A crowd of people had gathered on F Street. Neighbors entered the house cautiously, calling out to Mrs. Thornton, inquiring after her safety. Then two constables arrived. One of them was Madison Jeffers, a longtime constable and slave trader who was especially worried about the prospect of a slave rebellion. Jeffers went to the still-locked back door and addressed it on the assumption Arthur was outside. They were going to arrest him, Jeffers yelled. Silence.
Jeffers pushed the door open and the men peered out into the back area. Nothing moved in the blackness of the garden. Someone pointed at his feet. There was a wooden scrub brush on the porch, the implement that Arthur had used to pound on the door. Arthur was gone and the alley was silent. Anna felt a sense of dread and knew the feeling must be worse for Maria Bowen. Her son’s life was forfeit. He would soon be hanged, shot like a dog, or in some manner struck down.
The men in the room had a different thought, and they didn’t have to say the words: Runaway nigger with an axe.
24
A DREADFUL NIGHT was last night—never to be forgotten,” Anna wrote in her diary the following day. She was sitting at the writing desk in the parlor. The weather outside was cloudy and cool with rain. She dipped her pen in the black ink.
“Arthur entered the room at ½ after one o’clock with an axe, with the intention we suppose to murder us. His mother (Maria) sleeping in the rooms with us, & being fortunately awake, seized him & got him out, while I ran next door to alarm Dr. Huntt & got help—Oh what a horrid night.”
Anna did not leave the house all day, declining an invitation to attend a musical party in Kalorama. “I have not spirits for such parties now,” she said. Maria Bowen was even more miserable. Anna was grateful to her for shoving Arthur out of the room. At the same time, she pitied her for her child’s fate. Anna asked Maria if she could find out where Arthur had gone.
“It could save his life,” she said.
Maria knew something of Arthur’s favorite haunts: the racetrack, the billiards room, the talking society. She probably knew John Cook, or knew of him. The Union Seminary schoolhouse was located just two blocks away. Heeding Anna’s advice, Maria set out to find her son.
To Anna’s way of thinking they had to sell Arthur as soon as possible to someone who would take him far away. She had never intended to sell him, but now she had no choice. Bayard Smith, the twenty-five-year-old son of her friend Margaret Smith, stopped by the house and agreed to help. A graduate of Princeton who was friendly with Arthur, Bayard came to sleep at the house to make everyone feel safer. He said he would look for “a Negro buyer”—polite society’s term for a slave trader—who might be willing to cooperate in whisking Arthur away for a price.
The story of Arthur’s intrusion spread quickly thanks to Madison Jeffers and Dr. Huntt and took on lurid overtones as it was repeated. A black slave. A white woman. An axe. In the offices of the Intelligencer at Ninth and E streets, editors Seaton and Gales thought it best that they not report the matter, lest it encourage other mischief among the blacks. When Thursday morning brought no sign or word of Arthur, Anna wrote out an advertisement and sent George to take it over to the Intelligencer. The ad appeared in Friday’s paper.
$100 REWARD
Ran away from the subscriber on the night 4th instant, her mulatto boy named John Arthur Bowen, aged about nineteen years. He is about five feet nine or ten inches high, straight and well made; one side of his face is scarred by recent blisters, and the mark of a wound on the back of one hand. He has a bushy head of hair, and speaks civilly and softly in general. He went off without shoes, hat, or jacket. The above reward will be given for his apprehension out of the District of Columbia and delivery in the city of Washington, together with all reasonable expenses incurred for keeping him. If taken within the District a reward of fifty dollars will be given.
AM THORNTON.
When Anna looked for the advertisement, she discovered Seaton and Gales had decided to report on the rampant rumor after all. A headline at the top of the page, more prominent than her notice, declared
FIRST FRUIT
A circumstance of a shocking character, which was within a second of time of resulting in the perpetration of a most bloody tragedy, occurred in this city two nights ago.
This event, Anna read with a sinking feeling, was “one of the immediate fruits of the incendiary publications with which this city and the whole slave-holding portion of the country have been lately inundated.”
