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The Black History of the White House Page 45

by Clarence Lusane

16. Ibid., p. 12.

  17. Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, p. 38.

  18. Ibid., p. 40.

  19. Henry Chase, “Plotting a Course for Freedom; Paul Jennings: White House Memoirist,” American Visions, Feb.–March, 1995.

  20. G. Franklin Edwards and Michel R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings—White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” The White House Historical Society. http://www.whitehousehistory.org/​whha_publications/​publications_documents/​whitehousehistory_​01-jennings.pdf

  21. Karl Marx and Shelia Rowbotham, The Revolutions of 1848: Political Writings (London: Verso Books, 2010); Priscilla Smith Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968); and Roger Price, The Revolutions of 1848 (Oxford: Macmillan Education, 1968).

  22. Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, p. 57.

  23. John Paynter, “The Fugitives of the Pearl,” Journal of Negro History, Washington, D.C., July 1916, p. 246.

  24. Ibid., pp. 247–248; and Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, p. 75.

  25. G. Franklin Edwards and Michel R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings—White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” The White House Historical Society. http://www.whitehousehistory.org/​whha_publications/​publications_documents/​whitehousehistory_01-jennings​.pdf

  26. Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, pp. 122–123.

  27. Taylor, “Enamoured with Freedom.”

  28. Ibid., and Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, pp. 243–244.

  29. Daniel Drayton and American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (For Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail: Including a Narrative of the Voyage and Capture of the Schooner Pearl (New York: B. Marsh, 1855), p. 121.

  30. Ricks, Escape on the Pearl, p. 44.

  31. Ibid., p. 181.

  32. The Obamas were not present at the reunion—they were vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard at the time. David Montgomery, “For D.C. Family, a Distinguished, If Little-Known Ancestor,” Washington Post, August 25, 2009.

  33. William Seale, The President’s House: A History (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 1986), p. 136.

  34. Ibid., pp. 142–143.

  35. Ibid., p. 143.

  36. Ibid., p. 147.

  37. Henry Chase, “Black Life in the Capital,” American Visions, February–March, 1995, p. 14.

  38. Thomas Jefferson, Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4, (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1829), pp. 323–333.

  39. Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821, (Lexington, KY: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1953), p. 46.

  40. Kenneth C. Barnes, Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 3.

  41. See Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Gainsville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2008); Early Lee Fox, The American Colonization Society: 1817–1840 (New York: AMS Press, 1971); and Allan Yarema, The American Colonization Society: An Avenue to Freedom? (Lanham, MD: Univ. Press of America, 2006).

  42. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, NC: 1968), p. 394.

  43. Herbert, Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: International Publishers, 1943, 1993), p. 368; citing Calvin Jones to Governor John Owen, Wake Forest, North Carolina, December 28, 1830, in MS. Governor’s Papers, no. 60, Historical Commission, Raleigh.

  44. Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Jacksonian, 1795–1843 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 422.

  45. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492–Present (New York: HarperPerennial, 1980, 2003), p. 127.

  46. Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 32.

  47. Ibid., p. 33.

  48. Ibid., and Christopher Booker, African-Americans & the Presidency: A History of Broken Promises (New York: Franklin Watts, 2000), pp. 40–41.

  49. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, p. 259; and Robert Vincent Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 239.

  50. Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedoms: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830– 1860 (Lansing, MI: Michigan State College Press, 1949), p. 34.

  51. Garry Wills, Negro President, p. 218.

  52. Ibid., p. 219.

  53. Argument of John Quincy Adams Before the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the United States, Appellants, vs. Cinque, and others, Africans, captured in the schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney, Delivered on the 24th of February and 1st of March 1841. The complete text of this document is available electronically from History Central: www.historycentral.com/amistad/amistad.html.

  54. Denise M. Henderson, “John Quincy Adams, the Amistad Case, and the Idea of the Inalienable Rights of Man,” American Almanac, August, 1998. http://american_almanac.tripod.com/amistad.htm.

  55. Exploring Amistad website: http://academic.sun.ac.za/forlang/bergman/​real/amistad/history/​msp/main_wel.htm

  56. www.whitehouse.gov/about/history

  57. The three surnames reflected various stages of the slave status and ownership of Thomas and his family. James Wiggins claimed ownership of Thomas’s mother, Charity, at one point; and Myles Greene claimed ownership of his father, Mingo, when he was born. Gen. James Neil Bethune would purchase the entire family about six months after Thomas’s birth. For most of his performing years, Thomas would use the surname Bethune, but in his final years, he generally went by Wiggins.

