The Bone and Sinew of the Land

by Anna-Lisa Cox

  Was it the new laws? For years laws in Indiana had made it difficult for African Americans to defend themselves by making it illegal for them to testify against or sue a white person in court. This meant that a white person could walk right into an African American farmer’s barn and walk out with a hog, and if the only witnesses were of African descent, then that white person had little to fear, for no one could testify that he or she had stolen it. But the new laws made it worse.

  First there was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Then the terrible new state constitution of 1851—ratified in overwhelming numbers by Indiana white men—making perfectly clear that the Lyles family and any others like them were not welcome in that state. But the worst came in March 1857.

  There are all kinds of hurt. The Lyles family already knew the pain of having their own home state of Tennessee reject them and their rights. Then they had seen Indiana move in a similar direction. But now their nation—where their families had been free for so long—was rejecting them. They were now officially no longer citizens of the United States. The Supreme Court back in Washington, DC, had just made this brutally clear in its Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling.7

  Dred Scott had worked hard under bondage and finally been able to offer his owner enough money to buy his own freedom and to start purchasing the freedom of his wife, Harriet, and their daughter as well. But his recently widowed owner, Eliza Sanford Emerson, refused. Maybe she relied overmuch on the income she made renting Dred and Harriet to others. Whatever the reason, she would not relent, and so Dred and Harriet took her to court. After all, they had been living in Wisconsin and Illinois for years, and the Missouri court had long understood that an enslaved person who spent time in a free state had a right to a chance at freedom.8

  But Eliza Sanford Emerson desired to hold others in bondage, just as Eli Hawkins’s widow had been unwilling to give Jacob Hawkins his freedom thirty years before. Even when Eliza Sanford Emerson moved to Massachusetts, she was unwilling to give Dred, Harriet, and their family their freedom. Instead, she made sure her brother John Sanford took them so that they would continue to be enslaved. And now, in 1857, Dred and Harriet Scott had finally lost their case, when a majority of justices in the highest court of the land decided that no one of African descent could be considered a citizen.

  In his decision, Justice Roger Brooke Taney considered all the rights that families just like the Lyles family had held and then lost over the years—the right to vote, the right to fight for their nation’s protection and freedom, even the Tennessee decision denying them the right to bear arms—and used the loss of those rights to justify stripping away even more. Did the Lyles family hear that Taney had even attacked the Northwest Territory states, saying that the Ordinance of 1787 should never have made the region free of slavery?9

  And the Lyles family? Well, they were not supposed to exist—to have enjoyed freedom, to have voted, to have chosen to become pioneers, to have moved to two frontiers to help settle this nation, south and north. Instead, Justice Taney wrote, since some of their ancestors had been brought to the United States and treated only as “an ordinary article of merchandise,” they were not true Americans, further arguing that they had not chosen the United States to be their own nation. This in the face of the fact that African-descended men had fought as patriots in the Revolutionary War to create the country whose highest court had just generated such injustice.10

  But didn’t Taney know of them, of the Lyles family? Of the thousands like them who had chosen to migrate to the Northwest Territory and states? They had chosen to stay in the United States—their “motherland”—despite being urged to leave. The Lyles family and all of their kin had not left the United States in 1838; they had moved to Indiana, refusing to abandon their nation. And Indiana was now their home. They would not leave. Even if many of the whites in Vanderburgh County were determined to force them out.

  There were whites in that county who may have long been jealous, may have been covetous, but now they had an excuse to allow their worst passions to overtake them. When Taney and those in power—whether in the Indiana legislature or in the Vanderburgh County government—started practicing and preaching prejudice, they gave energy and focus to hate. And then that hate grew into violence.

  The Lyles family knew who was taking their pigs, but those men were white, and the state of Indiana had long said that African Americans could not sue a white man in court. So the Lyles family could not go to the sheriff and have the men of the Edmonds family charged with pig stealing.

  So, in July 1857 Daniel and three of his sons—Thomas, John, and Wesley—went to Thomas Edmonds’s farm to get their stolen property back.

  Politics and prejudice had long bled into the printer’s ink in Evansville, and it would have been very difficult for African Americans to have their side of the story told well or truthfully. But what does seem to have happened is that Daniel and his three oldest sons, Wesley, John, and Thomas, went to the Edmonds’ farm and found their stolen hog hidden in a shed. As they were trying to get their stolen pig back, there was some kind of altercation between the Lyles and Edmonds men, and in the fray, Thomas Edmonds and his son Mike were both hurt.

  Daniel and his sons managed to get back to their farm with their pig, but the Edmonds men went to the papers. Before long, reports were published of six large Lyles men marching with their guns onto the defenseless and innocent Edmonds family’s farm with the intent to murder them all. Of course, the Edmonds family gave many excuses to anyone who would listen. One was that they had found the hog lost on their property and were kindly keeping it safe for the Lyles family with every intention of returning it. Another version was that they were merely borrowing the pig. It would have been funny if it had not been so dangerous.11

  The Lyles family would have known that this was not just about those pigs; it was about them—their good land and home, their thriving.

  As soon as Daniel got home with the boys, he and Nancy must have talked, and then started preparing for war.

