7. Thomas P. Slaughter, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York: 2008), 103–104.
8. John Woolman, Journal of John Woolman, and A Plea for the Poor, John Greenleaf Whittier edition text (Gloucester, MA: 1971), 15.
9. Slaughter, Beautiful Soul, 232–233. Woolman, Journal, 113.
10. This story is based on an oral tradition. It may be a dramatization of the overall reaction of the Meeting to Woolman’s testimony. One man later said his “simplicity, solidity and clearness” made doubt and opposition “vanish as mists at the sun’s rising” (Slaughter, Beautiful Soul, 344).
11. Harvey Wish, “American Slave Insurrections Before 1861,” Journal of Negro History 22, no. 3 (July 1937): 302–303. Wish cites several stories of slave suicides.
12. The British slave ship Zong is a good example of this horrific practice. The captain threw 132 men overboard in 1781. Over the protests of a British antislavery advocate, the court awarded him the insurance money. See PBS, “Africans in America,” part 1. Also see Wish, Insurrections, 303; and Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (New York: 2005), 79–83.
13. Peter C. Hoffer, Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739 (New York: 2010), 103ff.
14. Peter C. Hoffer, The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741: Slavery, Crime and Colonial Law (Lawrence, KS: 2003). Some historians have dismissed the plot as the product of wartime hysteria. A majority believe that a genuine conspiracy existed. The author spent a year studying it for his novel, Remember the Morning (New York: 1998), and is convinced the majority are correct. The conspiracy was real—and lethal. Like John Brown’s foray, it had no hope of succeeding.
15. George Washington, letter of July 20, 1774, Writings of George Washington, vol. 3, 232–234, http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/WasFi03.html.
16. James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston: 1763), http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1069&Itemid=264.
17. Robert Olwell, “‘Domestick Enemies’: Slavery and Political Independence in South Carolina, May 1775–March 1776,” Journal of Southern History 55, no. 1 (February 1989): 21–48.
18. Michael Lee Lanning, African Americans in the Revolutionary War (New York: 2005), chap. 5, “Liberty to Slaves: Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment,” 51ff.
CHAPTER 2: SLAVERY’S GREAT FOE—AND UNINTENDED FRIEND
1. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston: 1948), 121–122.
2. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Julian P. Boyd, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: 1950), 423–428. Also see Julian P. Boyd, The Declaration of Independence (New York: 1945), for illustrations of this “Original Rough Draft.”
3. Carl Lotus Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Ideas (New York: 1922), “The Rough Draft,” Online Library of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1177.
4. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: 1930), 747–748.
5. Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: 2003), 203–204.
6. Ibid., 208–214. Washington later permitted his aide, Joseph Reed, to have the poem published in Pennsylvania Magazine.
7. Ibid., 261.
8. Fritz Hirschfield, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, MO: 1997), 148–150.
9. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Writings, vol. 2. Also see Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, 264–268.
CHAPTER 3: THE FIRST EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
1. Gregory D. Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution (Columbia, NC: 2000), 63.
2. Washington feared that freeing some slaves to serve in the army would “make slavery more irksome to those who remain in it.” Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, 150–151.
3. Papers of Alexander Hamilton, edited by Harold C. Syrett, vol. 2, 17–19.
4. Massey, John Laurens, 132–133.
5. Ibid., 137.
6. Ibid., 141–143. Dr. David Ramsay, one of Laurens’s supporters, said the proposal was “received with horror” by the legislature.
7. Laurens received invaluable aid and advice from America’s ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, in this venture. See Thomas Fleming, The Perils of Peace (New York: 2007), 72–74.
8. Massey, John Laurens, 207–208. A crucial opposition speech accused Laurens of fostering racial intermarriage, a fear that disturbed southerners almost as much as a slave insurrection.
9. Washington, Writings, vol. 24, 421.
10. Massey, John Laurens, 224–225.
11. Ibid., 225–227.
12. Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 3, 183–184.
CHAPTER 4: ONE HEAD TURNING INTO THIRTEEN
1. Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution (New York: 1997), 366.
2. George Washington to Joseph Jones, May 21, 1780, Writings, vol. 18. Nathanael Greene lamented that “a rage for the sovereign independence of each state” was destroying all hope of national unity “and national revenue.” Papers of Nathanael Greene, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill, NC: 1980), 656.
3. Robert C. Alberts, Benjamin West: A Biography (New York: 1978), 123.
4. Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 3, 255–256.
5. Jefferson to Madison, April 25, 1784, The Republic of Letters: Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, vol. 1, edited by James Morton Smith (New York: 1995), 308–309.
6. William W. Crosskey, Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States, vol. 3 (Chicago: 1980), 395.
7. Samuel Eliot Morrison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: 1965), 39. The first printing press in the New World began operating in Mexico City in 1539.
8. Stuart Leibiger, Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic (Charlottesville, VA: 1999).
9. Letter from George Washington to Henry Lee, October 31,1786, Writings, vol. 29, 34.
10. Clinton Rossiter, The Grand Convention (New York: 1966), 226. In a final vote on the subject, Washington held out for a three-fourths majority to override a veto, but he was outvoted.
