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.
As slaves revolted in Virginia and American settlers rebelled against Mexico in Texas, the decade saw the further consolidation of settlement. This was especially true in the Midwest, where Michigan became a state and Wisconsin and Iowa were organized as territories, and along the banks of the Mississippi, where Arkansas was admitted to the Union in 1837. The Census of 1830 was the first to use a uniform printed schedule for counting and tallied 12,858,670 Americans, of whom 2,009,050 were slaves.
Railroads Booming There was thirty miles of track in the United States in 1830. Within twenty years there would be 9,000. Nine railroads were chartered in 1831, sixteen in 1831, and twenty-six in 1832 alone. No longer dependent on imported British locomotives, rolling stock, and expertise, Americans began developing their own equipment, like the DeWitt Clinton, pictured here, built for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Company in 1831.
Slave Education Following Nat Turner’s Revolt in Virginia, that state and several others passed draconian laws forbidding slaves the right to learn how to read. Louisiana had banned slave education the year before the uprising but after 1831 the ban spread across the South. Virginia’s law included free blacks and provided for twenty lashes in punishment, while Alabama threatened its citizens with a $500 fine for teaching any black person to “spell, read, or write.” Widespread black illiteracy would prove a significant hurdle when emancipation came in 1865.
The Latter Day Saints In April 1830, Joseph Smith, Jr. founded the Church of Christ in western New York based on his revelations he published as the Book of Mormon the month before. He moved his congregation to Missouri, where he fought a running battle with the people and state government before being expelled in 1839. By then called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the denomination reconstituted in Nauvoo, Illinois where it grew in power and again faced resistance. Smith was murdered by a mob in 1844 in Carthage, Illinois and many of his followers moved once again, this time to the Utah Territory.
The Panic of 1837 A lengthy period of prosperity came to an end in April 1837 when a combination of questionable bank practices, inflation, and land speculation brought a devastating series of failures to hundreds of banks and brokerage houses in New York City. Within weeks, the entire country was involved in a deep recession that last for around five years. While unemployment everywhere reached record levels, the South was particularly hard hit, with cotton prices reaching a low of five cents a pound, down from nearly twenty cents earlier in the decade.
Periodical Reading For most Americans besides southern slaves (see above) literacy was on the increase and the decade saw a significant increase in available literature, particularly less expensive periodicals. Louis Godey founded his Lady’s Book in 1830 and it became the preeminent women’s magazine of the age. William Lloyd Garrison’s fiery and influential abolitionist newspaper The Liberator began in 1831. James Gordon Bennett founded the New York Herald in 1835 and it became the center of his newspaper empire. Most periodicals, however, concentrated on religious topics.
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.
The Mexican-American War was an aggressive and smashing victory that saw the United States acquire massive new territories in the south-west and along the Pacific coast. This typified a dynamic decade that saw the admission of four new states, two slave and two free, the rise of women’s rights activity, the intensification of the Underground Railroad, and the discovery of gold in California that touched off an unprecedented and frantic western migration.
“Manifest Destiny” Democratic writer and columnist John L. O’Sullivan wrote first in the Democratic Review in July 1845 and then in his column in the New York Morning News in December that it was “the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” The popularity of the phrase sparked political controversy but it captured much of the spirit in the country at the time and has endured as an important definer of American attitudes.
Washington Monument The cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid on July 4, 1848. Construction to the design of Robert Mills began soon after but was halted in 1854 through lack of funding. Construction was not resumed until 1879. The obelisk was finally dedicated on Washington’s Birthday, 1885, completed in late 1886, and opened to the public on October 9, 1888. It was the tallest building in the world at the time.
The Telegraph The invention and instant spread of the electric telegraph revolutionized communications. In the United States, its development was largely the work of Samuel Morse, who demonstrated his work in a link between Washington DC and Baltimore, sending the famous biblical question “What Hath God Wrought” on May 24, 1844. Within two decades almost every part of the United States had a telegraph office that send text over thousands of miles within seconds.
Charles Dickens in America
Already an international celebrity, the thirty-year old author and his wife spent two months in North America in June and July 1842. Mobbed wherever he went, he gathered his keen and often humorous observations into American Notes, published soon after he returned home to England. Critical yet admiring, his Notes reserved their harshest words for America’s continuing institution of slavery. Dickens published his famous Christmas Carol the next year in 1843.
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.
