by Rachel May
In the early 1830s, when the Civil War was still in the future, distant and unknown, when textile mills churned out fabric in the hands of New England mill girls, when the Leonids fell, when Susan and Hasell were settling down in Charleston and Eliza, Minerva, and Jane were working to support them, when hundreds of people were picking the cotton that was slowly building Winthrop’s fortune as a cotton broker, and just before Hilton bought Boston and Bishroom (who had by then lost the woman who was probably his wife, Mary) to work at his mill, there was a conflict between the North and South over that cotton. Three years later, it erupted as the Nullification Crisis, but its roots had been planted years earlier.
This commemorative fabric celebrates Jackson’s inauguration. It was likely added to the quilt tops by Franklin; these stitches are not nearly as fine and even as others, which are likely Susan’s.
In 1828, the federal government instated a tax on all imported goods, with the intention of preventing England from selling its goods at lower prices than those with which the industrial North could compete; this law followed those that had been passed years earlier, after the War of 1812, and echoed that Embargo Act of 1807 that would so cripple the business dealings of Jason Williams, Susan’s father. I witnessed his losses as I flipped through folders with receipt after receipt in longhand as he slowly paid off his debts—the great sloping letters in black ink, splotches and smudges obliterating some of the numbers and words.
Andrew Jackson was a part of the War of 1812, as well, leading the battle at Horseshoe Bay in 1814 in Alabama, where he and his troops killed a thousand people from the Creek nation, who fought to defend their territory rather than be pushed west. Years later, as president in 1830, Jackson would sign off on the Indian Removal Act, which ruled that the federal government could send tribal nations to new lands west of the Mississippi River in a “trade” for the lands to which they held claim in the settled states. This would eventually lead to what’s commonly referred to as the “Trail of Tears” in 1838, when people of the Cherokee nation in Georgia refused to cede lands illegally taken by the colonists; these Cherokee people, as well as Cherokees from other states and people from other southwestern tribes, were then forcibly pushed off their land and sent west of the Mississippi River, to “Indian Territory” in what is today the state of Oklahoma. This journey would kill between four and eight thousand people; some people died in the stockades before they began to walk, and others died on their way west, through exposure—as they were made to walk through the winter—starvation, or dehydration because they were given little food and water, and from the sicknesses and injuries that came from lack of proper shelter or medicine—all this in spite of the fact that John Marshall, Supreme Court chief justice, had ruled in favor of the Georgia Cherokee, judging that they held the right to their lands and should not be forced west. “This is the only time a president openly defied the Supreme Court,” a scholar reminds us. Jackson ignored that ruling, and sent troops to move the nations off their land, which he wanted to repurpose for the planting of cotton.
Jackson was a planter himself. He owned enslaved people (as did some of the Native American people he removed). Jackson’s first concern, he said, was to preserve the United States and protect its ability to trade products. But, he was driven by racism in his attempts to eradicate indigenous nations from these lands. In 1814, he was saved by a Cherokee chief, Junaluska, who had led 800 warriors to fight with Jackson’s troops in the battle against the Creeks. And then, in 1830, in a speech to Congress about the progress of “Indian removal,” he espoused the benefits of moving the nations west, one benefit that it would “perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute . . .” Those who had fought and died with him, who had saved his life, were now “savages” who needed to be taught by white colonists to cast off their ways. He says the government is doing the people a favor by sending them to new lands and “support[ing] them for a year in their new abode. How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions!” He goes on with his paternalistic comments and adds that the “wandering savage” can’t possibly be more attached “to his home than the settled, civilized Christian.” They were saving the people, he said in closing. This was a kindness for the General Government to “offer” them “a new home.”
In 1835, he proposed his plan to the indigenous nations, betraying them, under the guise that he was trying to protect them from the violence they’d face in Georgia from whites. “I have no motive, my friends, to deceive you. I am sincerely desirous to promote your welfare,” he says in 1835 when he urges them to agree to move west and sign away rights to their lands. He goes on to warn the Cherokee people that the “condition of the Creeks” provides an example for what will happen to the Cherokee if they don’t move. “See the collisions which are taking place with [the Creeks]. See how their young men are committing depradations upon the property of our citizens, and are shedding their blood. This cannot and will not be allowed. Punishment will follow.” He starts the speech trying to woo his “friends” into trusting him, and closes with the threat that if they don’t, they will end up like the Creeks who purportedly do harm to our citizens and will be punished by the patriarchal US government as a result.
Winthrop wrote an account of meeting Osceola, a well-known man from the Creek and Seminole nations. There was no intimation then of Winthrop’s desire to “exterminate” the “Indians,” but his letter from 1836 reveals his beliefs:
It would seem that the predictions of many that there would be war if Gen. Jackson became President of the United States has been and is being fulfilled, the Seminole Indians are still in arms. Volunteers are collecting from all quarters of this State. I have been thinking about it myself, it would be fine fun to shoot one of the yellow rascals. War with France still seems to be undecided. I believe I will wait a short time and see if that would not be the best chance. I don’t like the idea of having my hair taken off skin and all, perhaps Whiskers.
