The Bondwoman's Narrative

by Hannah Crafts

  The Case of Jane Johnson

  The case of Passmore Williamson—or, more properly, the case of Jane Johnson—became a cause célèbre in Philadelphia in 1855. According to a pamphlet published by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in that year, and according to the black abolitionist William Still, who wrote about Jane Johnson’s escape in his book, The Underground Railroad (1872), John Hill Wheeler arrived in Philadelphia on Wednesday, July 18, 1855, on his way from Washington, D.C., to Nicaragua, to take up his position as “the accredited Minister of the United States to Nicaragua.”24 Traveling with Wheeler were Jane Johnson, whom he had purchased in 1853 in Richmond, and her two sons, one six or seven, the other eleven or twelve.

  When the foursome arrived in Philadelphia, Wheeler took them to Bloodgood’s Hotel, located near the Walnut Street wharf. When Wheeler went to dinner in another part of the hotel, Johnson “spoke to a colored woman who was passing, and told her that she was a slave, and to a colored man she said the same thing, afterwards adding, that she wished to be free.” William Still, chairman of the Acting Vigilant Committee of the Philadelphia Branch of the Underground Railroad, wrote in a letter published in the New York Tribune on July 30, 1855, that he was handed a note at 4:30 in the afternoon “by a colored boy whom I had never before seen, to my recollection.” The note read as follows:

  Jane Johnson. (from Underground Railroad by William Still)

  Rescue of Jane Johnson and her children. (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill)

  M. Still—Sir: Will you come down to Bloodgood’s Hotel as soon as possible—as there are three fugitive slaves here and they want liberty. Their master’s here with them, on his way to New York. [Still, pp. 87–88]

  Still, “without delay,” ran to Passmore Williamson’s office. Williamson was the secretary of “The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and for improving the condition of the African Race.” The society was incorporated in 1789, and Benjamin Franklin served as its first president. Williamson told Still to go to the slave and get the names of both the slaveholder and the slave; then he would telegraph this information to New York, where they would be arrested when they landed there by boat. By the time Still arrived at the hotel, however, he discovered that Williamson had changed his mind and decided to go himself.

  Williamson and Still were told that the slaves and their master had left the hotel and had boarded a boat. Still interviewed one of the four black people who had seen them at the hotel, and was told that the slave “was a tall, dark woman, with two little boys.” Still and Williamson rushed to the boat and found Wheeler and his slave, Jane Johnson, along with her two sons on the second deck; they then implored Jane to leave her master, flee with them, and seek her freedom in the courts. “If you prefer freedom to slavery, as we suppose everybody does,” Still recalled saying to her, “you have the chance to accept it now. Act calmly—don’t be frightened by your master—you are as much entitled to your freedom as we are, or as he is.”

  Wheeler kept interrupting Still and Williamson as they sought to persuade Johnson to flee with them, saying that she had no wish to leave. To the contrary, however, Still wrote, Jane “repeatedly said, distinctly and firmly, ‘I am not freed, but I want my freedom—ALWAYS wanted to be free! But he holds me.’” According to Still, when Jane rose to leave, Wheeler attempted to interfere, taking “hold of the woman and Mr. Williamson.” Williamson shook off Wheeler, and the party left the boat. Once rested, Jane was said to proclaim that she and her sons had been so “providentially delivered from the house of bondage.” Still later informs us that Wheeler had instructed her twice not to speak to the hotel’s colored waiters or listen to their “evil communication.” If asked about her status, she should say that she was free. But Jane had said instead, “I and my children are slaves, and we want liberty.” Still describes Johnson as “tall and well formed,” with a “high and large forehead, of gentle manners, chestnut color, and seems to possess, naturally, uncommon good sense, though of course she has never been allowed to read.”

  Jane was spirited away, Williamson was sent to jail, and the “half dozen colored men” (including Still) who assisted with Jane’s escape were accused of “riot,” “forcible abduction,” and “assault and battery” and were forced to stand trial. Accompanied by Lucretia Mott (and three other female anti-slavery sympathizers), Jane Johnson made a most dramatic, and surreptitious, appearance in court, in an attempt to provide testimony that would free the accused. Two versions of her testimony are reprinted in Appendix B.

