Ebony and Ivy

by Craig Steven Wilder

  A COLLEGE FOR VIRGINIA

  Reports of King Philip’s success in New England heightened Virginians’ fears of Native people. In 1675 the young, well-to-do English immigrant Nathaniel Bacon, to whom Governor William Berkeley had given a handsome plantation in the Virginia back-country, gathered his own army. Bacon encouraged hostility toward Indians, including the Appomattox, the Occaneechee, and other friendly nations. He promised economic freedom to the colonists and physical freedom to any servants who joined his army. In 1676 his forces overthrew the governor, burned Jamestown, and brought Virginia under rebel rule for several months. Later that year Bacon died of dysentery. His death and the arrival of a royal fleet ended the uprising. The restored colonial government quickly executed two dozen of Bacon’s lieutenants.56

  Bacon’s Rebellion did not lead to the establishment of the first college in Virginia, but the decision to organize a college responded to the lingering problems of defending the colony’s expansive borders with Indian nations, regulating a large population of enslaved people, and governing a free population with a history of resisting political and religious authority. In 1693 King William III and Queen Mary II granted a charter. The trustees were primarily planters and merchants from the colony’s leading landholding and slaveholding families. The Reverend James Blair, a graduate of Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland, served as president for life, and governed the school for its first fifty years. The charter funded the College of William and Mary from the profits of slave labor, assigning a duty of a penny per pound on tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland to support a president and professors. The crown also gave two 10,000-acre grants and the Virginia assembly allocated a duty on liquor, furs, and skins traded in the colony.57

  The mission was to educate Christian youth, supply a trained ministry, and ensure that “the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the Glory of Almighty God.” Rev. Blair and Governor Francis Nicholson promoted Indian evangelization. The trustees sent Blair on a fund-raising trip to England to publicize the progress of the colony. Well-placed friends such as John Locke, who had intellectual and financial interests in the Americas, proved useful as Blair sought donors. Indian missions were particularly marketable. Several Native boys attended William and Mary during its first years. In 1723 the trustees began the construction of a brick Indian college, Brafferton Hall.58

  Brafferton Hall, originally the Indian College, at the College

  of William and Mary

  SOURCE: Library of Congress

  The Reverend Hugh Jones, the chaplain to the colonial assembly and a faculty member at William and Mary, argued the urgency of Indian conversion. He saw an intelligence and artistry in Indians that could be cultivated, but there was no similar divine light in black people, whom the minister viewed as “by Nature cut out for hard Labour and Fatigue.” The trustees excitedly received “1000£ to buy Negroes for the College Use and Service.” In 1718 alone the board purchased seventeen enslaved black people—hardly remarkable in a colony that paid its ministers in tobacco and where the preachers were quick to fuss about exchange rates. Rev. Jones designed a course of instruction for Native students, but he relegated the education of black people to the whim of slave owners and even ignored the spiritual fate of the college’s slaves.59

  The strategic rewards of Indian missions were again paramount. Codified in August 1695, the Brafferton Fund, which paid for Indian education at Harvard and William and Mary, had regulations to ensure that a swift current of trained Indian ministers flowed back into their respective nations. The administrators encouraged the college officers to get as many Indian children as possible, from friendly or enemy nations, by invitation, purchase, or kidnapping. They placed Indian scholars under the direct supervision of the president and required regular censuses of Native students and reports on their progress. They set rates for boarding and educating Indian youth. The board then insisted that the governors “shall keep at the sd colledg soe many Indian children in sickness and healthe, in meat drink washing lodging clothes Medicines books and Education from the first begining of letters till they are ready to receive orders and be thought sufficient to preache be sent abroad to preach and convert the Indians.”60

  If the conquest and devastation of Indian peoples were mere expressions of providence, then attempts to hasten their fall could hardly be sinful. In 1711, when colonists in North Carolina were at war with the Tuscarora, Virginia governor William Spotswood demanded that the chiefs and leaders of the neighboring friendly nations surrender “Two Sons of the Chief Men in Each Town … to the Number of Twenty” to the College of William and Mary. President Lyon G. Tyler later admitted that the campus became a prison “where they served as so many hostages for the good behavior of the rest.” Ultimately, about twenty Native children were being held on campus—including the sons and daughters of the chiefs of the Nottoway, Pamunkey, and Meherrin—and other Tuscarora were held for more than a year.61