11. Ibid., 266–268. Rossiter underscores his conviction that “the decisions and non-decisions of 1787 about slavery were . . . decisions for the Union.”
12. Ibid., 217, 250. Ellsworth was convinced slavery would gradually disappear. Rossiter called him “the halfway man” of the century, a genius at the art of compromise.
13. Leibiger, Founding Friendship, 85.
14. Junius P. Rodrigue, ed., Slavery in the United States, A Social, Political and Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: 2007), vol. 2, 515–516. Also see “The Man Who Made Cotton King,” by Stephen Yafa, American Heritage of Invention and Technology (Winter 2005).
15. Letter from Washington to Mercer, Writings, vol. 29, 5; letter to Morris, vol. 28, 408.
16. Peter R. Henriques, Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington (Charlottesville, VA: 2006), 153.
17. Ibid., 158. Mr. Henriques’s chapter on Washington and slavery, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret,” is a remarkably thoughtful treatment of Washington’s changing view of blacks’ abilities and their essential humanity.
CHAPTER 5: THE FORGOTTEN EMANCIPATOR
1. Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 8, edited by Paul Leicester Ford, Online Library of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/805/87066. For Callender quotation see John A. Carroll and Mary W. Ashworth, George Washington, Volume 7: First in Peace, completing the biography by Douglas Southall Freeman (New York: 1957), 231.
2. Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: 1993), 213–218. Smith notes that Washington first sent a peace commission to negotiate with the rebels. By the time he acted, the rebellion had spread to twenty counties in four states.
4. Carroll and Ashworth, First in Peace, 403–407.
5. Ibid., 541.
6. Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, 127. Hirschfeld finds grave fault with Washington for his failure to act in concert with Lafayette. He has no awareness of the political difficulties Washington encountered, and his concern for the Union as a first and foremost necessity.
7. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, March 23, 1790. Yale University has a draft of the essay that was published in the Federal Gazette.
8. Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery, 72–73. The visitor was a popular British actor, John Bernard. He left a vivid account of his conversation with Washington.
9. Ibid., 209–223. Hirschfeld reports that Washington’s heirs spent $10,080 in cash and provided food and shelter for those slaves who were too old or ill to leave Mount Vernon. The last payment was made in 1833 for the burial of a slave named Judy.
10. Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1802 (Boston: 1947), 13.
11. Patricia Brady, Martha Washington: An American Life (New York: 2005), 234. In her will, Martha gave her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, “my mulatto man, Elijah,” but he was already a dower slave and she was merely transferring ownership within the family. See “The Will of Martha Washington,” in Worthy Partner: The Papers of Martha Washington, edited by Joseph E. Fields, with an introduction by Ellen McCallister Clark (Westport, CT: 1994), 406–410.
CHAPTER 6: THOMAS JEFFERSON’S NIGHTMARE
1. Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1971 (Boston: 1978), 26–27.
2. Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, NC: 1968), 376–377.
3. Robert Hendrickson, Hamilton, vol. 2 (New York: 1976), 460–462.
4. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York: 1970), 748–749.
5. Jordan, White Over Black, 280–282.
6. Harlow Giles Unger, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness (New York: 2009), 140–142.
7. Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, vol. 3 (Charlottesville, VA: 2006), 480.
8. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 100–108.
9. Petersen, Thomas Jefferson, 748–750.
10. Dennis A. Castillo, The Maltese Cross: A Strategic History of Malta (Westport, CT: 2005), 126. Disagreement over the French acquisition of Malta was the chief cause of the rupture of the peace of Amiens. The British balked at handing it over because of aggressive French moves elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and Napoleon threatened “Malta or war.”
11. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, vol. 4 (Boston: 1970), 284–310.
12. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 123–130.
13. Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, Eighth Congress, First Session, 813. “Some gentleman would declare St. Domingo free,” Eppes said. “If any gentleman harbors such sentiments, let him come forward boldly and declare it. In such case he would cover himself with detestation” (Annals, 996).
CHAPTER 7: NEW ENGLAND PREACHES—AND ALMOST PRACTICES—SECESSION
1. Malone, Jefferson the President, 297.
2. James K. Hosmer, History of the Louisiana Purchase (New York: 1902), 157–158. Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, Eighth Congress, First Session, 463–464.
3. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson, 793–794.
4. Gerald H. Clarfield, Timothy Pickering and the American Republic (Pittsburgh, PA: 1980). This is a seminal book for those seeking to understand how passionately New England regarded its right to lead America. See 219–225, in which many other New England leaders besides Pickering are cited, declaring that the Louisiana Purchase was part of a “deliberate plan” to diminish New England’s influence.
5. Richard Buel Jr., America on the Brink (New York: 2005), 54ff. This is a superb account of New England’s resistance to the embargo.
6. Ibid., 156–160.
7. Freeman, R. E. Lee, 14–17.
8. Buel, America on the Brink, 165–166.
9. Ibid., 190–191.
10. Samuel Eliot Morrison, Harrison Grey Otis: The Urbane Federalist (Boston: 1969), 356–357.
11. Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography, rev. ed. (Newtown, CT: 2003), 592–593. A Virginia friend reported that Madison’s mind was “full of New England sedition.”
