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Reckoning with Enslavement

Excerpt Georgetown, April 2017 It was early morning when I crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Virginia into Georgetown. College spires loomed in the distance, gray in the dawn...

Haiti and the Fear of Insurrection: A Review of The Slaveholding Crisis

Review Warning the governor of Kentucky that the white South stood on the brink of destruction in 1860, secession commissioner Stephen F. Hale wrote that Lincoln's election "inaugurates all the...

A Woman's Work: Jim Crow Modernity and the Remaking of the Carceral State

Review There's a gripping scene in Arthur Jafa's award-winning film, Dreams Are Colder Than Death, in which he pairs the image of a small group of African American boys acrobatically...

The Law and the Mississippi Basin: A Review of Mississippi River Tragedies

Review The present system of flood control in the Mississippi Valley is a compromise resulting from a long and complicated interplay among interest groups. The current solution to the problem...

The Tulip Quilt [ca 1880]

...the Spartanburg Herald on May 19, 1875, offered "Singer's celebrated sewing machines, the cheapest and the best sewing machine, for sale on easy terms." In the same issue, McK. Johnstone...

Somewhere Like Real Life: On Richard Linklater's Boyhood

...for cheap melodrama, but the point gets across: Mason loves and respects his father, but he isn't about to pretend that the past didn't play out the way it did...

"We're Almost There": The Drive-By Truckers' Art of Place

...into the modern era by the cheap electricity and federal intervention of the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority. (There are two TVA songs in the Truckers catalogues.)2The two songs are...

Enslaved Labor and Building the Smithsonian: Reading the Stones

...his wife, Martha Custis Washington. After Mrs. Washington's death in 1802, a number of her slaves at Mount Vernon were inherited by Martha Custis Peter, adding to the Peter family...

