Snow-Storm in August

by Jefferson Morley

  42.7. Less than three hours later: The Metropolitan said the jury deliberated for “three hours.” In a letter to his brother, Reuben said the jury was out “but a short time.” Clisby, “Canterbury Pilgrims,” 20.

  Chapter 43

  43.1. William Jackson, an antislavery: He recounted the meeting in The Emancipator, March 8, 1838.

  43.2. “Crandall the Abolition Botanist”: Telegraph, April 28, 1836.

  43.3. “I believe there is a feeling”: Boston Courier, April 25, 1836, reprinted in Liberator, April 30, 1836.

  43.4. “He has suffered”: U.S. Gazette, April 27, 1836, reprinted in the Telegraph, April 28, 1836.

  43.5. “this excellent but suffering”: Liberator, May 9, 1836.

  Chapter 44

  44.1. She wrote a letter to the notorious: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 967.

  44.2. “one of the most exemplary”: Brown, “The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor Johnson,” 18–19.

  44.3. Senator Johnson had even appeared: Gazette, January 21, 1836.

  44.4. agreed to pay her a call: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 967–68.

  44.5. “His countenance is wild”: Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 155.

  44.6. “I hope the president:” RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Petitions for Pardons 1789–1860, Jackson Administration 1829–1837, box 25, file 1327.

  44.7. “I have enquired”: Ibid.

  44.8. “He is favorably inclined”: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 968.

  44.9. On June 13, Anna and Johnson: Ibid.

  44.10. “What a strange business”: Ibid., 969.

  Chapter 45

  45.1. Daniel, was walking: This chapter relies heavily on the account of Sherburne’s second, Thomas Mattingly, as recounted in “The Fatal Duel Between Midshipmen Key and Sherburne,” National Era, May 12, 1859. I also consulted Charles Oscar Paullin, “Dueling in the Old Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 35, part 1, no. 132 (Baltimore: U.S. Naval Institute, 1909), 1155–98; Myra K. Spaulding, “Dueling in the District of Columbia,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 29/30 (1925), 183–85; “Old Days on C Street,” Washington Post, December 8, 1901; and “Naval Duels at Bladensburg,” Washington Post, August 21, 1921. The latter Post article implies incorrectly that the Key-Sherburne duel took place at the Bladensburg dueling ground and states that Daniel Key was killed with the first shot. Mattingly’s account in the National Era is more credible on both points.

  45.2. Charges for dueling had been filed: RG 21, entry 6, Case Papers, box 236, October Term 1821, “Appeals, Criminal Appearances,” 21.

  45.3. Since becoming district attorney: Docket Book, vol. 71, entry 6, Case Papers, box 545, March Term 1834, Criminal Appearances.

  45.4. “A moderately skillful marksman”: Paullin, “Dueling in the Old Navy,” 1155.

  45.5. “We have come to fight”: “Fatal Duel,” National Era, May 12, 1859.

  45.6. “Very well,” finished Sherburne: Spaulding, “Dueling in the District of Columbia,” 184.

  45.7. “Goddamnit,” Key snapped: “Fatal Duel,” National Era, May 12, 1859.

  45.8. “Leave me. Leave me”: “Sketches of War,” Advocate of Peace, September 1837, APS Online, 77. I have slightly edited Key’s reported words. The original reads, “Leave me, leave me,” gasped Key, “[for, though dying] I scorn and detest you.” I excised the bracketed words, which sound imputed.

  45.9. Daniel Key lived for another: “Fatal Duel,” National Era, May 12, 1859.

  Chapter 46

  46.1. “I am a possum bred + borne”: Daniel Key, “Life of Possum,” Key-Cutts-Turner Papers, Library of Congress, folder 3.

  46.2. He left that task to his niece: Letter, FSK to Mrs. Daniel (Anna Key) Turner, June 26, 1836, Francis Scott Key Collection, MS 469, Maryland Historical Society (MHS).