  Still was acquitted; two of the other black men were found guilty of “assault and battery” and were forced to serve a week in jail. Williamson was found guilty of contempt of court and served a sentence between July 27 and November 3, 1855. Jane boarded a carriage immediately following her testimony, “without disturbance.” Wheeler would complain in his diary that he was never able to recover her and her sons as his property.

  I tried to locate Jane Johnson through the 1860 and 1880 censuses. In 1860 seventy Jane Johnsons were living in Pennsylvania alone, forty-seven of whom lived in Philadelphia. By 1880 more than one thousand black women named Jane Johnson were living in America. If Jane Johnson had wanted to blend facelessly into the African American community, she could have done no better than to select Johnson as her surname. In fact, Frederick Douglass tells us that he rejected the surname of Johnson when he escaped to the North precisely because it was so commonly used by other blacks.

  As I read these accounts of the case, I recalled a passage in The Bondwoman’s Narrative in which Mrs. Wheeler laments that her slave named Jane had run away, thus providing the motivation for acquiring Hannah. (Still reports that Jane had said that Wheeler had “sold all his slaves” within “the last two years” and had “purchased the present ones in that space of time” [p. 90], though I have not been able to find any record of these sales in Wheeler’s papers or in the archives of Lincoln, North Carolina.) I suddenly realized that it was this Jane to whom Hannah Crafts refers in chapter 12 of her novel! Ironically, it was the character without a surname, Jane, whose identity I would most clearly be able to establish among all of Crafts’s black characters, contrary to the laws of probability applicable to this sort of historical research. This means that Hannah Crafts could not have written her manuscript until after 1855. It also means that Hannah would have been purchased after Jane’s escape, just as the novel claims. Jane, moreover, told the Philadelphia abolitionists that she had carefully planned her escape before she had left Washington on her trip with Wheeler: “I had made preparations before leaving Washington to get my freedom in New York; I made a suit to disguise myself in—they had never seen me wear it—to escape when I got to New York; Mr. Wheeler has that suit in his possession, in my trunk.” Hannah Crafts would also avail herself of a disguise in a suit in her escape to freedom—at least as depicted in her novel. Armed with these new facts about Wheeler and Jane Johnson, I returned to the search for the elusive Hannah Crafts by examining John Hill Wheeler’s diary.

  The Diary of John Hill Wheeler

  The biographies of John Hill Wheeler indicated that he kept a diary, now housed in his papers at the Library of Congress. Would this diary shed any light on Wheeler’s feelings about Jane Johnson’s escape and, even more important, about the identity of Jane’s replacement, Hannah Crafts?

  Wheeler wrote in his diary regularly from the time on his plantation located in Beattie’s Ford in the county of Lincolnton, in North Carolina (about 250 miles from Wilmington), during his residency in Nicaragua, and all during his various periods of residence in Washington, D.C. The period covered in the diary housed at the Library of Congress is May 30, 1850, to his death in 1882. The diary is intact, except for the year 1858, much of which is damaged or illegible for the first half of the year. The latter half of his diary for 1856 is lost after May 23.

  Wheeler lived
in Nicaragua between 1855 and November 1856, according to a “Diary of Events” that he recorded in his diary. This chronology follows several pages of financial records, including that for the sale of a farm in Prince Georges County, Maryland, along with what appears to be the sale of three slaves, one named Joyce ($485.92), another named Gadis ($360.00), and finally Boker ($400.98). Wheeler moved from Washington to North Carolina during the Civil War, resettling in August 1861. He kept his permanent residence there until June 1865, when he moved to a farm near Washington. In 1873 he moved to a home in the city of Washington, apparently remaining there until he died. Even when he lived in Washington and Nicaragua, he returned to North Carolina several times, at least once accompanied by slaves.

  Wheeler’s diary for 1854 opens when he is assistant secretary to the president of the United States, Franklin Pierce. He reports a conversation with Pierce on June 2, 1854, during which Pierce was “delighted with the news from Boston that the slave [Anthony] Burns had been remanded by law to his master and that ‘the only fear [that abolitionists] had was of lead and steel.’” Two months later Pierce appointed Wheeler “Minister Resident of the U.S. for the Republic of Nicaragua, Central America.”

