The Field of Blood

by Joanne B. Freeman

    46.  French, diary entry, October 9, 1866, Witness, 520–21. French was helping to move an outbuilding closer to a house, and the householder treated his helpers to “the best of gin” doled out from a copper teakettle.

    47.  French, diary entry, February 17, 1867, Witness, 530. On French’s life, see ibid., 1–11.

    48.  French, diary entry, October 25, 1840, ibid., 103.

    49.  John Adams Vinton, The Richardson Memorial: Comprising a Full History and Genealogy of the Posterity of the Three Brothers, Ezekiel, Samuel, and Thomas Richardson (Portland, Maine: Brown, Thurston & Co., 1876), 114–17; French, diary entry, March 29, 1838, Witness, 77.

    50.  Margaret French Cresson, Journey into Fame: The Life of Daniel Chester French (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 17.

    51.  Ibid., 15–17; August Harvey Worthen, The History of Sutton, New Hampshire, 2 vols. (Concord, N.H.: Republican Press Association, 1890), 1:236.

    52.  The Spectator, founded in 1825, was Newport’s first and only newspaper until 1831. On the New Hampshire press in this period, see Jacob B. Moore, “History of Newspapers Published in New Hampshire, from 1756 to 1840,” American Quarterly Register 13 (1841); Simeon Ide, “History of New Hampshire Newspaper Press, Sullivan County,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the New Hampshire Press Association (January 1874), 56–64; H. G. Carleton, “The Newspaper Press in Newport,” in Edmund Wheeler, The History of Newport, New Hampshire: From 1766 to 1878 (Concord, N.H.: Republican Press Association, 1879).

    53.  The best extended account of Hill’s New Hampshire political activities, as well as antebellum New Hampshire politics generally, is Donald B. Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970). See also Cyrus P. Bradley, Biography of Isaac Hill (Concord, N.H.: Published by John Brown, 1835). On antebellum New Hampshire politics, see also Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965); Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery & the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2004), 78–102; Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (New York: Norton, 1966), 54–62.

    54.  French, draft of memoir, BBFFP.

    55.  French, diary entry, February 17, 1834, Witness, 38.

    56.  Cole, Jacksonian Democracy, 60–61.

    57.  Ibid., 3–6, 69.

    58.  Ibid., 61. See also Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), esp. 208–13; Steven P. McGiffen, “Ideology and the Failure of the Whig Party in New Hampshire, 1834–1841,” New England Quarterly 59 (September 1986): 387–401.

    59.  On politics and the press in this period, see esp. Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Katherine A. Pierce, “Networks of Disunion: Politics, Print Culture, and the Coming of the Civil War” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2006); Thomas C. Leonard, The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2003); Craig Miner, Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the National News, 1854–1858 (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2008); Richard B. Kielbowicz, News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700–1860s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989); or Sachsman, Rushing, and Morris Jr., eds., Words at War.

    60.  Jefferson to James Madison, February 5, 1799, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-31-02-0005, accessed June 8, 2015.

    61.  Jeffrey Pasley, “Printers, Editors, and Publishers of Political Journals Elected to the U.S. Congress, 1789–1861,” pasleybrothers.com/newspols/congress.htm, accessed June 8, 2015.

    62.  “Biography of Benjamin Brown French,” in Gauther, History of the Scottish Rite Bodies, 35. For a listing of his Masonic activities, see ibid., 73–74.

    63.  French, diary, Witness, June 10, 1831, 21.

    64.  Ibid., April 24, 1853, 238–39. On Pierce, see Roy Franklin Nichols, Franklin Pierce: Young Hickory of the Granite Hills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931); Michael F. Holt, Franklin Pierce (New York: Henry Holt, 2010); Peter A. Wallner, Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire’s Favorite Son (Concord, N.H.: Plaidswede, 2004); idem., Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union (Concord, N.H.: Plaidswede, 2007); Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991).

    65.  Horatio Bridge to Nathaniel Hawthorne, December 25, 1836, in Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1884), 1:148.

    66.  French, diary entry, June 18, 1831, Witness, 23.

    67.  New Hampshire Sentinel, June 27, 1833. See also French, diary entry, June 10, 1831.

    68.  French, diary entry, June 18, 1831, Witness, 23.

    69.  Ibid., June 3, 1831, 20.

    70.  Ibid., June 2, 1831, 19.

    71.  Ibid., December 18, 1843, 157.

    72.  Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1996); Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); idem., “Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual,” in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, ed. Marc C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 37–52.

    73.  French, diary entry, September 15, 1828, Witness, 16. For an excellent account of politics and Congress in this period, see Joel H. Silbey, “Congress in a Partisan Political Era,” in The American Congress: The Building of Democracy, ed. Julian Zelizer (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 139–51.