  46.3. “The excitement caused”: “Old Days on C Street,” Washington Post, December 8, 1901.

  46.4. “I need not tell you”: Letter, FSK to Mrs. Daniel (Anna Key) Turner, June 26, 1836, Francis Scott Key Collection, MS 469, MHS.

  46.5. he was alarmed: Niles’ Weekly Register, July 16, 1836, 350.

  46.6. “strong and universal”: Delaplaine, Life and Times, 428.

  46.7. “Let the Negro boy”: Memo, AJ, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Petitions for Pardons 1789–1860, Jackson Administration 1829–1837, box 25, file 1327.

  46.8. Anna, fearing Mrs. Brodeau: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 970.

  46.9. She was at least eighty years old: Mrs. Brodeau arrived with baby Anna in Philadelphia in 1775 when Ben Franklin vouched for her school. If she was twenty years old at the time, she was born in 1755 and thus eighty years old at the time of her death.

  46.10. “How much more thankful”: Ibid., 971.

  46.11. “Now I am harassed”: Ibid.

  46.12. She sold Arthur: Ibid.

  PART VII: THE EPICUREAN RECESS

  Chapter 47

  47.1. “Temerity and foolishness”: Metropolitan, August 13, 1836, reprinted in the National Intelligencer, August 18, 1836.

  47.2. Claggett’s dry-goods store: Metropolitan, August 13, 1836.

  47.3. Dubant’s barbershop: Directory for Washington City, 1834, 16.

  47.4. Mrs. Charles’s boardinghouse: Ibid., 12.

  47.5. covering himself with his cloak: Metropolitan, August 13, 1836.

  47.6. “We know Snow”: Liberator, September 24, 1836, quoting an undated Richmond Whig article.

  47.7. O’Sullivan detected “some prevarication”: Metropolitan, August 13, 1836.

  Chapter 48

  48.1. Epicurus had said: Digby, Epicurus’s Morals, 113.

  48.2. One British supporter of emigration: Thomas Rolph, Emigration and Colonization: Embodying the Results of a Mission to Great Britain and Ireland, During the Years 1839, 1840, and 1842 (London: J. Mortimer, 1844), 334.

  48.3. In late 1837: Thomas Price, Slavery in America: With Notices of the Present State of Slavery and the Slave Trade (London: G. Wightman, 1837), 207.

  48.4. opened a new eatery: Advertisement, British Colonist, April 26, 1843.

  48.5. plenty of competition: These Church Street eateries are listed in the 1843 Toronto City Directory, 35, 82.

  48.6. “B. R. Snow, Purveyor”: British Colonist, January 24, 1845.

  48.7. “Look at This!”: Advertisement, Toronto Globe, June 5, 1847.

  48.8. “Snow … with his whole soul”: Ibid., July 10, 1849.

  48.9. Snow, “with his usual liberality”: Ibid., June 26, 1847.

  48.10. “assiduity and attention”: Ibid., October 28, 1848.

  48.11. Beverly offered a rich: British Colonist, November 17, 1848.

  48.12. The Law Society of Upper Canada: Osgoode Hall website, accessed October 1, 2010, http://osgoodehall.com/buildingevolution.html.

  48.13. Beverly spent many gay and memorable: Hamilton, Osgoode Hall, 40–41.

  48.14. “He had the satisfaction”: Digby, Epicurus’s Morals. M. Du Roudel, “The Life of Epicurus,” xxxii.

  48.15. “long and favorably known”: Toronto Globe, October 22, 1856.

  48.16. Julia Snow and friends: Snow is buried in section K, lot 90, according to a card in the files of the Toronto Necropolis found by Mary F. Williamson of York University.

