Taney declared it was not. The U.S. government did not need to respect the liberties of free black seamen, the attorney general wrote in a memo. In language foreshadowing his infamous Dred Scott decision twenty-five years later, Taney declared, “The African race in the United States even when free, are everywhere a degraded class, and exercise no political influence. The privileges they are allowed to enjoy are accorded to them as a matter of kindness and benevolence rather than of right.” South Carolina’s law was allowed to stand.
Taney also encouraged Jackson’s greatest political ambition: to destroy the power of the country’s largest private financial institution, the Bank of the United States. Based in Philadelphia and run by an overbearing financier named Nicholas Biddle, the bank had huge influence over the economy, financing between a quarter and a third of the nation’s business. As a western landowner, Jackson had grown up mistrusting eastern bankers, whose control of capital gave them inordinate influence over the frontier economy.
The bank’s charter, issued every five years by Congress, legally installed the bank as the depository institution for all the agencies of the U.S. government. The constant flow of tax and tariff revenues into the government accounts gave Biddle’s bank a remarkable measure of stability and liquidity, not to mention profitability. For many in the U.S. government, it was an acceptable arrangement. In May 1832, the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives approved the renewal of the bank’s charter.
Jackson asked his cabinet if he should sign the legislation into law. When Secretary of the Treasury Louis McLane equivocated, Taney replied with a closely argued twenty-six-page letter that bolstered Jackson’s prejudices. While the rest of the cabinet preferred to avoid a fight with the bank, Taney relished it. He followed up with another letter to Jackson—this one running to fifty-four pages—which urged the president to veto the charter. Taney’s detailed proposal for a new national banking system intrigued Jackson. Taney envisioned a collection of state banks—“judiciously selected, and arranged”—that would replace the U.S. Bank at the center of the financial system. Jackson approved the idea. His critics derided it, saying the state banks would be selected for political loyalty and become the docile “pets” of the administration.
Emboldened by Taney’s ideas, Jackson vetoed the legislation rechartering the bank in July 1832. Taney helped draft the president’s famous veto message, which justified a much more active use of executive power than any previous president. The bank charter veto proved a formative moment in the evolution of the American presidency, and Taney did much to make it happen.
In September 1833, Jackson adopted Taney’s new national banking plan. He had appointed a new treasury secretary, William Duane, and ordered him to remove the government deposits from the bank’s accounts. When Duane balked, Jackson dismissed him and replaced him with Taney, who immediately started moving the government’s accounts to the pet banks.
With the U.S. Bank’s profits threatened, Biddle started calling in loans. As debt-ridden businesses struggled to come up with hard currency to preserve their credit, the country was thrown into a financial panic. Biddle, in the words of a Taney biographer, made “the whole nation groan under the pressure.…For months there were the most fearful scenes of dismay and ruin when the paper currency was thus suddenly and violently contracted.…Property became unsellable. The price of produce and labor was reduced to the lowest point. Thousands and tens of thousands of laborers were thrown out of employment.” The bank panic of 1833, as it was dubbed, left the country destitute.
It also ruined the Bank of Maryland, a Baltimore institution that was controlled by Thomas Ellicott, an amoral Quaker businessman and close friend of Taney’s. Ellicott had been secretly speculating with bank funds and suffered massive losses. The bank’s account holders, many of them working people, lost their life savings. The Bank of Maryland’s failure, in turn, threatened a second bank controlled by Ellicott, the Union Bank, where Taney had served as a director. Taney, mortified that Ellicott’s irresponsible dealings might discredit his new national banking policy, quietly tapped Treasury Department accounts to make good on Ellicott’s losses. Taney, in the words of one economic historian, “knew he would have to bail him out or absorb a severe political setback.” In modern political parlance, the Union Bank was too big to fail.
The Bank War amounted to a personal power struggle between Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle. The imperious banker relished the disarray in the financial system and did not feel responsible for the suffering of those thrown out of work. He expected that desperate debtors would pressure the president to restore the bank’s charter, and they did. A delegation of leading businessmen called on Jackson to describe their plight. With no currency in circulation, businesses were failing, which meant people had no money to spend, which meant that ever more businesses were becoming insolvent. Jackson erupted. “Insolvent you say?” he barked at his visitors. “What do you come to me for then? Go to Nicholas Biddle. We have no money here, gentlemen. Biddle has all the money!” Jackson intended to prevail over Biddle even if it pained the workingman and the shopkeeper in the short term.
Biddle had misread the politics of the situation. In the spring of 1834, amidst the country’s worst economic contraction since 1819, Jackson won. The House of Representatives, swelled by the ranks of newly elected Jacksonian congressmen, voted against the renewal of the bank’s charter. It was a death blow to Biddle’s financial empire. Without the guaranteed government deposits, the U.S. Bank lost its competitive advantage and eventually went bankrupt. Biddle had been defeated. Thanks to Jackson and Taney, the country had entered into a new financial regime, more democratic and less stable.