The article was about Arthur.
On Tuesday night last, an attempt was made on the life of Mrs. Thornton, of this city, (the much respected widow of the late Dr. Thornton, superintendent of the patent office) by a young negro man, her slave, which, from the expressions he used was evidently induced by reading the inflammatory publications referred to above.
This was not what Anna wanted, not at all. Helpless, she read on.
About half past 1 o’clock, in the dead of night, Mrs. T.’s chamber in which slept herself, her aged mother, and a woman servant, was entered by the negro, who had obtained access to it by forcing the outer door. He approached the bed of Mrs. T. with uplifted axe.
Anna was shocked. How could the newspaper say such things? That was not what happened. Arthur had not forced the door. He had not raised the axe. He had not rushed at her. The boy was drunk. But she had to admit some of it was true.
During the whole time that he was endeavoring to force a second entrance into the house, he was venting the most ferocious threats, and uttering a tissue of jargon, much of which was a literal repetition of the language addressed to the negroes by the incendiary publications.
Anna’s parlor thickened with friends coming to call and servants bearing cards of anxious inquiry from other acquaintances. Anna tried to explain what had happened, but she could not talk to everyone who heard or read the story. Worse yet, Duff Green had reprinted the Intelligencer’s account, word for word, in the afternoon edition of the Telegraph. In Georgetown, the Metropolitan embellished the story with a more alarming headline: “DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT MURDER, BY A NEGRO IN WASHINGTON.” The only difference between the Metropolitan and the Intelligencer lay in their assessment of Arthur’s motive. “We believe the negro was incited to this foul deed by the hope of plundering a large quantity of valuable plate belonging to the Lady,” said the editors of the Georgetown sheet, “and not, as some would represent it, by the effect of any incendiary publication or language whatever.”
That was reassuring but wrong. Arthur did not want Anna’s silver. He could have taken her plates and cutlery from their drawers at any time. He wanted his freedom.
The regulars loitering down at Linthicum’s drugstore in Georgetown did not believe Arthur Bowen was a thief either. Instead, they wondered if he might have known their new neighbor, Dr. Reuben Crandall. Henry King, a doctor who had an office at First and High streets, had paid a call on his fellow physician earlier in the summer and noticed that Crandall kept an antislavery newspaper lying about openly in his room. King had mentioned this brazen behavior to a friend. Another man, William Robinson, had borrowed a copy of an abolitionist tract from Crandall. Well aware of these incidents, George Oyster, a butter maker who owned the house where Reuben rented his rooms, confronted his tenant in the backyard of the house.
“Did you hear the news?” Oyster asked.
“No,” said Reuben.
A slave boy tried to murder Mrs. Thornton, Oyster said. He failed but he got away. “We got nobody to blame but the New Yorkers and their aide-de-camps,” Oyster added pointedly. “They say the boy had been excited by these New York publications.”
“I do not approve of putting them into circulation,” Reuben said, turning away. “The excitement is too high already.”
George Oyster was more suspicious than ever. Who was talking about putting them into circulation?
On the third day, John Arthur Bowen reappeared. Maria brought him in. He was alive, bushy hair and all. He had not been caught but had returned o
n his own volition, or that of his mother. If Anna was surprised or angry with him, she did not record her feelings. As time went on, she believed ever more confidently that he had not intended to harm her when he stumbled into the room that night. She did not fear his presence in the house. As for the obvious questions—Why did he do it? Where had he gone?—Anna did not ask, much less answer them, at least not in her diary. Arthur said he remembered nothing.
But there was no time to talk. Anna told Maria that Bayard Smith had found a Negro buyer, a gentleman willing to take Arthur away. He would come at six o’clock in the morning.
