Snow-Storm in August

by Jefferson Morley

  44

  ARTHUR BOWEN REMAINED seated in his cell on the second floor of the City Jail, still in leg irons. The warming of the weather made his dank quarters slightly more hospitable. At night, the high windows of the cells could catch a breeze off the river or a whiff of jasmine or the pungent slaughterhouse nearby. With a steady supply of provisions delivered by his mother, Arthur ate better than his fellow inmates. But his appetite was not theirs. They were confined for their crimes. He was still due to be hanged. President Jackson’s respite of February 25 had spared him from execution until June 3, a day fast approaching.

  Anna Thornton still worried about him and wondered what she might do. And then she had a moment of inspiration. A woman of habit, she was rarely creative, but in her desperation to avert Arthur’s execution she became daring. She wrote a letter to the notorious Richard Mentor Johnson, the senator from Kentucky, who had been nominated as Mr. Van Buren’s running mate in the election coming in November. Anna knew Johnson might well be the next vice president of the United States, and she knew President Jackson admired him. Perhaps he could help.

  Anna knew the stories about Johnson. His enemies in the South were telling the story to any newspaper editor who would listen. Southerners were balking at supporting a man known to keep a black “wench.” Anna knew that he had taken Julia Chinn as a common-law wife and fathered two girls with her. She might have read Duff Green’s outraged charge that Johnson’s dalliance would win abolitionist votes for the Van Buren ticket because the antislavery voters approved of racial “amalgamation.” But Anna also knew that Johnson had plenty of respectable defenders, including a friend who wrote a letter to the Globe arguing that Johnson had never married a Negro woman, merely kept house with several of them. Julia Chinn, the writer added, had been “one of the most exemplary and pious of women.” Anna might have observed that if Johnson was a scandalous man to some, he was also a candidate for national office who enjoyed the personal blessing of Mr. Jackson, Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Blair, three of the most powerful men in the capital. Senator Johnson had even appeared in a public platform with chief justice nominee Roger Taney back in January. Whatever Anna thought of Johnson’s morality (and it probably wasn’t much), she recognized he was a decent man, not intimidated by what people thought of him. If he loved his own mulatto children as he said he did, he might well sympathize with Arthur’s plight.

  A few days later, Johnson agreed to pay her a call.

  When the senator arrived at the house on F Street, Anna was preparing another petition on Arthur’s behalf for President Jackson. Johnson was an unusual visitor to Anna’s parlor, less punctilious than most gentlemen and more expressive. “His countenance is wild though with much cleverness in it,” observed Harriet Martineau when she met him. “His hair wanders all abroad, and he wears no cravat.”

  Anna gave Johnson her petition and he read it over. He could see that other reliable allies of Jackson had signed on, including Globe editor Francis Blair. “I hope the president will pardon the convict,” wrote the Globe editor. “I believe he was the victim of the [drink] and that he had no design on the life of his mistress.” Johnson needed no more persuading. “I have enquired into the facts of this case,” he wrote on the petition, “and have no hesitation in strongly recommending the pardon of the condemned slave.…Most respectfully R. M. Johnson.”

  Jackson was swayed. On June 2, the president issued a two-month respite for Arthur, sparing him from execution until August 4. He also sent word to Anna via a friend hinting that he would eventually pardon Arthur. “He is favorably inclined towards him” was the message.

  Anna did not relent. On June 13, Anna and Johnson called on President Jackson. They made an unusual pair, this conventional society lady and the roguish soldier turned politician. Jackson probably liked them all the more for it. He told them he wanted to pardon Arthur but said he would need a new petition and he needed the support of the district attorney. Johnson welcomed this news but Anna was “greatly disappointed.” She already had such a petition and she knew the pitiless Mr. Key would reject it. He would rather see Arthur hang than change his mind.

  In her diary that night, Anna reflected on how her life had changed since the night of August 4. Once she worried about Mama’s health, her debts, and her rents. Now she talked to the president of the United States about saving Arthur’s life.

  “What a strange business for me to have to do,” she wrote.

