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

by Taylor, Alan

  Proud of their sacrifices in fighting the empire, the Virginians despised the many New Englanders who sympathized and traded with the enemy. Making much of their own honor, the Virginians denounced the Yankees as corrupted by greed. A Virginian boasted that the war would “prove to our Yankee brethren that Southern patriotism is not to be estimated by Dollars and Cents.” Rigorously blockaded by the British, the Virginians seethed when the enemy initially exempted the New Englanders, who profited by trading with the foe. Compelled to rally thousands of militiamen for service, the Virginians also resented that New England’s Federalist governors refused to mobilize their militia for federal service. Virginians blamed the American defeats in Canada on New England’s failure to assist the war effort. “If the New England men wou’d now do their duty, Canada to the works of Quebec wou’d be ours,” insisted Wilson Cary Nicholas. While the British spared New England from raids and invasion until 1814, when they seized eastern Maine, Virginia bore the brunt of British animus. Governor James Barbour claimed that the British targeted Virginia for destruction from “a deadly and implacable hate, the result of the magnanimous and distinguished part acted by Virginia in resisting at all times British aggressions.”8

  The Virginians regarded the New England Federalists as insidious traitors. St. George Tucker concluded that the Yankees were “determined to rule or to dissolve the union.” Britain “is promised civil war by our Northern Traitors,” agreed Dr. Philip Barraud. A Virginia veteran of the revolution, Colonel John Minor, recalled, “It was my lot . . . in the last war to see in the Southern States the Horrors of a Civil War, at the recollection of which I now shudder and feel an indignation against those bad men, who by attempting to divide the nation, threaten us with a Civil War.”9

  By fighting the British, the Virginians meant to vindicate their military prowess and save the republic. Barbour vowed to defend “the ark of our political salvation—the Union of these States” from “all the horrors of civil war.” John Campbell assured the Yankees, “If you raise the standard of rebellion, your green fields will be wash’d with the blood of your people and your country laid desolate by the flames of civil discord! If you attempt to pull down the pillars of the Republic, you shall be crush’d into atoms.” In late 1814, Thomas Jefferson predicted that Virginians would rather fight New Englanders than the British: “we can get ten men to go to Massachusetts for one who will go to Canada.” During the War of 1812, Virginians opposed secession, in contrast to the stand they would take fifty years later.10

  The Virginia officers in the national army worked up a great dislike for their northern colleagues as inept, corrupt, and sorely lacking in southern honor. Colonel S. B. Archer declared, “I have my doubts whether even now the Northern and Eastern section of this Country are not too far gone in depravity ever by themselves to be regenerated.” After denouncing one cowardly scoundrel, Colonel Isaac A. Coles noted, “I need not tell you that this man was not a Virginian.” Returning home from national service, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker assured his father, “I have come back into old Virginia, more of a Virginian than ever, and as to Messrs. the Yankees, I love them not.”11

  In early 1813, James Madison appointed an ambitious New Yorker, John Armstrong, as the secretary of war. Armstrong quickly offended the army’s southern officers, who felt slighted and passed over for promotion in favor of northern men. Southerners suspected that Armstrong used patronage to build a political following that could elevate him to the presidency in 1816 at the expense of his great rival, James Monroe of Virginia. Southern officers felt especially miffed when the northern politicians William Duane and Jacob Brown gained powerful roles in Armstrong’s army. Several Virginia officers resigned in a huff, denouncing Armstrong as “an unfeeling & unprincipled Scoundrel.” Brigadier General Thomas Parker explained that he would never “Submit to the degradation of being Commanded by Mr. Brown.”12

  Armstrong also offended Virginia’s leaders by failing to repair and garrison Fort Powhatan, which guarded the approach to Richmond via the James River. Located at Hood’s Point on a high bluff thirty-five miles south of the city, the fort could block the ascent of British barges. But the secretary of war delayed for months any reply to Governor Barbour’s urgent request to rebuild the fort. Then Armstrong unwittingly added insult to injury by forwarding a discouraging report by Colonel John Swift, a military engineer, who declared the fort “worthless” for “any other purpose than that of affording a point of security to the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Fort in case of the insurrection of negroes.”13

