles Leas to William Seward, 20 March 1865, T334, Roll 2. William Seward to Charles Leas, 10 November 1864, T334, Roll 2.

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41. Augustus Sullivan to Secretary of War, 19 November 1863, T446, Roll 11. 42. Material on A. R. Abbott, no date, A. R. Abbott Papers, Toronto Reference Library. His father was of European ancestry and his mother was a “mulatto” born in Richmond, Virginia, circa 1802. In the same collection, see “Anglo-American Magazine,” May 1901. Abbott was in Washington at the time of Lincoln’s assassination and apparently was friendly with him. Mrs. Lincoln gave him the “plaid shawl which Mr. Lincoln was frequently seen wearing [on] a chilly evening when going to the War Department to consult Mr. Stanton.” While in Washington, he was leery of drinking the water for fear it had been poisoned. 43. Petition to Abraham Lincoln from Africans (formerly of the U.S.) residing in Puerto Plata and Samana in “Santo Domingo,” 24 March 1863, T446, Roll 11, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Turks Islands, NARA-CP. 44. Letter from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic to Consul General in Turks Islands, 8 September 1863, T446, Roll 11. 45. Letter, 4 March 1862, James Redpath Correspondence, Schomburg Center. 46. Remarks on Hayti as a Place of Settlement for African-Americans; and on the Mulatto as a Race for the Tropics, Philadelphia: Pugh, 1860, University of Rochester. 47. Clipping from Ganieves, Haiti, 10 February 1859, James Redpath Scrapbook, Schomburg Center. 48. Ibid., Clipping, no date, James Redpath Scrapbook. 49. James Redpath, A Guide to Hayti, Boston: Haytian Bureau of Emigration, 1861, 168, 173, 174, 175. 50. James Redpath, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860, 3. His opening page includes a dedication to “General Fabre Geffrard, President of the Republic of Hayti.” See also “Hayti Papers—Number 1,” no date, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. 51. James Theodore Holly, A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for SelfGovernment and Civilized Progress as Demonstrated by Historical Events of the Haytian Revolution and Subsequent Acts of That People since Their National Independence, New Haven: Afric-American Printing Company, 1857, 25. See also Howard Holman Bell, ed., Black Separatism and the Caribbean in 1860 by James Theodore Holly and J. Denis Harris, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970, 30–35. 52. “Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts  . . . in the Senate of the United States, April 23 and 24, 1862,” Washington: Congressional Globe, 1862, Western Reserve Historical Society–Cleveland. See also “Speech of D. W. Gooch of Massachusetts, Delivered in the House of Representatives, June 2, 1862,” on the recognition of Hayti and Liberia, Schomburg Center. 53. John Camp to William Seward, 4 October 1862, Reel 21, T31. 54. John Camp to William Seward, 25 March 1863, Reel 21, T31. 55. Elliott to Hammond, 25 October 1862, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. 56. Jamaica Guardian, 18 September 1862 and 19 September 1862. 57. Govenor Eyre to “My Lord Duke,” 5 July 1862, CO884/2/14, NAUK. 58. Letter to W. R. Myers, 7 June 1860, CO137/350/61, NAUK. 59. M. Galody to Governor of Antigua, 18 March 1863, T327, Roll 4, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Antigua, West Indies, NARA-CP. 60. M. Galody to William Seward, 27 August 1864, T327, Roll 5. See also Captain Dunlop to Admiralty, 28 December 1863, COL2/1/16, Barbados Department of Archives: “[B]oth 336

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Grenada and Tortola have very superior harbors to Antigua and they are both positions that could be easily defended but the first is too far south and the last too far north.” Thus Antigua was preferable, not least since it contained “extensive military barracks and other barracks already existing in the island.” 61. Minutes of Assembly, 1862–1863, Governor’s Speech, 26 February 1862, Barbados Department of Archives. 62. Minutes of Assembly, 1863–1866, Governor’s Speech, 26 March 1863, Barbados Department of Archives. 63. Despatches from the Colonial Secretary, 28 December 1863, COL2/1/16, Barbados Department of Archives. 64. T. D. Edwards to William Seward, 16 August 1862, T336, Roll 8. 65. T. D. Edwards to William Seward, 26 August 1862, T336, Roll 8. 66. T. D. Edwards to William Seward, 25 August 1862, T336, Roll 8. 67. Letter to Earl Russell, 28 September 1862, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. At the same site and file, see also Report from Earl Russell, Foreign Office, 30 October 1862. 68. U.K. Consul, St. Croix to Earl Russell, 24 June 1864, COL2/1/16, Barbados Department of Archives. See also Letter from Sir Frederic Rogers, 31 July 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. 69. C. M. Allen to William Seward, 6 March 1865, T262, Roll 7: “reliable source” says that the “Danish brig Mathilde has been for some days laden with coal  . . . and is waiting to go out to support a rebel [vessel] which is hourly expected here.” 70. F. Hincks to Duke of Newcastle, 22 August 1862, CO884/2/14, NAUK. 71. F. Hincks to Duke of Newcastle, 22 August 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 72. Governor of Barbados to Duke of Newcastle, 15 October 1862, CO101/118/474, NAUK. 73. William Seward to Earl Russell, 28 September 1862, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. 74. Sir Frederic Rogers to E. Hammond, Esq., 12 August 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 75. J. W. Murdock to Sir Frederic Rogers, 19 August 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 76. W. S. Romaine to Sir Frederick Rogers, 5 January 1864, COL2/1/16, Barbados Department of Archives. 77. Adjutant General’s Office to Colonial Secretary, 15 April 1864, COL2/1/16, Barbados Department of Archives. 78. Sir F. Rogers to Under-Secretary of State, 27 June 1863, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. 79. Lord Lyons to “My Lord,” 24 February 1863, COL2/1/15, Barbados Department of Archives. 80. To Earl Russell from Washington Legation, 4 September 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 81. Washington Legation to Earl Russell, 15 September 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 82. Downing Street to E. Hammond, Esq., 24 October 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. 83. William Seward to “Sir,” 30 September 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. At the same site, see also “Correspondence Respecting the Emigration of Free Negroes from the United States to the West Indies,” CO884/2. 84. Washington Legation to Earl Russell, 18 October 1862, NAUK. 85. Washington Legation to Earl Russell, 28 September 1862, FO5/934, NAUK. 86. Washington Legation to Earl Russell, 28 September 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. This reluctance did not deter leaders in the Bahamas. Governor of Bahamas to “Sir,” 2 October 1862, FO5/394,

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87. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 27 December 1861, PRO30/22/ 371, NAUK. 88. C. M. Allen, U.S. Consul to Bermuda to William Seward, 18 April 1863, T262, Roll 6, Consular Despatches from Bermuda, Bermuda Archives. “Three men” from Confederate steamer “and five from the Robert E. Lee,” “free people of color who shipped in the south to escape being compelled to work on the fortifications and did not wish to return. The contrabands stored themselves away till after they had past the blockade.” 89. Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, 26 December 1862, FO5/394, NAUK. 90. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 23 January 1863, PRO30/22/9, NAUK. See also Charles H. Wesley, “Lincoln’s Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (Number 1, January 1919): 7–21. 91. “Forty-Fifth Annual Report of the American Colonization Society with Proceedings of the Annual Meeting and of the Board of Directors,” 21 January 1862, Buffalo Public Library. See also U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. 37th Congress, 2nd Session. Report on No. 148. “Report of the Select Committee on Emancipation and Colonization with an Appendix,” Washington: GPO, 1862, Massachusets Historical Society–Boston: “[W]hat would be the result of planting five millions of American Negroes, far superior in skill and intelligence to those of Cuba, in a country equal to the Queen of the Antilles, protected by our power and directed by our intelligence.” Reference was made to the transforming impact of the Negro refugees from the 1812 war who settled in Trinidad. At the latter site, see N. B. Burford, “African Colonization,” Washington, 19 December 1862, including Brigadier General Burford to Abraham Lincoln, proposing U.S. Negroes as an advance guard for U.S colonialism in West Africa. See also “Speech of J. R. Doolittle of Wisconsin on Homesteads for White Men in the Temperate Zone—Homesteads for Black Men in the Tropics—White Immigration to and Black Emigration from the United States—A Continental Policy, Embracing All Climes and Races, Bringing Freedom and Homes to All,” Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 11, 1862, Washington: Congressional Globe, 1862, Tulane University. 92. James Stanley to “Sir,” 7 May 1860, CO137/350/96, NAUK. 93. U.S. Congress. 37th Congress, 2nd Session. House of Representatives. Mis. Doc. No. 31, “Colonization of Free Blacks. Memorial of Leonard Dugged, George A. Bailey and 240 Other Colored Persons of California, Praying Congress to Provide Means for Their Colonization to Some Country in Which Their Color Will Not Be a Badge of Degradation.” 16 January 1862, Schomburg Center. 94. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 29 June 1864, FO5/966, NAUK. A leading Confederate spokesman predicted that Washington would simply seize enslaved Africans and dump them in St. Croix. Judah P. Benjamin to Mann, 14 August 1862, FO198/21, NAUK. 95. Alexander Milton Ross, Memoirs of a Reformer, Toronto: Hunter, Ross, 1893, 39, 119, 121. 96. Samuel Gridley Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. Report to the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, Boston: Wright & Potter, 1864, 15, 37. 97. Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, 20 July 1863, FO5/394, NAUK. 98. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 19 June 1863, PRO30/22/84, NAUK. 99. William G. Webb to William Seward, 28 September 1863, M468, Roll 2. 100. William Spear to William Seward, 27 April 1862, M468, Roll 2. 101. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 8 April 1862, PRO30/22/36, NAUK. 102. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 15 November 1861, PRO30/22/310, NAUK. 103. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 25 April 1862, PRO30/22/74, NAUK. 338