  45

  JUNE 21 WAS yet another cool and rainy day in Washington’s wettest spring in years. Mr. Key was at his desk on the first floor of City Hall. The court’s spring session was over. He had prosecuted as much of the criminal docket as he could. He regretted that Reuben Crandall and his ilk had stirred up popular feeling in the capital. The blacks, he felt, faced only more control now than they did before.

  Key welcomed the more leisurely tempo of summer. In one term, he had attended more than four hundred criminal appearances or cases in the courtroom. Now he was looking forward to going up to Terra Rubra, where he could finally spend some time with Polly and the children. Taney was sure to join them.

  As Key worked, his son Daniel was walking on Sixth Street near Pennsylvania Avenue, spoiling for a fight. The most temperamental of the Key boys, Daniel was not a dandy like his oldest brother, the reprobate Frank Jr. Nor was he dutiful, like John Ross. He was not intellectually gifted like his younger brother Philip Barton. He was impulsive and brash.

  Outside of Gadsby’s Hotel, Daniel spotted a man he knew well, John Sherburne, who had been a fellow midshipman in the navy. He was waiting for a hack with some friends when Daniel approached him.

  “You’re a coward,” he shouted.

  He and Sherburne had met by chance earlier that year on a navy ship in the Pacific. While serving on the Brandywine, Key had defied an order and was arrested for insubordination. The captain sent him home on another ship to face disciplinary action. It was on this ship that Key had met Sherburne and taken an instant dislike to him. In their brief acquaintance, they fell into a discussion of steamboats, debating which of two famous vessels was faster. The argument turned into an exchange of insults that enraged both men and elevated their trivial differences into an affair of masculine honor. Key challenged Sherburne to a duel when the ship docked in Norfolk. Local authorities, warned of Key’s intent, arrested him during shore leave. Sherburne proceeded to his family’s home in Baltimore, while Key was informed that he been sentenced to a week in the brig in Biloxi, Mississippi.

  He returned home to Washington in disgrace and stayed with his mother and father in their new house on C Street. He told his father about his sentence and said his quarrel with Sherburne was over. His father was delighted to see him, despite his troubles. He felt the navy had favored Sherburne and that his son was being bullied.

  But when Daniel spotted John Sherburne outside of Gadsby’s he could not help but renew his challenge, no matter what he told his father.

  “You are a coward,” he repeated. Sherburne and friends suddenly found themselves listening to a lethal challenge. Sherburne coolly told Key that his friend Mr. Mattingly would contact him to arrange a duel.

  The next morning, Thomas Mattingly visited the Key house on C Street. Daniel was alone. His father was at the office. His mother was visiting relatives.

  “I am calling as a friend of Mr. Sherburne’s to make arrangements to close the unsettled difficulty between you and him,” Mattingly said.

  “There is no difficulty between me and Mr. Sherburne,” young Key snorted. “He is a scoundrel, and I will not meet him.”

  “I did not come here to discuss Mr. Sherburne’s character,” said Mattingly. “I want you to say once and finally if you will meet Mr. Sherburne.”

  Daniel Key was silent for a few minutes, thinking about honor and his father.

  “I will fight Mister Sherburne provided it is done immediately,” he finally said.

  “Would one hour from now suit you?” Mattingly asked
.

  “I need to provide myself with a friend,” Daniel answered.

  “At six o’clock tonight?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Let’s meet at the Good Hope Tavern.”

  . . .

  At that time in America, duels of honor were common, if not respectable. They marked the culmination of an elaborate, commonly understood protocol. If a man’s honor was insulted or even impugned, he could demand a duel to the death as redress. Friends, known as seconds, handled the time and place of the duel, selected the weapons, and determined the distance between the duelists. The practice of dueling was technically illegal but largely tolerated. Charges for dueling had been filed in Washington circuit court for the first time in October 1821, probably in response to the much-lamented death of Commodore Stephen Decatur the year before. But the law was observed mostly in the breach. Since becoming district attorney in 1833, Francis Scott Key had prosecuted only two men for sending or seconding challenges for duels, and they were each fined all of one dollar.

