Places to Visit
No structures or sites related to Jesse Torrey, Jr. exist. Torrey was born in New Lebanon, New York.
Images
Some of the images that Torrey created and published in A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States (1817) are in the slideshow below.
Life & Family Thomas Roderick Dew did not have any children. He married Natilia Hay in 1845, but died the following year in Paris, France.
Sources
After Nat Turner’s revolt in 1832, Dew published Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature, 1831-1832. In 1853 it was republished in The Pro-Slavery Argument, as maintained by the most distinguished Writers of the Southern States. In addition, Dew’s lectures at the College of William and Mary were published as Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners, and Institutions of the Ancient and Modern Nations (1853). Dew also wrote several other books, including Lectures on the Restrictive System (1829). His correspondence is in the Dew Family Papers at the Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
Peter Wallenstein’s essay in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1997) provides an overview of Dew’s perspective on slavery. Other secondary sources include Eugene D. Genovese’s Western Civilization through Slaveholding Eyes: The Social and Historical Thought of Thomas Roderick Dew (1986), Lowell Harrison’s “Thomas Roderick Dew: Philosopher of the Old South,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 57 (1949): 390-404, and Stephen Mansfield’s “Thomas Roderick Dew at William and Mary: ‘A Main Prop of That Venerable Institution,’ ” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75 (1967): 429-442.
Places to Visit
Dew taught classes at the College of William and Mary, which you can visit in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Images
A picture of Dew’s portrait (see image above) is avaliable in the “Office of the President. Thomas Roderick Dew, 1830-1967” at the College of William and Mary. While Dew was originally buried in France, he was reburied at the College of William and Mary in April 1939. An image of this event is available in the Memorial Services Records at the College of William and Mary.
Places to Visit
The Edmondson sisters were imprisoned at the Bruin Slave Jail, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and located at 1707 Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1854 Harriet Beecher Stowe explained in The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin that she used information about the jail to help write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In addition, you will find a statue of the two sisters at Edmonson Plaza (1701 Duke Street). The statute was unveiled in June 2010 and serves as a memorial to those suffered while in the jail. You can learn more about the Bruin Slave Jail from a short overview at the Alexandria Black History Museum’s website. Also see this short essay from the Virginia African American Heritage Program. Visitors should note that this building is not open to the public.
Images
The image of the Edmondson sisters was posted online at this page on Flickr. The image is originally from the Washington Post Magazine. In addition, a daguerreotype from 1850 is available at the Syracuse University Library. Other abolitionists, including Samuel J. May, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass, are also in the picture. The original daguerreotype is held at the Madison County Historical Society.
Important secondary sources include Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease’s The Fugitive Slave Law and Anthony Burns (1975), Virginia Hamilton’s Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave (1988), and Albert J. Von Frank’s The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston (1998).
Places to Visit
A historical marker about Glover’s rescue is located at the intersection of East Kilbourn Avenue and North Jackson Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Images
The Wisconsin Historical Society also has another image of Glover.
Narrative
Though his family connections alone guaranteed a bright legal future, the young Moncure Conway was an indifferent law student. Despite the urging of his numerous cousins to take up his place as an active defender of the South, he was already having significant problems justifying his beloved Virginia’s maintenance of slavery. Despite this, he served in 1850 as the secretary of the Southern Rights Association in Warrenton, and seemed in his momentary embracing of the recently published racial theories of Louis Agassiz to be searching for any justification for human bondage. Despairing of the law, he pleased his parents at last when on his nineteenth birthday he became a Methodist circuit rider preacher, assigned to the Rockville, Maryland area. During the next three years he rode northern Maryland, literally expanding contacts with the world, which included an influential friendship with a family of Quakers. Most importantly he indulged in the obsessive reading that was to adjust both his ideas about religion and slavery. Under the influence of writers such Ralph Waldo Emerson, he left the Methodist circuit in February, 1853, went north to Boston and enrolled in the Unitarian dominated Harvard Divinity School. While there he met and befriended Emerson and Thoreau and settled his mind against slavery. He was still a southerner, however, and became involved in the famous case of Anthony Burns, a recaptured slave being returned from Boston to Virginia under the new and hated federal Fugitive Slave Law. He refused publicly to rally in support of the action with other southern students but also declined in private to aid abolitionist friends in accosting Burn’s Virginia slave owner — whom he knew slightly from earlier days in Fredericksburg — thereby offending both sides.