  GIFTS

  Shortly after his graduation from Harvard, Jonathan Belcher, the son of a colonial slave trader, presented an Indian child as a gift in Europe, an act that symbolized the demographic devastation and violent conquest of the New England Indians and the ordinariness of unfreedom in the Christian empires of new Spain, New France, and British America. Academies and colleges, teachers and ministers, religion and science were as responsible for that ruin as forts, soldiers, armor, guns, and swords. Free and unfree, Indians were now relics of the English empire whom Belcher could treat as trophies, displaying them as the marvels of his country.

  You negroes are treated here with great humanity and

  tenderness; ye have no hard task-masters, ye are not

  laden with too heavy burthens … ye grow cruel by too

  much indulgence: so much are ye degenerated and

  debased below the dignity of human species, that even

  the brute animals may upbraid you; for the ox knoweth

  his owner, and the ass his master’s crib, even the very

  dogs also will, by their actions express their gratitude

  to the hand that feeds them, their thankfulness for

  kindness. … Such is the fidelity of these dumb beasts;

  but ye, the beasts of the people, though ye are clothed and

  fed, and provided with all necessaries of life, without

  care; in requital of your benefactors, in return for

  blessings ye give curses, and would scatter firebrands,

  death and destruction around them, destroy their

  estates and butcher their persons. Thus monstrous is

  your ingratitude!

  —SENTENCING OF TOM (BRADT),

  NEW YORK CITY, 1742

  Oh Reader whoever thou art, it is impossible for you

  to conceive or me to describe the torture I sustain at

  the loss of these Slaves we have committed to a wat[e]

  ry grave[,] one of w’ch boys was to have been my

  own. … [I]n the afternoon got our slaves up and gave

  them an airing two more of which [I] imagine will die

  this night to my inexpressible grief, how unhappy is a

  person who undertakes the care of slaves.

  —DR. WILLIAM CHANCELLOR, MAY 1750

  Chapter 2

  “Bonfires of the Negros”

  The Bloody Journey from Slave Traders to College Trustees

  In 1771 a sixteen-year-old orphan assumed the day-to-day management of a St. Croix shipping house when his employer, Nicholas Cruger, returned to New York City. The wealthy St. Croix merchant Thomas Stevens had taken the boy in after the child’s mother died. Apprenticing him in a merchant house was a predictable and somewhat generous act. Cruger supplied the Caribbean plantations with everything from fish and flour to mules. He also sold human beings. The teenager skillfully administered Cruger’s ships and merchandise as they moved through a network of Caribbean ports, maximized profits by adjusting points of sa
le and seeking prime markets, and kept Cruger abreast of the performance of his captains and factors. His published poems and short essays brought him local fame. Two years earlier, he had written Stevens’s son Edward to wish him well in his studies at King’s College (Columbia) in New York City. He worried about his prospects in life and swore that he “would willingly risk my life tho’ not my Character to exalt my Station.” Now this precocious manager boarded one of Cruger’s ships with funds from a subscription among the local merchants and set off for the North American mainland. Nicholas Cruger’s father and uncle were founding trustees of King’s College, the Crugers and their in-laws served on the board through the American Revolution, and several of their sons attended the college. Hamilton’s guardians placed him at the Presbyterian academy in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The following year Alexander Hamilton matriculated at King’s. A job with a slave trader had rescued him from poverty. Donations from slave traders saved him from despair. His new life began with his arrival on a slave trader’s ship. His New York and New Jersey sponsors included Crugers, Livingstons, Boudinots, and other elite families who enrolled him at a college funded and governed by merchants. His tuition and fees were paid from the sale of barrels of rum, manufactured on slave plantations, that Cruger’s firm sent to New York.1

  On the eve of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton entered college in a city transformed by the Africa and West Indies trades. Charitable gifts to fund the educations of poorer boys announced the social influence of the American slave traders, land speculators, planters, and financiers, who replaced British donors as the source of support for colonial churches, schools, libraries, and missions.