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104. William Seward to Lord Lyons, 22 March 1862, in “U.S. Congress, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate. Ex. Doc., No. 57. Message from the President of the United States Transmitting a Copy of the Treaty between the United States and Her Brittanic Majesty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade. June 10, 1862,” Schomburg Center. The Secretary of State conceded that “large numbers of African slaves have been carried into the colonies of Spain and that this infamous traffic has been mainly carried on by persons resident in other countries, including the United States and under the fraudulent cover of their flag.” 105. Allen Francis to William Seward, 31 December 1862, T130, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Victoria, British Columbia, NARA-CP. 106. Allen Francis to William Seward, 3 March 1865, T130, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Victoria, British Columbia, NARA-CP. See Instructions to the Governor of Victoria, 1861–1865, FO881/2068, NAUK. 107. Donald F. McLarney, “The American Civil War in Victoria, Vancouver Island Colony,” 1972, 4, 34, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. At the same site, see “Treaty between Her Majesty and the United States of America for the Settlement of the Claims of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Puget’s Sound Agricultural Companies,” Signed at Washington, D.C., 1 July 1863, London: Harrison, 1864. 108. Claire Hoy, Canadians in the Civil War, Toronto: McArthur, 2004, 104. 109. R. J. Kimball to William Seward, 3 January 1865, T491, Roll 1, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Toronto, NARA-CP. The rebels had “plenty of money at their command” and “employ British subjects.” They “carry dispatches which are made and carried  . . . ingeniously secreted in the lining of the coat . . . . [T]hese messengers wear metal buttons, which upon the inside, dispatches are most minutely photographed, not perceptible to the naked eye but are easily read by the aid of a powerful lens—letters are written but are clearly interlined with imperceptible ink.” 110. R. J. Kimball to “My Dear Sir,” 28 March 1865, T491, Roll 1. 111. Consul to Nova Scotia Militia, 10 November 1860, T469, Roll 9, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Halifax, Nova Scotia, NARA-CP. 112. Consul to William Seward, 19 August 1863, T482, Roll 1. See also C. M. Allen to William Seward, 22 July 1863, T262, Roll 6: “C. L. Vallandigham” arrives in Bermuda, “I learn he will go from here to Halifax by the first opportunity.” 113. U.S. Consul to Solicitor General of Quebec, 31 May 1865, T482, Roll 2. See also Viscount Monck to the Duke of Newcastle, 19 March 1864, CO880/5/442, NAUK. Armed Confederate vessels in Canadian waters poised to attack the U.S. “Confederate refugees of whom there are at present large numbers residing in Canada.” At the same site, see also Law Officers of the Crown to Earl Russell, 25 November 1864, CO880/5/479. Confederate raid into St. Albans, Vermont from Canada. See also “The St. Albans Raid; or Investigation into the Charges against Lieutenant Bennett H. Young and Command for Their Acts at St. Albans, Vermont on the 19th October 1864,” compiled by L. N. Benjamin, Montreal: Wilson, 1865, Tulane University. 114. Case of Arthur Robinson, 28 April 1861, FO5/788/5, NAUK. 115. Consul to “Sir,” 13 July 1861, FO5/788/21, NAUK. See also Pierrepont Edwards to “My Lord,” 27 August 1864, FO5/967, NAUK: “[T]he commission of crime, on board vessels carrying the British flag, has perceptibly increased since the commencement of the civil war in this country. The numerous transfers to that flag of American vessels, bringing with them American masters, mates, and crews and American ideas of discipline

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has contributed to this result.” At the same site, see also Frederic Bernal to Lord John Russell, 30 March 1863, FO5/910: “transfer of many vessels from the American to the British flag  . . . very questionable.” 116. E. J. Parker to Sir, 8 August 1861, FO5/788/212, NAUK. 117. George Moore to Earl Russell, 11 January 1863, FO5/909/40, NAUK. 118. H. Pinckney Walker to Earl Russell, 10 July 1864, FO5/969/36, NAUK. 119. Frederic Bernal to Lord John Russell, 27 April 1861, FO5/784, NAUK. 120. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 1 April 1861, PRO30/22/38, NAUK. Apparently Europeans generally were subject to being dragooned by the Confederates. See F. B. Wells, U.S. Consul in Bermuda to William Seward, 3 November 1861, T262, Roll 5, Consular Despatches Bermuda, Bermuda Archives: “Last night a man came to my house, who said that he had just escaped from the ‘Nashville.’ He is a native of Switzerland, a marble cutter by trade, has a wife & children in Charleston & says the alternative was presented to him to serve as a soldier, or go on board this vessel & begged me to befriend him.  . . . [T]hey are much in want of firemen & sailors on the ‘Nashville’ & that the crew have been worked so hard that most of them are determined to make their escape here.” 121. George Moore to Earl Russell, 15 January 1864, FO5/909/88, NAUK. 122. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 22 July 1861, FO5/781/42, NAUK. 123. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 23 September 1861, FO5/781/341, NAUK. 124. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 6 May 1861, PRO30/22/73, NAUK. 125. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 24 April 1861, FO5/778, NAUK. 126. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 28 September 1861, FO5/781/ 343, NAUK. 127. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 25 April 1862, PRO30/22/74, NAUK. 128. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 26 March 1861, PRO30/22/24, NAUK. 129. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 10 July 1863, PRO30/22/101, NAUK. 130. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 14 January 1862, PRO30/22/5, NAUK. 131. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 27 May 1861, PRO30/22/92, NAUK. 132. Frederic Bernal to Lord John Russell, 12 December 1864, FO5/974, NAUK. 133. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 7 August 1863, PRO30/22/ 133, NAUK. 134. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 20 October 1863, PRO30/22/209, NAUK. 135. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 27 August 1861, PRO30/22/207, NAUK. 136. Joseph Crawford to Lord Lyons, circa 1861, FO72/1013/233, NAUK. Washington may have known what the Havana consul of London said of the snatched Dixie officials: “Mr. Slidell is an acquaintance of mine since 1823 and Mr. Mason’s brother was my very intimate friend.” 137. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 23 December 1861, PRO30/22/359, NAUK. At the same site, see E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 2 May 1862, FO5/841. Irishmen in New York were raising funds for “transmission to Ireland of arms and ammunition.” These “agitators” were fueling “unfriendly feeling towards Great Britain.” It seemed “doubtful” they were then plotting an “invasion” of Ireland—though the “military training” so many were “undergoing” could create unpredictable results. 138. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 19 March 1862, FO5/843/148, NAUK. The South also had the disadvantage of, perhaps, having citizens with divided loyalities: At the same site, see Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 25 June 1862, FO5/843/254: “[M]y informant is W. William Davidson, a British subject by birth altho’ a naturalized American citizen and a slave owner. His chief estate is on Lake Providence in Louisiana.” 340