  58. Afri-Classical.com website: http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.​homestead.com/​JohnsonF.html.

  59. On July 22, 1992, the 200th anniversary of his birth, Johnson was honored by the U.S. Senate. “Commemoration of A Musical Master,” Congressional Record, U.S. Senate, July 22, 1992, p. S10152. See Library of Congress: http://rs9.loc.gov/cgi-bin/​query/D?r102:72:./temp/~r1021MHOhw

  60. Ibid.

  61. See Barbara Clemenson, “Justin Holland: Black Guitarist in the Western Reserve,” Western Reserve Studies Symposium: The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH, 1989; and Douglas Back, American Pioneers of the Classical Guitar, liner notes, Mento Music Press SMM 3023, 1994.

  62. See Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1855 (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1980); and Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1865–1900 (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986).

  63. Howard H. Bell, “Negro Nationalism: A Factor in Emigration Projects, 1858–1861,” The Journal of Negro History, January 1962), p. 48; and Robert L. Harris Jr., “H. Ford Douglas: Afro-American Antislavery Emigrationist,” The Journal of Negro History, July 1977), p. 224.

  64. Deirdre O’Connell, The Ballad of Blind Tom: Slave Pianist, America’s Lost Musical Genius (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2009), p. 32.

  65. O’Connell, Ballad of Blind Tom, p. 29.

  66. Deirdre O’Connell, “Who Was Blind Tom,” BlindTom.org website: www.blindtom.org/who_was_blind_tom.html.

  67. Geneva H. Southall, Blind Tom: The Post–Civil War Enslavement of a Black Musical Genius (Minneapolis: Challenge Books, 1979); Geneva H. Southall, The Continuing Enslavement of Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1865–1887) (Minneapolis: Challenge Books, 1983); and Geneva H. Southall, Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849–1908) (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999).

  68. See O’Connell, Ballad of Blind Tom, p. 132; and Geneva H. Southall, “Blind Tom: A Misrepresented and Neglected Composer-Pianist,” The Black Perspective in Music, May, 1975, p. 145.

  69. O’Connell, Ballad of Blind Tom, p. 74; and Southall, “A Misrepresented and Neglected Composer-Pianist,” p. 90.

  70. O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano, p. 41; and Book
er, 54–55.

  71. See Paul Finkelman, Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997); Don Edward Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford Univ. Press US, 1981); and Andrew P. Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 2009).

  72. Elise K. Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 72.

  73. Virginia Clay-Clopton and Ada Sterling, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, Covering Social and Political Life in Washington and the South, 1853–66 (New York: Doubleday, 1905), pp. 104–105.

  74. Kirk, Music at the White House, pp. 75–76; and O’Connell, Ballad of Blind Tom, p. 105.

  75. O’Connell, Ballad of Blind Tom, p. 115.

  76. Ibid, Blind Tom: The Post–Civil War Enslavement of a Black Musical Genius, p. 9.

  77. Following South Carolina, and before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, six other states voted for secession: Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10, 1861), Alabama (January 11, 1861), Georgia (January 19, 1861), Louisiana (January 26, 1861), and Texas (February 1, 1861). They would be joined by four other states after the war started with an attack on Fort Sumter in North Carolina on April 12, 1861. These were Virginia (April 17, 1861), Arkansas (May 6, 1861), Tennessee (May 7, 1861), and North Carolina (May 20, 1861).

  Chapter 5

  1. Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), pp. 285–287.

  2. See Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: The New York Printing Company, 1868). The book was published with the author’s name spelled “Keckley,” rather than the correct “Keckly.”

  3. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

  4. Ibid., pp. 31–39.

  5. Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, p. 140.

  6. In 1848, Emerson had transferred the advocacy of the case to her brother, John Sanford. The Supreme Court reporter who registered the case, however, misspelled his name so the case has officially been registered as Dred Scott v. Sandford. See Paul Finkelman, Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997); and Mark A. Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006).

  7. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, p. 49.

  8. Ibid., pp. 63–64.

  9. Ibid., pp. 69–73.

  10. Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, p. 200.

  11. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, pp. 84–85.

  12. Ibid., p. 127.

  13. Ibid., p. 105.

  14. Ibid., pp. 112–116.

  15. Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, p. 317.

  16. Stunningly, in his massive work on Lincoln focusing on the president’s racial views, Lerone Bennett does not mention Keckly at all. He is not alone. See Lerone Bennett Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2007)

  17. Bennett, Forced Into Glory, p. 531.

  18. Ibid., p. 532.

  19. Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Introduction,” in Philip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt, and Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p. ix.

  20. See Michael K. Fauntroy, Republicans and the Black Vote (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2007).

  21. Roy P. Basler, ed., Marion Dolores Pratt and Lloyd A. Dunlap, asst. eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1955), p. 264.