12. Robert A. Rutland, James Madison: The Founding Father (New York: 1987), 230–231.
13. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: 1961), 20–24.
14. Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten (New York: 2002), 189ff.
15. Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 274–279; Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 290–293.
16. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson, 995–998.
17. Antislavery Northerners were skeptical about diffusion. One said it was “as effectual a remedy for slavery as it would be for smallpox or the plague.” Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 277.
18. David M. Robertson, Denmark Vesey: The Buried History of America’s Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (New York: 1999). Historians have disagreed about the size and scope of Vesey’s revolt, some claiming he was a victim of white hysteria. This is a well-researched, solid account of the tragic episode.
CHAPTER 8: HOW NOT TO ABOLISH SLAVERY
1. Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: 1998), 110–124.
2. Ibid., 125.
3. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: 1997), 568–569.
4. Mark Arkin, “The Federalist Trope: Power and Passion in Abolitionist Rhetoric,” Journal of American History (June 2001). This article brilliantly connects Garrison to New England’s grievances against the South for the three fifths clause in the Constitutional Convention, the Louisiana Purchase, and other supposedly evil maneuvers to give Southerners national power and humiliate New England.
5. Mayer, All on Fire, 116–117.
6. Thomas C. Parramore, “Covenant in Jerusalem,” in Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed., Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (New York: 2003), 58–76. Also see Matthew J. Clavin, Toussaind Louverture and the American Civil War (Philadelphia: 2010), 14–15.
7. Freeman, R. E. Lee, 111–112.
8. Mayer, All on Fire, 120–123.
9. Winch, A Gentleman of Color, 239–249. James Forten wrote for The Liberator and donated considerable amounts of cash. He also supplied Garrison with much negative information about the ACS and Liberia.
10. John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston: 1963), 158–162. Also see Hochschild, Bury the Chains, 346–347.
11. “George Thompson,” American National Biography Online, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-01311.html. When MP Thomas Buxton asked Garrison how the British could assist him, Garrison replied, “By giving us George Thompson.”
12. Mayer, All on Fire, 160–161.
13. Thomas, The Liberator, 167–170.
14. Mayer, All on Fire, 166–167.
CHAPTER 9: NEW ENGLAND REDISCOVERS THE SACRED UNION
1. James Haw, “The Problem of South Carolina Reexamined: A Review Essay,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 107, no. 1 (January 2006), 9–10.
2. James Roark et al., The American Promise: A Compact History, vol. 1 (New York: 2000), chap. 11.
3. Ketcham, James Madison, 640–643.
4. “A Century of Lawmaking for the New Nation: U.S. Congressional Debates, 1774–1875,” Register of Debates, Twenty-first Congress, First Session, January 26–27, 1830.
5. John Robert Irlean, The Republic: A History of the United States Administrations, from the Monarchic Early Days to the Present (Charleston, SC: 2010), 252.
6. James Madison to Nicholas Trist, December 23, 1832, Writings of James Madison, edited
by Gaillard Hunt (New York: 1900), Online Library of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1940&chapter=119243&layout=html&Itemid=27. Jackson Proclamation, December 10, 1832, Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale University.
CHAPTER 10: ANOTHER THOMAS JEFFERSON URGES VIRGINIA TO ABOLISH SLAVERY
1. Louis P. Mazur, 1831: Year of the Eclipse (New York: 2001), 51.
2. Ibid., 50–52.
3. Ibid., 60.
4. Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War (Chicago: 1942), 52–55. Also see John W. Cromwell, “The Aftermath of Nat Turner’s Insurrection,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 5, no. 2 (April 1920): 223–224.
5. Craven, The Coming of the Civil War, 57.
6. Cromwell, “The Aftermath,” 225.
7. The bill to remove free Negroes was indefinitely postponed in the Virginia State Senate and eventually abandoned (Cromwell, “The Aftermath,” 230).
8. Richmond Enquirer, January 28, 1832.
9. Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, University of Virginia Library, accession no. 8937.
CHAPTER 11: THE ABOLITIONIST WHO LOST HIS FAITH
1. Robert H. Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (New York: 1980), 1–5.
2. Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830–1844, with a new introduction by William C. McLoughlin (New York: 1964), 64–73.
3. James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: the Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: 1976), 56–58.
4. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, chap. 8, “Weld’s Agency,” 79–87.
5. Thomas, The Liberator, 130–133.
6. Stewart, Holy Warriors, 72–73. Mobs were active elsewhere, attacking other abolitionists with often lethal fury.
7. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 86–87.
8. Abzug, Passionate Liberator, 150–152.
9. Ibid., 210–214.
10. Ibid., 240–241.
CHAPTER 12: ABOLITIONISM DIVIDES AND CONQUERS ITSELF
1. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, chap. 9, “Garrisonism,” 88–99. His “hateful self portrait . . . could not have been more ruinous to the abolitionist cause.” Stewart, Holy Warriors, 95. Theodore Weld “rejected all factions as self serving and morally bankrupt.”
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