His lines ring in me as an echo to that day on the lawn in college, when I heard similar sentiments, when I hear them now from America’s leaders, including the president. Genocide, extermination, murder—acts against African Americans and Native Americans, sanctioned by the US government through its laws, its loopholes, its unwillingness to enforce laws.
As Jackson pressed for Indian removal, Jackson also believed he had to limit competition from the British for American goods. South Carolinian John C. Calhoun was Jackson’s vice president. He was ardently opposed to the tariffs Jackson instated, because he thought they gave advantages to the North, who had ready local access to industrially produced goods—like cotton cloth made at the mills—that were available only at a high tax to southerners. And so the Nullification Crisis was born when southerners, with Calhoun leading the way, opposed the high tax on goods they couldn’t get except from the British or from the northern industrial states. They resisted the tax, and said they had the right to nullify any federal law that didn’t serve the state’s best interest. They said this tariff was an abomination. The land Jackson believed was necessary for the success of the cotton industry, and thus the nation, was to be “cleared” of indigenous people who had claims to it, which would fulfill both his goals of genocide of Native Americans and large-scale profits from cotton production.
Winthrop chronicles the slowly roiling tensions between North and South as soon as he moves to Columbia, and then Charleston. He writes of a man visiting Columbia:
He is an engineer from some part of Massachusetts engaged out here [near Columbia, SC] to put a cotton factory in motion whi
ch is being built on a river about a mile from this place. It is to be operated by negroes instead of white labor, which has been found to answer very well indeed in several small factories in this state.
They intend making very coarse heavy goods called “cotton usnaburghs,” in which they think they can cut out the Northern manufacturers entirely, owing to the cheapness of slave labor and having the staple right at their doors.
. . . He is a great advocate of the System as you may suppose . . . They were not aware that I was in favor of it. . . . They live in much style.
Winthrop writes to his sister Eliza Williams, explaining that a factory for “usnaburghs,” osnaburgs, commonly known as slave cloth or negro cloth—the rougher, lower grade fabric produced for people enslaved in fields to wear—was to be built along the river near his new home in Columbia. This, he says, would save money, since the cotton was being harvested so nearby. Like those who supported nullification, Winthrop hopes the building of the factory in Columbia will mean that they can cut out the northern mills and save the cost of shipping and buying the cloth back for the enslaved people to make their clothes with negro cloth on the plantations. The “staple,” cotton, was being picked right there, and the enslaved people were wearing clothes made of cotton; he argues that it’s senseless to ship the raw good north only to ship the cloth south again to be sewn into clothes by the people who labored to pick the cotton. Winthrop writes this letter just after the Nullification Crisis was dodged by the federal government, in a compromise with the state of South Carolina. The state had threatened to secede over the disagreement, so the federal government proposed lowering the import tax to which South Carolina opposed; the decrease would come gradually, over time (a promise later broken). Though they avoided confrontation in the 1830s, Winthrop continues illustrating the rising tensions between North and South in his letters home. The Nullification Crisis was a prelude to the coming attempt at secession—and the resulting war.
In November of 1834, Winthrop writes, “You would laugh outright if you should see the suit of clothes I wear they are of coarse negro cloth black mixed—the pantaloons and vest cost me 2.50$ all made. They answer very well for my business. Much better than anything very fine would because they would tear.” He’s speaking about working back among the “cotton bales and countrymen . . . instead of Dry Goods and the Ladies,” a position to which he’s happy to return in the spring of 1835: “I like the rough outdoor business better than the confinement behind the counter. We sell a great many goods and buy a good deal of Cotton.”
In this letter, like so many others, Winthrop notes the prices of cotton, corn, and rice: “The cotton market is up—the article was sold here today for 19 cts—the highest we have paid is 18 cts for a small lot which we sold the same day for 18 7/8. Since October last we have bought about six thousand bales in both Houses.”
Six thousand bales of cotton at about three hundred seventy pounds apiece is about two million two hundred twenty thousand pounds. At nineteen cents a pound, that’s $422,000. This was 1835. Today, that would be nearly $6 million dollars.
Winthrop was in the thick of big business. He had hit the boom.
In the coming year, he and Mr. Ewart would enter into partnership together, one that benefited both men and took advantage of their respective connections in New York and Providence. By the time of the Civil War, Winthrop stood to lose what amounts to millions today. As he said, he was “in favor of the System” that made this business profitable—slavery. Like his brother, Hilton, and sister Susan, he slipped into the slave economy with ease. Hilton writes, in November 1834:
One of my negroes ran away during my absence and I caught him the day after my return. I have since sold him for $600. I gave $500 for him about seventeen months since, he was a great rogue, would steal from me every opportunity he had. I bought another fellow last week for $462 that I think will answer my purpose much better. Negroes are now selling very high—the other negroes behaved very well during my absence.