  In private appeals to their state government, Virginians obsessed about an impending slave revolt. Indeed, Armstrong and Swift were far less explicit than the Richmond Committee of Vigilance, chaired by the mayor, which privately warned the state government that if the British captured the fort, “A Saint Domingo Scene will be exhibited.” But Virginians felt insulted when a northerner made the same point in a public and official statement, for they had grown especially sensitive to northern charges that slavery weakened the South’s capacity for self-defense. When the nation failed to protect Virginia against British raids during the war, the state leaders felt doubly offended by any suggestion of southern weakness and dependence on the North. Worse still, the legislators considered Armstrong’s letter and Swift’s report at the same time that they heard, in February 1814, that the War Department balked at compensating the state for the heavy costs of the militia force posted at Norfolk.14

  In a pointed retort, the House of Delegates insisted that Virginia had long defended the nation and “has never found it necessary to call on the U[nited] States to secure her repose against an interior enemy nor does she at present urge any such claim for protection.” Joseph C. Cabell, a state senator, explained, “The style of Genl. Armstrong’s & Col. Swift’s letters have given offence to all parties here . . . and that, as they had not been consulted as to the utility of Fort Powhatan as a position of defence against an insurrection of slaves, they might have abstained from any intimations of a nature calculated to wound the feelings & degrade the character of the state.” The episode shook the confidence of Virginia’s leaders in the president for retaining the despised Armstrong as a counterweight to Monroe in the cabinet. Cabell attested that Barbour felt “treated with great neglect if not contempt by the Secretary of War.”15

  Nationalisms

  During the crisis of 1814, Virginia’s leaders rallied men to defend the state rather than the nation, appealing to their pride as Virginians rather than to their patriotism as Americans. Noting the nation’s failure to defend the state, the Richmond Enquirer exhorted:

  Virginians! Brave Virginians! You have every motive to rouse you. Remember Hampton! Remember the Northern Neck! Call to mind the wrongs you have suffered, the slanders which have been heaped upon you by the mercenary prints of the enemy! . . . Virginia is now thrown upon her own resources. Her sons must show that they are equal to her defence. The eyes of the Union are upon us: shall we draw upon us their scorn? The bones of our fathers sleep in our soil; shall we suffer a foreign enemy to trample on them?

  Knowing his readers well, the author cited only atrocities and insults directed against Virginians, and he invoked the Union only as an external audience eager to scorn them.16

  In 1788 Virginia had narrowly and reluctantly ratified the Federal Constitution in response to Madison’s hopeful promise that a stronger union would amplify the state’s power on a continental scale. The War of 1812 put that promise to the test, and Virginians concluded that the nation had failed them by neglecting their defense and insulting them with Armstrong’s response regarding Fort Powhatan. The nation also proved impotent to compel cooperation from the New England states, which escaped the brunt of a war borne by Virginia. In addition, the Madison administration sought to buy northern support by reserving key positions in the War Department and the army for men of suspect principles and abilities.

  If the Union could not fulfill Madison’s promise to Virgin
ia with Madison as president, what could the state expect from a northern leader in the future? The hated Armstrong crashed and burned politically in August 1814, when he became the scapegoat for the British capture of the capital, but perhaps some other New Yorker—DeWitt Clinton or Daniel D. Tompkins—might succeed in building a national coalition to govern the nation without Virginia. While Virginians began the war as champions of the Union, they ended it with powerful new doubts. Feeling betrayed for their wartime nationalism, the Virginians sought support from the other southern states against the distrusted northerners, who seemed poised to seize control of the Union. The South began to become Virginia’s nation during the War of 1812, but this was a slow process that did not fully mature until the secession of 1861.17