  The Good Hope Tavern stood a mile and a half south of the city on a hill looking down at the Anacostia River and the Navy Yard. The establishment welcomed duelists, who settled their differences in the adjacent fields, not that a lot of room was needed. The standard duel was fought at ten paces, barely twenty feet. “A moderately skillful marksman could readily hit his adversary at that distance,” said one historian, “provided he was not unduly nervous.”

  Daniel Key was not unduly nervous. Late on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 22, he and his cousin, a young man named Richard West, took a hack from Key’s house down Pennsylvania Avenue, up to Capitol Hill and over to the rickety wooden bridge across the Eastern Branch. They passed through the village of Anacostia and followed Good Hope Road up to the tavern at the top of the hill. Washington City was visible in the distance.

  John Sherburne was already there with his second. While the principals hung back, Thomas Mattingly again proposed reconciliation, this time to Richard West.

  Daniel Key overheard the offer and scoffed. “It’s useless to waste time talking about it,” he jibed.

  “We have come to fight, not to talk,” said West, who was almost as obnoxious as his cousin Key, though not quite so audacious. “The sooner it is over, the better.”

  Mattingly pointed to the nearby meadow and the four men walked out into its green expanse. As they came to the spot, Sherburne spoke up.

  “Mr. Key,” he began, “I have no desire to kill you.”

  “No matter,” Daniel barked back. “I came to kill you.”

  “Very well,” finished Sherburne without pleasure. “I will kill you.”

  Ten paces were measured off between the two men. West gave the word, and both men raised their guns and fired. Both missed.

  “Goddamnit,” Key snapped. “Load up quickly and let us have another shot.”

  It was now twilight, and Mattingly’s turn to give the signal. Key and Sherburne again took their stands, counted their steps, and turned to each other. A bullet slammed into the lower part of Daniel Key’s chest, smashing through ribs and staggering him backward. He stumbled in reverse, toppled onto his rear, sat on the grass, and keeled over on his side.

  Sherburne was unhurt. He rushed toward Key, offering his hand.

  “Leave me. Leave me,” Daniel cried, touching the wetness of the red blot growing on his white shirt. “I scorn and detest you.”

  Impetuous to the end, Key had not brought along a doctor as many duelists did. His cousin West didn’t know how to bandage a wound any more than he knew how to cook an egg. The red stain grew. Daniel Key lived for another twenty minutes. He expired on the wet grass where he fell. He was twenty years old.

  46

  FRANK AND POLLY Key were at home on C Street that evening when they heard a knock on the door. A family friend was calling with alarming news: Daniel had been wounded in a duel and a doctor had been sent for. Frank was surprised. Daniel’s fellow officers had assured him that the quarrel with Sherburne was over. Polly had been planning to take her son to visit his sister in Maryland. Frank hoped his son would serve his time in the brig and learn his lesson. Their hopes vanished when a group of men arrived with a stretcher bearing the body of Daniel Key. He was not wounded. He was dead.

  Polly was frantic, then stunned. The men laid the lifeless body on a table in the house. It was the same room where Daniel had spoken with Mattingly that morning. The mother bent over the corpse in speechless agony. His sisters wrung their hands and wept.

  At the same time Frank Key could not move. He thought of the little boy who lived so brightly and wrote so sprightly. When he was nine years old Daniel had composed a poem in a little booklet that his parents had saved:

  I am a possum bred + borne

  My name and birth I will not scorn

  My father was a noble fellow

  Who dwelt upon a weeping willow

  That was Daniel on the table, but he was gone. Once again, Key had lost a son, this time to a duel of honor. To others Daniel might have been a surly rebel. To his bereft father, Daniel would always be that little possum, bred and borne in family happiness, who had lost his way.