25
DOWN AT THE Epicurean Eating House, Beverly Snow heard the rumors and read the newspapers. Some people were saying Arthur Bowen’s attack was the first blow in a slave insurrection, that there was a plot among the colored people. Some people even said that the authorities had intercepted a letter to Snow that contained details about the uprising. He hastened up Sixth Street to see his friend William Bradley, the banker who had been elected mayor the year before. At City Hall, Beverly offered his services, pledging to discourage any talk of rebellion among the blacks. Bradley said he appreciated the gesture.
The free people of color in Washington City had reason to be uneasy. No one seemed to be in charge. President Jackson had gone for his usual summer vacation at Rip Raps, a U.S. Army–built island in the middle of Hampton Bay on the Virginia shore. White men were demanding someone take action, and colored men knew what that meant. The boy did not have long to live, that much was sure. Would others be blamed too? Among the Negroes, the many often paid for the sins of one.
Beverly hoped not. He could see the emotions of the white people in his restaurant and on the Avenue: the shock, surprise, fear, and anger. He could see the same in the faces of the colored. In his own mind, he thought as an Epicurean. He walked over to the offices of the Mirror on Louisiana Avenue and handed over a dollar and the text for another advertisement, which appeared the next morning:
LOOK AT THIS!
A FINE GREEN TURTLE will be served up this day at the EPICUREAN EATING HOUSE, in all the various modes of cookery: together with a very fine sheep’s head, and every other luxury of the season, to be prepared and ready to be served up at eleven o’clock A.M.
SNOW & WALKER
The sentiments were familiar but the ad was unusual. Beverly had never advertised in the summer season, the slowest time of the year. But with feeling running high about abolitionism, he wanted people to know he still offered the balm of Green Turtleism. What the people of the National Metropolis needed, he thought, was a good meal.
Saturday morning dawned cool and pleasant on the F Street ridge. Anna and Maria woke up early to meet the gentleman who said he would buy Arthur. But they were soon disappointed. The man took one look at Arthur’s blistered face and backed out of the transaction.
“I’m afraid of trusting his future good behavior,” he said, excusing himself. Not long after, Bayard Smith arrived with alarming news: People on the street had learned Arthur was back in the house.
“There might be a mob raised,” Bayard warned. “People are much incensed against him.”
Someone knocked on the front door. It was Constable Madison Jeffers, accompanied by his partner, Henry Robertson, asking if the runaway, John Arthur Bowen, was present in the house. Anna and Maria had no choice but to surrender him. Mrs. Thornton agreed with Jeffers that Arthur must be taken to the jail for his own safekeeping and assured Arthur it was for the best. Before he could register any reaction, the constables had escorted him out the front door and pushed him into a waiting carriage.
Arthur sat between the two white men as the carriage rolled down F Street.
“What possessed you to attack your mistress?” Jeffers wanted to know.
Arthur, now sober, considered his answer.
“I have a right to be free,” he said finally, “and if it hadn’t been for the law, we would all be free.”
Jeffers and Robertson were not expecting such a saucy reply.
“We ought to be free,” Arthur went on coolly, “and we will be free. And if we are not, there is going to be such confusion and bloodshed as to astonish the world.”
Stunned by this insolence, the white men rode on in silence.
When they reached the City Jail at Fourth and F streets, the constables pulled Arthur out of the carriage, passing by the “whipping machine” as they entered the jail. Inside, the guards took Arthur to the second floor, where the Negro prisoners were kept, and locked him in a cell.
On F Street, Anna, Maria, and Bayard still hoped they might sell Arthur and get him away. But it was not to be. Not long after the constables took Arthur, a messenger arrived with a writ from the magistrate. Based on what Dr. Huntt and General Gibson said, one of the magistrates for the Second Ward had filed charges. Arthur had been committed for trial—for attempted murder.
“Oh this is dreadful,” Anna wrote in her diary that evening. “His poor mother how I pity her. The people are incensed against him as he is thought to be one of a party instigated by some white friends to raise an insurrection.”