He graduated from Harvard Divinity and took up a post as minister of the First Unitarian Church of Washington D.C. in late October 1854. All his time in the capital did, however, was to convince him that war over the sectional question was inevitable. In January 1856, he gave his solution for the avoidance of such a violent outcome. He preached from his pulpit the minority opinion that disunion was preferable to civil war and that an independent South would be left to work out emancipation through the moral example of the free labor North. This pleased few members of his congregation on either side of the question and as the sermon gained in national notoriety he was dismissed the following October. He was soon in the pulpit again, however, this time in Cincinnati, Ohio. A far more liberal membership welcomed him and his anti-slavery work there and he continued his development in both study and writing. He also met and married Ellen Dana in June 1856, beginning a sustaining and enduring partnership that was to last almost forty years.
Life & Family
Moncure Conway was related to the Washingtons, the Madisons, and the Lees. His uncle on his mother’s side sat as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Both his father, Walker Peyton Conway, a prominent slaveholding landowner and his mother, Margaret Daniel Conway, had converted after their marriage to Methodism and the Conway children were exposed at an early age to disciplined evangelicalism. Moncure Conway first was schooled at home then attended the thriving Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, a school that had educated Washington and other famous Virginians. He then followed his brother Peyton to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania as a fifteen-year-old sophomore. The Methodist affiliated institution cemented his faith and he fell somewhat under the influence of professors George Crooks and John McClintock. He did not share the latter’s fierce abolitionism and almost left the college when McClintock was involved in a notorious riot in the town that freed recaptured slaves and resulted in the death of a slave catcher. He graduated with the class of 1849 and returned home to Virginia to study law with a family friend in Warrenton.
Sources
The Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections contains a large collection of Conway’s papers and books. Some of this material is available online at Their Own Words, including his Personal Journal (1851-53), Testimonies Concerning Slavery (1864), Republican Superstitions as Illustrated in the Political History of America (1872), and Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway (1904). Not all of the correspondence in the Conway collection at Dickinson has been digitized. Other material in the collection includes Conway’s letters and some of his descendants (several letters are from 1940s and 1950s). This finding aid has details on the material in the collection. Key secondary sources include Helen Gallaher, Moncure Daniel Conway: Author and Preacher, 1832-1907: A Bibliography (1938), John D’Entremont’s Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway, The American Years 1832-1865 (1987), and Jonathan Earle’s “The Making of the North’s ‘Stark Mad Abolitionists’: Anti-Slavery Conversion in the United States, 1824-54,” Slavery & Abolition 25 (2004): 59-75.
Artifacts
Several items are at Dickinson College Archives, including a cover of a French game that Conway gave to his daughter, Mildred. This finding aid details the other material in the collection.
Narrative
Joseph Bustill was a teacher and an Underground Railroad agent from Harrisburg who helped create a “Fugitive Aid Society” in Pennsylvania’s capital city during the 1850s. He is one of the few agents who left behind operational letters, including this one to William Still from 1856 that refers to the escape of four adult slaves and two children (“four large and two small hams”).
Life & Family
The Bustill family were prominent black Quakers from Philadelphia. Joseph Bustill was the great uncle of legendary singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson.
Sources
Important primary sources include three letters that Bustill sent William Still in 1856. These letters were later published in Still’s Underground Rail Road (1872). You can also read them on House Divided – March 24, 1856 ; April 28, 1856 ; May 31, 1856.
Places to Visit
Few structures associated with the Underground Railroad in Harrisburg remain, but there are historic markers, such as one for Tanner’s Alley (where Bustill lived), which describe the local black community and their role in helping slaves escape to freedom.