References
1.	Zbigniew Herbert, Collected Poems, 1956–1968 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 141. Thanks to Allen Tullos for suggesting this apt quote.
2.	The contributions of enslaved African American workers to the construction of the US Capitol are detailed in: William C. Allen, "History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol, Report by the Architect of the Capitol," June 1, 2005, https://emancipation.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/emancipation/publication/attachments/History_of_Slave_Laborers_in_the_Construction_of_the_US_Capitol.pdf.
3.	Kirk Savage evocatively writes, ". . . slave pens sat right on the edge of the Mall, and slave coffles—groups of slaves chained together—shuffled across the Mall's "waste" on their way to loading docks on the river. What L'Enfant had imagined as a glorious avenue leading to the equestrian image of Washington was now a scrubland pockmarked by the visible traces of the slave trade." Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington DC, The National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 46.
4.	Josephine F. Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape Attempt on the Potomac (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Mary Kay Ricks, Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad (New York: Harper Collins, 2007). As part of the great compromise of 1850, centered on the Fugitive Slave Law, Congress in September 1850 prohibited the slave trade within the District of Columbia. Slavery itself continued in the District until April 16, 1862, when Congress provided that all slaveowners in the city would be compensated financially for the loss of their human property. Nonetheless, the Fugitive Slave Law was still, in principle, in force throughout the Civil War in the District of Columbia for enslaved persons who escaped from non-Confederate states and sought refuge in the city.
5.	It would appear that few free persons, white or African American, labored in the quarry during this period. The 1850 census, enumerated two years after the Smithsonian sandstone was quarried, records only one white stonecutter residing in the entire Medleys District of Montgomery County, Maryland. Charlesworth Wood, age forty seven, born in England, lived adjacent to the widow of John P. C. Peter and her new husband Rev. Charles Nourse. Of the approximately one hundred free persons of color residing in the Medleys district in 1850, nearly all are accounted for in terms of employment in farm labor or other trades, such as plastering. It thus seems a fair conclusion that, as oral history accounts by Seneca's current African American community members attest, the majority of labor in the quarry was done by enslaved men possessed by quarry owner John Parke Custis Peter, or by slaves that he rented from fellow slaveowners in the area.
6.	Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003), 335–339.
7.	The use of enslaved labor at the Peter family’s Seneca quarry definitively dates to as early as 1823. In that year the Federal government undertook excavations at Seneca quarry, then under the ownership of Thomas Peter, the father of John P.C. Peter. A ledger book recording payments for this enterprise has been located in the National Archives by historian Garrett Peck, who has generously shared its contents. The ledger book indicates the presence of at least eighteen enslaved workers in Seneca quarry. Three men, Benjamin Delahey, Benjamin Bird, and “James,” are identified as “Boy.” Thirteen men--Alexander, Frank, Harry, Hall, Hillary , Ishmael, Luke, Martin, Nace (evidently also referred to as Ignatius), Rezin, Salsbury, Thomas, William--are identified only by first name. Of those thirteen, two are specifically identified by race, “Negro Martin” and “Negro Frank.” It is not clear if these enslaved men were directly compensated for their labor in the quarry or if only their owners were paid. In the case of two workers, Harry and a Leonard Mattingly, the name, “Anthony B. Smith,” is listed besides their names, suggesting that Mr. Smith may have been their owner, renting them out for quarry labor. Rachael Cheney is also listed as a “cook”; it is not clear is she was enslaved or free. (For more information on Seneca quarry, and a discussion of this ledger book, see the forthcoming book, Garrett Peck, Seneca Castle and the Smithsonian Castle, Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2013.) Two of the enslaved quarry workers may be the same as persons listed in the 1795 inventory of Mrs. Peter’s Patrimony, currently held at Tudor Place. William, who worked at the quarry in April and May 1823, may be the same person as Will, age seventeen, son of Bob and Sal, in the 1795 list. Harry, who worked in the quarry in June 1823, may be the same person as the seven-year-old Harry, son of Joe and Patty, in the 1795 list.
8.	Strictly speaking, Martha Custis Washington did not own the dower slaves, which were to be held by the Custis Estate until her son, John “Jacky” Custis, attained majority and assumed ownership. Since John died during the American Revolution, these slaves then passed to his heirs, including Martha Custis Peter, the wife of Thomas Peter of Georgetown. Upon the death of her first husband in 1757, Martha was guaranteed life use of one third of her husband’s lands and slaves. This dower share was the source of much of Mount Vernon's income, resources which in turn made it possible for George Washington to expand Mount Vernon’s land and slave holdings. For a more detailed discussion, see Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003).
9.	There are four possible matches between the names in the 1848 Peter estate inventory, and a list of slaves brought to the marriage by Martha Parke Custis in 1795, held in the Archives of Tudor Place in Georgetown. (Most of these 1795 slaves would appear not to have come from Mount Vernon, but rather from the outlying Custis plantations in York and New Kent.) The possible matches are as follows: Joseph, “very old” in the 1848 inventory, may be the same person as Joe, age twenty-seven in 1795, the husband of Patty and father of Tom and Harry; George, over fifty in 1848, may be the same person as George, age seven, in 1795, the son of Bob and Sall ; Anna (age not given) in the 1848 inventory may be the same person as the four year old Anna (child of Molly) or the eight year old Anna (child of Rose) in 1795; John, “over fiffty” in 1848, may be the same person as the two year old John in 1795. Many thanks to Henry Wiencek for generously sharing his transcription of the 1795 inventory.