  Wednesday, August 6, 1854, reports his return to his plantation: “much exhausted about 10—and went forthwith to bed.” Wheeler complains, however, that he was unable to sleep “because my slumber much disturbed by the wake kept up by the Negroes over Captain Slade’s servant—who died today—and who I hope has gone where the good Negroes go.”

  The following July, in 1855, Jane Johnson’s escape occurs. Wheeler’s diary entry for July 18 describes it as follows:

  Left Washington City at 6 o’clock with Jane Daniel and Isaiah (my servants) for New York. D. Webster Esq. 6th Street Philadelphia in Co. Reached Philadelphia [a]t 1 1/2—went to Mr. Sully’s to get Ellen’s [i.e., Wheeler’s wife] things—and hurried to the Warf [sic]. The Boat had just left—so we remained until 5 o’clock—took dinner at Bloodgood’s hotel foot of Walnut Street. At 4 1/2 went on board of the Steamer Washington, and a few minutes before the boat started a gang of Negroes led on by Pass-more Williamson an Abolitionist came up to us, and told Jane that [i]f she would go ashore she was free—On my remonstrating they seized me by the collar, threatened to cut my throat if I resisted, took the servants by force, they remonstrating and crying murder. Hurried them on shore—to a carriage which was waiting, and drove [stricken: “off”] them off.

  Wheeler’s diary for July 19:

  I went to the Marshal’s Office and with his Deputy, Mr. Mulloy, went to Judge Kane, who ordered a Habeas Corpus—returned to town about 10 o’clock, to M. J.C. Hazlitt the Deputy Clerk—took out the writ, then we went to the House of Williamson who had absconded. At 1 o’clock I left Philadelphia, and arrived at New York at 6—and put up at the Washington House.

  Entries following, between July 19 and through much of August, refer to the trial of Passmore Williamson and that of the black men separately accused. Wheeler writes that Williamson had been confined to prison, “where he will stay until he gives up my property which he stole.” (July 27, 1855) Jane—Wheeler never uses her surname—“has been induced to make an affidavit that she wished to be free—all stuff!” (August 3)

  Wheeler reports that on August 15 he “engaged” two servants, Margaret Bina and Margaret Wood, both white, from the Protestant Servants Association in New York. In late August he returned to Philadelphia to testify in court, after which he reports attending a performance of “the Sanford Minstrels.” A day later, on August 30, he reports that Jane—“escorted by Lucreta Mott and others”—had given her testimony, which he characterized as the “most barefaced perjury committed by her and her black confidantes.” Wheeler’s entry concludes with the report that he “went to see Judge Grier—to have her arrested.” On August 31 he writes that a rumor had circulated that “the U.S. Officers would seize Jane—in Court at 10,” causing “much excitement.”

  Wheeler was a religious person and saw absolutely nothing incompatible about being a good Christian and owning slaves. On the nineteenth anniversary of his first wife’s death, Wheeler’s diary entry of October 4, 1855, reads as follows:

  This is the anniversary of the death of my Sainted Mary 19 years ago—In the stillness of midnight my mind reverted to this mysterious Providence—and tho I cannot know I shall know hereafter the reasons for so mournful a dispensation. May the Lord sanctify his acts and make me worthy to be with her in glory.

  By 1857 Wheeler has returned from Nicaragua and has reestablished himself in Washington. Nine days after attending the inauguration of James Buchanan as president, Wheeler reports writing to his lawyers about the Passmore Williamson case once again.(March 13, 1857) On March 21 he leaves Washington for North Carolina. On April 2 Wheeler reports visiting his sons, then his cousin Mollie Mebane, accompanied by “Esther and John & James.”25 Given the fact that he gives no surnames for any of the three people accompanying him, it is highly likely that they are slaves. It is also possible that these slaves accompanied him when he left for his plantation at Lincolnton on April 7. On May 5 he returns to Washington.