Where Hilton sees a “rogue,” we might see a man who was expert at resisting enslavement. Maurie D. McInnis writes, “There was little that made traders angrier than slaves who tried to run away, not only because an escape represented a significant financial loss, but also because such actions powerfully refuted the proslavery assertion that slaves were content.” Hilton wasn’t a trader, of course, but as an owner of enslaved men he was equally as furious that one of “his men” would undermine him by claiming his freedom. The man was likely intelligent and knew the land well, because he not only ran away but also seems to have kept that freedom for at least a few weeks. Maybe he was visiting a beloved, a friend, a family member—a child, a wife, a brother, his ailing mother. He took what he needed from Hilton, though Hilton calls it stealing. The man was supposedly worth $600, which was a high price for a laborer, and yielded a profit of $100 for Hilton. Powers writes that “Mill owners preferred using slaves in unskilled or semiskilled capacities,” and notes that the “majority of workers employed at the Gibbes and Williams Steam Saw Mill” were enslaved men. So, the man who ran away was probably unskilled or semiskilled, meaning he hadn’t been permitted to apprentice to a craftsman to gain skills that would allow him to do the “skilled labor” that other jobs (like carpentry, for example) required. But this doesn’t mean, of course, that he didn’t have skills and talents that were unrecognized by the whites who bought and sold him. Maybe each night, he carved intricate animals and dolls for his daughter who lived a few blocks away. Maybe he knew how to play violin, like Solomon Northrop, or banjo, and secretly made one for himself with scraps from the mill. Maybe he was a beautiful writer who would one day escape, for good, and tell his own story.
To whom did Hilton sell him? Where did he go?
Like Winthrop, Hilton comments on the markets, discussing the costs of buying enslaved people just as he would the cost of buying rice or cotton. In 1835, Winthrop was twenty-one and Hilton was twenty-six. They were young. When I walk around my university campus, I try to imagine my students—many of whom are here to swing themselves into upward mobility, just as Hilton and Winthrop hoped to do—in the brothers’ places, heading to a new land far from their own home, and buying and selling people to build their businesses, propelling themselves upward in the stratification of the classes. This, Hilton and Winthrop must have believed, was their best hope for advancement in a world that hadn’t guaranteed their father’s wealth. They’d witnessed him paying off his debts for a trade gone bad since they were children, their mother tending a house full of student boarders attending Brown—the college their uncle had attended but which they, apparently, could not afford to attend. They seemed to have been willing to do anything to rise up, to—like Susan, striving to be part of the Charleston master class and the circle of fine ladies—enter the world in which their friend Hasell had been raised, surrounded by “servants” in a fine home by the battery.
But their sisters Emily and Eliza Williams, back in Providence, were, nevertheless, apparently opposed to the “System.” Because so few letters in their voices survive, we don’t get to hear them speak their stories. The women’s stories are told, for the most part, through the lens of their brothers’ responses. Here, Winthrop gives Eliza advice about coming south and reforming a man who might not live so differently than he does:
Believe me now it is a good place for them to come for there are unmarried men aplenty, but then you say they are slave holders, horse racers, carry dirks and pistols. Now, the best plan is to marry one and reform him. You will get double the merit for such an act, than to stay at home and marry a quiet, easy steady husband.
He suggested she might find a “wild” southern man and “reform” him, gaining the benefit of the community for having done a social good.
Eliza seemed already to have chosen a man. Here, Winthrop calls him “your intended,” and says the worst idea is to bring with her other women who might provide competition: “But the worst of it is to plan it so as to
bring your intended other’s company, you will have to make a visit to this place as he will not be able to have leave here this winter. But more of this anon.” He suggests she visit Columbia soon so she can see him, as he won’t be able to leave that winter. This was October 8, 1836, almost exactly two years after Eliza was widowed when her husband fell to smallpox, in September 1834. Now, she was perhaps in love again, or had at least found someone suitable to marry.
This is likely the match that her family opposed. Maybe the “intended” was a factor like Winthrop, who had moved south from Providence to make his fortune. Maybe he was a southerner whom she’d met when he traveled north. We never get to learn why the marriage was prohibited and her inheritance denied her, but after Susan returns from the south in 1838, Eliza moves in with Emily, with whose family she lives until she dies. Emily and Eliza would only go back to the George Street house where Susan and her daughter lived, Franklin notes, when Susan and her daughter had left to winter in Charleston with her brothers.
We never get to hear Eliza Williams’s reaction to her marriage being blocked, nor even Susan’s or Emily’s. It seems to have been a quiet rift that grew between the sisters, perhaps deepened by Susan and Hasell’s ownership of enslaved people while in the South.
Winthrop goes on to justify the need for enslaved people to build a person’s wealth, as if trying to convince Eliza Williams of the System:
My friend Shrivers, who was a clerk with me at the upper store last winter, has made quite a speculation in the matrimonial line—he is engaged to a Miss Bynum, daughter of an old rich planter to whom it is said he will give 70 negroes. Is not that worth having? More especially when the said young lady happens to be accomplished, intelligent, and very amiable?