Images
The slideshow below includes images related to the Underground Railroad:
Life & Family
Abraham Lincoln was a southerner who led the North during the Civil War. Born on February 12, 1809, the same day as scientist Charles Darwin, Lincoln began his life on a farm in Kentucky before moving as a young child to Indiana and eventually to Illinois. He settled in Springfield, married Mary Todd, and raised four boys (two of whom died before he did). Lincoln was six-feet, four inches tall and weighed about 180 pounds. He was well respected as a politician and attorney and well-liked for his story-telling abilities. Lincoln served one term in Congress where he gained notice for opposing the Mexican War but otherwise had no experience in Washington before becoming president. During the 1850s, Lincoln helped organize the Republican Party in Illinois and distinguished himself as an anti-slavery orator, especially during the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. Two years later, Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced each other again, this time as part of the dramatic four-way presidential contest of 1860. Lincoln won an electoral majority and seven Deep South states seceded. President Lincoln refused to bend and war erupted at Fort Sumter in April 1861. As a wartime leader, Lincoln has been widely revered for his actions to save the nation, free the slaves and for his astounding ability to communicate the values of democratic self-government in simple, elegant phrases. He won reelection in 1864 but was shot and killed by actor John Wilkes Booth in mid-April 1865, just over one month into his second term.
In December 1859 Lincoln wrote a short autobiographical sketch and sent it to Jesse W. Fell. You can listen to this letter through the audio player below:
Places to Visit
You can find a historical marker about the November 1865 USCT Grand Review that Day helped organize in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A historical marker about Day is also located in Steelton, Pennsylvania at the intersection of Lincoln Street and Carlisle Street. While the William Howard Day Cemetery is also located in Steelton, Day was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Penbrook, Pennsylvania.
Images
A photograph is available from Day’s profile on House Divided.
Hutchinson Family Singers, 1845 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Sources
Important primary sources include the collection at the Wadleigh Memorial Public Library in Milford, New Hampshire and Dale Cockrell’s Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842-1846 (1989). In addition, Joshua Hutchinson published A Brief Narrative of the Hutchinson Family in 1874 and John Hutchinson recalled his experiences in The Story of the Hutchinsons in 1896 (Vol. 1 ; Vol. 2). While Joshua’s work offers “intimate vignettes” of the singers, historian Scott E. Gac cautions that John Hutchinson’s “memoir… is a less accurate but entertaining reconstruction of the group.” In addition, a collection at the Wadleigh Memorial Public Library in Milford, New Hampshire has sheet music and newspaper clippings about the Hutchinsons. Important secondary sources include Philip D. Jordan’s Singin’ Yankees (1946), Carol Brink’s Harps in the Wind: The Story of the Singing Hutchinsons (1947), Caroline Moseley’s “The Hutchinson Family: The Function of their Song in Ante-Bellum America,” Journal of American Culture 1, no. 4 (1978): 713-23, Scott Gac’s Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (2007), and Matthew Warner Osborn’s “Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Antebellum Reform,” Journal of the Early Republic 28 (2008): 488-491.
Places to Visit
Apparently no structures or sites related to the Hutchinson Family Singers exist. Jesse and Mary Hutchinson were from Milford, New Hampshire. Thirteen of their children formed the original Hutchinson Family Singers.
Life & Family
In late 1860 South Carolina Governor Gist William Henry Gist referred to the “John Brown Pike” in his message to the state legislature. As the Charleston (SC) Mercury reported, Ruffin gave this pike to South Carolina to display in January 1860 and included a note which read in part: “Sample of the favors designed for us by our NORTHERN BRETHREN.” When John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry in October 1859, he brought pikes with him as a way to arm the slaves who rebelled.
Sources
Key primary sources include Ruffin’s The Political Economy of Slavery (1857), William K. Scarborough’s three volume Diary of Edmund Ruffin (1972-89), and David F. Allmendinger’s Incidents of My Life: Edmund Ruffin’s Autobiographical Essays (1990). Ruffin also wrote a number of other books and pamphlets, including Agricultural, Geological, and Descriptive Sketches of Lower North Carolina, and the Similar Adjacent Lands (1861). In addition, the Bland-Ruffin Papers at the Library of Virginia has some of Ruffin’s correspondence from the Civil War. These letters “document Ruffin’s unflagging support of the Confederacy,” as the finding aid notes. The Library of Virginia also has the diary that Ruffin used between 1841-1851. In addition, the Southern Historical Collection at UNC has Edmund Ruffin Jr’s Journal (1851-1862, 1866-1873). Other studies on Ruffin’s life include Betty L. Mitchell’s Edmund Ruffin: A Biography (1981) and David F. Allmendinger’s Ruffin: Family and Reform in the Old South (1990). Several historians have focused their research on Ruffin’s role in the secession crisis: Avery O. Craven, Edmund Ruffin, Southerner: A Study in Secession (1932), Eric H. Walther’s The Fire-Eaters (1992), and Kenneth L. Smith’s “Edmund Ruffin and the Raid on Harper’s Ferry.” Virginia Cavalcade (1972). In addition, the online Encyclopedia Virgina has an entry on Ruffin. For more information about John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859, see Paul Finkelman’s His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1995) and David S. Reynolds’ John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (2005).