  Wheeler’s diary for 1858 is severely damaged, and entries are missing between January and June, when he could have reported a slave escaping. The remainder of the diary is of interest to us indirectly for his anticipation of and anxieties about the impending dissolution of the Union and the prospect of civil war. (On September 18, 1858, he reports seeing John Wilkes Booth in The Robbers, having seen him four days earlier in the role of Shylock: “a very promising actor,” he writes.) Wheeler occasionally mentions his case against Williamson throughout 1858, hoping to receive compensation for Jane—or the return of Jane herself. (February 18, 1859, March 31, 1859, and January 5, 1860) Along the way, he praises the hanging of John Brown:

  John Brown hung today at 11 o’clock at Charleston Va. For treason, murder & insurrection—large military force present— He died as he lived game. May such be the end of all traitors! (December 2, 1859)

  As late as January 10, 1860, he wrote that he “engaged in preparations of memorial to the Legislature of Pennsylvania as to the forcible taking away of my Negroes at Philadelphia on 18 July 1855 by a mob for which I hope to be indemnified by the State.” “This question [of slavery],” he had written on December 13, 1859, “is shaking the Union to the center.” As Wheeler lamented in his own “Diary of Events,” Jane Johnson and her sons got away: “the servants were never reclaimed.”

  On February 8, 1860, Wheeler reports that “one of our girls,” Kate Dorsey, “took it into her head to commit matrimony last night,” leaving “only one servant, Nora—which rather deranges matters.” Wheeler’s slaves have somehow disappeared, replaced by a series of white servants named Nora, Rosa Clark, and Mary Dorsey.

  In terms of the search for Hannah Crafts, the most important fact that I learned from reading Wheeler’s diary—other than that he loved minstrel shows almost as much as he loved slavery—was gleaned from his diary entry for November 28, 1857. It reads as follows:

  Visited Clark Mills, saw his equestrian Statue of Washington— on which he will be immortalized—as it is equal or superior to his Jackson.

  When I read this, I remembered Dr. Joe Nickell’s use of Crafts’s reference to the construction of the equestrian statue of Jackson (on p. 196) as a date before which The Bondwoman’s Narrative could not have been written. It is a curious overlapping of references, suggesting perhaps Wheeler household discussions about Mills or Jackson’s statue, which if true, underscore Crafts’s proximity to the Wheelers as a house servant.

  We do not know, however, from reading Wheeler’s diary when Hannah Crafts escaped or whether she fled from the Wheeler home in Washington, or, like Jane, during one of Wheeler’s trips, perhaps back home to North Carolina. If indeed she escaped from the Wheeler plantation, we can use Wheeler’s diary to arrive at a reasonable date during which this could have occurred. The “window of opportunity” for Hannah’s e
scape from the Wheeler plantation is established in John Hill Wheeler’s diary by the earlier escape of Jane in July 1855, referred to by Hannah in her first meeting with Mrs. Wheeler, and the onset of the Civil War in 1861. Judging from the relevant information contained in Wheeler’s diary, Hannah’s escape would most likely have occurred betweenMarch 21 and May 4, 1857. This period corresponds not only with the Wheelers’ recorded trip to the plantation from Washington but with several other unique events and circumstances in their lives during this time, such as Wheeler’s recent dismissal from his government post. Negative evidence supporting the year 1857 for the escape is provided by the lack of known visits by the Wheelers to the plantation during the years 1855, 1856 (only the first half of the diary is extant, but Mr. Wheeler was still in Nicaragua until November of that year), and 1858 (only the last half of his diary survives). Trips were made by the Wheelers to North Carolina in 1859 (with President James Buchanan in early June), 1860 (in the latter half of December), and 1861 (about July, from which point Wheeler stayed in North Carolina). But Mr. Wheeler’s continual employment as clerk of the Interior Department in Washington from 1857 would not have occasioned Hannah’s reference to his recent dismissal from office during any of these years. Further, the relative proximity in time between the departure of Jane, a much-valued servant of Mrs. Wheeler, and the acquisition of Hannah as a competent replacement (less than two years) logically supports the year 1856 as the date of Hannah’s service with the Wheelers and her subsequent escape in the spring of 1857. Quite tellingly, Crafts writes that the Wheelers took her to North Carolina from Washington by boat. Wheeler’s diary confirms that he did in fact travel to North Carolina by boat early in 1857.