Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  In contrast to the demagogues and fanatics of his party, Lincoln viewed the slavery problem as a statesman. Above all things, he desired to save the Union, and in his mind emancipation was always subsidiary to this great central ambition. Neither sentimentality nor vindictiveness blinded him to the social upheaval which a sudden overthrow of the institution would entail. He had repeatedly voiced his cherished hope that the loyal slaveholding States would voluntarily adopt some plan of gradual emancipation with compensation to the owners from the Federal Government.

  In March, 1862, to the accompaniment of heated oratory, the Senate took up the bill for emancipation in the District. The slaves were to be freed immediately, but loyal masters were to receive compensation at an average of three hundred dollars per slave. Moreover, an amendment appropriated money for a project dear to Mr. Lincoln’s heart, one to which he strongly adhered and with which he unsuccessfully experimented—the colonization of such freed blacks as might wish to leave the country.

  Neither compensation nor the hope that some Negroes might take their departure calmed the anxiety of the capital’s citizens. In their eyes, the abolitionists were bent on making the District “a hell on earth for the white man.” The Board of Aldermen passed a resolution which urged Congress “to provide . . . . safeguards against converting this city . . . . into an asylum for free negroes, a population undesirable in every American community.” The Star indignantly took it for granted that owners of valuable slaves would lose no time in placing them beyond the reach of Congress. According to observers of Republican sympathies, there was a great exodus of blacks by train and wagonload to Maryland. The Baltimore slave-pens were reported to be crowded. A few owners undoubtedly persuaded their slaves to leave. The provost marshal remarked that a number of these apparently compliant chattels seized the opportunity to escape altogether.

  The emancipation bill was passed in both Houses, and on April 16, 1862, was signed by the President. In an attempt to atone to ex-Mayor Berret for his summary arrest and detention in Fort Lafayette, Mr. Lincoln offered him a place on the commission to award compensation for the freed slaves; but the honor was declined. Early in May, the commission was receiving the petitions of the owners, while the long lists of itemized human property, to be examined and valued by a Baltimore slave dealer, began to appear in the newspapers. Eventually, about one thousand persons in the entire District presented claims for three thousand, one hundred and twenty-eight slaves. There were a few applications—mainly those of ladies advanced in years—in which the evidence warranted the commissioners in withholding payment. It was refused for one hundred and eleven slaves in all, either because of the disloyalty or the defective titles of the owners. Among those who received their money was a free Negro, who asked compensation for a wife he had purchased, and for the half-dozen children born of the union. At least, this fact was vouched for by Horace Greeley, the pink-faced, goggle-eyed, anti-slavery editor of the New York Tribune.

  With enfranchisement an accomplished fact, Congress provided public schooling for the Negro children of the District. Meantime, the capital was preparing to stage its own political contest for the election of mayor and members of the city councils. The contenders in the miniature arena of the municipality corresponded with the two branches of the Democratic party in national affairs: the War Democrats, who had rallied to the support of the Union; and the Peace Democrats, who decried the administration and opposed the war. In Washington, the loyal faction was called the Unconditional Union party. Its candidate for mayor was the incumbent, Mr. Richard Wallach, the brother of Douglas Wallach, the proprietor of the Star. In the two preceding elections, Richard Wallach had run against Berret and been defeated. At the time of Berret’s arrest and enforced resignation, he was serving as president of the Board of Aldermen, and was elected mayor by the city councils for the unexpired term.

  The opposition, the Union Democratic party, was, according to the Star, made up of “those whose faces are so radiant with joy when news of a secesh victory reaches the city.” Its supporters denounced the Unconditional Union party as allied with the radical Republicans. Mayor Wallach himself was assailed as an abolitionist of deepest dye. He scorned to refute the charge during the campaign, but one of his adherents disposed of it on the ground that Wallach owned nine slaves.

