“Mr. Cornwell’s generosity ought to be acted upon before it is withdrawn.”5 Should anything happen to John Cornwell, or to his creditors, Judge Neale warned, the chance would be lost. “In similar cases, the limitation on Mr. Cornwell to not sell the family, in his grandmother’s will, may be considered, in legal terms, ‘repugnant to the grant’ should the family be sold on the open market. Any limitation binding Mr. Cornwell would be rendered void for their next owner.”6
Judge Neale cited the case of Williams v. Ash, in which James Ash had defended his freedom against William H. Williams of the Yellow House in 1842.7 William H. Williams had purchased James Ash to sell him at auction, but Ash and his friends filed a petition for freedom at the Circuit Court of Washington County, claiming that Ash was entitled to the freedom promised him nearly twenty years earlier, in 1824, by his mistress’s will. Ash had been inherited by Gerard T. Greenfield, the nephew of Maria Ann T. Greenfield, James Ash’s first owner, whose will stipulated that “he shall not carry them out of the state of Maryland, or sell them to any one; in either of which events, I will and desire the said negroes to be free for life.” It was a conditional limitation of freedom, which would take effect the moment Ash was sold. Ash was found “held in custody and confined in the private jail of William H. Williams,” that is, he was chained to the basement of the Yellow House. Williams could not find a way to legally sell Ash until the matter of his ownership was settled. A jury found in favor of James Ash, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his petition.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (author of the Dred Scott decision) wrote a curious judgment in which he demonstrated, once again, his infamous disregard for the rights of enslaved people when in conflict with the rights of property. Taney wrote for the majority, “We think that the bequest in the will was a conditional limitation of freedom to the petitioner, and that it took effect the moment he was sold” to Williams. However, Taney added a caveat, that this condition had to have been met within the lifetime of Gerard T. Greenfield. Had Greenfield died without selling James Ash, the stipulation in the will would have been null, and Ash would have remained a slave for life, as the property of Greenfield’s heirs. The heirs, as a third party, could do what they wished with property they had inherited. Conditions placed upon one party did not pass to the next generation. Taney established a precedent of “a conditional limitation of freedom.”
Sumner and Andrew wrote to Neale for his legal opinion. “You believe the slave laws of Virginia will prove consistent with this precedent from Maryland?” Prue’s legal situation mirrored several key aspects of this case. Neale replied, “Yes, it is my opinion that Williams v. Ash will prevail, in part because I feel it precisely illustrates the bind we find ourselves in. We should assume that the limitation applies to Mr. Cornwell alone. Should he die before these proceedings are complete, that is, while he still owns Prue, the legal precedent would be for Prue and her children to remain enslaved to his heirs, without limitation, forever, after Mr. Cornwell’s life ends.”8
Given that John Cornwell was only a few years older than Senator Sumner, it seems noteworthy that they discussed John’s imminent death in such a matter-of-fact way. Poor health may have explained John Cornwell’s avarice as urgency.
Neale dodged the question of Cornwell’s health. “Evelina’s general health, on the other hand, is excellent. She is young, very smart, and intelligent, and it is said that she is an elegant, first rate seamstress.”
Was Neale selling Evelina to abolitionists? He let slip an affecting detail. He had noticed her hands, cramped and gnarled as if with age, when he met her in Brentsville. “They have become crippled. Such local afflictions are very common, with laboring people, and easily cured—they are produced by the sudden, and indiscreet, application, of extreme heat and cold—an especial plight among washerwomen. The proper application of a galvanic battery would, no doubt, restore the muscles of her hand to their original elasticity. Strange as you may think it, let her hands be cured, and she is worth, and would readily sell for $1000 cash, and her Mother, at least $300. Both of whom John proposes to free for $200. I am willing to extend a short credit, while the money is raised.”9
Neale aimed this last volley to arouse Sumner’s sympathies, but he needn’t have bothered. Andrew had already written the check.