  After all, they knew what had happened to Joseph Spencer.

  Joseph Spencer had lived just to the west of them, a few miles down the Ohio. Spencer was a successful entrepreneur, running a lucrative and lovely hotel on his large boat, the Patrick Henry, docked at the village of Cairo, Illinois. But he was getting just a bit too successful. As a local report stated, “Some were embittered against him by feelings of envy on account of his prosperity; others because he had been too successful in playing his favorite game of poker with them.”12

  The local reports were greatly biased, but they make clear that a mob of hundreds of white men attacked Spencer on his ship. They arranged themselves around it in sniper positions and started shooting. Spencer was well armed and managed to defend himself, but after a while some whites managed to untie the Patrick Henry and push it off into the water where they lit it on fire. Then they surrounded the burning ship in their boats, guns drawn, and waited for Spencer to appear.

  Joseph Spencer was soon dead.13

  So, the Lyles family gathered—all nineteen of them—in Daniel and Nancy’s house. It was a lot of people to cook for, but Nancy was used to that. They always had plenty of food; they had worked hard to make sure of that. And there were others to help.

  The whole house would have smelled good as they cooked and baked, keeping busy. It was hot work, to be sure, but there were dippers of clear water for their thirst and clean handkerchiefs still smelling of the sun for their warm faces. And there was good company. Normally Nancy would have encouraged the younger ones to take a dip in the stream to cool off, but not today. Today they were staying put. Today they were staying close.

  The sheriff arrived to arrest Nancy’s husband and sons just as they were all sitting down to breakfast.

  There is no word on which sheriff came to their door, but it was likely Sheriff John S. Gavitt, for he had taken a personal interest in this matter. This was the same Sheriff Gavitt who had worked so hard with Bernard McKie
rnan to capture Seth Concklin and the Still family as they fled north from the Stormonts’ home. This was the same Sheriff Gavitt who had put the Still family in the jail in Evansville, separating them and “questioning” the children until they broke. And this was the same Sheriff Gavitt who forced Concklin and the Still family in chains onto the steamboat at Evansville, for a journey that Concklin would not survive. Six years later Gavitt was still boasting of his capture of Seth, whom he called a “slave stealer.”14

  Sheriff Gavitt was still enthusiastically enforcing the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, along with the other laws that had come after it, all meant to take away the liberty and rights of Americans with Africa in their blood.

  And Gavitt, who saw Vina Still and her children only as chattel, now had an excuse from Justice Taney for treating all African Americans as less than human.

  When Nancy watched the lawmen walk away with Daniel, with her boys, she would have known that there was a real risk that she would never see them again. There could be a long rope in a tree or a bonfire or worse. There might only be remnants of their remains for her to bury.

  They had one hope, and it was the court. Unlike Justice Taney back in Washington, DC, there were some men in the county courthouse who were known to have some fairness in them, their lawyer Horace Plummer included.15

  First the Lyles men had to stand in chains as they were accused of terrible things. Attempted murder was the worst. The prosecutor urged that they be denied bail and imprisoned in the Evansville jail, where everyone knew there would be little defense against any mob that came to kill them.

  But the Lyles men were not without support. They had their lawyer, Horace Plummer, to defend them. Plummer explained the facts of the case and outraged the Daily Enquirer editor by expressing his belief in “negro intellect and equality.”16

  Then Daniel, Thomas, Wesley, and John stood before the clerk, Mr. Mills, and told him what had happened. And Mr. Mills believed them.

  In the end, Mr. Mills choose to let the Lyles men go on bail, a heavy one of $500 each, and they were each fined $25. But it meant that they could go back home. It meant that they had a chance of surviving.17

  But when the clerk allowed them to return home, war was declared. The Lyles men were not supposed to go free. They were not supposed to be alive. As the Daily Enquirer wrote, “The Lyles are a wealthy tribe of blacks and one thousand dollars can easily be raised by them as we can raise five dollars.” Adding that “Judge Lynch could be called,” for “it looks to us like Union Township might do herself a credit by ridding herself of the large number of free blacks who now infest it.”18

  Daniel and his sons barely made it back to Nancy. They were attacked trying to cross a bridge, but they made it home. And then the work started. They had to prepare; they knew what was coming. After all, Sheriff Gavitt’s colleague, Sheriff-elect John Hall, was organizing an army of county men to attack the Lyles farm.19

  Once, whites in Tennessee had told the Lyles family that they no longer had the right to bear arms, but they had them now. Their home was well built and sturdy, and the family could guard it well. But they were not expecting so many men to come marching down their long drive to fire on their home.

  They ran out of bullets. Then the pounding on the door started, the wood slowly splintering, as the adults inside scrambled to protect the children. In the close combat that followed, one of the boys was wounded, and Nancy was badly hurt. But they had all survived, and the attackers had fled.20

  Even as they were recovering, binding wounds, and cleaning the blood off the floor, they knew that many of the white men of Vanderburgh County were not done trying. Those men wanted them dead or gone.

  But Nancy and Daniel did not want to leave. This was their home.