  Late in May, a mass meeting of Union Democrats on Capitol Hill was picketed by the police, while a squad of the provost guard was drawn up across the street. From a stand draped in red, white and blue, the speakers addressed the crowd “in terms violently patriotic and desperately pro-slavery.” The candidate, Mr. James F. Haliday, was greeted with shouts of “Damn the abolitionists” and “Send the niggers to Massachusetts to be educated.” Mr. William Mulloy, a member of the Common Council, whose feelings were for the white man first, spoke in favor of a humble petition to Congress to set the Democrats free. More telling in its emotional appeal, which evaded the fact that Washington citizens had no voice in the issues before Congress, was the speech of Mr. McNerhany, who inquired if a father would vote to have his darling boy educated with niggers. “No, by God, no. God damn it, no,” roared the Union Democrats. Carried away by the excitement, this speaker went so far as to recommend that wives should refuse admission to their husbands if—by voting the Unconditional Union ticket—they were willing to place such a stigma on their little ones.

  On election day, June 2, the voters carried proof of their loyalty to the Union in their pockets; for, under a recent act of Congress, they were obliged to produce certified oaths of allegiance, if challenged. Most of the restaurants were closed, and there were few cases of drunkenness at the polls. Toward evening, however, “effervescences of feeling” suggested that some restaurants’ side doors had been left open. The Third Ward was enlivened by a procession of flag-draped hacks, filled with caroling Baltimore roughs of both factions. Well-known election strikers in the Fourth Ward were disarmed of concealed weapons, including a bowie, two pistols and a double-headed billy. The Metropolitan Police—proudly uniformed for summer in navy-blue flannel frock coats and straw hats—charged to the aid of a badly beaten Unconditional from the Island, and put down a “skrimmage” in the Second Ward. A scattering of other fights occurred, but only one approached the dimensions of a riot. A Wallach crowd near the City Hall was so enraged by a Haliday supporter that bricks and stones began to fly, and only the timely interference of the mounted provost guard averted serious trouble. The day was conceded to have “passed off with remarkable good order.”

  The result of the election proclaimed the Union sympathies of the capital—Richard Wallach was chosen mayor by a vote of five to one. But in spite of the increase in the population of the District, the total vote of under five thousand was considerably smaller than that registered at the 1860 election. The National Republican was not slow to attribute this fact to the required oath of allegiance; while the Star noted that many citizens were absent on military duty, under one flag or another.

  In the evening, after the result was known, huge bonfires were lighted in the streets, and the bands of the exultant Unconditionals blared their way to City Hall and to Mayor Wallach’s residence on Louisiana Avenue. On succeeding nights, the winning candidates for the city councils were serenaded, and self-congratulation prevailed among the loyal Washingtonians. The secessionist sympathizers, although defeated, were by no means silenced, and Swampoodle was seething with dissatisfaction. Mary Shaunnessy, who lived near the iron bridge on H Street, went to the house of her neighbor, Patrick Quirk; and, “after disposing of her clothing after a singular fashion,” knelt down and invoked curses on his head—that his children might be born blind and that purgatory would hold him fast—because he had cast a vote for Mr. Wallach. The irritated Quirk procured a warrant. Presently, two officers visited Mrs. Shaunnessy’s house and bore her, half-dressed and tied with ropes, to a baker’s wagon, in which she was carried to the justice of the peace. In jail, she was joined by her brother, who had brandished a doubl
e-barreled gun and professed an intention to kill any Irishman living between the iron bridge and Seventh Street who had voted the Unconditional Union ticket.

  Although the congressional legislation on behalf of the Negroes created so much commotion in the District, it brought little immediate change to the colored people themselves. For the most part, the manumitted slaves continued to work for their masters. They were not assertive in laying claim to their new civil rights. They were not permitted to ride inside the Washington streetcars, although special labeled cars were presently provided for them. This discrimination became nearly a personal issue between Senator Sumner and the street-railway company, and was at length abolished. A year and a half after Congress provided public schools for Negro children, none had been opened in the District. The expected revenues from taxes on Negro property and philanthropic contributions proved disappointing, and the community had no mind to saddle itself with the expense. The Freedman’s Aid Society, formed by sympathetic persons in the capital, set up schools in shabby rooms and church basements on the Island and in the Northern Liberties. Teachers volunteered their services. The pupils in the night classes, from ten years old to sixty, supplied their own books and lights.