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139. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 8 July 1861, FO5/781/33, NAUK. 140. H. Pinckney Walker to Earl Russell, 21 August 1863, FO5/907/117, NAUK. 141. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 25 April 1862, PRO30/22/74, NAUK. 142. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 17 January 1863, FO5/906/30, NAUK. 143. H. Pinckney Walker to Earl Russell, 5 June 1863, FO5/906/283, NAUK. 144. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 14 August 1862, FO5/844/41, NAUK. 145. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 26 August 1862, FO5/844/41/49, NAUK. 146. Lord Lyons to Lord John Russell, 2 June 1863, PRO30/22/73, NAUK. 147. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 2 December 1861, FO5/781/412, NAUK. 148. Robert Bunch to Earl Russell, 21 October 1862, FO5/844/51, NAUK. 149. See “Papers Relating to the Insurrection in Jamaica,” October 1865, CO884/2, NAUK. 150. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 14 July 1863, FO5/903, NAUK. 151. Affidavits of Charles Felix Millard and Charles Thomas Conant, 15 July 1863, FO5/903, NAUK. 152. E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 15 July 1863, FO5/903, NAUK. See also E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 25 November 1864, FO5/967, NAUK. “My informant tells me [that] many thousand  . . . of arms are secreted in Cork” and “money is being very liberally contributed to the common fund.” “[A]rms are being constantly conveyed to Ireland by men returning from Canada as well as from the United States.” The “greater portion of the Roman Catholic clergy in this country I believe encourage the movement.” Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati a “few days ago [in] denouncing the Roman Catholic opponents of Mr. Lincoln’s government, thus expresses himself, ‘Did they not reflect, that its downfall would be hailed with acclamation by our own hereditary oppressors across the ocean? Did they not reflect that if political salvation is ever to reach a far distant and beloved island, it must come to it from these United States, which they would sever?” At the same site, see also E. W. Archibald to “My Lord,” 16 January 1865, FO5/1023: “My informant further reports that the time fixed for the rising or outbreak of the Fenians in Ireland is the 1st of May next. That on the 14th of 15th of April next, a considerable number of Fenians will embark here in the steamers bound for Ireland, carrying them with a quantity of arms in cases.  . . . [A]mong those who will go over at that time will be some officers of the 99th New York Volunteers, which is one of the Regiments of the Irish Brigade.” At the same site, see also “Correspondence Respecting the Recent Fenian Aggression upon Canada,” 1867, FO198/21, NAUK. See also James Redpath, The Roving Editor: Or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States, New York: Burdick, 1859, 157: “I am sorry to say that the Irish population with very few exceptions, are the devoted supporters of Southern slavery. They have acquired the reputation, among the Southerners and Africans, of being the most merciless of Negro task-masters. Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Germans, with very few exceptions[,] are either secret abolitionists or silent neutrals.” 153. Glenn O. Phillips, “Judge D. A. Straker’s Visit to Barbados,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 36 (Number 2, 1980): 197–209, 200. 154. Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007, 175, 224. 155. Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, 329. 156. Ruth Bogin, “Sarah Parker Remond: Black Abolitionist from Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 110 (1974): 120–150, 121, 131, 136, 138–139. See also Dorothy

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Burnett Porter, “The Remonds of Salem, Massachusetts: A Nineteenth Century Family Revisited,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 95 (Part 2, 1985): 259–296, 264, 277, 287. From 1859 to 1861, she gave 45 lectures in 18 sites in England, 3 in Scotland, and 4 in Ireland. See also Sibyl Ventress Brownlee, “Out of the Abundance of the Heart: Sarah Ann Parker Remond’s Quest for Freedom,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1997. 157. Owen Mortimer, Speak of Me as I Am: The Story of Ira Aldridge, Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia: The Author, 1995. See also Herbert Marshall, “Further Research on Ira Aldridge, the Negro Tragedian,” Center for Soviet and East European Studies, Southern Illinois University, no date, Schomburg Center. Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian, New York: Macmillan, 1958. 158. Nicholas M. Evans, “Shakespeare and Minelstry,” in Bernth Lindfors, ed., Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007, 157–178, 160. 159. “Correspondence with the Government of Canada in Connection with the Appointment of the Joint High Commission and the Treaty of Washington,” London: Clowes, 1872, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. At the same site, see also “Messages, Despatches, and Minutes of the Privy Council Relating to the Treaty of Washington,” Ottawa: Taylor, 1872. 160. Annexation to the U.S., Correspondence and Confidential Reports, 1867–1868, GR2049, B8968, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 161. Speech by William Renwick Riddell, “A Canadian’s View of the Battle of Plattsburgh,” 1915, Tulane University. 162. Claire Hoy, Canadians in the Civil War, 373. 163. Alvin Charles Glueck, “The Struggle for the British Northwest: A Study in Canadian-American Relations,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1953, 238, 336. 164. George Alkins, “An Address in Vindication of the U.S. Government, for the Course Pursued in Subduing the Southern Rebellion, Delivered in Marshall’s Hall, Bridgetown, Barbados, British West Indies,” 3 February 1865, Philadelphia: Leisenring’s Steam Printing House, 1865, Detroit Public Library. 165. F. B. Dowell, “Petition Asking for Two Companies of Oregon Volunteers,” Jacksonville, Oregon: Oregon Sentinel, 1869, Provincial Archives of British Columbia. 166. Strikingly, 150 years after the destruction of the “Negro Fort,” the Black Panther Party amassed a formidable arsenal—though it was dwarfed by what had been destroyed in Florida in 1816. Flores A. Forbes, Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party, New York: Atria, 2006, 125. In Oakland “[W]e had dozens of every kind of automatic weapons: M16s, M14s, M60s, AK47s, Thompson submachine guns, 9mm grease guns, M79 grenade launchers, Boys Caliber .55 antitank weapons, AR-180s, and AR-7s with silencers. There were trunks of older weapons like M1 Garand Army files, M1 and M2 carbines, M59 Santa Fe Troopers, FNs, bolt-action high-powered rifles, Winchester repeating rifles, and about seventy-five riot shotguns of various makes.” See also Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. 167. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, New York: Holt, 1993, 317. 168. Marie Tyler McGraw, An African Republic: Black & White Virginians in the Making of Liberia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 169. 342

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169. Robert Frankel, Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007, 103, 139. 170. Gerald Horne, From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 171. Gerald Horne, Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920, New York: NYU Press, 2005. 172. Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire, New York: NYU Press, 2004. 173. Gerald Horne, The End of Empires: African Americans and India, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008. 174. Gerald Horne, Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956, London: Associated University Presses, 1988. 175. Gerald Horne, Mau Mau in Harlem? The United States and the Liberation of Kenya, New York: Palgrave, 2009. 176. Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, New York: NYU Press, 2001. 177. Financial Times, 27 June 2009: Rothschild banking interests organized the “loan that funded the [British] government’s bailout of British slave-owners when colonial slavery was abolished in the 1830s. It was the biggest bailout of an industry as a percentage of annual government expenditure—dwarfing last year’s rescue of the banking sector . . .. [A]t the time this huge sum represented almost half the government’s annual expenditure.” 178. Christian Science Monitor, 27 November 2009. See also Roger Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001; Julianne Malveaux, ed., The Paradox of Loyalty: An African American Response to the War on Terrorism, Chicago: Third World Press, 2004.

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Index

Abaco Islands, Bahamas: shipwrecks/ships blown off course, 99, 103, 109–110, 111, 133, 135; slave resistance/revolts in, 18. See also Comet shipwreck case; Creole mutiny case Abbott, A. R., 200 Aberdeen, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of, 4, 108, 154 abolition within British Empire (1834), 105–111, 120–121, 132, 136–137 abolitionism: in Bahamas, 102; in Bermuda, 70; in Britain (see abolitionism in Britain); in Canada, 18, 60–61, 94–95, 126–127; in Europe, 192; Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), 28; Missouri Compromise (1820), 91; Monroe Doctrine, 87; Negro Seamen Acts (South Carolina, 1822-1848), 97–98; number of societies, 92, 105; Royal Navy, 43, 103, 111; Treaty of Ghent (1815), 77; in United States, 7, 11, 106, 137, 149; in Victoria, 185; war between Britain and United States, 32; War of 1812, 32, 52, 53; in West Indies, 277n4 abolitionism in Britain: abolitionism in United States, 331n150; American efforts to deposit slaves in Amazon River valley, 188; American enslavement of Britons of African descent, 131, 144; arrest of British subjects in United States, 167; in battle of ideas between monarchy and republicanism, 170; Britain’s moral influence, 107; Britain’s reliance on African sailors, troops, 70; Britain’s strategic interests, 27–28, 44, 73–74, 80–81; BroughamDallas confrontation (1860), 175–176; colonization of Africans, opposition to, 121; compensation to slaveholders,

27, 109–110, 137, 214–215; defections by white British sailors, 224n87; defense of non-British Africans held by Americans, 167; as diplomatic imperative, 5, 14, 149; Garrison on, William Lloyd, 100; Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), 12–13, 18–19, 22–24, 27–28, 73–74; influence worldwide, 121; loss of North American colonies, 6; Missouri Compromise (1820), 91; as a plot to divide the United States, 4, 12, 22, 63, 77, 114, 121–122, 155, 166, 173–174; proliferation of slavery in post-War of 1812 United States, 89, 103; public support for, 118, 136, 175; rebelliousness of American Negroes, 104; republicanism, 123; Somersett’s case (James Somersett), 18, 28; Texas, secession by/annexation of, 150, 153, 154; tracking down abducted Negroes, 142–143; undermining of Caribbean planters, 5; United States as capital of hypocrisy, 10–11 Abraham (Seminole leader), 112 Adams, Charles Francis, 199 Adams, John, 162 Adams, John Quincy: on abolitionists, 4; on annexation of Texas, 157; British Foreign Office’s view of, 85; on Dixie, 138; on fears of war, 114, 166; on Louisiana, 150; on Texas crisis, 12; on warmongers, 150; Wise and, Henry, 4 “African American” (the term), 217n1 African Americans: British alliance with, 5–6; British enticement of, 34, 50–51, 57, 81, 83; having roots in Hispaniola or British colonies, 21–22; patriotism of, 215; during War of 1812, 39–40, 46–47, 48–49, 54–55, 56. See also Negroes