    74.  French, diary entry, September 15, 1828, Witness, 16.

    75.  French to Henry Flagg French, May 22, 1832, BBFFP. Emphasis in original.

    76.  French was referring to Houston’s caning of William Stanbery (AJ-OH) on April 13; an assassination attempt by Major Morgan A. Heard against Thomas Arnold (AJ-TE); and a near duel between E. S. Davis and Eleutheros Cooke (AJ-OH).

    77.  Isaac Hill probably facilitated French’s rise; he routinely drew young blood into the Jacksonian fold by dangling jobs. Cole, Jacksonian Democracy, 165.

    78.  French, diary entry, July 20, 1833, Witness, 29–34. The next few paragraphs are based on ibid.

    79.  Ibid.; New Hampshire Sentinel, July 18, 1833. For accounts of the Concord celebration, see chapter 35 in the unpublished Grace P. Amsden, “A Capital for New Hampshire,” NHHS, www.concordnh.gov/Library/concordhistory/concordv2.asp?siteindx=L20,08,05, accessed August 18, 2012.

    80.  French to Daniel French, January 30, 1835, BBFFP.

    81.  On Jackson’s image, see esp. John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); Thomas Brown, “From Old Hickory to Sly Fox: The Routinization of Charisma in the Early Democratic Party,” JER 3 (Autumn 1991): 339–69; Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Random House, 2007); James C. Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976).

    82.  French, diary entries, December 13, 1836, and January 9, 1844, Witness, 69, 158.

    83.  Cole, Jacksonian Democracy, 167. On increased voter participation in this election, see John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? A Second Look (Chicago University of Chicago Press), 122–26. On Van Buren’s pitch for the party, see ibid., 113–14; and more generally, Donald B. Cole, Martin Van Buren and the American Political
System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Joel H. Silbey, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). On the election of 1828 and the organizational origins of the Jacksonian Democrats, in addition to the above, see Ralph M. Goldman, The National Party Chairmen and Committees: Factionalism at the Top (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1990); Donald B. Cole, Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two-Party System (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Robert Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1963); idem., “Election of 1828,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger and Fred L. Israel, History of American Presidential Elections (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), 1:413–92; Lynn Hudson Parsons, The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  1. THE UNION INCARNATE FOR BETTER AND WORSE

      1.  French, diary entry, December 21, 1833, and September 10, 1835, Witness, 34, 45. In November 1835, French made this trip again by stagecoach, boat, and—for the first time—train.

      2.  French to Bess French, January 1834, in Gauker, History of the Scottish Rite Bodies in the District of Columbia, 7.

      3.  French, diary entry, December 21, 1833, Witness, 34.

      4.  Edmund Morris, ed., The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Modern Library, 1996), 44; Seward, Reminiscences, 68–69; J. S. Buckingham, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive, 3 vols. (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1841) 1:293–94, 319, 321; George Augustus Sala, My Diary in America in the Midst of War, 2 vols. (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1865), 2:68. For older accounts of antebellum Washington, see Wilhelmus B. Bryan, A History of the National Capital from Its Foundation Through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1914); John C. Proctor, Washington Past and Present: A History, 5 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1930). Particularly useful in this study were Barbara G. Carson, Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (Washington: American Institute of Architects, 1990), 1–23; Young, Washington Community; Howard Gillette, Jr., ed., Southern City, National Ambition: The Growth of Early Washington, D.C., 1800–1860 (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University Center for Washington Area Studies, 1995); Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from the Tidewater to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1999); David C. Mearns, “A View of Washington in 1863,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 63/65 (1963–1965): 210–20; Kenneth J. Winkle, Lincoln’s Citadel: The Civil War in Washington, D.C. (New York: Norton, 2014); Guy Gugliotta, Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013); and Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962), 1:23–229.

      5.  Seward, Reminiscences, 69. In 1851, the government was accepting bids to light Pennsylvania Avenue, the Capitol, the President’s House, and “other public grounds.” The first contract was granted in 1852. In 1854, lamps went up on Pennsylvania Avenue at a cost of almost $2,000. “Report of the Commissioner of Public Buildings,” October 5, 1854, 599.

      6.  Green, Washington, 1:255. On the “National Hotel Disease,” see Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 78; Eric H. Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 118; M. C. Meigs, diary entry, March 7, 1857, in Senate Document 106–20, “Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853–1859, 1861,” ed. Wendy Wolff (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2000), 496. See also Michael A. Cooke, “Physical Environment and Sanitation in the District of Columbia, 1860–1868,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 52 (1989): 289–303.