  By the mid-eighteenth century, merchant wealth was reconfiguring the colonies. Impressive stores rose in the New England and mid-Atlantic ports, handsome townhouses stocked with European and Caribbean luxuries filled the old city streets, and country retreats sprung up in the outskirts of the big towns. During a six-month stay in Manhattan, the Boston artist John Singleton Copley painted thirty-seven portraits for upper-class families, including the Crugers, Livingstons, Verplancks, and Ludlows. The great landlords of colonial New York had transitioned into a more diverse range of investments, including shipping and insurance. These were the families that laid the foundations of the metropolis. They controlled the board of the New York Hospital. The majority of the eighty-three subscribers to the New York Society Library, the first public library in the city, were traders, and sixteen merchants served as trustees of King’s College before the Revolution.2

  American colleges had their genesis in this Atlantic economy. Colonial merchants were not for the most part scholars, but they became the patrons of higher education. The wealthiest families had traditionally sent their sons to Britain to finish their studies and make connections. A fourth-generation Livingston, Robert, took his education at Cambridge, a distinction that he converted into a middle name—Robert Cambridge Livingston—to separate himself from his relatives and publicize his credentials. However, as their wealth increased and as their American identities evolved, merchant families became the sponsors and patrons of colonial colleges.3

  King’s College, known today as Columbia University

  SOURCE: Library of Congress

  Presbyterians and Reformed Dutch in New Jersey, Anglicans in New York, Anglicans and Presbyterians in Philadelphia, Baptists in Rhode Island, and Congregationalists in New Hampshire all benefited from the rise of the merchants. Between 1746 and 1769, a period of less than a quarter century, the number of colleges in the British mainland colonies tripled to nine. Ministers and merchants in the commercial centers of the Mid-Atlantic and New England organized the College of New Jersey (Princeton, 1746), the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania, 1749), King’s (1754), the College of Rhode Island (Brown, 1764), and Queen’s College (Rutgers, 1766). Not primarily intended to further Indian evangelization, these schools relied upon the generosity of the colonial elite. Even Dartmouth College (1769) in New Hampshire fits this pattern. Ostensibly founded for Indian education, Dartmouth had few Native American students, it soon became a training ground for white missionaries, and its president was experienced at soliciting colonial patrons.4

  There was nothing all that remarkable in West Indian slave traders providing a scholarship to a gifted clerk. Far more noteworthy was the ascent of the merchants as the benefactors and guardians of colonial society.

  THE RISE OF THE MERCHANTS

  In 1672 the Royal African Company succeeded the Royal Adventurers to Africa, which was chartered in 1618 as the Governor and Company of Adventurers Trading to Gynney and Bynney. The Duke of York—who later ascended the throne as James II—was governor of the company and its largest individual shareholder. A list of prominent investors further raised the endeavor’s profile. For example, John Locke owned at least £600 in Royal African stock and had earlier invested in the Royal Adventurers.5

  Many of the great fortunes of New York were created while the monopoly was in effect. Frederick Philipse had arrived humbly. He came to New Amsterdam in the 1650s as a carpenter for the Dutch West India Company and labored in that capacity for years. As late as 1660 the company ordered him to renovate the Dutch Church at Midwout (Midwood, Brooklyn). A marriage to the wealthy widow Margaret Hardenbroeck de Vries, who had inherited a number of ships and a family business network, propelled Philipse into the merchant class. An astute and adventurous businesswoman, Margaret Philipse limited her second husband’s access to her estate, managed the family businesses, and sailed with her own ships. She was one of a number of women merchants, landowners, and proprietors who came to power during the Dutch era.6