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African Slave Trade: American reluctance to limit, 93; American reopening of, 168–169; Bermuda, 71; Haitian interdiction of, 13; War of 1812, 75. See also slavery African Squadron, 156 Alabama, Fort Sims Massacre (1813), 63, 253n84 Aldridge, Ira, 231 Allen, Richard, 40 Allen, William, 90 Amelia Island, Florida, 46, 85, 93 American Anti-Slavery Society, 11 American Colonization Society, 76, 162, 206 American Revolution: Africans fleeing to British side, 27; Britain’s southern strategy, 17; Haitian Revolution compared to, 201–202; slave resistance/revolts during, 17–18; slavery, 6 Anderson, John, 172 Anderson, Osborne, 4–5 Anderson, W. W., 162 Andros Island, Bahamas, 103 Anglophilia: among antebellum Negroes, 7–8, 9, 10; among slaves, 5; Blyden’s, Edward, 198 Anglophobia: among Euro-American elite, 9; among slaveholders fleeing Caribbean turmoil, 19; among Southern secessionists, 194; Calhoun’s, John C., 9–10, 85; in Charleston, South Carolina, 60, 210–211; in Confederacy, 198–199, 211; Jackson’s, Andrew, 9, 63; Marshall on, John, 31; Negrophobia, 10; in Savannah, Georgia, 60; of slaveholders, 75 Angola, 169 anti-abolition sentiment: Calhoun’s, John C., 148; in Charleston, South Carolina, 144, 209; Jackson’s, Andrew, 11; Lyons on, Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount on, 169– 170; in Massachusetts, 120; in Savannah, 11; slaveholders’, 29; in Zanzibar, 207 anti-American sentiment: among Londoners, 198; in Bermuda, 200; in Chatham, Ontario, 190; Cochrane’s, Alexander, 47; in Jamaica, 12, 144–145, 162–163, 177–178; in Nova Scotia, 70, 189 346

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anti-Irish sentiment, 30, 179 Antigua, 96–97, 202–203 Aptheker, Herbert, 220n40 Arbuthnot, Alexander, 83–84 Archibald, E. W., 197, 212 Armbrister, Robert, 83, 84–85 Articles of Confederation, 157 Ashburton, Alexander Baring, 1st Viscount, 138 Asher, Jeremiah, 175 Avery, William Tecumseh, 189 Bacon, John, 136 Bahamas: Abaco Islands (see Abaco Islands, Bahamas); abolitionism in, 102; Andros Island, 103; in BritishAmerican relations, 101–102; Cat Island, 18; Confederate blockade runners, 200; Exuma Islands, 18; freedom for arriving slaves, 4; manumission in, 103; Nassau, 18, 99, 135, 147, 200; runaway slaves in, 82; shipwrecks/ships blown off course, 99–101, 103, 109–110, 188 (see also Comet shipwreck case; Creole mutiny case); slave resistance/revolts in, 18, 102; slavery in, 99; United States, relations with, 102, 111; during War of 1812, 41–42; Watlings Island, 18; West India Regiments in, 4, 111 Baird, Robert, 142 Ball, Charles, 55 Baltimore, 61–62 Barbados, 70, 152, 200, 203–204 Bathurst, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl, 71 Bayard, Margaret, 57 Bayley, Thomas, 49–50 Beach, Mary, 90 Beckley, Stephen, 8 Beecher, Henry Ward, 167 Belize: American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199; American vessels in, 31; British presence, 186; Confederates in, 199; desire to attract American Negroes, 202–203; expulsion of slaves, 26; Jamaica, 199, 202; Louisiana, 187 Bengal, 109

Benjamin, Moses, 129 Benton, Thomas Hart, 12, 156 Benwell, John, 171, 315n78 Bermuda: abolitionism in, 70; African mariners, dependency on, 188; African Slave Trade, 71; American interests in possessing, 122; American slaveholders in, 109; anti-American sentiment in, 200; anti-free Negro legislation (1806), 25–26; Confederate blockade runners in, 192, 334n34; desertion by white British sailors, 97; ex-slaves in, 69; fear of possible slave revolts, 18–19; “Huzzah for Bermuda,” 25; manumission in, 107–110; Negro skilled labor, reliance on, 24–25; runaway slaves in, 15, 205; shipwrecks/ships blown off course, 107–108; slave resistance/revolts in, 70; slaves, expulsion of, 26; during War of 1812, 52–53 Bernal, Frederic, 198 Bird, Isabella Lucy, 171 Blackburn, Thornton, 3, 124–125 Blacksmith, Ben, 140 Blanchard, Daniel F., 113 Blandings, William, 76–77 Bleby, Henry, 163 Blyden, Edward, 198, 214 Bolívar, Simón, 123 Bond, Phineas, 33–34 Booth, John Wilkes, 208 Booth, Mordecai, 56 Bowlegs, 84 Boyer, Jean Pierre, 86, 106, 158 Brant, Joseph, 45 Brazil, 109, 209–210 Breckenridge, Robert, 118 Briscoe, James, 61 Britain, 1–9, 17–34, 179–188, 202–207; abolitionism in (see abolitionism in Britain); African Americans, alliance with, 5–6; American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199, 202–207; American Revolution, southern strategy during, 17; assistance to the enslaved, 8–9; desire to attract Negroes to its colonies,

199; Emancipation Proclamation, view of, 197, 209, 212; extradition of African refugees, opposition to, 126; Federalists, 29; Haiti, relations with, 12, 14–15, 33–34, 70, 76, 87–88; indigenes and, 79–80, 81–82; Ireland, relations with, 142; Mexico, relations with, 148–149, 151; Negro fighters for, 1–4, 45, 47–48, 49–52, 64; Negro population of London (1804), 24; Negro sailors, reliance on, 39–40, 97, 224n87; Negro Seamen Acts (South Carolina, 1822-1848), 97, 174, 224n87; Negro skilled labor, reliance on, 24–25; Negro troops, reliance on, 45, 70, 74, 187–188; rift between government and settlers over slavery, 26; Royal Navy (see Royal Navy); Somersett’s case (James Somersett), 18, 28; United States, relations with (see British-American relations). See also Anglophilia; Anglophobia British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 142 British-American relations: American arrests of British subjects, 167, 187; American designs on Mexico, 148–149; American enslavement of Britons of African descent, 131, 144; American plan to attack Britain, 210; American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199, 202–207; American plans to annex Canada, 32, 37–38, 157, 193, 194; American response to Creole mutiny case, 135–138; American slavery, 74; Bahamian freeing of American slaves, 101–102; Britain’s alliances with indigenes, 38–39, 79–80, 81–82; British abolitionism as a plot to divide the United States, 4, 12, 22, 63, 77, 114, 121–122, 155, 166, 173–174; British actions in Florida, 78–79; British colonies’ seizures of Africans destined for slavery, 111; British enticement of African Americans, 34, 50–51, 57, 81, 83; British hostility toward Negro Seamen Acts, 97, 174, 224n87; BroughamDallas confrontation (1860), 175–176;

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British-American relations (continued): Caribbean, conflict over, 31–32; Confederacy, pressure on Britain to recognize, 198–199; Confederate maltreatment of British subjects, 195; Confederate military, forced enlistment of British subjects in, 209; Florida in, 78–79, 111; normalization of relations, 214; northwest, conflict in, 179–186; slavery, 93; Texas secession by/annexation, 155; Virginian assertiveness, 31. See also War of 1812 British Honduras, 102 British seamen of African descent, 131, 144, 224n87 Bronson, Isaac, 117 Brougham, Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron, 175–176 Brown, Isaac, 145–146 Brown, John: British associates, 189–190, 191; British confederates, 4; Chatham, Ontario, meeting, 4–5, 9, 189, 190–191; Douglass and, Frederick, 191; Harpers Ferry attack, 4–5 Brown, William Wells, 39, 174 Bryan, Andrew, 20 Buchanan, James: Anderson case, John, 172; on British hostility to United States, 85; Harrison and, Robert, 12; on Nova Scotia, 187; Texas alliance with Britain, 156 Buckingham, J. S., 122 Bunch, Robert, on: anti-abolition sentiment in Charleston, South Carolina, 209, 210–211; Emancipation Proclamation, 197; Negro Seamen Acts (South Carolina, 1822-1848), 174; Southern secessionism, 194–195 Burke, Thomas, 35–36 Burnley, William Hardin, 73 Bush, George W., 164–165, 179, 200 Bush, Matthew, 164 Butler, Edward George Washington, 165 Butler, W. O., 114 Buxton, Powell, 153 Byron, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron, 190 348