26
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS learned, via letter, of Anna Thornton’s ordeal while summering in his hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts. Adams was mortified. The former president came across as a chilly man to many, but he had warm feelings for his neighbor on F Street. He adored Anna Thornton. For Adams, a lonely statesman, brilliant and besieged, a friendship of swelling bosoms and faithful hearts with a beautiful woman like Anna Thornton provided welcome respite from the political wars he waged daily. Alas, when Adams heard that Arthur had attempted to murder his friend, he was more analytical than romantic. In his diary, he explained the politics of the moment with his usual concision.
“The theory of the rights of man,” he wrote, “has taken deep root in the soil of civil society. It has allied itself with the feelings of humanity and the precepts of Christian benevolence. It has armed itself with the strength of organized association. It has linked itself with religious doctrines and religious fervor. Antislavery organizations are formed in this Country and in England.…They have raised funds to support and circulate inflammatory newspapers and pamphlets, and they send multitudes of them into the Southern Country into the midst of the swarms of slaves.”
Adams noted there was a call for a town meeting in Boston to put down the antislavery men, but he didn’t think it would do any good. “The disease is deeper than can be healed by town-meeting resolutions.”
Nowhere was the former president’s mordant analysis more accurate than in the nation’s capital.
As Adams wrote, a spontaneous assembly was taking place around the jail behind City Hall. Angry white men streamed into the square from every direction—from the Navy Yard and Capitol Hill, from Georgetown, Alexandria, and Greenleaf’s Point. By nightfall there were scores of mechanics crowding the jail’s locked doors and shouting their own resolutions, which, shorn of profanity, amounted to “Give us Arthur Bowen so that we can enforce the law.” The contempt for colored people, the waning influence of gentlemen, the anxieties generated by new machinery, the fear of another Southampton, and the resentments of the poor had combined into a combustible rage. The gathering crowd argued with the city’s marshal, Henry Ashton, who was in charge of the jail, about how best to punish the black villain. At one point, Ashton was shoved to the ground. The men were incredulous. Why wouldn’t the authorities turn him over? Why were they protecting the nigger from justice?
The clamor forced the reticent Francis Scott Key to leave his office in City Hall. With Mayor Bradley he went outside to address the mob intent on snatching the prisoner. Key too had heard the talk of a slave insurrection, but he served as officer of the court, a man of the law, and an official with duties. If he turned over Arthur Bowen to the mob, he would forfeit his position and self-respect. He recognized the weakness of his position. He, the mayor, and the marshal had only ten constables at their disposal, and some of them
would prove more loyal to the mob than to the law. He had to resist and as he did, his predicament deepened. How could he appease the angry white men who crowded around him? These men, their ranks swelled by inebriated mechanics and filthy street urchins, spat contempt at all authority. The Mobocracy that had manhandled the Vicksburg gamblers had now turned on public servants like himself. Amidst the angry throng, Key and Bradley pleaded for order without effect.
Inside the jail, Arthur could hear the shouting and the cursing, the lusty threats to kill and maim him. Through the bars of the second-floor windows, he could see the angry men swirling around the entrance below.
“They said their object was to get Mrs. Thornton’s mulatto man out and hang him without Judge or juror,” wrote Michael Shiner, a black carpenter who was watching from a safe distance. Shiner was a bondsman who had been hired out by his owner to work at the Navy Yard. Uniquely among Washington’s blacks, Shiner kept a journal of the events of the summer of 1835. His spelling was uncertain, but he had a knack for showing up at big events. Mr. Key and Mayor Bradley, he reported, made “every effort to preserve peace and harmony among those men. But all of it appeared to be in vain.”
As the furor grew, someone notified Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson, who sent a message to the Navy Yard calling for troops. Soon a detachment of blue-uniformed Marines armed with blunderbusses came marching down Pennsylvania Avenue into the square around City Hall and established a perimeter around the jail. The irate mechanics turned sullen and stood back from this display of force. Shiner wrote that the Marines “done their duty without faction or favor.” The thwarted crowd eventually dispersed into the night. Key’s authority had survived, if barely. Arthur Bowen was safe, at least for the moment.
Snow-Storm in August Page 14