      7.  French, diary entry, May 11, 1838, August 24, 1844, Witness, 82, 162.

      8.  Green, Washington, 1:354. Washington was 54 percent streets and alleys as compared with New York at 35 percent and Philadelphia at 29 percent. Goldfield notes that the poor streets and lack of city services reflected the sensibilities of a Southern city more than a Northern or even a Western one. David R. Goldfield, “Antebellum Washington in Context: The Pursuit of Prosperity and Identity,” Southern City, National Ambition: The Growth of Early Washington, D.C., 1800–1860, ed. Howard Gillette, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University Center for Washington Area Studies), 16.

      9.  Green, Washington, 1:211; Charles Billinghurst to his wife, December 15, 1855, ibid. See also French, diary entry, June 18 and November 6, 1863, Witness, 423, 431; Mary Jane Windle, Life in Washington: and Life Here and There (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859), 158. Consumer Price Index calculated on www.measuringworth.com, May 12, 2011.

    10.  Nicholas Trist to Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist, May 8, 1829, Nicholas P. Trist Papers, UNC. Trist was a clerk in the State Department.

    11.  “Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790–1990,” compiled and edited by Richard L. Forstall (Department of Commerce, U.S. Bureau of the Census), 4.

    12.  “The Metropolis,” Yale Literary Magazine, Conducted by the Students of Yale University 3 (February 1838): 139–43. See also Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1838), 1:238; Susan Keitt to Carrie, February 2 [ca. 1860], Laurence Massillon Keitt Papers, Duke University.

    13.  Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., February 6, 1844, 231.

    14.  French, diary entry, May 30, 1841, Witness, 116.

    15.  Ibid., December 21, 1833, 35. Henry Hubbard (J-NH) was French’s other guide.

    16.  Ibid., 34–35.

    17.  Ibid., December 21 and 30, 1833, 35. Emphasis in original.

    18.  Within the large body of scholarship on the art and architecture of the Capitol, particularly useful for this study were Donald R. Kennon, American Pantheon: Sculptural and Artistic Decoration of the United States Capitol (Athens: Ohio University, 2004); idem., The United States Capitol: Designing and Decorating a National Icon (Athens: Ohio University, 2000); idem., ed. A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic (Charlottesville: UVA Press, 1999); Henry Hope Reed, The United States Capitol: Its Architecture and Decoration (New York: Norton, 2005); Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); House Document 108–240, 108th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 18, 2008, Glenn Brown’s History of the United States Capitol; William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001).

    19.  George Watterston, New Guide to Washington (Washington: Robert Farnham; New York: Samuel Colman, 1842), 20–22. Watterston’s popular guide series was reprinted many times; a copy was even deposited for posterity in the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. National Monument Society, Oration Pronounced by the Honorable Robert C. Winthrop, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States … on the Occasion of Laying the Corner-Stone of the National Monument to the Memory of Washington (Washington, D.C.: J. & G. S. Gideon, 1848). Watterston’s observations were first collected and published by William Elliott under the title The Washington Guide (Washington City: Franck Taylor, 1837). After Elliott died in 1840, Watterston came out with his own publication, A Picture of Washington (Washington: William M. Morrison, 1840). For his account of his various publications, see Watterson, Picture of Washington, introduction.

    20.  On the history of paintings in the Capitol, see Kent Ahrens, “Nineteenth Century History Painting and the United States Capitol,” Records of the Columbia Histor
ical Society, Washington, D.C., 50 (1980): 191–222; Vivien Green Fryd, “Representating the Constitution in the US Capitol Building: Justice, Freedom, and Slavery,” in Constitutional Cultures: On the Concept and Representation of Constitutions in the Atlantic World, ed. Silke Hensel, Ulrike Bock, Katrin Dircksen, and Hans-Ulrich Thamer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 227–50; Vivien Green Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001); Ann Uhry Abrams, “National Paintings and American Character: Historical Murals in the Capitol’s Rotunda,” in Picturing History: American Painting, 1770–1930, ed. William Ayres (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 65–78. For House discussion of paintings in addition to those of Trumbull, see Globe, 23rd Cong., 2nd Sess., December 15, 1834, 37–40.

    21.  Margaret B. Klapthor, “Furniture in the Capitol: Desks and Chairs Used in the Chamber of the House of Representatives, 1819–1857,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 69/70 (1969–70): 192–93.

    22.  On the House and Senate chambers in this period, see esp. House Document No. 108–240, Glenn Brown’s History of the United States Capitol, 183–213; Robert Mills, Guide to the Capital of the United States Embracing Every Information Useful to the Visiter [sic], Whether on Business or Pleasure (Washington: n.p., 1834), 31–38, 43–45.