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Caesar (a slave), pension for, 236n19 Calhoun, John C.: abolition within British Empire (1834), effects of, 106; Anglophobia, 9–10, 85; annexation of Texas, 154–157, 166; anti-abolition sentiment, 148; on Canada, 174; Creole mutiny case, 155; Negro armies in Jamaica, rumors of, 144–145; Oregon Territory, 166; on War of 1812, 38; warmongering by, 137; whites in Hispaniola, 160 California, 104, 179–180, 181 Calvert County, Maryland, 47 Camden, South Carolina, 76–77 Cameron, Charles, 84 Cameron, David, 184 Campbell, Elizabeth, 114 Campbell, James V., 114 Canada, 114–119, 124–128, 181–185; abolitionism in, 18, 60–61, 94–95, 126–127; Africans’ affection toward, 172; American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 205; American plans to annex, 32, 37–38, 157, 193–194, 213–214; Articles of Confederation, 157; border conflict with Maine, 157; border crisis (18371838), 114–119, 137; Brown in, John, 4–5, 9, 189, 190–191; Calhoun on, John C., 174; Canadian identity, 206–207; Chatham, Ontario, 4–5, 190–191; Confederates in, 208; Douglass in, Frederick, 191; emancipation of slaves in, 7; ex-slaves in, 69–70; extradition of African refugees, opposition to, 126; gold discovery, 181; integrated juries, 7; Negroes from United States in, 2–3, 9, 32–33, 94–95, 118, 128, 179, 181–185; New Brunswick, 166; Nova Scotia (see Nova Scotia); runaway slaves in, 38, 79–80, 115, 124–126, 172, 206; Toronto, 115–116; United States, relations with, 114–119, 126; Upper Canada, 116–117, 118; Victoria, British Columbia, 182–184, 185, 208; during War of 1812, 36–39, 46, 59–61; West India Regiments in, 32 Candler, John, 14, 158 Canning, George, 26, 27–28

Canning, Stratford, 93–94 Carbery, Edward, 128–130 Caribbean basin: American designs on, 96; British strategic interests, 74; emancipation in, 132; as haven for Negroes seeking exile, 96; military threat from, 130; planter elite in, American alliance with, 96–97; slaveholders in, 33; trade with British colonies in, 96–97. See also West Indies Caroline (ship), 115 Carroll, Charles, 61 Cass, Lewis, 154, 183–184 Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Viscount, 77, 78–79, 81, 96 Cat Island, Bahamas, 18 Central America, 103, 186 Chambers, William, 171 Charleston, South Carolina: Anglophobia in, 60, 210–211; anti-abolition sentiment in, 144, 209; British seafarers deserting in, 224n87; British seamen of African descent in, 224n87; Emancipation Proclamation, response to, 211; enforcement of Negro Seamen Acts, 97; “French Negroes” in, 20; onehanded Negroes in, 171; slaveholders fleeing Caribbean turmoil, 19; Vesey and, Denmark, 90; during War of 1812, 39, 50 Chatham, Ontario, 4–5, 190–191 Chazotte, Peter, 22–23 Chesapeake incident, 34 Christophe, Henri, 33–34, 76, 158 Cilley, Jonathan, 117 Civil War: American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199, 202–207; annexation of Canada, 213–214; Brazilian recognition of the Confederacy, 209–210; clash in the northwest, 180; Confederate blockade runners, 192, 200, 334n34; Confederate maltreatment of British subjects, 195; Confederate military, forced enlistment of British subjects in, 209; Confederates in Canada, 208; Draft Riot (New York City,

1863), 8, 212–213; pressure on Britain to recognize Confederacy, 198–199; slavery, 206; Southern secessionism, 173–175, 192–195, 200; Trent Affair, 210; War of 1812, 44; from war to preserve union to abolitionist war, 195 Claiborne, William, 21, 67 Clarendon, George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl, 187 Clarkson, Thomas, 85–86, 158 Clay, Henry: border crisis with Canada (1837-1838), 117; on British enticement of African Americans, 81; Canada’s attraction to Negroes, 95; Negro insurrections predicted, 94; Texas annexation, 149 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850), 187, 205 Cochrane, Alexander: anti-American sentiment of, 47; battle of New Orleans, 69; on Negro fighters in War of 1812, 2, 50–51; on Negroes in Virginia, 1–2; on New Orleans, 241n94; War of 1812, 41–42, 61 Cockburn, George, on: African American refugees in Bermuda, 71; Blacks in War of 1812, 49; Negro fighters in War of 1812, 2, 51; sacking of Washington, DC, 54, 57 Cockburn, James, 53, 59 Collins, Charles, 86 The Colored American (newspaper), 127–128, 131, 132, 161 “Colored Convention” (California), 181 Comet shipwreck case, 99–101, 103, 123, 137 “Company of Coloured Men,” 45 Conant, Charles Thomas, 212 Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), 67 Connecticut, 69 Constantine, Bernard, 20 Cook, Philip, 41 Coppee, Edward, 20 Cowley, Henry Richard Charles Wellesley, 1st Earl, 155 Crawford, William, 44 Creek Nation, 75, 82, 84, 112

Index

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349

Creole mutiny case, 133–140; Abaco Islands, Bahamas, 133, 135; American response, 135–138; British compared to American response to, 6; Calhoun, John C., 155; departure for New Orleans, 135–136; Douglass on, Frederick, 136; emancipation of slaves onboard, 135; indictment of slavery, 177; killing of white crew member, 134; Merritt and, William, 133– 134; mutiny by Negroes, 3–4, 133–135; Washington, Madison, 140; Washington and, Madison, 133–134, 136; WebsterAshburton Treaty (1842), 138–139; Young and, Cuyler, 173 Crimean War (1853-1856), 177, 187, 189 Cromwell, Oliver, 18, 189 Cuba: American slavers in, 169; Douglass on, Frederick, 172; Rhode Islanders in, 44; runaway slaves in, 82; slave smuggling to, 111 Cuffe, Paul, 43, 94 Cumberland Island, Georgia, 46 Custer, George, 113

Douglass, Frederick: on American abolitionism, 7; ancestry, 324n64; on annexationism in United States, 172; on British-American relations, 149; British colonies, enthusiasm for, 147; Brown and, John, 191; in Canada, 191; on Creole mutiny case, 136; fate of black man and red man connected, 186, 324n64; Francis and, Abner Hunt, 183; on Fugitive Slave Act (1850), 172; Gibbs and, Mifflin, 181; on slavery, conflict and war, 171–172; on slaves’ view of the English, 316n83; Trinidad, encouragement of migration to, 161; on Walker, Jonathan, 141; Washington and, Madison, 147 Draft Riot (New York City, 1863), 8, 212–213 Dred Scott decision, 168, 170, 181, 184 Du Bois, W. E. B., 214 Dunmore, John Murray, 4th Earl of, 45 Dunston, Edward, 142 Durham, John George Lambton, 1st Earl, 119

Dade Massacre (1835), 3, 4, 113 Dallas, Alexander James, 38–39 Dallas, George, 175–176 Darrell, James, 24–26 Davis, Jefferson, 208, 211 Davis, John, 30 De Onís y González-Vara, Luis, 82 Deas, John Sullivan, 182 Delany, Martin, 160, 172, 174, 176 Dellette, Thomas, 147 Demerara, 24, 161–162, 188, 203 Denmark, 205 Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 33 Devereux, William, 134 Dickens, Charles, 10, 214 Dominica, 97, 105 Dominican Republic, 15, 159–160, 200–201 Douglas, James: appeal for Negro immigrants to Canada, 179, 181; Gibbs and, Mifflin, 182; as governor, 180, 184–185; Hudson’s Bay Company, 184; Puget Sound invasion, plan for, 208

Elliot, Charles, 155–156 emancipation/manumission of slaves: agency of the enslaved, 226n106; in Bermuda, 107–110; in Canada, 7; in Caribbean basin (British colonies), 132; compensation to slaveholders, 27, 109–110, 214–215; of Creole passengers, 135; in Massachusetts, 25; in Mexico, 94; Somersett’s case (James Somersett), 18, 28; via habeas corpus, 108 Emancipation Proclamation, 197, 209, 211, 212 Encomium (ship), 109–110, 137 Enterprise (ship), 109, 123, 137 Everett, Edward, 140–141 Exuma Islands, Bahamas, 18

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Federalists, 29, 37 Fehrenbacher, Don E., 137–138 First Seminole War (1817-1818), 78, 85, 114 Fitz, Albert, 122