  Of course, they knew others in their state were leaving. Aaron Siddles had. He had been living in a rural area outside Indianapolis. Siddles had settled on his land years earlier, and after years of danger and brutal toil, he and his family now lived on one of the loveliest farms in the region. He had been comfortably situated and on good terms with the other local elites, the doctor being a particular friend.21

  But the whites who arrived after him were none too happy with his success. Some men had attacked his home, throwing bricks through his expensive glass windows. So, Aaron Siddles had shot at them, using small shot that would have stung their hind parts when it hit them. The doctor may have laughingly recounted to Siddles how the men had limped into his office, but Siddles was furious. He knew his standing in the community made him safe from retaliation, but he wanted to sue the men for the damage to his home, and whites in Indiana had voted to make such action illegal. This right was widely known as one’s “oath,” and to lose it was to lose one’s voice.22

  Siddles would later bitterly recount, “Living in Indiana I was dissatisfied with the laws of that country. I had a good deal of property there; it was not safe, for any loafing white might destroy or steal, and unless a white man were by to see it, I could get no redress.” So, even with loyal white friends, Siddles knew that Indiana’s prejudiced laws, combined with the Fugitive Slave Law, put him and his family in too much danger. So he gave up on the United States and left for Canada.

  But the move broke his heart. As he later admitted, “Excepting for the oppressive laws, I would rather have remained in Indiana. I left one of the most beautiful places in that country—everybody who sees it says it is a beautiful place. I had a two-story frame house, with piazza—good stable—and every arrangement about the premises was nice and convenient.”23

  And others were making the same sacrifice that Aaron Siddles had made. Especially farmers who lived along the Ohio River in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. For it was all too easy for someone to cross the river from a slave state and grab them, free as they were. Their bodies had not become any less valuable, kidnappers had become bolder, and the local laws were not helping.

  Indeed, in 1853 Illinois whites again proved their extraordinary prejudice. Ever since the passing of the new Illinois constitution in 1848, African Americans had been forbidden from settling in the state. But in 1853 it was decided that any who were caught trying to enter the state would be charged a massive fine as well as court costs. And if they could not pay the fine, then the local sheriff could sell them into slavery—effectively turning the state of Illinois into a slave-trading entity. Many Illinois whites were determined to make their state a place where liberty was always at risk and equality endangered.24

  It was not surprising that African American farmers were deciding to leave. Some chose it freely, others with guns aimed at them. But African Americans in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, finding their rights and freedom endangered, knew that they still had an important freedom left, the freedom of movement.25

  The problem, though, was where to go. Whites in many states to the west had now put exclusion laws on their books to hamper or block African American immigration, as well as denying African Americans the right to vote. Many whites in these regions wanted no repeat of the successful African American pioneering movement that had settled the Northwest Territory states. At California’s first state convention of 1849, the white attendees decided to exclude African Americans from voting, then pushed hard for complete exclusion of any African-descended people from the state. Citing the laws passed in Illinois and arguing for similar ones in California, they warned that otherwise, “You will find the country flooded with a population of free negroes—the greatest calamity that could befall California.” Robert Semple of Sonoma added that he considered free African Americans “the worst species of the population.”26

  There was something chilling about these speeches, however, for they were informed by some recent tainted information that these politicians would have known of. In addition to trying to model themselves along the lines of the most prejudiced Northwest Territory states, some of these politicians seem to have been referencing the 1840 census report.

  Powerful enslavers had long argued that a
nyone of African descent was unfit for freedom. Napoléon Bonaparte’s colonial minister Denis Decrès had made this argument almost fifty years earlier as he ordered the French military to reenslave freed people.27

  But the Northwest Territory states were now filled with free African Americans who clearly enjoyed the taste of freedom, a fact that many influential whites did not want reported. After the 1840 census data was tabulated and reported, it was full of so many errors that both experts in the field and politicians were outraged. Their chief complaint was aimed at bizarre data seeming to show that an extraordinary number of free African Americans in the northern states were sick or insane. Representative John Quincy Adams, who had been the nation’s sixth president and was now a representative from the state of Massachusetts, pointed out, it “listed insane Negroes where no Negro population existed,” and in other regions the numbers were so falsely exaggerated that more were listed as insane than the actual number of “reported Negro residents.”28

  While experts at the time argued that the report was clearly fraudulent, some later argued that the fact that entire aged and infirm populations of white people were transformed into African Americans may have just been a simple transcription mistake. However, these “mistakes” rarely favored people of African descent, with one of the census transcribers converting the entire white population of a hospital for the mentally ill in Massachusetts into African Americans.29

  These inaccuracies were another attack on freedom and equality; by asserting the frailty of free African Americans, they bolstered the intellectual framework for slavery. Pro-slavery politicians could not conceal their delight. The secretary of state at the time was the notoriously prejudiced John C. Calhoun, who had recently served as the nation’s seventh vice president. Calhoun had long praised the virtues of slavery, arguing that it was the best of all possible conditions for anyone of African descent. Despite requests to open an investigation into the 1840 census, Calhoun refused, arguing that the results were to be expected in the northern free black population, for these were a people who could only thrive in bondage.30