10.	Loren Schweninger, ed., Race, Slavery, and Free Blacks: Series II, Petitions to Southern County Courts, 1775–1867 (Bethesda, MD: LexisNexis, 2005), microform. The petition asserts that Thomas Peter on "[illeg.] day of August in the year 1820 did convey to the said Robert Pick and P. P. C. Peter part of a tract of land called Conclusion containing about six hundred acres at that time in the possession of said Thomas Peter, and the management of one Wm Robbin and also forty six negroes the slaves of said Thomas who are named in the same copy, a copy of which is herewith exhibited marked No. 3." As of this writing I have not been able to locate the August 1820 deed.
11.	Perhaps twenty-three-year-old George Boman, mentioned in the 1831 Runaway Ad, is the same person as the "George," over fifty years of age, listed in the inventory of John P. C. Peter's estate.
12.	After Peter's death, some slaves from the John P. C. Peter estate were retained by Peter's widow Elizabeth and her second husband, the clergyman and educator Charles Nourse. The Nourses relocated to Virginia, Elizabeth's home state, in the late 1850s with several slaves. (Rev. Nourse served as a Confederate courier during the Civil War and was for a period imprisoned by the Union military in Washington, DC, until he was exchanged for pro-Union detainees.) Other slaves from the estate were apparently conveyed to John P. C. Peter's children as they reached the age of majority. Still others may have been sold off to settle the estate's debts or raise cash for other purposes. At least two of the enslaved people listed in the 1848 inventory evidently obtained their freedom soon after the death of John P. C. Peter. In the 1850 census for Medleys, Montgomery County, Maryland, a free woman of color, Harriet Beale, age thirty-one, and her thirteen-year-old daughter Nelly, are listed as living next door to Elizabeth Nourse, the widow of John P. C. Peter and her new husband, Charles Nourse. These Beales presumably are the same two people as "Harriet and child", valued at $350.00 in the 1848 slave inventory of the late John P. C. Peter's estate. Harriet continued to reside in Medleys as a freewoman until at least 1860. Her daughter Nelly appears to have married a George Green and settled after the Civil War in Sandy Spring, on the other side of Gaithersburg from the Medleys district.
13.	Members of the African American descendant community in Seneca, Maryland (associated with the Seneca Community Church congregation) recall oral historical accounts, passed down from elders, that enslaved people at the quarry were tasked with transporting quarried stone down the canal to Washington, DC, and to the Smithsonian site. I have not been able to confirm this assertion from the extant documentary record.
14.	At the time of the construction of the original Smithsonian building (1847–1855). Pierre L'Enfant's original plan that the Mall would serve as a grand national park had not yet been realized. The Mall area was used for farming, horticulture and the storage of lumber and trash; the area on which the Castle was built was a marshy floodplain, difficult to traverse. The Tiber Creek, running along the Mall's northern boundary, had been transformed into the Washington Canal, running east from the Potomac River (where it entered the city at the area of the present-day "Watergate" complex). Present-day Constitution Avenue is built atop the remnants of the old Washington Canal, which was filled in, in the early 1870s, as a health and sanitation hazard. See: Richard Longstreth, ed. The Mall in Washington, 1791–1991, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Kenneth Hafertepe, America's Castle: The Evolution of the Smithsonian Building and its Institution, 1840–1878 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984); Cynthia Field, Richard Stamm, and Heather Ewing, The Castle: An Illustrated History of the Smithsonian Building, 2nd edition (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2012).
15.	Smithsonian Institution Day Book, 1846–1856, p. 578.
16.	It appears possible to reconstruct the names of these enslaved men. The slaveowner William Clark died July 7, 1855. In 1862, his widow petitioned for compensation for a group of slaves that had been freed by the act of Congress. These included three adult men, whose ages roughly match with those of the unnamed male slaves enumerated in the 1850 slave schedule for the William Clark household: Benjamin Marler, age seventy; William Butler, thirty-two; Frank Joyce, thirty. It seems quite possible that one or more of these men, as slaves, hauled the trees to the Smithsonian grounds. At least two of these men continued to live in Washington: Eight years later, in the 1870 census, William Butler, age forty, is listed as a brick maker, living near seventh street. Residing in the same neighborhood is Frank Joyce, "expressman," age thirty-eight. In the mid-nineteenth century, an "expressman" referred to a wagon driver; speculatively, perhaps Frank Joyce was the "driver" referred to in the Day Book's entry for February 16, 1850.
17.	The controversy over the Washington Lecture Series is detailed in Michael F. Conlin, "The Smithsonian Abolition Lecture Controversy: The Clash of Antislavery Politics with American Science in Wartime Washington," Civil War History 48, no. 4 (December 2000), 301–323. Secretary Henry, a firm believer in scientific racism, argued for the natural inferiority of persons of African descent. A close friend of Senator John C. Calhoun (no friend of the Smithsonian), Henry maintained that blacks could only co-exist with whites in the United States if maintained in a state of slavery. During the Civil War, Henry attempted to maintain the Smithsonian's neutrality in the conflict, refusing to authorize the flying of the Stars and Stripes over the Castle building. He was suspected in some Union quarters of pro-confederate sympathies; he did, however, serve as a trusted scientific and technical advisor to Lincoln on military matters throughout the War. Henry's second in command and successor at the Smithsonian, Spencer Baird, was a noted anti-racist and served as an important advocate for African American Smithsonian employees during his tenure as Secretary (1878–1887).

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