  Historians often note the surge in American nationalism that immediately followed the War of 1812. As never before, newspapers and orators celebrated patriotism, while displays of the flag and the eagle proliferated in engravings, paintings, and taverns. But that effusive nationalism was, ironically, highly sectional: strongest in the Middle Atlantic and western states and weaker in Virginia and other southern states. In fact, the war generated competing nationalisms, for the southern states developed a far stronger bond and shared identity with one another. As a consequence of the war, southerners felt suspicious of the Middle Atlantic version of patriotism, which we often mistake for the sentiment of the entire nation. Rather than promoting a unifying nationalism, the experiences of war bred distinct regional variants.18

  At war’s end in early 1815, Virginians exulted in Andrew Jackson’s great victory at New Orleans as a vindication of the South rather than of the nation. As a Tennessee slaveholder and Anglophobe, Jackson appealed to the South far more than did any northern-born commander. The Norfolk doctor Philip Barraud assured St. George Tucker that Jackson’s triumph

  established the claims & reputation of the Southern portion of this Empire. The people of the East shall hence forth no longer dare to charge on this section of the States the foul calumny of seeking wars without the spirit to maintain them with valor or with their Blood. . . . It fixes the power & ability of these states to protect their Firesides & to punish their Enemies without Yankee aid. . . . It teaches England that we are not weak, altho we have Slaves & rich Lands. It establishes beyond all doubt that the South is the soil for Generous, Loyal & valorous men.

  By contrast, Barraud recalled “the never-to-be-forgotten turpitude & traitorous conduct of the Eastern portion of our Nation.” Tucker agreed that the “Explosion of Joy for Jackson’s Victory” exceeded anything he had ever experienced in Virginia.19

  To celebrate the peace, Richmond staged a grand illumination with candles in the windows, bonfires on the hills, rockets in the air, and patriotic paintings on the public buildings. Everywhere Jackson’s image stole the show. “The favorite figures of the evening were ‘Jackson’ and ‘Peace,’” reported the Richmond Enquirer. The “Wax-work Museum” displayed “a transparent scroll with the name of Jackson,” while the state capitol presented “a large transparent painting” featuring “a triumphal crown surrounded by Cornucopias and encircling the name of ‘Jackson’ with that never-dying day, ‘The 8th of January 1815.’” Next to Jackson, the displays honored the leading Virginians, Madison and Monroe, with a couple of naval heroes thrown in—but it was revealing that no generals from the North appeared. Of course, northerners also claimed Jackson for their nationalism, but they linked him with their own heroes in a bigger cast, while Virginians detached and elevated Jackson as the one great champion of southern nationalism.20

  In addition to its geopolitical significance in discouraging the British from again waging war in North America, the Battle of New Orleans reshaped America’s political culture. Southerners interpreted the battle as proof of their superior honor and fighting ability in stark contrast to the selfish and corrupt northerners. By claiming martial superiority, southerners refuted northerners who charged that slavery rendered their region weak and dependent on the North. After the war, when some Virginians proposed establishing a national committee to raise subscriptions to aid the families of dead or disabled militiamen, St. George Tucker responded, “We are not enough one nation for such a plan to succeed.” He expected that only state initiatives could raise the funds.21

  Colonization

  The War of 1812 gave Virginians a great scare, revealing the military potential of black troops deployed against them. Long a specter, the internal enemy had become real in the red coats of British troops rather than as the anticipated murderous massacre at midnight. But the Virginians persuaded themselves that the black troops had brought their state to the verge of a “Saint Domingo Scene.”