  Frederick Philipse’s instructions for a 1698 voyage to Madagascar survive. Piloting the barque Margarit, Captain Samuel Burgos was to trade for or purchase “two hundred good slaves or as many as the ship can carry.” Philipse laid out the entire scheme: what route to follow; the names of his contacts, how to protect his ship; when to take on provisions for the crew and slaves, and what to buy; how to secure the slaves on board; directions for trading the supplies of liquor, guns, and money; cautions about piracy and other threats; where to register and clear the cargo; and the best seasonal periods for the return voyage. “Being arrived at that place … you are to trade with the Natives for Elephants Teeth, imploying the Brass Neck Collars, Arm Rings, Beeds, Looking glasses, boxes & such like things out of that cargoe to purchase them with,” Philipse wrote. Barring the captain and crew from slave trading on their own, Philipse reminded Burgos that his share—to be paid upon his return to New York City in money, goods, and Africans—depended upon his success.7

  That year Frederick Philipse was charged with piracy and evasion of the Navigation Acts for trading directly with non-English ports. The Madagascar slave trade itself married corruption, piracy, and kidnapping. To evade Royal African’s monopoly, merchants had opened a trade from Madagascar. With vessels sailing into the South Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, and into the Indian Ocean, these journeys could take two years to complete. Private traders from Britain and the colonies eroded Royal African’s privileges. Merchants in New York joined in, trading illegally to West Africa and Madagascar. New York governor Cadwallader Colden later gossiped, “Several of the now principal families, I have been told, took their first rise to commerce with the Pirates.” Philipse resigned from the governor’s council, which enacted and executed laws and formed an appellate court for major cases. In an age of merchant adventurers, this was a modest scandal. All but one of his fellow councilors were accused of crimes. Nicholas Bayard, Thomas Willet, and William Nicholl were financing piracy, while William Pinhorne engaged in real estate fraud. Samuel Burgos had testified against William Nicholl and Governor Benjamin Fletcher, admitting that he had served under a captain who paid them £700 to unload goods pirated in the East Indies. Philipse remained the “wealthiest man” in the colony, he had an active merchant house, and he was the lord of Philipsburg Manor, comprising more than
two hundred square miles of land.8

  The great New York merchant houses were family networks that crossed the Atlantic world. Although their rights to hold property and make contracts were curtailed by English law, women traded actively and they were often at the center of these family enterprises. In July 1679 Robert Livingston married the wealthy heiress and widow Alida Schuyler Van Rensselaer. The couple acquired 160,000 acres of land near the village of Hudson and began investing in slaving voyages. Their first venture—the 1690 journey of the Margriet—traded slaves, sugar, and tobacco between Madagascar, Barbados, and Virginia. They bought interests in four additional ships, three with Peter Schuyler, Alida’s brother. The Livingston children then married and maneuvered their way to greater wealth, consolidating about a million acres of land in two generations. The second generation’s Philip Livingston and his wife, Catrina Van Brugh, sent their sons—Peter, John, Philip, and William—to Yale College to prepare them to manage the web of commercial sites and relationships in the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the West Indies, Europe, and Africa that formed Livingston Manor.9

  In 1698 Parliament deregulated the slave trade while preserving a semblance of the African Company’s privileges. With its merchants clearing fifty ships a year for Africa after the liberalization, Bristol overtook London as a slaving port in just a few decades, with more than two thousand total slaving ventures completed. Leading British banking and insurance houses such as Barclays and Lloyds rose from this commerce, and profits from the Africa trade were funding cultural and charitable institutions. By 1750 Bristol traders constituted a majority in the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, which replaced the African Company.10

  The end of the monopoly was no less significant in British North America. In 1698 John Cruger had emigrated from Bristol, England, to New York. A marriage to the heiress Maria Cuyler, of the powerful Albany and New York City family, made him a Hudson Valley landlord and a merchant. The John and Henry Cruger house launched its ships from Cruger’s Wharf on the east side of the city and often registered its ships in Bristol. John Cruger held the New York City mayoralty from 1739 to 1744, and his son John was mayor from 1757 to 1766. Henry Cruger’s sons administered businesses at key sites in the family’s commercial complex. The younger Henry managed their business affairs in Bristol. John Harris went to Jamaica, Tileman to Curaçao, and Nicholas to St. Croix. Their sister Elizabeth married Peter Van Schaack of the prominent Albany clan.11