Florida, 78–85, 111–114; Amelia Island, 46, 85, 93; American encroachment in Spanish, 34, 79, 83–84; armed Negro troops in, 35–36; British-American relations, 78–79, 111; Dade Massacre (1835), 3, 4, 113; First Seminole War (1817-1818), 78, 85, 114; free Africans, seizure of, 143; free Negroes, migration of, 143; importation of slaves through, 35; indigenes, kidnapping of, 113; Jackson in, Andrew, 78–79, 82, 84, 85, 115; Negro Fort, 1, 16, 36, 82, 83; “Negro stealing” in, 141–142; “Patriot Rebellion” (1812-1814), 34–35, 36; Pensacola, 63, 64, 82, 145; runaway slaves in Spanish, 34, 35, 82, 85; Second Seminole War (1835-42), 105, 111–112, 119; Seminoles, 81–82, 83, 112, 186; slave resistance/revolts in, 1, 3, 112, 113–114, 186; Spanish Florida, 34–36; War of 1812, 62 Forbes, Hugh, 4, 5, 189 Forster, William, 143 Forsyth, John, 117 Fort Sims Massacre (Alabama, 1813), 63, 253n84 Fort Vancouver, 164 Fox, Charles, 23 Fox, H. L., 117, 129, 139 France, 29–30, 205 Francis, Abner Hunt, 183 Franklin, William, 44 Fraser, Daniel, 98 Frederick County, Maryland, 47–48 Freedom’s Journal (newspaper), 92, 126 “French Negroes,” 18–20 Frisbie, Roger, 144 Fugitive Slave Act (1850): application to foreign Negroes, 168; Douglass on, Frederick, 172; plan for American Negroes to emigrate to Central America, 199; westward migration of Negroes, 181 Fugitive Slave Law (1793), 7, 8 Furstenburg, Francois, 6 Gaines, Edmund, 83 Gallatin, Albert, 44, 81, 95 Garrison, William Lloyd, 11, 92, 121

Genovese, Eugene, 5, 220n40 Georgia: Cumberland Island, 46; fear of imported slaves from Caribbean, 20; runaway slaves from, 21–22, 52; St. Simons Island, 22; Sapelo Island, 22; Savannah, 11, 19, 60, 167 Gibbs, Mifflin, 181–182, 184 Giddings, Joshua, 6, 110, 112–113, 137 Gladstone, John, 88 Gladstone, William, 193 Gould, Eliza Chotard, 66 Grant, Ulysses, 213 Granville, Citizen J., 86 Greeley, Horace, 7–8 Green, Benjamin E., 159 Green, Duff, 137, 151 Grenada, 204 Greville, Robert Kaye, 153 Guatemala, 204–205 Guerrero, Vincente, 150 Guiana, migration of Negroes to, 128–130, 146 Gurley, Ralph Randolph, 121 Gurney, Joseph John, 136 Haiti, 13–15, 86–89, 200–202; American plot to invade, 160; Britain, relations with, 12, 13, 14–15, 70, 76, 87–88; British influence on, 158; court testimony, 201; diplomatic recognition of, 15, 33, 86–87, 159, 176–177, 202; Douglass on, Frederick, 172; expatriation by African Americans, encouragement of, 86; free Negroes in, 88; “French Negroes” from, 18–20; French refugees from, 19; interdiction of slave traders, 13; militarization of, 14, 106, 201; Negroes from United States in, 14, 88–89, 200–201; United States, relations with, 86–87, 159, 202; United States trade with, 202 Haitian Revolution (1791-1804): abolitionism in Britain, 12–13, 18–19, 22–24, 27–28, 73–74; American Revolution compared to, 201–202; crisis of slavery, 13, 34; slaveholders, 33 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 24, 200

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Hall, Bolling, 40–41 Hamilton, Alexander, 19 Hamilton, James, 87 Hamilton, Thomas, 10, 123 Hammond, James Henry, 118, 121, 165 Hampton, Virginia, 49 Hanna, S. W., 14, 128 Hanway, James, 189 Harpers Ferry, 4–5, 93–94, 191 Harris, J. Dennis, 160 Harrison, Robert: abolition within the British Empire (1834), 105–107; on anti-American sentiment in Jamaica, 144–145; fear of British destabilization of United States, 11–12; on Jamaica, 162–163, 177–178; Jamaican tribunal, appearance before, 130; military threat from Caribbean basin, 130–131 Hartford Convention (1814-1815), 37, 44 Hawkins, Caleb, 47 Hawkins, William, 62 Hay, George, 38 Hayne, Robert, 87 Head, Edmund, 192 Head, Francis, 116, 117–118 Henry, John, 190 Henson, Josiah, 8 Hermosa (ship), 133 Hetherington, Joseph, 179–180 Hewell, John, 140 Hill, Benson Earle, 67 Hillishago, Frances, 82 Hispaniola: African Americans with ancestors from, 21–22; African refugees from Turks and Caicos Islands, 18; British assistance to Negro refugees, 8–9; Calhoun’s beliefs about, John C., 160; the Citadel in, 14; splitting up of, 159–160. See also Dominican Republic; Haiti Hodgson, Adam, 74, 123 Holly, James Theodore, 176, 201–202 Houston, Sam, 151–152, 155 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 207 Hudson’s Bay Company, 164, 184, 185 Huiten, Prince (or Principe), 36 Huskisson, William, 98 352

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indigenes: Britain and, 79–80, 81–82; in Florida, American kidnappings of, 113; Negro-Indian cooperation, 81, 83, 112, 114 Innerrarity, John, 75 Ireland, relations with Britain, 142 Ironmonger, Edward, 71 Jackson, Andrew: Anglophobia, 9, 63; anti-abolition sentiment, 11; Arbuthnot and, Alexander, 83; Armbrister and, Robert, 83; Britons’ view of, 78; in Florida, 78–79, 82, 84, 85, 115; Negro Fort, Florida, 82; on Ste-Geme, Henri de, 67; Thompson and, George, 11; War of 1812, 63, 64–65 Jacobs, Harriet, 8, 126–127 Jamaica: American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199; American War of 1812 POWs, 43; anti-American sentiment in, 12, 144–145, 162–163, 177–178; Belize, 199, 202; desire to attract American Negroes, 202; freed slaves in, 106; Harrison on, Robert, 144–145, 162–163, 177–178; migration of American Negroes to, 146; military threat from, 130–131; Negro population increase (1775-1787), 17; slave resistance/revolts in, 70, 105, 277n4; United States, relations with, 96; during War of 1812, 12; West India Regiments in, 131, 177 Jamaica Hamic Association, 146 Jamaican Maroons, 24 Janson, Charles William, 30–31 Jefferson, Thomas: colonizing Negroes abroad, 75–76; France, attitude toward, 29; impressments by Britain, 34; Londoner’s view of, 122; Negroes, his view of, 17; Scotophobia, 9 Jennings, Paul, 54 Jessup, Thomas Sidney, 82–83, 112 Jim Crow, demise of, 214 Johnson, Samuel, 17–18 Johnston, John, 145 Jones, A. T., 5 Jones, Anson, 151–152

Jones, Henry, 139 Jones, John, 143 Jones, William, 195 Jordan, Edward, 163 Kansas, 190 Kennedy, William, 152, 154, 157 Know-Nothing Party, 179, 180 Lamar, Charles Augustus Lafayette, 153 Lamar, Mirabeau, 153 Lambert, William, 191 Laronde, Pierre Dennis De, 75 Latimer, Jon, 38 Latour, Arsene Lacarriere, 63 Leas, Charles, 199, 202–203 Leitner, Jacob, 140 Lewis, David Levering, 214 Liberia, 58, 176 Liberty Party, 162 Likers, Thomas, 7 Lincoln, Abraham, 170, 193, 204 Longuen, J. W., 119 Louisiana: arrest of British subjects in, 167, 187; Belize, 187; British seafarers deserting in, 224n87; fear of imported slaves from Caribbean, 21; importation of enslaved Africans, 67; jailing of African seafarers upon arrival, 168; New Orleans (see New Orleans); Point Coupee revolt (1795), 156; population, 21; slave resistance/revolts in, 67–68; Vigilance Committee, 167; during War of 1812, 66–67 Louisiana Purchase (1803), 30 Lusignan, Thaddius di, 4 Lyman, Loring, 88–89 Lynchburg, Virginia, 50 Lyons, Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount: American plan to attack Britain, 210; American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 204, 206, 207; American plans to annex Canada, 193–194; on anti-abolition sentiment in United States, 169–170; Brazilian recognition of the Confederacy, 209–210; on Dred Scott decision, 169–170; on Emancipation Proclama-

tion, 197; on French intervention in Mexico, 195; on Lincoln, Abraham, 193; on Negro Union forces in the South, 211; on pressure on Britain to recognize Confederacy, 198; Seward and, William, 193, 205, 206, 209; on slave sates, 189; on slaveholders, 171; on Texas, 315n77; on war between Britain and United States, 169–170 MacDougall, Duncan, 55–56 Mackenzie, Charles, 76, 88 Mackenzie, James, 116 MacKenzie, William, 125 Mackenzie, William, 115–116 Madison, Dolly, 57–58 Madison, James: Chazotte and, Peter, 22–23; Claiborne and, William, 21; France, attitude toward, 29; War of 1812, 30, 41, 54, 56, 60 Maillard, Nicholas, 149 Maine, 157 Malvin, John, 125 “Mammy Pleasant,” 190 Mandela, Nelson, 214 manumission. See emancipation/manumission of slaves Marcy, William, 187 Marshall, John, 31 Martineau, Harriet, 118, 149 Martinique, 105 Maryland: Baltimore, 61–62; Calvert County, 47; Frederick County, 47–48; during War of 1812, 46–47, 48, 60, 245n55 Mason, George, 18 Massachusetts: anti-abolition sentiment in, 120; British migrants in, 80; emancipation of captured enslaved Africans, 25; Federalist sympathies among Negroes, 37; foreign-born Negroes in, 22; free Negroes in, 142 Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 188, 200 McArthur, Alexander, 124 McGillivray, Alexander, 75, 112 Merritt, William, 133–134, 140