  Fears of insurrection surged in February 1816, when the magistrates in the Piedmont counties of Spotsylvania and Louisa discovered a plot organized by George Boxley. A storekeeper, farmer, and militia officer, Boxley owned a few slaves, which made him an unusual leader for a slave uprising. But he became embittered after the leading men of Spotsylvania blocked his ambitions to gain promotion in the militia and win a seat in the legislature. Frustrated by his wartime militia service at Norfolk, Boxley longed to smite Virginia’s leaders on behalf of a just and vengeful God. Addressing slaves at his store, Boxley declared that God had charged him “with the holy purpose of delivering his fellow creatures from bondage; that a little white bird had perched upon his shoulder and revealed it to him.” He recruited about thirty young men for a plot to steal arms and horses for a mass escape (after robbing the Fredericksburg banks) northward to a free state. A local writer noted, “The negroes were mostly actuated by an irresistible idea of freedom.”22

  In late February, however, an anxious female slave tipped off the magistrates, who began to make arrests and increase slave patrols. Driven to act prematurely, Boxley could rally only about a dozen followers, and they quickly lost confidence in the scheme and slipped home to resume their slavery. Although the plot collapsed far short of any violent acts, the terrified magistrates arrested, tried, and convicted eleven slaves, sending five to the gallows and six into exile by sale and transportation. Convicting Boxley proved harder because all of the witnesses to his treason were black and therefore barred by Virginia law from testifying against a white man. Uncertain what to do with Boxley, the authorities kept him in jail until May 14, when he escaped after breaking his irons and cutting a passage through the ceiling of his cell. His visiting wife had smuggled in a file, perhaps with the complicity of the jailer. Suspicions arose that some powerful local people wanted Boxley gone rather than risk an embarrassing trial that would acquit for lack of evidence. He fled north, eventually settling in Indiana, where he became a prominent preacher and radical abolitionist. He left behind a Virginia more troubled than ever by its growing black population.23

  Once again, Virginians blamed free blacks for resistance among the slaves. In an 1817 petition to the state legislature, the citizens in Isle of Wight County argued that free blacks tended “to promote insubordination & a spirit of disobedience among the slaves, & finally to lead to insurrection & blood.” In fact, during the war, while hundreds of slaves fled to the British, almost all the free blacks had remained loyal to Virginia. But they made tempting scapegoats because getting rid of them would deprive no white man of his property. By reiterating that their greatest danger came from free blacks, Virginians ensured that they would lament but never end slavery.24

  Although still modest in number (30,570 in 1810), the state’s free black population was growing at a faster rate (22 percent from 1810 to 1820) than either the free white (9 percent over that decade) or the slave populations (11 percent). Because the state barred the import of slaves or the advent of free blacks, the growth in the black population derived entirely from their natural increase. By comparison, Virginia’s white population grew more slowly because diminished by outmigration to the southern and western frontiers during the 1810s. Poor whites without slaves dominated that free migration, so their departure
tended to reduce the white proportion of Virginia’s population. At the same time, masters did sell thousands of slaves to the Deep South. During the 1810s, that coerced migration cut the growth in the slave population to half that of the free blacks in Virginia. Reluctant to move elsewhere because other family members remained enslaved nearby, free blacks proved the most loyal to Virginia as measured by persistence. White Virginians, however, felt threatened by that persistence.25

  To reduce the black population, many Virginians promoted the postwar African colonization movement. A prominent Virginia politician, Charles Fenton Mercer, took the lead after finding inspiration in his discovery of the previous effort, in the wake of Gabriel’s rebellion, by the state government to seek a foreign colony for free blacks and perhaps emancipated slaves. In 1801–1802, Governor Monroe and President Jefferson had tried but failed to find an overseas haven. In 1816, however, Mercer felt a new urgency and sensed a new opportunity. The urgency came from the threats of violent upheaval demonstrated by the British invasion, the Colonial Marines, and Boxley’s plot. The opportunity came from the postwar burst of enthusiasm for ambitious new measures to improve the republic. In December 1816 in Washington, D.C., Mercer assembled elite men to organize a national society to promote African colonization. Drawn from both the North and the upper South, and from both political parties, the founders included such prominent Virginians as James Madison, John Marshall, James Monroe, John Randolph, John Tyler, and Bushrod Washington (a Supreme Court justice and the nephew of the late president).26