In June 1834, Jackson felt confident enough to finally submit Taney’s formal nomination to be treasury secretary. Now it was Jackson’s turn to misread the politics. Taney’s too-cozy friendship with the now-notorious Ellicott still rankled leading newspaper editors. Biddle retained many allies in the upper chamber of the Congress. The Senate promptly rejected Taney, the first time in the history of the United States that a cabinet nomination had been turned down. Jackson had won the Bank War but lost the battle to keep Taney in the cabinet.
Taney and Key celebrated anyway. In August 1834, they attended a political picnic on the lawn of the Frederick County Courthouse attended by more than three thousand people. The crowd sat at tables spread with hams, joints of beef, chicken, jellies, vegetables, and sweets. As the guest of honor, Taney spoke first, taking credit for slaying the monster that was the U.S. Bank. Key was toasted as a friend of the administration, “worthy of being honored wherever genius is admired or liberty cherished, as the author of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”
Key took the podium. He flattered the hometown audience with nostalgia.
“Never even in my boyhood had I come within view of these mountains without having my warmest affections awakened at the sight.” He acknowledged the praise for his song and recalled the circumstances that impelled him to write it in September 1814. The people of Maryland inspired him, he said, a muse not previously disclosed.
“I saw the flag of my country waving over a city, the strength and pride of my native state.…” he declared. “I witnessed the preparations for its assaults. I saw the array of its enemies as they advanced to the attack.…Then did I remember that Maryland had called her sons to the defense of that flag.”
Key recalled another triumph, which he said was even more glorious: the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. There, he said, General Jackson had faced “the flower of the British army” and repelled them. “Yes, even now, when he has administered the Government with unparalleled wisdom and success, we are told he is a man of no learning, of no ability as a writer or a speaker.…Andrew Jackson was there. He made neither proclamation nor speech; but he put a tongue in the mouths of his artillery and bade them to speak to them. There was a speech to be had in everlasting remembrance.”
Key hailed this man of action who le
t his guns do the talking. To oppose Jackson was to abandon the country to the corrupting influence of the U.S. Bank, he said. At stake was the very soul of America as evoked in his “Star-Spangled Banner.” “If forgetful of her past,” he declared, “our country shall cease to be the land of the free and the home of the brave and become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and speculators.”
Key walked off to a chorus of cheering and whistling. The poet turned partisan had perfected a trope that would endure in American politics: To oppose the president was unpatriotic.
13
AS DISTRICT ATTORNEY for the City of Washington, Key had the mission of enforcing the laws of the slave system: to protect white men from the loss of their human property. He worked with the men of the grand jury to address the problem. The jurors, white men of diverse backgrounds, met daily on the second floor of City Hall, upstairs from Key’s office. In April 1833, the grand jury indicted John Prout, schoolteacher and colonization critic, for helping an enslaved man named Joe Dozier and his girlfriend escape to Baltimore. When Dozier was caught, Key charged Prout on two counts: for forging a pass describing Dozier as “a free person” and a “laborer,” and for enticing him to run away by arranging for another free black man, Abraham Johnson, to drive him north. Johnson was also charged with enticing a runaway.
At trial, a petit jury found Prout not guilty of forgery because the escape had not succeeded but convicted him of enticing and persuading. Johnson was also convicted. Both were fined fifty dollars. Key registered a victory for local slave masters when Prout left town.
Key stepped up his campaign against the city’s antislavery subversives in November 1833 when his constables caught a printer named William Greer reading an issue of Ben Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation in which the crusading editor declared, “There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district.”
Lundy reported a story well known among the free people of color. A group whom Lundy described as “people of quality” decided to throw a party for themselves. They applied to a constable for a permit; he wrote one and took payment for it. “The blacks assembled, under permission as they thought, enjoying themselves in a very orderly manner, when about 11 o’clock at night, fourteen constables surrounded the house armed with guns, pistols, and clubs.” The constables proceeded to rob the partygoers of all their money and watches. The next day they brought the colored men before a justice of the peace, where each was fined as much as he could pay, with the constables and the justice of the peace dividing the proceeds among themselves. Key’s constables, Lundy charged, amounted to little more than a gang of thieves whose “gross imposition and cruelty” were “practiced upon unoffending colored people with impunity.”
In the same issue Lundy reported another story perhaps even more damning to the district attorney. One day a “very decent, orderly looking” colored woman was crossing the Long Bridge into Washington when Constable Gilson Dove saw her. Dove tried to grab her, perhaps intending to take her to one of the Georgia pens where Negro families and laborers were sold to the South. The woman wrenched herself loose and ran across the bridge. Dove gave chase and when she had no way to escape, she fell into the river. She vanished beneath the Potomac’s waters.
“No fuss or stir was made about it,” Lundy noted. “She was got out of the river, and was buried, and there the matter ended.”
Lundy did not just report the story, the likes of which had been ignored before. He wrote that the Congress should act if District Attorney Key would not.
“It is the duty of Congress,” Lundy said, “to provide for the peace and good government of the district, and to protect the inhabitants from the depredations of unprincipled men invested with a little brief authority, by securing the just and equal administration of the laws. And if they fail to do this and permit such scenes to be acted with impunity … the guilt and ignominy will fall upon the whole nation.”
