Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  As he put aside the book, his tone changed to one more suited to the frowning face of his Secretary of War. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery. . . .” For, actually, he had summoned his ministers in order to read to them something which was very seriously intended, something of which he himself was the author—a military proclamation of emancipation.

  From the beginning, nearly four millions of slaves had shadowed the turmoil of this brothers’ war. The blacks had been the brand that had set the nation burning. Yet slavery was not the cause for which Northern men fought. In slogan and speech and rallying cry, this was a war to save the Union.

  So closely was slavery bound with the conflict that at the outset even Northerners shuddered at the prospect of a servile insurrection. None took place. Quietly, and without violence, in those voiceless millions a change occurred. News spread among them as mysteriously and swiftly as in the African jungles. With the first movement of the Union armies, they began to straggle into the camps. Feeble old people came, big bucks and scrambling children, women with babies at their black breasts. Their few possessions were tied in ragged bundles. Their faces, smeared with dust and sweat, were shining with hope. For, whatever might be said in slogan and speech and rallying cry, these dusky people knew that the men in blue were crowned with light and carried freedom on their banners.

  A mission of deliverance formed no part of the intention of those first Union troops. They had not enlisted to right the wrongs of the Negro race; and, for the most part, they looked with hesitation and even with aversion on their dark camp followers. Although there were regiments in which abolition feeling ran strong, most of the soldiers, like the great majority of the Northern population, were reluctant to interfere with an institution which they were accustomed to tolerate as a legal, if detestable fact. The commanders in the field were inclined to treat the slaveholders with a punctilious consideration, and many even permitted them to enter the Federal lines to seek their property.

  To the nation’s capital, as well as to the army lines, the bondmen traveled in the confident expectation that freedom awaited them. Across the Potomac bridges, they trudged into a town where slavery was entrenched. The people of Washington were comfortably used to scowling at the tiny woodcuts of running figures which appeared, among the strayed cows and mules, in the advertising columns of their newspapers. The severe black code, derived from the old Maryland statute books, was the law of the District, never modified by Congress. Under its provision that an unclaimed fugitive could be sold to pay for his imprisonment charges, the District had had an unsavory early history of the kidnaping and sale of free men. Although slave trading had been abolished there in 1850, the participation of magistrates and constables in the fees paid by the runaways’ masters continued to degrade the courts and corrupt the police; while it was to the financial interest of the jailers to detain fugitives as long as possible. Slaves who wandered farther than the legally prescribed distance from home were liable to be thrown into jail, even though they had had no intention of escaping. No free Negro, without a certificate of freedom on his person, was safe from arrest. Since his testimony could not be received as evidence against a white person, he was without redress. The city police and the District marshal’s deputies gave almost their entire time to hunting and seizing colored people, while unofficial slave catchers were attracted to this business, in which there was much to gain and nothing to lose.

  The black code had at an early date been supplemented by repressive city ordinances. Lashes were prescribed for pathetically childish offenses—for setting off firecrackers near a dwelling, for bathing in the canal and for flying a kite within the limits of the corporation. More important, in the resultant oppression and extortion practiced by the police, was the regulation that Negroes found on the street after ten o’clock at night could be locked up until morning, and fined as high as ten dollars. Since 1835, when an anti-Negro mob had rioted in the capital’s streets, the relations between the races had been strained. Washington still remembered the dread of a black insurrection, which had followed John Brown’s raid. The few slaves—the census of 1860 counted only eighteen hundred in the city—were not responsible for the alarm so much as the population of over nine thousand free Negroes, a class which the capital, like all slaveholding communities, regarded with fear and hatred. A disorderly minority of their number seemed to justify the charge that they were a menace to the town’s security. Drunkenness and brawls were notorious in such plague spots as Prather’s Alley in the Northern Liberties and Nigger Hill in the Third Ward. Washington made little discrimination between the dregs of the black inhabitants and industrious colored men. The latter, indeed, aroused the jealous resentment of white workingmen by the very qualities which made them serviceable to the community. In spite of the restrictions, they had flocked to Washington because of the many opportunities for making a livelihood as servants, hack drivers, bootblacks, barbers, bartenders, waiters and cooks. Livery stables and restaurants were successfully operated by Negroes. The well-to-do among them owned property and paid taxes. In their Sunday-best attire of gay shawls and satin waistcoats, carrying prayer books and pocket handkerchiefs, canes and parasols, they appeared so grand from the back that it was a surprise to see black faces when they turned. Bonnets as fine as any in Washington, said the Star reporter, were to be seen at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, where the colored aristocracy of the District worshiped. This church, which boasted a famous choir, showed the prosperity of its congregation in its cushions and carpets, its gold-lettered pews, marble-topped pulpit and handsome chandeliers. Yet its most respected members could not hold a gathering in their own houses, without a special permit from the mayor. Like the rowdies of Nigger Hill, they were liable to arrest if they ventured out after ten o’clock at night. Even for the children of colored taxpayers, no public schools were provided. A succession of private schools, some taught by Negroes, some by sympathetic white people, had persistently defied the prejudices and even the persecutions of the townsfolk.