Places to Visit
You can visit Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia and see John Brown’s fort and the historic town. In addition, the Kennedy Farmhouse is only about 30 minutes from Harpers Ferry. The farmhouse, which became a National Historic Landmark in 1973, is the place where Brown’s raiders launched their attack on Harpers Ferry. In addition, a historical marker notes the location in Charles Town, West Virginia where Brown was executed in December 1859. Ruffin’s plantation (Marlbourne) was located in Hanover County, Virginia and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1964. While Ruffin was buried at his estate, a historical marker for his grave is located near Mechanicsville in Virginia.
Images
Ruffin watched John Brown’s execution on December 2, 1859 in Charlestown, Virginia with cadets from the Virginia Military Institute. A drawing of the VMI Cadet Guard at Charlestown is online at the Encyclopedia Virgina. The image is originally from the Virginia Military Institute Archives.
Narrative
Kate Stone was twenty-years-old when Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces. She was thrilled. Stone was an ardent southern nationalist from Louisiana who lived on a large plantation (Brokenburn) with many slaves and an extended family, including at least two brother who would die in the Confederate army. Within a month after Sumter, Stone began a diary the she kept for seven years. The material was full of biting insights and wise comments. Stone lived through Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign in 1863 and feared the arrival of black troops into the region. She and her family fled to Texas in 1863 and lived there until the end of the war. The young plantation mistress was suitably unimpressed by Texans and frontier life. “There must be something in the air of Texas fatal to beauty,” she wrote. Stone sardonic tone appeared frequently in her journal and sometimes appeared especially hardened. Following Lincoln’s assassination, she remarked on her satisfaction at his fate. Stone returned to Brokenburn –which had been devastated by the war—helped rebuild the place, married in 1869 and lived until 1907. When her diary was published in 1955, it was to wide acclaim, hailed by critics such as Edmund Wilson and by crowds –an estimated 10,000 folks in Louisiana including her 77-year-old daughter (who lived until 1972) and has since become regarded as a Civil War classic, though it is not as well known and familiar as Mary Chesnut’s diary.
Sources
John Q. Anderson edited Kate Stone’s diary and published it as Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 in 1955. House Divided has several of Stone’s diary entries online, including July 4, 1861, June 30, 1862, March 22, 1863, September 5, 1864, and April 28, 1865. In addition, Anderson discusses one of the soldiers who appeared in Stone’s diary in “Joseph Carson, Louisiana Confederate Soldier,” Louisiana History (1960). Other scholars have also examined Stone’s diary, including Drew Gilpin Faust’s “Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War,” Journal of American History (1990) and Clara Juncker’s “Confederate Languagescapes: Kate Stone’s Brokenburn,” Southern Quarterly (1996). Other primary sources, such as photocopies of letters about Coleman Stone’s death and papers on the Carson family that appear in Stone’s diary, are in the John Q. Anderson Papers at Louisiana State University. The collection also has the correspondence of Stone’s daughter. Amy discussed a number of different topics, such as Civil Rights issues, James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi, and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In addition, the collection has a map from March 1955 that indicates the location of Brokenburn Plantation. This finding aid has more information on this collection.
Places to Visit
No structures or sites related to Kate Stone exist. Stone was born in X, Mississippi, but she grew up on a plantation in Louisiana. While her family moved to Texas during the later half of the Civil War, they returned to Louisiana after Confederates surrendered in 1865.
Images
The John Q. Anderson Papers at Louisiana State University has images of the Stone family and the Carson family. (See this finding aid for more details). In addition, a photograph of a float in the Kate Stone Day Parade held on March 17, 1955 is online at the LSU Digital Collections.
