The Creole Affair

by Arthur T. Downey

  At the same time that these “humanizing” acts were being introduced into the Bahamas, slavery was largely eliminated in the American North. However, in 1820, New York State had about the same number of slaves as Missouri. Slavery remained legal in New York until 1827 and in Connecticut until 1848. Tougher restrictions on slaves were enforced in the American South, following the 1822 Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy in South Carolina and the bloody Nat Turner slave revolt in Virginia in 1831. Thus, the condition of slaves in the Bahamas occupied sort of a middle ground between abolitionist developments in the American North and the harsher developments in the American South.

  The next and most significant slave-related event to impact Bahamian society took place on August 28, 1833, when the Royal Assent was given to the act adopted by the British Parliament that abolished slavery throughout most of the Empire.[13] The effective date was August 1, 1834. In practice, however, only slaves younger than six were freed immediately; those over six were redesignated as “apprentices” (subdivided into three classes), in which status they could remain until August 1, 1840. However, the apprentice system proved impossible to administer, and all the slaves were freed on August 1, 1838. The view from the United States was far from positive; as one scholar has noted: “the dominant portrayal of the freed West Indies [not confined to the Bahamas] in the American political press was overwhelmingly negative . . . [the mainstream press] emphasized the rebelliousness and laziness of former slaves.”[14]

  Some of the descendants of the original British Loyalists decided to leave the Bahamas, because they believed that without slavery, the last hope of a viable agricultural economy was destroyed. Many colonial plantations shut down as slave labor vanished, a point noted by the slave owners in the American South. Emancipation achieved little of practical value for the freed blacks, since white planters still controlled the economy and the social order. For example, enfranchisement laws placed the property qualifications so high that the former slaves were in fact excluded.[15] In November 1841, when the Creole arrived in the harbor of Nassau, the last local slave had been freed only three years earlier.

  At that time, Nassau had a population of about 7,000 inhabitants, a mix of Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians. Emancipation had caused many of the former American Loyalists and their slaves to leave Nassau, but this was somewhat offset by an influx of former slaves from Africa, mainly from Nigeria and Congo. While visitors described Nassau itself as pretty, pleasant, and well ordered, Afro-Bahamians lived separately in poverty.[16] American commercial visitors bought and sold goods with British sterling, Bahamian pounds, and Mexican and Spanish currency. “Newspapers brought from North and South America, from Europe and America . . . international news, local gossip and advertisements that announced the latest arrival of goods.”[17]

  When the Creole entered the harbor at Nassau on November 9, 1841, it would have been difficult to create a scenario more bleak and fraught with danger:

  There were severe US-British tensions, especially along the northeast border dividing the United States and the Province of Canada, and serious concerns in the United States about the prospect of a third war with Britain. Southerners in particular were very upset with the British, because slaves being shipped from the Southeast to New Orleans in the past decade had been freed in the British West Indies. Years later, after he left office, Tyler wrote from his plantation on the James River his reflection that, in the first five or six months of his presidency, a devastating conflict with Britain appeared imminent, and “the peace of the country had been suspended by a thread.”[18] This deep presidential worry was at a time just before the Creole sailed into Nassau.

  America had its third president in that single calendar year: Van Buren, Harrison, and Tyler. President Tyler was a slave owner who had awful relations with the Whig-dominated Congress. The entire cabinet had resigned only a couple of months earlier, except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Across the Atlantic, a new British government had just taken power, but the British drive for universal abolition remained intense.

  In the Congress, attention was focused on slavery, especially in the House, where the former president John Quincy Adams spearheaded the abolitionist cause.

  An emotional maritime slave issue (the Amistad) had just been dealt with by the Supreme Court, along with the issue of whether the interstate slave trade could be regulated (and perhaps eliminated) by the federal or state governments (Groves v. Slaughter). The explosive fugitive slave issue (Prigg v. Pennsylvania), centering on the Southern demands to be able to retrieve their runaway slaves, was scheduled for argument just a few months away.

  The population around Nassau was composed substantially of free Africans and newly freed former slaves, including many whose freedom had been obtained as recently as three years earlier. The white population was numerically very small.

  The last thing that anyone in the United States, or in the United Kingdom, would want at this time was a conflict between the two governments over a slavery issue. This was the “perfect storm” into which the Creole sailed as it entered the harbor of Nassau.

  Let us now return to the scene in Nassau harbor on November 9, 1841.

  1. Wendell K. Jones, “The History of the Clifton Plantation, 1788–2000,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 22 (October 2000): 4.

  2. John D. Burton, “American Loyalists, Slaves and the Creation of an Afro-Bahamian World: Sandy Point Plantation and the Prince Storr Murder Case,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 26 (October 2004): 14. See also John Burton, “From Slave to Student: Education on San Salvador, The Bahamas,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 35 (2013): 39.