  It was to this place that, in the spring of 1861, the Virginia field hands came in quest of freedom. Many were fugitives, others had been deserted by their decamping masters. In either case, the city and county police were zealous in hustling them off to jail. The police soon had formidable competition from the soldiers of the Union. A slave who had escaped from Mr. Gibson Peach of Alexandria had the misfortune to meet his master in Washington, and fled for protection to the Fourth Pennsylvania Regiment, then quartered at the Assembly Rooms. The guard held him at the point of the bayonet, while Mr. Peach got a carriage and secured him. On the Eastern Branch Bridge, soldiers of the Seventy-first New York caught three fugitives and kept them under guard at the Navy Yard until Mr. Reeder of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, came to claim them. Seventy-one runaways, confined in jail during May, had almost all been arrested by soldiers.

  On the other hand, a number of escaped slaves made themselves so useful as servants and laborers that they were harbored in the camps about Washington. This condition caused the President embarrassment. As an individual, Mr. Lincoln hated slavery, but, as Chief Magistrate, he had given solemn assurances that the institution would be protected; and he was anxious to avoid giving offense to the slaveholding States which had not joined the Confederacy. Before First Bull Run, an army order excluded slaves from the camps and the lines of the troops around the capital.

  But here was an anomalous situation. The young black men were strong and willing, and the army needed laborers. In May, General Ben Butler, commanding at Fort Monroe in his gold-laced militia uniform, had set some runaways to work on his fortifications, instead of permitting them to be reclaimed for similar service on behalf of the enemy. There was a simple logic in the idea that the slaves of the rebels, like their horses and mules, were “contraband of war.” The novel use of the term caught the fancy of the North, and people, while they chuckled over it, expe
rienced a great relief. A phrase vindicated a policy. The ludicrous nickname stuck, lost its oddity and became a commonplace of speech, used throughout the war to describe all slaves who had fled from or been abandoned by disloyal masters.

  Butler’s policy was soon given a legal justification. With the rout of First Bull Run still vivid in their minds, Congress included in the Confiscation Act a section providing that owners should forfeit their claim to slaves used for insurrectionary purposes. As practically interpreted, this was extended to include all slaves whose owners were disloyal. The contrabands in Washington were accordingly placed under the protection of the provost guard. They were lodged at the Old Capitol, and the able-bodied were employed at a small wage by the Government.