  Prior to ordaining emancipation in the District, Congress had passed an article of war which forbade the Federal forces to be used in apprehending slaves. All during the winter, contradictory orders about the treatment of fugitives had been issued by various generals, some excluding Negroes from their lines, some still using soldiers to hunt them down and return them to their masters. Contrabands in increasing thousands, however, were being employed in the army. In Washington, in the spring of 1862, there was evidence that a year of war had softened the soldiers’ attitude toward the fugitives.

  Early in April, an attempt to arrest the Negro, Edward Sam, caused wild excitement out on the Seventh Street Road, where two cavalry regiments, the Seventh New York and the Fourth Pennsylvania, were encamped. When two county constables got out of a hack and seized him, Sam’s lusty cries brought the Pennsylvania sentinel-running, with his saber drawn. Soon soldiers from both regiments were milling around the hack, with shouts of “Hang the damned kidnapers!” and “Shoot the nigger catchers!” The colonel of the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry rescued the constables, and sent them off, with an escort, to the provost marshal’s office. They were taken before General Wadsworth, who, on learning that they had no warrant, ordered them to be taken to the Central Guard-house.

  No abolitionist leanings were needed to revolt at the injustice of Sam’s arrest, for he was a free Trinidad man. In their camp north of Washington, however, the soldiers of the Seventy-sixth New York were harboring slaves from Maryland, and refused to admit the District marshal’s constables, though they were provided with warrants. In May, the regiment was ordered to the front. As it marched down Seventh Street to the steamboat landing, a pair of constables seized two runaway slaves who were attached to one of the companies as servants. The ensuing rumpus brought people running from the Avenue. Some of the soldiers raised their bayonets and threatened to shoot into the crowd. The officers restored order; and, after examining the constables’ writs, permitted them to carry off the two slaves. Seven or eight other fugitives accompanied the wrathful Seventy-sixth to the wharf. Next morning, when a deputy marshal went down to get them, with his warrants and an order from the provost marshal, he was admonished by officers and soldiers that they would see him in hell before they gave the Negroes up.

  Emancipation in the District had not abrogated the Fugitive Slave Law. As the restless slaves of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties came in hundreds across the Eastern Branch bridge, their disgruntled Maryland masters continued to seek redress at the City Hall. There was much anxiety and complaint in Maryland and the new unionist governor, Augustus W. Bradford, wrote Attorney General Bates of a report that the Government had forbidden the execution of warrants under the law. The radicals of Congress and, increasingly, the army were ready to consider any slaveholder a traitor—an opinion which nullified the necessity of restoring his property. On the other hand, the commissioners of the circuit court and its officer, Marshal Lamon, were disposed to accept the Marylanders’ protestations of allegiance, and were therefore bound to return their slaves.

  Against the background of a free District, every demonstration of the slave system was sharply etched. The Negro catchers could no longer peacefully drag their captives through the streets. Crowds gathered. There were protests, altercations, brawls. It was a sin and a shame, said the National Republican, that men and women could not walk abroad without being liable to witness the struggles and hear the shrieks of the fugitives. Abolitionists made the legal point that the Fugitive Slave Law was not applicable to the District, but only to the States. Judge John Dean of Brooklyn—said to have been engaged by wealthy and respectable citizens of Washington—came down to test the law in the courts. As he made his way out of the City Hall, after volunteering to defend certain runaways, he was followed by ominous shakings of heads and fists. “I’d like to stuff all the niggers down their damned throats,” one man remarked. On the points raised by Judge Dean, the decisions of the circuit court were all favorable to a strict enforcement of the law. Senator Wilson introduced a bill to reorganize the judiciary system of the District—or, as everyone clearly understood, to have judges opposed to the slave system appointed.