  3. Newsletter of the Bahamas Historical Society, October 23, 2010.

  4. Ross Hassig, “The Bahamas, POWs, and the War of 1812,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 35 (October 2013): 13–21. The other three Caribbean POW depots were located in Barbados, Bermuda, and Jamaica.

  5. “An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” 47 Geo. III, c. 36, sess. I, Statutes of the United Kingdom and Ireland: 1807–1869.

  6. Darius D. Williams, “Resettlement Villages of Liberated Africans & Emancipated Slaves in the Northern Bahamas,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 32 (2010): 32.

  7. The 1817 Anglo-Spanish Treaty banned the import of African slaves into Cuba.

  8. Gail Saunders, “The Impact on the Bahamas of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 30 (2008): 34.

  9. Bahamas National Archives, Box 8, Governor’s Dispatches, 1839–1844.

  10. Saunders, “Impact on the Bahamas,” 35. The author claims that one of the slave leaders from the Creole, Elijah Morris, settled in Gambier after he was freed from jail in Nassau in April 1842.

  11. Whittington B. Johnson, “The Amelioration Acts in the Bahamas, 1823–1833: A Middle Ground Between Freedom and Antebellum Slave Codes,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 18 (October 1996): 23.

  12. However, African natives were not permitted to give evidence, but Creoles were. This may have been because the whites believed that the Africans were not yet ready to understand traditional British values. Johnson, “Amelioration Acts,” 26.

  13. The full title was “An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves.” Ceylon and the possessions of the East India Company were exempted.

  14. Edward B. Rugemer, “Slave Rebels and Abolitionists: The Black Atlantic and the Coming of the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (June 2012): 188.

  15. See Patrice M. Williams, “Social Reconstruction of Bahamian Society After Emancipation 1838–1850,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Society 26 (2004): 24.

  16. Peter T. Dalleo, “Montell & Co., The James Power and the Baltimore-Bahamas Packet Trade 1838–1845,” Journal of the Bahamas Historical Soci
ety 30 (2008): 6–7.

  17. Ibid., 7.

  18. Tyler wrote this to Daniel Webster, then a senator from Massachusetts, on March 12, 1846. Edward P. Crapol, Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 90.

  II

  Forward: November 1841

  Chapter 4

  In Nassau

  The office of the American consulate in Nassau was about a mile from where the Creole anchored that morning, November 9, 1841. The first mate, Gifford, was the acting senior officer, in light of the severe wounds that Captain Ensor had suffered. Gifford quickly made his way to the consulate, with the help of the Bahamian quarantine official, and, luckily, was immediately able to meet with John F. Bacon, the US consul. As US consul, Bacon frequently received American mariners, usually to deal with relatively technical maritime and trade questions.

  Bacon had been new in his job when, almost exactly a year earlier, he had had to deal with the problem of the Hermosa. That was the ship, sailing from Richmond to New Orleans with fewer than forty slaves, that was wrecked on one of the Bahamian islands. The wreckers brought the crew and slaves to Nassau, where British authorities freed all the slaves. Therefore, as Gifford began to explain the situation of the Creole, Bacon undoubtedly thought that he faced a problem similar to that with the Hermosa—though with three times the number of slaves—and Bacon probably assumed that he would deal with it in a similar fashion. However, Bacon must have been taken aback by the dreadful story that Gifford told him: the horrors that had taken place on board the Creole, involving mutiny, mayhem, and murder. One could easily imagine the blood draining from Bacon’s face, and his stomach tightening as he took in the fact that the Creole problem—now in his lap—was fundamentally more difficult than was the Hermosa incident.

  The initial concern of both men was that the American slaves might get off the ship and come ashore. Bacon and Gifford knew that, once on British colonial soil, the slaves would be untouchable by US authorities. Bacon must have remembered the messy problem he had had with the British colonial authorities during the Hermosa episode. On that occasion, British soldiers took the slaves from the wreckers’ vessel and marched them to the magistrate, who then freed the slaves. Bacon’s protests to Governor Sir Francis Cockburn at that time had no impact.

  Bacon knew that it would be essential to attempt to obtain the help of the British authorities immediately to prevent the slaves from disembarking, and generally to prevent this situation from spinning out of control. He also wanted to ensure that those slaves who led the revolt, and who murdered John Hewell and severely wounded Captain Ensor, were held on board so they could be returned to the United States to face trial or other measures.

  The senior British government official in the colony was the governor general, Sir Francis Cockburn. As a young captain in the army serving in Upper Canada, Cockburn had fought against the Americans in the War of 1812. After the war, he remained in Upper Canada as an administrator. Prior to coming to the Bahamas in 1837, Cockburn had been the superintendent of British Honduras for seven years. Cockburn was knighted two months earlier in 1841. The next day, November 10, 1841, would be Sir Francis’s sixty-first birthday.