  22. Abraham Lincoln, Roy Prentice Basler, and Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), p. 404.

  23. Lincoln (Basler, ed.), Collected Works, 9 vols., 2:132

  24. Bennett, Forced Into Glory, pp. 464–465.

  25. See Robert Morgan, “The ‘Great Emancipator’ and the Issue of Race: Abraham Lincoln’s Program of Black Resettlement.” Institute for Historical Review website: www.ihr.com; and Allan Nevins, The War For The Union, Vol. 2, “War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863” (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1960), p. 10.

  26. See Michael Vorenberg, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization,” Journal of Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 14, Issue 2, pp. 24–45; Charles H. Wesley, “Lincoln’s Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes,” Journal of Negro History 4 (1919), pp. 7–21; and Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro,” Civil War History 20 (1974), pp. 307–8.

  27. Mitchell, a white minister, had written Lincoln earlier in the year, “Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.” Impressed with this rhetoric, Lincoln made the special appointment. See “James Mitchell to A. Lincoln,” May 18, 1862, Lincoln Collection, Vol. 76, f. 16044.; and P. J. Scheips, “Lincoln and the Chiriqui Colonization Project,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1952), pp. 426–427.

  28. “The Colonization of People of African Descent,” New York Tribune, August 15, 1862.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Lincoln (Basler, ed.), Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 371.

  31. Henry Jarvis Raymond, History of the Administration of President Lincoln: Including His Speeches, Letters, Addresses, Proclamations, and Messages. With a Preliminary Sketch of His Life (New York: J. C. Derby & N. C. Miller, 1864), p. 469.

  32. Ibid., p. 469.

  33. Ibid., p. 471.

  34. Ibid., p. 374.

  35. Ibid., p. 373.

  36. See Sheldon H. Harris, Paul Cuffee: Black America and the African Return (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972).

  37. See Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992).

  38. Kenneth C. Barnes, Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 1–2.

  39. Thomas F. Schwartz, For a Vast Future Also: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (Bronx, NY: Fordham Univ. Press, 1999), p. 42.

  40. Edwin [sic] M. Thomas to A. Lincoln, August 16, 1862, Lincoln Collection, Vol. 84, ff. 17718–17719.

  41. Bennett, Forced Into Glory, p. 464.

  42. Isaiah C. Wears, “Lincoln’s Colonization Proposal Is Anti-Christian,” in Foner and Walker, Proceedings, 1865–1900, p. 260.

  43. Ibid., p. 261.

  44. Frederick Douglass, “The President and His Speeches,” Douglass Monthly, September 1862.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Perennial Classics, 2002), p. 6; Benjamin P. Thomas and Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2008), p. 363; and Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, A History of the United States Since the Civil War (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), p. 78.

  47. “General Fremont’s Proclamation,” See John Charles Frémont website: www.longcamp.com/proc4.html.

  48. Allan Nevins, Fremont: Pathmarker of the West (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1992).

  49. Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States, 1860–1864 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1867), p. 246.

  50. Abraham Lincoln, “The President on the Negro Question, Executive Mansion, Washington, August, 22, 1862,” letter to editor, Harper’s Weekly, September 6, 1862, p. 563.

  51. Lincoln (Basler, ed.), Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 403.

  52. Ibid., p. 404.

  53. James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009),
p. 61.

  54. Henry Highland Garnet, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States,” in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Voice of Black America: Major Speeches by Negroes in the United States, 1791–1971 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 89.

  55. The pamphlet’s full title was Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America.

  56. See David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal: to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1993).

  57. Ibid., p. 73.

  58. Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro,” in P. Foner, Voice of Black America, p. 117. See also James A. Colaiaco, Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July (New York: Macmillan, 2007); and Bernard W. Bell, “The African-American Jeremiad and Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July 1852 Speech,” in Paul Goetsch and Gerd Hurm, eds., The Fourth of July: Political Oratory and Literary Reactions, 1776–1876 (Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1992), pp. 139–154.

  59. Douglass, “Meaning of the Fourth,” p. 114.

  60. Ibid., p. 115.

  61. Ibid., p. 126.

  62. Ibid., p. 128.

  63. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 336.

  64. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), p. 268. Ibid., p. 342.

  65. Ibid., p. 342.

  66. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston: Little, Brown Publishers, 1969), p. 117.

  67. Clinton, Catherine, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2004), p. 184

  68. Ibid.

  69. Ibid., p. 348.

  70. James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong (New York: Touchstone–Simon & Schuster, 2000), p. 255.

  71. Ibid. Also, see John Cimprich, Fort Pillow, A Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2005); and John Cimprich and Robert C. Mainfort Jr., “The Fort Pillow Massacre: A Statistical Note,” Journal of American History, November 1989, pp. 832–837.

 

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