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353

Mexico: Britain, relations with, 148–149, 151; dismemberment of, 157; emancipation of slaves in, 94; French intervention in, 195; slave trading in, 186–187; Texas secession, 149 Michigan Freeman (newspaper), 124 Mifflin, Thomas, 19 Mikasuki (Miccosukee), 112 Millard, Charles Felix, 212 Miller, C. W., 168 Mississippi, 66–67, 81, 195 Missouri Compromise (1820), 91 Mitchell, George, 48–49 Mitchell, W. M., 191 Monroe, James: American Colonization Society, 76; France, attitude toward, 29; “Patriot Rebellion” (Florida, 1812-1814), 35; War of 1812, 57, 59, 60, 67 Monroe Doctrine, 83, 87, 96, 151 Moore, George, 209 Moore, James, 66 Morgan, John, 334n34 Morris, Elijah, 134 Morse, Samuel F. B., 190 Moseby, Solomon, 125 Mozambique, 169 Mundy Point, Virginia, 48 Mure, William, 168 Naparima, Trinidad, 72–73 Napoleon, 59, 170 Nassau, Bahamas, 18, 99, 135, 147, 200 Natchez, Mississippi, 66 Neal, Joseph, 108 Negro Fort, Florida, 1, 16, 36, 82, 83 Negro Seamen Acts (South Carolina, 18221848): American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 206; Bermudan objections to, 188; British hostility toward, 97, 174, 224n87; provisions, 97–98 “Negro stealing,” 141–142 Negroes: American plans for colonization/ repatriation of, 94, 121; as fighters for Britain, 1–4, 49–52, 64, 70, 74, 187–188; Negro-Indian cooperation, 81, 83, 112, 114; Oregon Territory, barred from, 354

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164; repatriation of, American calls for, 94; as sailors for Britain, 39–40, 97, 224n87; seeking leverage abroad against domestic foes, 214; as skilled laborers for Britain, 24–25; in Virginia, 1–2 Negrophobia, 8, 10, 199 New Brunswick, 166 New Orleans: Cochrane on, Alexander, 241n94; jailing of African seafarers upon arrival, 208; rumors of British arming Negroes, 21; slaveholders fleeing Caribbean turmoil, 19; strategic importance, 241n94; during War of 1812, 2, 12, 37, 41, 62–64, 68–69 New York City, 8, 40, 200 Newcastle, Henry Pelham-Clinton, 5th Duke, 193 Newman, F. W., 10 Newport, Rhode Island, 22 Niagara Movement, 214 Nicolls, Edward, 62–63 Norfolk, Virginia, 39 North Carolina, 62 northwest, 179–186; British-American conflict in, 179–186; Oregon statehood, 185–186; Oregon Territory, 157, 164–166, 184; Puget Sound invasion, plan for, 208; Royal Navy in, 181, 184; slavery in, 185–186; Victoria, British Columbia, 182–184, 185, 208 Nova Scotia: American fisherman, 31; anti-American sentiment in, 70, 189; Buchanan on, James, 187; ex-slaves in, 69; Halifax, 24, 200; Negroes from United States in, 24, 39, 46, 48, 80; Southern secessionist activities in, 200; during War of 1812, 48 O’Connell, Daniel: on captive Africans, 146; on “slave breeding” by republicans, 123–124; on Stevenson, Andrew, 158; Texas, his vision of, 152; on Texas’s secession from Mexico, 153 Ogilby, William, 98–99, 156–157 Oregon statehood, 185–186 Oregon Territory, 157, 164–166, 184

Osceola, 112–113 Ouseley, William Gore, 154 Owens, William, 199 Pakenham, Richard, 154 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount, 101, 109, 110, 117, 159 Panton, William, 75 Patch, Joseph Dorst, 56 “Patriot Rebellion” (Florida, 1812-1814), 34–35, 36 Pechell, G. R., 14, 70 Pensacola, Florida, 63, 64, 82, 145 Petrie, Peter, 98 Phillips, William, 189 Pickett, George, 180 Pierpoint, Richard, 45 Pinkard, George, 45 Pinkerton, Allan, 189 Pletcher, David, 148 Poinsett, Joel Roberts, 150 Point Coupee revolt (Louisiana, 1795), 156 Polk, James K., 166 Potter, Woodburne, 113 Prosser, Gabriel, 94 Providence, Rhode Island, 22, 98 Purvis, Robert, 136 Quakers, 88 Rainey, Joseph, 192 Rainsford, Marcus, 23 Rapier, James, 213 Realf, Richard, 4, 189–190 Redpath, James, 5, 201 Reid, William, 127 Remond, Sarah Parker, 213 Renault, Philip Frances, 22 Republican Party, 170, 209 republicanism: British abolitionists, 123; discrediting of, 60, 122, 227n124; monarchy, battle of ideas with, 170; slavery, 116, 171, 180 Rhett, Robert, 121 Rhode Island, 22, 98, 127 Riddell, William Renwick, 37

Ridout, Thomas Gibbs, 116 Roberts, James, 64–65 Robinson, Arthur, 167 Rodney, Walter, 215 Rogers, Frederic, 204 Ross, Alexander Milton, 4, 191, 206 Royal Navy: abolitionism, 43, 103, 111; deserters from, 97, 184; impact on slaving, 207; in Pacific Northwest, 181, 184; runaway slaves, 52, 258n51; in St. Helena, 168–169; Texas-flagged vessels, searches of, 153; in War of 1812, 62; in western Africa, 170 Ruffin, Edmund, 168 runaway slaves: Anderson, John, 172; in Bahamas, 82; in Bermuda, 4, 205; in British armed forces, 62–63, 82; in Canada, 38, 79–80, 115, 124–126, 172, 206; in Cuba, 82; in Florida (Spanish Florida), 34, 35, 82, 85; freedom for, 4; from Georgia, 21–22, 52; Huiten, Prince (or Principe), 36; Royal Navy, 52, 258n51; in Texas, 148; from Virginia, 15, 47; in West India Regiments, 55 Runchey, Robert, 45 Rush, Richard, 77, 78–79, 81 Russell, John Russell, 1st Earl, 160, 197 Russell, William Howard, 9 Russia: as arbitrator between Britain and United States, 77, 79; British abolitionists’ view of, 118–119; Treaty of Ghent (1815), 77; United States, relations with, 165–166, 177; United States trade with, 202 St. Clair, Thomas Staunton, 24 St. Lucia, 105 St. Simons Island, Georgia, 22 Ste-Geme, Henri de, 67 San Francisco, 179–180 San Juan Island, 180 San Salvador, 204–205 Sandwich Islands, 172 Sapelo Island, Georgia, 22 Saunders, Prince, 85–86 Savannah, Georgia, 11, 19, 60, 167

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355

Scarlet, Margaret, 142 Schama, Simon, 56 Scholte, H. P., 166 Scoble, John, 142, 143–144 Scotophobia, 9 Seabrook, Whitemarsh, 91–92 Second Seminole War (1835-42), 105, 111–112, 119 secret societies, 167 Seminole War, First (1817-1818), 85, 114 Seminole War, Second (1835-42), 105, 111–112, 119 Seminoles, 81–82, 83, 112, 186 Seward, William: American plan to send Negroes to British colonies, 199, 203, 204, 205, 206; American trade with Zanzibar, 207; annexation of Canada, 193; Brazilian recognition of the Confederacy, 209–210; on emancipation, 198; Lyons and, Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount, 193, 205, 206, 209; warmongering by, 170 Shadd, Isaac, 213 Shama, Simon, 6 Sharp, Sam, 277n4 Shaw, George Bernard, 214 Sheridan, Francis C., 149 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 149 Sierra Leone, 43, 94, 168–169 Simcoe, John Graves, 18 slave auctions, 10 slave resistance/revolts: during American Revolution, 17–18; in Bahamas, 18, 102; in Barbados, 70; in Bermuda, 70; Dade Massacre (1835), 3, 4, 113; in Demerara, 24; in Florida, 112, 113–114, 186; in Jamaica, 70, 105, 277n4; mutinies, 139–140 (see also Creole mutiny case); Negro Fort, Florida, 1, 16, 36, 82, 83; in Pensacola, 145; in Rhode Island, 98; runaways (see runaway slaves); Second Seminole War (1835-42), 111–112; in South Carolina, 76–77, 91; Vesey, Denmark, 90–91; in Virginia, 27, 50, 58–59, 76, 90 (see also Turner, Nat); War of 1812, 40–41, 56, 58–59