  The problem of the runaways, however, was by no means settled. The Fugitive Slave Law remained on the statute books, and the bereft masters of the technically loyal State of Maryland visited the City Hall with loud protestations of allegiance. The three commissioners, appointed by the circuit court under the law, duly sat to receive their complaints. The District marshal’s office continued to issue warrants to his deputies. Still, that autumn and winter, the little figures ran, black, copper and bright, in the advertising columns of the Washington newspapers. They were almost all very young. The sparse lines of description breathed their half-formed plans, the haste and excitement of their adventure. Jane, seventeen, good-looking, made off in a pink dress and black, flaunting hat. Charles boasted new winter shoes and a suit of claret-colored kersey. Slender Dave Kelly left in a frock coat of gray cassinet, whiskered Ned had a purple jacket and white pants. Madison Booth, in two pea jackets, carried off a large gray horse. Bettie and Ellen Nora Bell clasped their babies in their arms. The boy, Toney, wearing yellow gauntlet gloves and a jacket with U.S. buttons, had a grim face, scarred by the kick of a horse. Lisping Robert Butler limped on an injured foot. Alfred Duckett went with his queer walk, throwing himself back. Special reasons appeared for presuming them to be in the capital. Louise had a husband there; Paul had a free grandmother. Lewis might be lurking near the Island, where his former master lived. Samuel Bungy, supposed to indulge in ardent spirits, had friends on both the Island and Capitol Hill. Edwin Nicholls’s mother belonged to Mrs. Burch on Sixth Street.

  When in December of 1861 the flags were hoisted on the Capitol for the return of the Thirty-seventh Congress, the radical Republicans had already been angered by the President’s action in annulling Frémont’s proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. Halleck, succeeding Frémont in the West, had forbidden Negroes to enter his lines. There were reports of generals who treated slaveholders with extravagant courtesy, and helped them regain their property. McClellan was in power in Washington, and the District marshal’s constables scrutinized every dark face that passed. The accumulated wrath of the abolitionist politicians found partial vent in the hue and cry after Charles P. Stone.

  Immediately after the opening of Congress, an Executive order reminded McClellan of the Confiscation Act. Slaves employed in hostile service were frequently received in the army lines, the order stated. On entering the city, they were liable to be arrested by the police. They were under the military protection of the United States, and persons arresting them should be arrested by the soldiers.

  On the day that this order was issued, the Senate Chamber rang with denunciations of the slave system at the seat of Government. Congress was the lawmaking body for the District, and, in the passionate phrases of the radicals, Washington grimly foresaw the emancipation of its slaves. All that winter, like a little kingdom under the heel of a foreign invader, the city sat sullen, smarting and resentful. Loyal or disunionist, its citizens had no sympathy with abolition. Many Republican newcomers to Washington, however, were imbued with the doctrine. In the Hall of Representatives, as well as in some of the churches, anti-slavery sermons were preached on Sundays. The National Republican daily exposed the wrongs of the Negro race. The Hutchinson Family tunefully delivered their anti-slavery repertory at the Y.M.C.A. rooms and elsewhere in the capital. Such embattled champions of the blacks as Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips were the speakers at a “popular course” of lectures given at the Smithsonian Institution. When Wendell Phillips spoke, there were colored people in the audience. Professor Henry had reluctantly consented to give the use of the lecture hall, and was much criticized in Washington for having done so. He stipulated that, on every occasion, it should be announced that the Institution was not responsible for the statements made by the lecturers. This announcement became a joke to the large Northern audiences which assembled each week, and its opening words, “I am requested,” were greeted with satirical applause.

  In the Senate, the county jail had provided a convenient springboard for the slavery question. As early as November, there had been unexpected callers at the dismal lockup north of the City Hall. The detective, Allan Pinkerton—alias E. J. Allen—had gone there to draw up a report for the provost marshal. James W. Grimes of Iowa, radical Republican chairman of the Senate’s Committee on the District, had pried into its damp precincts. The rickety old building had long been a disgrace to the community. It was dark, unsanitary and ill-ventilated. From the peculiar dull shade of its walls, it was known as the Blue Jug. For years, the city authorities and the grand juries of the District had been calling it to the attention of Congress, without arousing any great interest in that body. In December of 1861, however, it was suddenly crowded, like an exposition, with notabilities.