  Key was desolate. A man of ambition, idealistic and opportunistic, a man of Washington City, accustomed to fame and privilege, he was also sensitive and sinful. In looking at his son’s body, he again felt his faithlessness and failure as a parent and as a Christian. He had chased the power of this world at the expense of His glory. The only way Key could live with the pain of losing another son was to believe that he deserved it, that it was God’s will. Key’s sense of shame and loss was so deep, he could not bring himself to write to his grown children that their younger brother was no more. He left that task to his niece Elizabeth, one of Roger Taney’s daughters.

  “The excitement caused by this tragedy can hardly be imagined,” said one man who lived on C Street at the time. “The two families were so well known and the youth of the two midshipmen increased the interest in the affair.”

  “I need not tell you what a shock it was to us—so sudden & unexpected,” Key wrote to daughter Ann later that week. “Our poor boy himself had no idea of it till the morning of the day on which it occurred.”

  Key wanted to believe the best of his son.

  “It is some consolation to us to know that your poor brother was actuated by no malice,” he went on, “but a generous disposition to give this young man, whose companions had treated him as disgraced by the quarrel, an opportunity to retrieve his character.” Her brother, he wrote, “had no ill will toward him & would not attempt his life under any circumstances.”

  As always, Key sought the consolation of faith.

  “I trust we shall endeavor to see even in this dark and mysterious providence, the chastening hand of our heavenly father and be enabled to say, ‘Thy will be done.’ ”

  The mourning of young Key was accompanied by pity for poor John Sherburne. He was mercifully called away for duty, leaving his father to defend his name and conduct. The elder Sherburne had worked in Washington City for decades. He was known and respected by the clerks and auditors and messengers of the government offices. He was pained for his son, who he believed had done everything possible to avoid the fatal engagement. And he was alarmed by a report in the Baltimore Chronicle that stated President Jackson had ordered his son’s name stricken from the rolls of the navy. The elder Sherburne went to the President’s House to ask if it was true. Jackson denied it. The president, who had once killed a man in a duel, said he had heard no complaints “on this painful subject.”

  Jackson shared in the “strong and universal” sympathy in Washington City for the Key and Sherburne families, and the tragedy of Daniel Key made the plight of Arthur Bowen more poignant. The president had Anna Thornton’s latest pardon petition on his desk signed by his good friends Senator Johnson, Frank Blair, and others. He had not forgotten Anna’s plaintive pleas that the execution of the boy would overwhelm her and her mother
with “grief and horror unutterable.” The time had come for mercy. He reached for his pen.

  “Let the Negro boy John Arthur Bowen be pardoned to take effect on the 4th of July next,” Jackson scrawled, a date that would imbue the pardon with the generosity of American patriotism.

  Jackson gave the document to a messenger to take to the State Department. But for some reason, Jackson chose not to tell Anna Thornton that the tragedy of Daniel Key had prompted him to spare Arthur Bowen’s life.

  Unaware of Jackson’s clemency, Anna continued to seek Arthur’s pardon, not knowing it had already been secured. Then, on July 1, her mother’s condition worsened. Anna, fearing Mrs. Brodeau was near death, called Reverend Hawley, the pastor at St. John’s Church on President’s Square, who came and prayed at her bedside. Her mother appeared to understand and be comforted. Between eight and nine o’clock on the morning of July 4, Mrs. Ann Brodeau died in her bed in the house on F Street. She was at least eighty years old. A few hours later, Anna learned that the president had pardoned Arthur.

  “How much more thankful should I have been had he [Jackson] done so sooner,” she wrote in her diary. At least then her mother would have had the comfort of knowing Arthur would live. Without that consolation, Anna had to face the inevitable.

  “Now I have the painful task of selling him,” she wrote in her diary.

  That had been the bargain all along. Arthur would get to live but would have to be sold away. Maria Bowen succumbed to violent fits of crying at the thought that she would lose her son not to Judge Lynch or to the hangman, but to the slave traders and respectable man stealers living around President’s Square. Her mistress, Anna, was a good woman, and Maria would be eternally grateful to her for saving Arthur’s life. But they lived in a monstrous land, led by cruel, cynical hypocrites, and Maria Bowen had no reason not to say it to Anna’s face.