Sumner wrote few parting words to the worthy opponent he had unexpectedly found in Judge Neale. “I will take the matter into consideration.”
Neale ignored the senator’s dismissal. “Those poor creatures ought not to be separated from Prue, for they are really trustworthy, and faithful, and under all the circumstances, she ought to be free.” He urged Sumner to act quickly: “Give me your note” for two hundred dollars, and he will “forthwith execute the deed of emancipation, and deliver it to you—that is—her owner shall.”
Neale made Sumner a promise, which he signed and underlined for effect: “We share the same object, sir. I have promised these people their freedom, and they shall have it.”
The next morning’s post brought Sumner another nudge to act quickly: a promissory note for $200 signed by John Andrew on January 31, to come due in ninety days. With Sumner’s endorsement, it would be considered as good as cash. And “in the meantime—having 90 days before us—we shall, I doubt not, be able to raise the necessary funds.” Andrew underlined the next sentence with a strong hand: “And, at all events, I will put you in funds, sufficient, before the lapse of the 90 days.” Confident that the money could be quickly raised, Andrew offered to be the guarantor on the loan, ready to “pay down the $200” from his personal account on sight. “I wish you would let me know as soon as may be, what Judge Neale says. We shall raise the $200 easily if need be, I have already $150 subscribed.”
Andrew’s generosity came with one stipulation: that “Pruey and Evelina immediately come to Boston.” To remain in Washington was to court detention as free people of color, and to be at the mercy of kidnappers and bondsmen, should John Cornwell’s credit come into question. Andrew insisted that these women must not remain in Washington, even if Neale accepted the ninety-day loan. Wait three months, and the whole process could be undone.
In the last line of his letter from January 31, he made clear his commitment to the family, closing, as Neale had the day before, “They must be free.”10
But Sumner sat on the promissory note for eighteen days. Both Andrew and Williams were “daily expecting to hear” from him “in regard to Evelina and the old Mother,” Andrew wrote Sumner, “You have never told me what the Judge has decided on.” Andrew wondered if the delay had to do with money and overstepped boundaries, so he sent his assurances by frequent post: “If need be, you can draw on me, at sight, for the $200, for their free papers, so as to let them come on with Elizabeth and the children, this week.” Andrew’s letters appeared to be written with increasing passion or haste. His handwriting became larger, the underlined words are more frequent, and his tone more forceful and effective.
Andrew offered nothing but solicitude for John Cornwell, who had endured a “painful and arduous” legal battle to maintain his property. Cornwell v. Weedon—resolved “in the Tribunal of last resort,” that is the Virginia Supreme Court—had lasted “as long as the siege of Troy—9 yrs”! Andrew felt that Cornwell had accepted this undertaking because he hoped “to maintain the will, for the good, certainly, in part, of the people in question.” When the case resolved in his favor, Cornwell assumed it would be for his own good as well. Andrew felt that the sum of one thousand dollars for Prue, Evelina, Elizabeth, and the children was fair “in view of his trouble.”11
This thousand dollars, paid to John Cornwell in January 1855 (approximately $27,000 in today’s dollars), was a windfall for a clerk at a hardware store. Sumner was right; Cornwell had been lucky to secure any price. He had not lived with Prue since they shared his grandmother’s roof thirty years earlier. He might have even welcomed release from the duty of supporting her into her old age.
Without any
fanfare, Sumner forwarded Andrew’s two-hundred-dollar banknote to Neale and received in receipt a final letter from the judge: “I am much gratified to find that Evelina, and her poor old Mother, have found such kind and liberal friends.”12 Neale left a door open to Sumner’s friendship: “It will give me, great pleasure to call on you, when the weather settles, and equally happy shall I be, to have you under our Roof, promising you, plain Virginia fare, and a cordial and affectionate welcome.” There is no evidence that Sumner took the judge up on his offer.
In the last week of February 1855, Evelina, twenty-nine, and her mother, Prue, sixty-four, were freed by John Cornwell’s signature.
More weeks passed without word from Sumner, and without the family’s expected reunion in Boston. Sumner’s letter to Andrew of January 30, three days after he met Elizabeth, is lost, but Andrew’s cautioning reply is not. Sumner indicated that he was in no rush to send the family on. Andrew responded, “I hope Elizabeth and all the family will leave much sooner than . . . indicated if possible.” Andrew underlined: “They must not be allowed to continue slaves.”13
It is unclear where the family stayed while in Washington. They had family, friends, and a former master nearby, but these people mostly lived in service to other families, so a party of six women and children would not have been welcomed. In one letter, Andrew asked Sumner to “send” an enclosed letter from Seth to Elizabeth, suggesting that they were not staying at Sumner’s residence on H Street: “I enclose a letter for Seth, which please send to Elizabeth. He wants her to write to him, and feels disappointed that she has not already done so, since her stay has been prolonged.”14
There is much discussion of payment of board, but to stay at a hotel unattended would have put the family at no small risk. The women and girls could pass for white, but Oscar could not, so their options were limited. They could not be seen out of doors after ten o’clock at night. All free persons of color were required to register, annually, in the district and to carry on their persons at all times “satisfactory evidence of their freedom.” A free person of color could be called upon at any time “to establish their title to freedom,” and if found without papers, they could be “committed to jail as absconding slaves.”15
Andrew did not receive a reply. Twice more he wrote to request that Elizabeth and the children make their way to Boston “immediately.”
The following Monday morning Sumner let Andrew know that the family was fine. Andrew replied that he was “much pleased” but added, “I hope to see Elizabeth and the children as soon as possible.” Though Andrew had never met the family before, he expressed personal satisfaction and a “natural” curiosity to meet the people who had been his concern for nearly four years.
Andrew’s curiosity was nothing compared to Williams’s yearning to see his family: “Seth awaits their arrival with the natural anxiety and impatience of a husband and father.” Andrew told Sumner that he had shared his letters with Williams, who enjoyed “your letter’s description of his children—he heard it with much delight.”
Why did Andrew feel the need to remind Sumner—who was never a father—of Williams’s emotional claim to Elizabeth, Oscar, Mary, and Adelaide? His daughters’ light skin color raised doubt about his paternity, notwithstanding his tireless efforts to recover all three of his children. Andrew took this opportunity to remind Sumner that Williams’s relationship to his wife and children was “natural”—in the context of the slave system—and that his anxiety and impatience to be reunited with them ought to be afforded respect.
Meanwhile, Sumner had decided that this family could stand as a compelling claim against race-based enslavement, as he intimated in his letter of January 29. Andrew reminded Sumner that Williams’s emotional claim on his family superseded Sumner’s political plans to exhibit them in Washington and elsewhere. It was difficult, after four years separation, to be expected to wait for a reunion that seemed so near.
Henry Williams was ready to take matters into his own hands if he did not see his family soon. Nearly every day in February, as he awaited news of his family’s arrival, he stopped in Andrew’s office on Court Square to solicit news. Every other day, Andrew passed those solicitations on to Sumner in Washington. Andrew repeatedly apologized for the favors he asked of Sumner, but his letters suggest no such timidity in Williams’s demands. Even when ventriloquized by his lawyer, as Williams was in these letters, his presence was commanding and sure: he wanted to hear from Sumner “at once,” he “reminded” Sumner of his failure to report on the entire family, and his word was his bond, as “friends here will take the word of Seth” as credit for hundreds of dollars.
According to Andrew, Williams “was intending, when we rec’d your letter, to leave for Washington himself, and accompany the family in person.” And why not? His own free papers were not in question. He could travel freely to Washington, and his wife could freely travel out. But his employer, George Young, had requested that Williams remain at his position until Young returned from a trip abroad. Williams would wait until Mr. Young returned.
Prue complicated the delay. Her three sons—Albert, Jesse, and Ludwell—remained enslaved to John Cornwell and hired out in Washington for the year 1855. Prue refused to leave Washington without them. Williams knew she meant what she said, and that her choice to remain behind might also be Elizabeth’s choice. So Williams applied the full force of his charisma toward securing the freedom of his brother-in-law, Ludwell. He expanded the scope of his efforts to include the emancipation of his wife’s entire family.
Andrew conveyed a message from Williams to Sumner: “Seth wishes me to remind you that we have never heard, whether Judge Neale has fixed on any terms in regard to Jesse, Albert, and Ludwell.—He is very desirous to get Ludwell—the youngest boy. And he wants to know, at once, if you can tell, what Sum will buy him. He thinks the money can be got from friends here who will take the word of Seth that he and Ludwell will earn and repay the amount.” Andrew added his endorsement, though he had never met Ludwell: “Ludwell can work out his freedom. Seth speaks of him with a good deal of affection and confidence in his character and capacity.”
Should Judge Neale or John Cornwell be “unreasonable with the three men—the sons of Pruey,” Andrew warned, they ought to drop the “confidence in this Judge and his client which I now feel” and initiate legal proceedings.
But Neale had already begun negotiations with Ludwell’s hiring manager, “a Washington Merchant,” to buy out the remaining nine months on his 1855 hire, offered in exchange for Ludwell’s immediate release. John Cornwell signed the free papers for $300, plus $10 for Neale’s expenses, “for preparing the deed, &etc. &etc.”
Please make the best bargain you can with the Judge; & I will pay $300—(to be in full for expenses if at all possible)—the very day I may be called upon. Of course, I should like to have the draft as long, as may be; but, I will consent that you should draw on anytime, however short—even three days, I will advance the money, myself if need be.
Thank you for your letter of March 1st, covering the information, on which my proposed action herein is based. The work is already commenced of raising the $300 for Ludwell. Have him on my heart a good deal—because I felt the pathos of Elizabeth’s letter to Seth, in which she speaks of her mother’s unhappiness at the thought idea of leaving her youngest born in slavery, and with the thought that she might see him no more.—He is the Benjamin of her flock. I rely on you to bring him with the rest of the family, when they come.—
Albert and Jesse have no need, I should think, to remain slaves. When John Cornwell dies they will be much harder to buy. Can’t they make any arrangement, which would secure to them freedom? Can we not aid them, in any way?
Yours Faithfully, J. A. Andrew
—John Andrew to Charles Sumner, March 3, 185516
Andrew and Williams seem unaware that Jesse Nelson had already initiated legal proceedings in an individual suit for his own freedom. Unwilling to wait any longer for the Virgi
nia Supreme Court or John Cornwell to do right by him, Jesse, at twenty-six, sought the freedom to work for his own compensation. In the six years since his stay in the Yellow House, he had been hired out to work for the profit of John Cornwell.
In his case, Jesse Nelson, nominally a “man of color,” sued John Cornwell for his freedom. The optics of this case are worth noting: to all appearances, Jesse Nelson’s freedom suit against John Cornwell featured a black defendant fighting for his right to the proceeds of a white man’s enslaved labor.
On March 18, 1854, Caty Appleby was called, once again, to Alexandria, to the office of Judge Neale, to serve as a witness for her nephew. Caty told the story of her visit to Bruin’s jail and the Yellow House a few years prior and its happy result. The Yellow House had closed in 1850, along with every slave jail in Washington. The Compromise of 1850 had ended slave trading on the “neutral ground” of Washington. That business had been flowing into Alexandria, making Joseph Bruin a very rich man.
After Caty related her testimony, Judge Neale asked her a leading question: “Is, or not, John Cornwell, the defendant in this cause related to Jesse and Albert, and if he is, what is the nature thereof?” The recorder of this testimony highlights this question, number seven, with a bracket.
Caty’s answer: “He is in no manner related to them, or either of them.” Now a woman in her sixties, she had testified more than a dozen times in thirty years on the subject of her mother’s slaves.
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