  The jail was under the control of the District marshal, the President’s close friend, Ward Hill Lamon. Soon after the outbreak of the war, he had secured a colonel’s commission and for some months he had been absent from Washington, raising troops for his command. Deputy Marshal George W. Phillips acted in his absence. Pending repeal by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law, it was clearly the marshal’s duty to continue to issue warrants for fugitives from loyal masters. There was, however, a pro-slavery atmosphere about the marshal’s office that increased the irritation of the radical senators. It had not escaped their notice that Lamon himself was a native of Virginia. Phillips was suspected of sympathy with the slave system, and had been denounced to the Potter Committee by the jailer, Amon Duvall, as a secessionist. Lamon discharged Duvall because of his incessant opposition to Phillips and his friends. On the other hand, Duvall himself was reputed to be pro-slavery. In 1863, the commissions of one hundred and seven constables were revoked by the court on the ground that they had not taken the oath of allegiance and given bond, leaving only twenty-five members of the force who were authorized to act.

  There was no doubt that things had been going from bad to worse at the Blue Jug. It had been designed to accommodate from fifty to one hundred prisoners. In the winter of 1861, more than two hundred were crowded into its noisome cells. Among them were burglars, horse thieves and confidence men, as well as unruly soldiers and citizens suspected of disloyalty. Vastly more important to the radicals, Pinkerton had reported that sixty fugitive slaves were detained there. A goodly number of these were contrabands. One, at least, was indubitably a free man, and he had been in confinement for more than six months.

  By order of the provost marshal, some of the contrabands were discharged. The howls of outrage in the Senate Chamber had been justified, but no one was taken in by the radicals’ outburst of humanitarian feeling. The “Washington slave-pen” was a handy peg on which to hang abolitionist speeches. Soon after the uproar began, Senator Henry Wilson introduced a bill for emancipation in the District.

  Colonel Lamon was recalled to his duties as marshal. The big, swashbuckling Virginian hated abolitionists, and he had not the temper to take a challenge meekly. Soon after Grimes on the Senate floor compared the jail to the French Bastille and the dungeons of Venice, it was reported that no one was to be admitted to the Blue Jug without a special permit from the District marshal. Lamon said that the order was prepared by the Attorney General at the President’s request. Grimes flew out to
test the truth of the rumor he had heard, and the jailer closed the door in his whiskered, official face. He went straight to the White House, but was unable to see the President. In a rage, he “bounced up to the Capitol,” and aired his grievance in open Senate. The insult to its dignity fired that highly combustible body. No one’s feelings were soothed by the explanation that, after a recent large influx of visitors, chisels and knives had been found in the possession of the prisoners. A resolution was passed that Lamon had been guilty of contempt for the lawmakers’ authority. There was a loud demand that “this foreign satrap” should be instantly dismissed.

  It was the President himself whom the abolitionists were attacking through his friend. Mr. Lincoln was well aware of this. He loved and trusted Lamon, and firmly refused either to displace him, or to accept the resignation which Lamon proffered to relieve the President from an embarrassing situation. However, an Executive order soon cleared the jail of the remaining fugitives held on suspicion, and instructed Lamon to receive no more of them.

  The Senate did not relent in its persecution of Marshal Lamon. Every offense was charged against him, from inhumanity and dereliction of duty to dishonesty in participating in the fees of the jail, which were part of the perquisites of his office. The House, preserving a more nonchalant air, waited for two years before assenting to legislation which reduced his power and emoluments by giving the custody of the jail and prisoners to a warden, and providing a special marshal for the court. The change of custody gave rise to a singular situation. The District court sentenced two men to be hanged for murder, ordering the marshal to carry out the execution on April 1, 1864. In the meantime Congress created the office of warden, and Lamon, glad to be relieved of a painful duty, declared that he had no control over the prisoners, and could not legally execute them. On the appointed day, the gallows erected in the yard of the Blue Jug attracted a crowd to witness the hanging. The President, however, had solved the dilemma by commuting the prisoners’ sentence to life imprisonment. The crowd, at first inclined to take the rumor of Lincoln’s clemency as “an April 1 hoax,” eventually dispersed, and the gallows was taken down. The question arose whether Congress had not virtually abolished capital punishment in the District.