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slaveholders: Anglophobia of, 75; anti-abolition sentiment, 29; in Caribbean basin, 33; compensation for, 27, 109–110, 137, 214–215; fear of imported slaves from Caribbean, 19–21; Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), 33; Lyons on, 1st Viscount, 171; refugees from Caribbean turmoil, 19 slavery: of Africans kidnapped by Americans, 152, 166–167; American Revolution, 6; in Bahamas, 99; Biblical arguments supporting, 121; British visitors’ view of, 30–31, 80, 123; Civil War, 206; cost of slaves, 109, 111, 168; crisis of, 13, 34, 91, 176; “domino theory” of, 150–151; European attitudes toward, 165; as national security issue, 5, 11, 124, 178; in northwest, 185–186; proliferation in United States after War of 1812, 93; republicanism, 116, 171, 180; rift between British government and settlers over, 26 slaves: Anglophilia, 5; emancipation (see emancipation of slaves; Emancipation Proclamation); importation into Florida, 35; importation into Texas, 315n77; in Mexican-ruled California (1825), 104; in War of 1812, 37–38 Smallwood, Thomas, 32–33 Smith, Ashbel, 148, 151 Smith, B. E., 159 Smith, Gerritt, 109, 122, 124, 175 Smith, William, 71–72 Smith, William Wye, 126 Snyder, Simon, 45, 59 socialism, discrediting of, 227n124 Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slave Trade, 6 Somersett’s case (James Somersett), 18, 28 South Carolina: Caesar (a slave), pension for, 236n19; Camden, 76–77; Charleston (see Charleston, South Carolina); fear of imported slaves from Caribbean, 20; Negro Seamen Acts (1822-1848) (see Negro Seamen Acts); slave resistance/ revolts in, 76–77, 91 (see also Vesey, Denmark); during War of 1812, 69

Spain: United States, relations with, 34–36, 82–83; War of 1812, 62 Spratt, L. W., 165 “S.S.” branding, 141 Staples, Isaac, 99 Stavely, John, 55 Stephen, James, 13–14, 23 Stevenson, Andrew, 123, 158 Steward, Henry, 143 Sullivan, Augustus, 200 Sumner, Charles, 202, 207, 213 Swett, Charles, 199 Tallmadge, James, 91 Tappan, Lewis, 152 Taylor, Alan, 6 Taylor, Zachary, 180 Telfair, Edward, 20 Telfair, Mary, 46 Texas, 148–156; abolitionism in Britain, 150, 153; Adams on, John Quincy, 12; annexation of, 149–150, 152–153, 154–157, 166; Britain, alliance with, 156; British-American relations, 155; British subjects migrating to, 152; British visitors’ view of, 149; diplomatic recognition of, 154; “domino theory” of African enslavement, 150–151; enslavement of Africans, 152; importation of slaves, 315n77; independence, 149; runaway slaves in, 148; secession from Mexico, 149, 153, 154; slave breeding in, 153 Texas-flagged vessels, 153 Thompson, George, 11, 120–121, 190 Toronto, 115–116 Toussaint L’Ouverture, 33 Treaty of Ghent (1815), 77, 81–82, 168 Treaty of Paris (1783), 18 Trent Affair, 210 Trinidad: ex-slaves in, 69, 72–74, 131–132, 161; migration of American Negroes to, 146; militias in, 160–161; Naparima, 72–73; runaway slaves in, 258n51; during War of 1812, 71

Troy, New York, 146 Tucker, George, 26–27, 234n109 Tucker family, 26, 52 Turks and Caicos Islands, 18 Turnbull, David, 186 Turner, Nat, 91, 98, 101, 104 Tyler, John, 151, 156 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 170 United States: abolitionism in, 7, 11, 106, 137, 149; Bahamas, relations with, 102, 111; border crisis with Canada (18371838), 114–119, 137; Britain, relations with (see Britain-American relations); Canada, relations with, 114–119, 126; France, relations with, 29–30; Haiti, relations with, 86–87, 159, 202; Jamaica, relations with, 96; reluctance to limit African Slave Trade, 93; Russia, relations with, 165–166, 177; Spain, relations with, 34–36, 82–83 U.S. Constitution, 146 U.S. Navy, 57, 97 Upper Canada, 116–117, 118 Upshur, Abel, 129, 150 Urquhart, David, 149 Vail, Aaron, 109 Vallandignham, Clement, 208 Van Buren, Martin, 9 Vaughan, Thomas, 167–168 Vesey, Denmark, 90–91, 98, 101, 104 Victoria, British Columbia, 182–184, 185, 208 Victoria, Queen, 192 Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps, 182 Vigilance Committee, 167 Villere, Jacques Philippe, 67, 75 Virginia: Dickens on, Charles, 10; Hampton, 49; Lynchburg, 50; Mundy’s Point, 48; Negroes in, 1–2; Norfolk, 39; runaway slaves from, 15, 47; slave resistance/ revolts in, 27, 50, 58–59, 76, 90 (see also Turner, Nat); during War of 1812, 1–2, 15, 41, 47, 48–50, 58–59, 245n55

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357

Waddell, John, 110 Wakefield, Priscilla, 31 Walker, Jonathan, 141–142, 143–144, 188 Walker, Robert, 10 Walker, William, 187 Walker’s Appeal (David Walker), 98, 101, 104 Walsh, R. M., 159 War of 1812, 36–77; African Americans fleeing to British side, 39, 40, 46–47, 48–49, 55, 56; African Americans on American side, 39–40, 68–69; African Slave Trade, 75; American declaration of war, 44; American demands for reparations for lost slaves, 77; American goal, 38, 61, 62; American POWs, 12, 43, 69; antiwar movement in New England, 43–44, 61; Bahamas during, 41–42; Baltimore, attack on, 61–62; Bermuda during, 52–53; British abolitionism, 32, 52, 53; British enticement of African Americans, 57; British expectations, 43–44; British intelligence reports, 49; Calhoun on, John C., 38; Canada during, 36–39, 46, 59–61; casualties, 36–37; Charleston, South Carolina, during, 39, 50; Chesapeake incident, 34; Civil War, 44; Cochrane and, Alexander, 41–42, 61; Connecticut during, 69; First Seminole War (1817-1818), 85; Florida, 62; impressments by British, 13, 34; Jackson and, Andrew, 63, 64–65; Jamaica during, 12; Louisiana during, 66–67; Lundy’s Lane, battle of, 45; Madison and, James, 30, 41, 54, 56, 60; Maryland during, 46–47, 48, 60, 245n55; Mississippi during, 66–67; Monroe and, James, 57, 59, 60, 67; Negro fighters for the British, 45, 47–48, 49–52, 64; New Orleans during, 2, 12, 37, 41, 62–64, 68–69; Nova Scotia during, 48; postwar reverberations, 69–77, 92–93, 99; Royal Navy in, 62; runaway slaves joining British, 245n55, 258n51; slave resistance/revolts dur358

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ing, 40–41, 56, 58–59; slaves in, 37–38; South Carolina during, 69; Spain, 62; Treaty of Ghent (1815), 77, 81–82, 168; Trinidad during, 71; Van Buren and, Martin, 9; Virginia during, 1–2, 15, 41, 47, 48–50, 58–59, 245n55; Washington, D.C., sacking of, 54–58, 61; West India Regiments during, 51–52, 68–69 Washington, D.C., 54, 61 Washington, George, 17, 123 Washington, Madison: Colonial Office on, 138; Creole mutiny, 133–134, 136, 140; Douglass and, Frederick, 147; precedent for, 139 Watlings Island, Bahamas, 18 Webster, Daniel: American interests in possessing Bermuda, 122; American plot to invade Haiti, knowledge of, 160; Creole mutiny case, 138; diplomatic recognition of Haiti, opposition to, 15; Green and, Benjamin E., 159; slavery, defense of, 138–139; Young and, Cuyler, 173 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 138–139, 172 Wells, H. G., 214 West India Regiments: First West India Regiment, 69; Second West India Regiment, 103; Third West India Regiment, 46; Fifth West India Regiment, 69; African American soldiers compared to, 71; Africans seized at sea in, 110; in Bahamas, 4, 111; British reliance on, 51–52; in Canada, 32; in Central America, 187; fear of, 18, 32; in Jamaica, 131, 177; Rainsford and, Marcus, 23; recruitment by, 51; runaway slaves in, 55; during War of 1812, 51–52, 68–69 West Indies: abolitionism in, 277n4; British assistance to Negro refugees, 8 Whig Party, 112 White, Alexander, 167 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 141 Wilberforce, William, 79, 85 Wilcox, Joseph Morgan, 63–64

Wilentz, Sean, 36 Williams, George H., 3 Williams, James, 182, 331n150 Williams, Patrick, 167 Windward Islands, 200 Wise, Henry, 4, 191–192 Woodford, Ralph, 72–73

Woodside, William, 140 World Anti-Slavery Convention, 118 Yeo, James, 40, 68 Young, Cuyler, 173–174 Zanzibar, 169, 207

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About the Author

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His books include The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade; Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica; and Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (all available from NYU Press).

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