At his desk in City Hall, Mr. Key was furious. He decided that obnoxious line “There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district” constituted an insult to his associates that he could not ignore. The district attorney filed charges against both Lundy and his printer, Greer. In the handwritten indictment, Key declared Lundy’s article was intended “to injure, oppress, aggrieve & vilify the good name, fame, credit & reputation of the Magistrates & constables of Washington County.”
Lundy, aware the constables were looking for him, had already left town. Tired of the threats and confrontations endemic in Washington, he collected one last care package from his black friends. “The little pale thin man never departed empty-handed,” said Isaac Cary. Lundy relocated his one-man paper to Philadelphia, and Key had to content himself with prosecuting Greer. In his defense, the printer called two witnesses. One was Jacob Janney, the young Quaker who sold subscriptions to the Genius. The other was James Thompson, a boat captain who may have seen the drowning of the colored woman. Greer presumably wanted them to corroborate the truth of Lundy’s stories for the jurors.
As district attorney, Key called Gilson Dove and another constable, David Waters, as witnesses. Both men had been charged the year before with unspecified “illegal practices,” probably a reference to the kidnapping of free Negroes. Presumably Key wanted their testimony to prove Lundy’s article was libelous.
Both sides were heard in the City Hall courtroom, and the district attorney failed to convince. The jury found Greer not guilty. Already there were at least a dozen white people in Washington City who did not share Mr. Key’s vision of justice. There would be others.
PART III
ANNA AND ARTHUR
Anna Maria Thornton, a socialite and slave owner who lived on F Street, as depicted by Gilbert Stuart in 1804. (illustration credit p.3)
14
MRS. ANNA MARIA Thornton still missed William Thornton, her late husband, five years after his death. Anna and her aging mother, Ann Brodeau, and their various Negro servants lived in a fine three-story brick house on F Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, one of the city’s most prestigious addresses. F Street was a hard dirt thoroughfare that ran east-west atop a ridge that yielded a splendid view of the Potomac River. The residents were people of means. Anna’s friend, former president John Quincy Adams, and his wife, Louisa, lived next door. Anna and Dr. Thornton, as she still called him, had lived there for thirty-two years before his death on March 28, 1828. During their eventful and affectionate marriage, William Thornton had designed the U.S. Capitol, saved the Patent Office from British marauders in 1814, advocated for African colonization, and done many other wise and foolish deeds. The anniversary of their wedding (October 13, 1790) had once pleased her. Since his death, the anniversary of his passing always pained her.
At fifty-six years of age Anna Thornton still had some of the beauty of her youth, particularly the bright eyes and sharp features that painter Gilbert Stuart captured in a portrait in 1804. She played chess and the piano, read history and novels, and kept a detailed diary of her daily life. In matters of business, Anna was said to be the equal of a man, which was fortunate because Dr. Thornton’s passing left her in charge of his extensive household and his rather more extensive debts.
Anna knew Francis Scott Key well, regarding him as a gentleman and a friend. Key’s wife, Polly, was a cousin of her dear friend Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, and she occasionally called for a social visit. Mr. Key had been a friend of her late husband and represented him in one of the many lawsuits he provoked.
Anna did not know Beverly Snow, though she often rode by the Epicurean Eating House in her carriage. After dinner, she liked to take a ride, accompanied by her mother or a friend. Sometimes her driver, a Negro man in his forties named George Plant, drove her and the other passengers up Sixteenth Street to the heights of Kalorama. Other times, they proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue and out to the Long Bridge over the Potomac to enjoy the sights and the night air. On these evening tours, Anna almost always
passed the corner of Sixth and Pennsylvania, but it is unlikely she ever dined at Beverly Snow’s restaurant. Anna Thornton was no Epicurean.
Mrs. Thornton’s house on F Street was not sumptuous, but it had a distinguished air. The front parlor was adorned with Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of her and of her husband, a rocking chair, a bookcase, a glass bust of George Washington, and a tripod that the first president had given to Dr. Thornton. During the winter, Anna and her mother and their servant, a black woman in her thirties named Maria Bowen, slept in the back room, warmed by a fireplace. In the summer, the three women slept upstairs to catch the night breezes.
Anna Thornton was by no means wealthy. Thanks to her late husband, she owned property around Washington City from Rock Creek to the far end of Capitol Hill. But she no longer had his salary from the Patent Office. She tried to sell land to raise money, but few had reason to buy remote fields along the Eastern Branch. Even her lots on C Street near the Long Bridge did not attract much interest. Her expenses were not small. She owned a five-hundred-acre farm in Bethesda that produced potatoes and firewood but not much else. She also owned a country house up in Kalorama Heights that required maintenance.
It was Anna’s slaves, her property in people, that sustained her. She owned seven people, most of whom had worked for her for many years. She owned three men—Joe, Bill, and Archy—who took care of the Bethesda farm. Archy was the oldest and the most reliable. When he was not hauling supplies into town, Anna hired him out to work at a rock quarry. He blasted the rocks, and she received seven dollars a month for his labor.
Snow-Storm in August Page 9