Franklin and Armfield Slave Dealers (House Divided)
Sources
The Virginia African American Heritage Program has a short essay about the Franklin and Armfield office on their website. In addition, Edward E. Baptist uses Isaac Franklin and John Armfield as an example in his article “”Cuffy,” “Fancy Maids,” and “One-Eyed Men”: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” American Historical Review (2001). Robert H. Gudmestad also discuses the two slave dealers in A Troublesome Commerce: The Transformation of the Interstate Slave Trade (2003).
Places to Visit
Franklin and Armfield’s office became a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and is now home to the Freedom House Museum. The museum opened in 2008 and is located in Alexandria, Virginia at 1315 Duke Street. You can also find a historical marker about Franklin and Armfield outside the museum. In addition, the Bruin Slave Jail is located several blocks away at 1707 Duke Street. 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. The Edmondson sisters were one of many slaves who were imprisoned at this jail. 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 on 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.
As the bloodshed in Kansas and during John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry in Virginia set an awful precedent on the road to civil war, the nation grew at a remarkable rate. By the end of the decade there had been a 34% increase in population to more than 31 million, of which almost four million were slaves. Minnesota, California, and Oregon had become states, while Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Washington were organized as territories. By 1860, many more Americans were living in cities. In the twenty years since 1840 the number of towns with more than 8000 people had more than tripled, to 141.
Bleeding Kansas Immigrants from the north-east, the north-west, and the neighboring slave state of Missouri competed with terror and violence to insure that the Territory of Kansas would enter the Union either as a free or a slave state. After four years of atrocity, Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861 with the nation on the verge of Civil War.
Fugitive Slave Law The Compromise of 1850 included a federal law to force the return of fugitive slaves from the North. This led to sometimes violent and litigious incidents, as at Christiana in Pennsylvania in September 1851, where a slaveholder was killed and several Pennsylvanians were tried for treason under the new law.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates Abraham Lincoln of Illinois sprang to prominence as a leader of the Republican Party with an unsuccessful contest against the sitting Democratic senator Stephen Douglas. A series of public debates between the two in late summer 1858 grasped the attention of the entire country. A major topic in the conversations was the future of slavery, especially in newly settled territories.
John Brown’s Raid In mid-October 1859, veteran Kansas radical John Brown and a group of fighters attempted to occupy the Harpers Ferry Arsenal in western Virginia and thereby arm slaves for a massive slave insurrection. The raid failed, many of his men were killed, and John Brown was executed in December 1859.
New Dome for the United States Capitol In September 1855 work began on dismantling the old wooden dome on the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. in preparation for the erection of a new structure that would tower 288 feet over Capitol Hill. The new stone dome, the design of Thomas Walter, would be largely in place in 1863 and was completed in 1866. In all, the new structure cost more than a million dollars.
Isaac Singer and his practical home sewing machine I.M. Singer, a forty year-old German immigrant living in Boston was granted Patent Number 8294 on August 12, 1851 for his new compact and practical sewing machine. Though designed at first for factory use, the Singer Sewing Machine would soon come into the home and change the sewing habits of millions of Americans.
Half a million New Yorkers, and growing The U.S. Census counted 515,547 people in New York City in 1850. Far outstripping Baltimore in second place and Boston in third, New York’s numbers continued to grow with thousands of new immigrants, particularly poor Irish fleeing the lingering effects of the famines of recent years. By 1860, there would be 805,658 New Yorkers, 383,717 of them foreign-born.
“Dixie” Daniel Emmett wrote “Dixie” in New York City where he was singing with Bryant’s Minstrels, white singers performing in blackface, a popular genre at the time. The group gave a debut to the song during the finale of their show at the Mechanics’ Hall in the city on April 4, 1859. It became an instant hit and Emmett sold the rights for $500.
Stowe and Darwin Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in 1852 and Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species By Means of Natural Selection in London in November 1859. Stowe’s novel became the best-selling fiction of the century in America and Darwin’s book sold out on the morning of its first day of publication in London.
Places to Visit
The historic marker for the Christiana Riot was dedicated in May 1998 and is located south of Christiana on the Lower Valley road. In addition, the riot is mentioned on “The Underground Railroad and Precursors to War” historic marker at the intersection of Pennsylvania Route 462 and West Market Street in York, Pennsylvania. While William Parker’s house no longer exists, you can view a 3-D model on House Divided.
Images
Images related to the Christiana Riot are in the slideshow below:
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:
