The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

by Taylor, Alan

  Hard times on the farm and in the militia sapped the willingness to serve. In August, Randolph reported that “a late requisition of militia for Norfolk carries dismay and grief into the bosoms of many families in this country. . . . This is our court day, when the conscripts are to report themselves, and I purposely abstain from the sight of wretchedness that I cannot relieve.” A rural veteran of the revolution declared, “I never saw men brought to this extremity before.” He concluded, “Men thinks hard of their government and are not willing to serve their Cuntrey.” One officer wryly noted the rampant ailments cited by men to seek exemption from serving: “I had not the most distant idea that there was half as many dislocated limbs, broken bones, sore shins, ruptures, pulmonary complaints, asthmatic, and rheumatic afflictions as are made known when men are called to the list.” Some men simply refused to appear at the musters convened for a draft. Governor Nicholas lamented, “More patriotism or public spirit I fear are not to be counted upon.”11

  Defeatism spread among the militia officers and state officials. Unless the men received tax relief, St. George Tucker expected “Sedition or Revolt.” In September the commander in Accomack County warned that without pay and food for the suffering militiamen, “we must give up the show of resistance and submit to the mercy of a merciless Enemy.” In late November the commander in Middlesex County told the governor that without increased aid, “I will agree to become a Vassal” to the British. Another militia officer, Henry St. George Tucker, urged his father to remove into the interior because neither the state nor the nation could protect the Tidewater from a British invasion during the next year: “The prospects of the Country are melancholy beyond all former Example—a divided people—a feeble Congress—and an administration of very little efficiency! . . . If the war should not speedily be terminated, the Vandals of Great Britain will next Summer burn our seaports and ravage our coasts with almost unresisted fury.” In December, John Campbell of the Council of State predicted, “If the war continues . . . we shall be beaten, disgraced, massacred, and burnt up again.”12

  The Republicans had declared the war to vindicate the republican form of government by proving that it could rally the people to defeat the empire. Instead, repeated defeats, mounting taxes, and internal discontent cast doubt on the republic and its union of states. Campbell confessed to his brother, “I begin to think James that the national character of this Republic is to be sunk, woefully sunk, by this war instead of being elevated.” After listening to the “babbling fools” in Congress, his brother David despaired: “I can literally say that the nation is ruled by fools and the administration opposed by knaves.” In late August the loss and partial burning of Washington and the capitulation of Alexandria deepened the widespread gloom in Virginia. “You, no doubt, have heard of the disgraceful disasters that have overwhelmed our Country,” John Minor wrote to Jefferson. Decrying “the vanity & short-sightedness that forms our American Character & fashions all our Councils,” Walter Jones insisted that the conflict had delivered “many damning proofs of the Imbecillity of our form of Government & its peculiar unfitness for war.”13

  In late 1814 the federal government teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. In December the new secretary of the Treasury, Alexander J. Dallas, grimly reported that to fund the war for another year the government needed $56 million: three times the national revenue. Only loans could bridge the gap, but investors had lost confidence in the administration because the war seemed futile and endless. Deprived of cash, the nation’s banking system verged on collapse, and a belated effort to create a new national bank crumbled as the administration bickered with Congress. Without funds the government could not offer the bounties needed to recruit soldiers for a renewed military campaign in the spring. In early January, despair gripped the Madison administration when a gloomy rumor insisted that peace negotiations with the British had broken down. Visiting the capital, Edward Ross reported that “disappointment was visible in every face present. . . . Mr. Dallas declared, at the impulse of the moment, to all present, that he had flattered himself with a peace . . . but that now he gave up the Country for utterly lost.”14

  The Union seemed on the verge of collapse as the Federalists in New England flirted with secession, which would then provoke a civil war. In late 1814 delegates from most of the New England states held a convention in Hartford to discuss secession, alarming the Virginians as the “climax [to] a ruinous & disastrous war.” In November, Samuel Hopkins wrote from Washington, “Something must be done & quickly, or the ship will Sink.” At the start of 1815 the Richmond Enquirer described a nation dissolving under the pressures of war:

  In the Northern and Eastern states, rebellion and civil war stare you in the face. The people generally are losing confidence in the energy of the government. They are suffering, they are bleeding under the pressure and calamities of war. The militia dragged suddenly into service, without preparation; unaccustomed to the hardships of the camp, pining after their homes and their families, are dying by hundreds with disease. On the Atlantic frontier, the enemy are making inroads into our country, conflagrating our towns, villages and hamlets—plundering our people.

  The Virginia adjutant general, Claiborne W. Gooch, predicted that without a miracle, “This union is inevitably dissolved.”15

  Desperate Measures

  In January 1815, in an act of desperation, the Virginia state legislature revived the state regular defense corps that it had considered, but rejected, two years before. The legislators proposed to conscript 10,000 men to serve within the state. In 1813 the federal government had nixed proposed state armies on constitutional grounds, and the government of Virginia had given way. In early 1815, however, the hard-pressed Madison administration set aside its scruples and invited the coastal states to recruit their own regulars for local defense. Madison and Monroe could hardly say no to Virginia, which had advanced loans, derived from state banks, to save the nation from bankruptcy.16

  In a second measure of desperation, in late 1814 some Virginians broached the previously unthinkable: the enlistment of black troops. During the similar crisis of the American Revolution, Virginians had armed and freed five hundred blacks for their able service. Thereafter, however, the state’s leaders denied that blacks had fought for American independence and insisted that white men would never serve beside them. Masters argued that blacks were too cowardly to fight, although they also dreaded their slaves as a formidable internal enemy: living with slavery required such contradictions of belief. George Tucker (St. George’s cousin) owned slaves but knew better than to question their courage. He recalled “a thousand instances” where slaves “stormed dangers and difficulties, while their cowardly masters have fallen back, or fainted before the breach.”17

  During the war alarm of 1807, the Federalist former governor Henry Lee had urged a Republican successor, William H. Cabell, to enlist free blacks. Appealing to fear rather than empathy, Lee reasoned that sending free blacks to fight the British in Canada would reduce the danger of insurrection at home: “You deprive the slaves of intelligence, of advisers, and of leaders. You kill the blacks as well as the white in battle, and thus hold up in a degree the present proportion between the two classes.” But Governor Cabell rejected Lee’s proposal. A newspaper essayist frankly explained, “We are conscious of treating them with injustice, and we dread the consequences of letting them acquire any knowledge or power whereby they might be enabled to retaliate for the wrongs with which we oppress them.”18

  During the War of 1812, that fear of armed blacks hampered an American army that desperately needed more troops. In 1810 the republic had about 240,000 enslaved and 36,000 free black men of military age, but the Madison administration barred them all from serving. Some desperate recruiting officers overlooked the restriction to enlist a few mixed-race men. One of them, William Williams, died defending Fort McHenry at Baltimore, and his officers belatedly discovered that he was, in fact, a runaway slave.19

  Because so
many merchant marine sailors were black, the government did accept them into the navy but never as officers. At Norfolk, men of color dominated the gunboat crews, and the best American force in the Chesapeake, Joshua Barney’s flotilla men, included many free blacks and some hired slaves. Just before the battle at Bladensburg, President Madison asked Barney if the “negroes would not run at the approach of the British.” Barney replied, “No sir, they don’t know how to run; they will die by their guns.” And so they did, while Madison and the white militia fled for their lives. To deny the military ability of blacks, Virginians had to overlook those who fought so ably in the naval units posted in the Chesapeake.20

  During the war, Irish American leaders in Philadelphia and New York challenged the restriction on black troops. These leaders sought reinforcements to ease the burden borne by the many Irish immigrants serving in the beleaguered American army. The secretary of war, John Armstrong, also denounced the restriction on black troops: “We must get over this nonsense . . . if we mean to be what we ought to be.” Armstrong, however, faced formidable opposition from southern Republicans, including Madison, who blanched at the idea of arming free blacks, considering it the slippery slope to slave revolts. And in September 1814, Madison sacked Armstrong in favor of his great rival in the cabinet, James Monroe of Virginia.21

  Monroe reconsidered the ban on black troops in late 1814, after Congress rejected his proposal to conscript white men. Without enough troops to carry on the war, Monroe accepted New York’s plan to raise two regiments of blacks for service within that state. In November 1814 the official newspaper of the administration, the National Intelligencer, published two essays promoting free black troops, in an apparent bid to soften southern opposition in Congress. Committed to Monroe’s political fortunes, that newspaper would never have promoted black troops without his tacit support.22

  Published on November 11, the first essay proposed a radical plan to hire slaves as troops by giving their bounty and pay to their masters, with freedom and land awarded to the recruits who honorably served and survived the war. The author insisted that by enlisting a quarter of their slaves, Americans could repel the British attempt to free them all. “Experience has proven that blacks thus organized make as good soldiers as European troops,” he declared. While floating this essay as a trial balloon, the paper’s editor also expressed doubts: “Such a project would be very obnoxious to the Southern states, and we may safely venture to say will never be put in execution.” Then why print it?23

  The editor probably sought to prepare public opinion to accept a more moderate proposal to recruit free blacks. Two weeks later an anonymous Virginian wrote: “It is a fact, well ascertained, that no men make better sailors than the blacks, and that they would make equally good soldiers, can hardly be doubted.” While praising their strength, hardiness, and courage, the author also emphasized “their habits of submission, [and] the ease with which they can be made to submit to any kind of discipline.” In a further appeal to white prejudices, the author insisted that most free blacks were lazy “wretches” who set bad examples to the slaves and bred faster than whites. Unfit for civilian life, they belonged in the army, and once enlisted “a very small proportion of them would ever return to the places of their original residence. Many would be destroyed by the casualties of war,” while the survivors would settle, at war’s end, on western bounty lands. Although the war ended before anything came of this proposal, it attested to the dire state of the white man’s republic in late 1814.24

  Cumberland Island

  By year’s end, the Virginians got a respite when the British withdrew most of their warships from the Chesapeake. In mid-September, Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn departed for the West Indies and Bermuda to prepare for a winter campaign against New Orleans and Georgia. A month later, more ships left with Sir Pulteney Malcolm and still more in mid-December, after Captain Robert Barrie wrapped up his “shooting party” on the Rappahannock. One of Barrie’s transports, the Regulus, carried away most of the Colonial Marines, and some of their women and children, for service in the Deep South. The British left behind a small squadron of five frigates and three lesser vessels under the command of Captain John Clavell. Preoccupied with blockading the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, Clavell rarely raided the shores of Virginia and Maryland. At last, most of the drafted militia could go home, but they expected the British to return in greater numbers and with a vengeance in the spring.25

  Meanwhile, at Jamaica in the West Indies, Cochrane assembled the primary fleet, reinforced by troops from Europe, for an attack against New Orleans. Near the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans controlled the trade of the great American heartland: the vast watershed between the Appalachian Mountains, on the east, and the Rocky Mountains, to the west. By capturing New Orleans, the British could deepen the economic chaos in the United States and either provoke western secession or dictate harsh peace terms to the American government. Cochrane predicted, “The capture of New Orleans will be the severest blow America can meet with.”26

  As a diversion to preoccupy American forces in the Southeast, Cochrane directed Cockburn to lead a smaller force from Bermuda to attack and occupy the Sea Islands of Georgia. For this operation, Cockburn had two battalions of marines, including 365 Colonial Marines, and two companies from the Second West India Regiment, a black corps based in the Bahamas. In a great nightmare for the Georgia planters, black troops comprised most of Cockburn’s land force. He hoped also to draw reinforcements from nearby Florida; Creek Indian allies and a black marine corps led by Major Edward Nicolls. In August 1814, Cochrane had sent Nicolls to the Gulf Coast to rally the Creeks and entice runaway slaves from the Georgia frontier.27

  On January 10, Captain Philip Somerville led the advance squadron of the British expedition to Cumberland Island, a Sea Island near the border with Spanish East Florida. Landing without opposition, the British made their base at the island’s southern tip, which offered a good anchorage for many ships. They commandeered “Dungeness,” a plantation where a four-story mansion overlooked groves of lemon and orange trees, fields of cotton and corn, herds of cattle, and scores of slaves.28

  At dawn on January 13, Captain Barrie commanded when the British crossed over to the mainland to strike the American fort at Point Peter on the St. Marys River. Marching through a dense forest to the fort, the black troops fell into an ambush, but they quickly routed the American riflemen. A British officer reported, “Blacky, on the impulse of the moment, left the ranks and pursued them into the woods, fighting like heroes.” He added, “Blacky had no idea of giving quarters, and it was with difficulty the officers prevented their putting the prisoners to death.” After capturing the abandoned fort, the invaders pressed into the undefended town of St. Marys, where they plundered homes and stores, taking away their loot in captured merchant ships. On January 23, after the arrival of Cockburn to assume command, the British evacuated the town and blew up the fort.29

  Panic spread among the coastal planters, who feared a bloody slave rebellion and a British advance to attack Savannah, the state’s premier city and seaport. According to Governor Peter Early, Georgia faced “insurrection on one side, and Indian massacre on the other,” for he especially dreaded that the “enemy have black troops with them.” Hastening to the coast with 800 militiamen, General David Blackshear was slowed “by the multitude of wagons flying from the horrors of invasion and insurrection.”30

  Cockburn longed to attack Savannah, but he had to wait for the arrival of Major Nicolls from Florida. Nicolls, however, had gone westward to support the British attack on New Orleans, where the redcoats suffered a crushing defeat that also put a damper on Cockburn’s ambitions. From his headquarters on Cumberland Island, Cockburn settled for raiding the other Sea Islands, seeking cotton to plunder and slaves to liberate. Because few whites lived on the islands, they offered little resistance to the British raids.31

  Some runaways came away in stolen boats and canoes, while many more joined raid
ing parties that reached their plantations. Often, as in the Chesapeake, the British first induced the slaves to help them kill the master’s cattle and plunder his larder for a feast. Then the officers warned that they had better leave rather than risk the whip or the gallows from masters angered over the loss of their livestock and liquor. The British also painted a bright future of freedom and land for those who came with them. Most persuasive of all was the conspicuous appearance of the uniformed and armed Colonial Marines, who displayed the trust and good treatment afforded by the British.32

  Rather than fault slavery or themselves, the Sea Island masters blamed the flight on seductive lies allegedly told by the British. According to Roswell King, the British assured slaves that they would go to hell if they died in bondage, so they had better save their souls by seeking freedom. Another Georgian implausibly reported that the British assured female slaves “that the Queen of England was a Negro Woman” and that British gentlemen preferred “Negro Women as wives,” so they “would for the rest of their lives, be maintained in affluence, without labor, having servants, horses & carriages kept for their use.”33

  On St. Simons Island, King managed Pierce Butler’s plantation which lost 138 slaves to the British. He warned the slaves not “to leave their comfortable homes and go into a strange country where they would be separated, and probably not half live the year out.” But he noted the power of family ties and the influence of the boldest who first cast their lot with the British: “some said they must follow their daughters, others their wives.” Far from being separated, they sought to remain united by leaving together. King angrily concluded, “I found my reasoning had no effect on a set of stupid negroes, half intoxicated with liquor and nothing to do but think [that] their happy days had come.” However, he conceded that “they appeared sorry, solemn, and often crying” as they weighed a decision that would shape the rest of their lives.34