  Sir Francis’s older brother, Sir George Cockburn, had also fought the Americans in the War of 1812. It was Sir George, an ambitious rear admiral, who led a squadron of ships up the Chesapeake Bay, enthusiastically plundering along the way. And it was Sir George who had organized the burning of the public buildings in Washington, DC, in August 1814. The story was that Cockburn stood on the chair of the speaker of the House and asked rhetorically: “Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?”[1] He became the most hated man in America; Americans compared him to Attila the Hun.[2] Two months before the Creole came into Nassau, Sir George was elected to the British Parliament and became First Naval Lord. One must assume that the Cockburn brothers did not have an instinctive deep affection for the United States.

  Bacon took Gifford to Government House, the impressive Georgian colonial building on the ridge that overlooked the harbor of Nassau. In front of the imposing coral-colored building stood a large statue of Christopher Columbus, which had been erected a decade earlier. Fortunately, the governor general was available. Consul Bacon introduced Gifford, who must have looked shaken, and who bore a visible wound where the slave’s bullet had grazed his head. Together, Gifford and Bacon explained the dire situation, and the problem floating at anchor in Nassau’s harbor just down the hill.

  Consul Bacon asked the governor to take measures to prevent the slaves from coming onshore and escaping inland, and to secure the murderers. Cockburn was somewhat reluctant to become so involved, because he doubted whether he was authorized to interfere at all. Nevertheless, in the end, the governor agreed in principle, but he pointed out that he did not have full information. He questioned Gifford directly and insisted that Bacon put his request in writing. Bacon then told Gifford to return to the Creole to ensure that the American colors were still flying and to tend to the wounded.

  Bacon quickly wrote and sent to the governor “a written application,” as the governor requested. In it, Bacon requested: “that your Excellency will be pleased not to suffer any of the slaves on board to land until further investigations can be made.” Almost immediately, the governor’s secretary responded with a note acknowledging Bacon’s written request, explaining that the governor had “ordered a military party on board of the said brig. There will be, however, no impediment to any of the white persons on board landing here.”

  Shortly after that, Bacon himself went on board. At about noon, twenty West Indian soldiers and a West Indian sergeant and corporal, commanded by a white British officer, soon joined Bacon on board. Bacon introduced the senior officer to Gifford as the mate in charge, and then Bacon returned to shore, bringing the severely wounded Captain Ensor with the assistance of two crewmen. As soon as he landed, Bacon was told that the governor requested that he meet immediately with the governor and council then in session. At that meeting, the governor read from a document informing the US consul that:

  courts in the Bahamas had no jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed on the high seas;

  in light of the “grave charge” alleged it would be “expedient that the parties implicated” should not be allowed to go at large, and that an investigation under oath should be made; and, finally, if it appeared that Bacon’s information was correct, all the parties implicated in such a crime “should be detained here [in Nassau] until reference should be made to the Secretary of State [for War and the Colonies]” to determine whether those detained should be delivered over to the US authorities; and, finally,

  all persons on board not implicated in the alleged offenses “must be released from further restraint.” (One might speculate whether Cockburn underlined the use of the word “persons,” rather than “slaves” or the ship’s “cargo.”)[3] The statement concluded by noting that a report on this matter would be sent to the British minister in Washington.

  After reading from this statement, the governor asked Bacon if he was satisfied. Nonplussed, Bacon responded that he was indeed satisfied with respect to sending troops on board, and launching an investigation, but he declined to provide a further answer at that time.

  The governor and council ordered two magistrates to go on board the Creole to begin their examination. Bacon went on board at the same time. “Reliable persons” had told Bacon that an attempt would be made to liberate the slaves by force. The consul observed “a large collection of boats near the brig” and there was a “great concourse of people collected on the shore opposite” where the Creole was anchored. Bacon returned to his office and found Gifford waiting for him. Gifford advised Bacon of the “threatening nature” of the situation and that the “crew were greatly intimidated.”

  The magistrates’ examination continued on Tuesday and Wednesday, was suspended on Thursday, but on Friday, November 12, it was abruptly terminated. At noon on that
Friday, Consul Bacon sent another note to the governor. He explained that, as he was proceeding to board the Creole that morning, he saw a large collection of people on shore near the vessel and was advised that, as soon as the soldiers left the vessel, an attempt would be made to board her by force. Bacon sought protection for the vessel and her cargo. Cockburn’s response was immediate. One could imagine Cockburn’s nose in the air as he stated in his reply note: “I beg to state that I cannot think it possible that any of Her Majesty’s subjects would act so improperly as to attempt to board by force.” Nevertheless, should such an attempt be made, Cockburn said that he “shall be quite ready to use every authorized means for preventing it.” Bacon was also requested to attend the council in session again that day.

  At the council session, the governor told Bacon that the council had directed that the attorney general, along with the provost marshal and police, go to the brig, have the troops and prisoners removed to the shore, see that no violence was committed by the assembled people, and also that “no impediment be given on board the vessel to the passengers [slaves] should they desire to leave.”