  The conflict had not been smoothed by the appointment of the abolitionist, James S. Wadsworth, as military governor. With the departure of the Army of the Potomac for the Peninsula, the contrabands in the District had come under Wadsworth’s charge, together with the control of the provost guard and the military prisons. He had soon moved the blacks from the Old Capitol prison to the near-by houses of Duff Green’s Row. To prevent overcrowding, a number of able-bodied men and women were placed in private service in Washington and other cities. In spite of Wadsworth’s efforts, conditions at Duff Green’s Row were far from ideal. Its constantly changing population lived in miserable poverty. The Negroes had too recently been enslaved to become immediately industrious and self-reliant. They required, not only Government supervision, but philanthropic assistance as well. The Freedman’s Aid Association provided them with clothing and sent them teachers. Colored churches in the city contributed to their relief. Missionaries came down from the North to labor among them.

  On arrival, each fugitive was examined on the important point of his master’s loyalty; and, on his giving evidence against this, he was furnished with a paper, signed by Wadsworth and known as a military protection. As martial law had not been proclaimed in the District, the civil authorities saw no reason for supposing that Wadsworth was either perfectly informed or all-powerful. Although Duff Green’s Row was patrolled by a detachment of the Old Capitol guard, Lamon’s constables hovered in the neighborhood. One of the contrabands was whisked away to his master in Maryland before the military governor had a chance to act.

  The arrest of the mulatto girl, Alethia Lynch, precipitated the conflict between the civil and military jurisdictions. There was a story that she was General Wadsworth’s cook. In any case, she carried one of his military protections when the constables seized her. Wadsworth sent a peremptory demand for her release. When this was refused, his aide and a squad of the provost guard marched on the jail, took possession of the keys and delivered Alethia by force. The jailer and Deputy Marshal Phillips were arrested and taken to the Central Guard-house; while two lawyers who had arrived on the scene—one was the counsel for the girl’s Maryland owner—were shut up in the Blue Jug.

  News of these highhanded doings reached the District marshal late that night. Under the persecutions of Congress, Lamon’s temper had not improved. When he found the President was out of town—it was the occasion of his visit to McDowell’s camp on the Rappahannock —he decided to take things in his own hands. Word was sent for the police to assemble, but either they were reluctant to engage in the fray, or Lamon was too impatient to wait for
them. Posting to the Blue Jug with a single police sergeant, Lamon personally “recaptured the jail,” by disarming the two soldiers who had been left on guard. The lawyers were now released, and the soldiers locked up instead.

  In the clear light of day, this melodrama must have seemed a little absurd, even to the leading participants. Both sides set their prisoners free. The honors of the engagement were divided—Lamon had his jail, but Wadsworth had Alethia Lynch.

  In his account of the affair, the District marshal stated that Lincoln called on the Attorney General for an opinion, and that Mr. Bates decided that, under existing conditions in the District, the civil authority outranked the military, and that Wadsworth’s conduct had been misguided, however kindly his intentions. But, if the gentleman from western New York was rebuked, he was by no means subdued. A few days after the jail episode, according to the National Intelligencer, he sent a file of soldiers into Maryland to demand the restitution of a slave recovered by due process of law—though in defiance of a military protection—by Mr. William H. Offutt, a venerable citizen of Montgomery County. The Intelligencer stated that the soldiers, on finding that the slave had been sent to another part of Maryland, arrested Mr. Offutt instead, and the venerable citizen was lodged in the Old Capitol as a prisoner of state, until Mr. Montgomery Blair procured his release.

  That same month, May, 1862, a proclamation of military emancipation was issued in the Department of the South. It was the act of Lincoln’s old friend, Major-General David Hunter, who after serving for some time in the West had been placed in command of the coastal regions of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, which had passed under Union control as the result of successful military and naval expeditions. The department was under martial law, and the white population had fled, abandoning their slaves. These thousands of blacks were cared for by the Government and by private philanthropy, and it was their freedom which Hunter, in all sincerity exceeding the powers of a military commander, proclaimed. On reading of this order in the press, the President publicly annulled it, with the quiet consistency which allied him in abolitionist minds with the slave-catching Lamon. To Hunter himself, Lincoln expressed no disapprobation, and their friendship was not disturbed by the incident.