  48.17. Beverly would regale them: Hamilton, Osgoode Hall, 133.

  Epilogue

  epl.1. From December 1838 to March 1839: Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 245–46.

  epl.2. Among the handful of congressmen: Ibid., 225.

  epl.3. moderate antislavery leaders: Ibid., 290–304.

  epl.4. lent his house on Louisiana Avenue: Harrold, Subversives, 20; Directory for Washington City, 1843, 8.

  epl.5. Smallwood and Torry were among: Harrold, Subversives, 20.

  epl.6. Gamaliel Bailey established: Dumond, Antislavery, 264.

  epl.7. Washington City would experience: “Race Riot of 1919 Gave Glimpse of Futu
re Struggles,” Washington Post, March 1, 1999.

  epl.8. his limousine stopped: Ibid., January 20, 2009.

  Postscript: Who

  bm1.1. to “say he was doing well”: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 1022. The passage, in its entirety, reads: “I rec’d an [illegible] from Maria to Capt. Bolton saying he was doing well and liked on board the steamboat at Pensacola.”

  bm1.2. Reuben Crandall had contracted tuberculosis: “Canterbury Pilgrims,” unpublished manuscript, 1947, Prudence Crandall Museum, 21.

  bm1.3. Whittier wrote a poem: John Greenleaf Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1894), 338.

  bm1.4. “a very general painful sensation”: National Intelligencer, January 13, 1843.

  bm1.5. Cranch praised Key as one: Ibid., January 16, 1843.

  bm1.6. President Herbert Hoover signed the bill: Historian, U.S. House of Representatives.

  bm1.7. Roger Taney served as chief justice: Steiner, Life of Roger Brooke Taney, 550–55.

  bm1.8. “had for more than a century before”: The Case of Dred Scott in the United States Supreme Court. The full opinion of Chief Justice Taney and Justice Curtis and abstract of the opinions of the other judges (New York: Horace Greeley & Co., 1860), 9, 11.

  bm1.9. Three weeks later, slavery: Maryland State Archives website, Historical List, Constitutional Convention 1864, http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/​sc2600/sc2685/html/conv1864.html.

  bm1.10. “the transition from the era”: Steiner, Life of Roger Brooke Taney, 553.

  bm1.11. “He resumed his work”: Williams, History of the Negro Race, 188–91.

  bm1.12. Benjamin Lundy published: Fred Landon, “Benjamin Lundy in Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 33, no. 1 (March 1940), 57–67.

  bm1.13. “served without distinction”: Brown, “The Miscegenation of Richard Mentor Johnson,” 27.

  bm1.14. bequeathed his property in scores: Warshauer, “Chivalric Slave Master,” 225–29.

  bm1.15. died in an asylum: Register of the Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy (Washington: Bureau of Naval Personnel, U.S. Navy Department, 1849), 112.

  bm1.16. Maria Bowen and her mother: AMT Diary, vol. 2, 540.

  bm1.17. Julia Snow, Beverly’s widow: Records of the Toronto Necropolis.

  bm1.18. She died in a rented: National Intelligencer, August 18, 1865.

  Bibliography

  ARCHIVES

  National Archives

  Record Group 21, Records of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

  Record Group 351, Records of the Government of the District of Columbia

  Record Group 29, Records of the Bureau of Census

  Library of Congress, Manuscript Division

  Andrew Jackson Papers, microfilm edition

  Anna Maria Brodeau Thornton Papers

  Key-Cutts-Turner Papers

  Margaret Bayard Smith Papers

  Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, online

  William Thornton Papers

  Maryland Historical Society

  Francis Scott Key Papers

  Howard Papers

  Roger Taney Vertical File

  Maryland State Archives

  Francis Scott Key materials from the St. John’s College Collection

  Howard University Spingarn-Moorland Research Center

  Charles Francis Cook Papers

  University of Virginia Library, Special Collections

  John Warwick Daniel Papers, including diary of Susannah Norvell

  Forrest Sweet Papers

  William Wormley Family Papers

  Jones Library, Lynchburg, Virginia

  Warwick House Papers

  University of Alabama W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library

  Josiah and Amelia Gorgas Family Papers, including the diary of Sarah Haynesworth Gayle

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