Girl in Black and White

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Girl in Black and White Page 29

by Jessie Morgan-Owens


  10. Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2008), pp. 95–96.

  11. Higginson quoted in Mary Potter Thatcher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: The Story of his Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), p. 153.

  16. “The Anti-slavery Enterprise,” Boston, March 29, 1855

  1. Caroline Healey Dall to editor of National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 19, 1855.

  2. Charles Sumner to Samuel Gridley Howe, January 24, 1855, in Sumner, Selected Letters, ed. Beverly Wilson Palmer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).

  3. Charles Sumner to Julius Rockwell, November 26, 1854, in Sumner, Selected Letters.

  4. “Disappointment,” Boston Evening Transcript, March 29, 1855.

  5. Charles Sumner, “The Anti-slavery Enterprise: Its Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity, With Glimpses of the Special Duties of the North,” delivered March 30, 1855, Manuscript Collection, New-York Historical Society. See the digital version at https://www.nyhistory.org/slaverycollections/collections/sumner/index.html.

  6. “Mr. Sumner’s Anti-Slavery Lecture,” Boston Evening Transcript, March 31, 1855.

  7. “Disappointment,” Boston Evening Transcript, March 29, 1855.

  8. “Mr. Sumner’s Lecture,” Boston Evening Telegraph, March 30, 1855.

  9. Sumner, “The Anti-slavery Enterprise.”

  10. “Mr. Sumner’s Lecture,” Boston Evening Telegraph, March 30, 1855.

  11. Charles Sumner to Samuel J. May, March 30, 1855, Boston Public Library.

  12. National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 1855.

  13. According to Reverend Convers Francis, quoted in Sumner, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Edward Lillie Pierce (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893), p. 3:416.

  14. Charles Sumner, “The Anti-slavery Enterprise: Its Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity, With Glimpses of the Special Duties of the North,” delivered March 30, 1855, Manuscript Collection, New-York Historical Society.

  15. Charles Sumner, Recent Speeches and Addresses (Boston: Higgins & Bradley, 1856), p. 493.

  16. Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, April 24, 1855, in Frederick Douglass, Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999), p. 33.

  17. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), chap. 23. In this chapter, he explains what it was like to be a black man among white abolitionists.

  18. One hundred years later Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made the same case: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

  19. “Life Pictures,” Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

  20. Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).

  21. Frederick Douglass’s Paper, June 1, 1855.

  22. “Lecture Tonight by a Colored Physician,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 4, 1855.

  23. “Dr. Rock’s Lecture at the Music Hall,” Frederick Douglass’s Paper, April 20, 1855. A summary is available in the University of Detroit Mercy Black Abolitionist Archives, digital collections, at https://www.udmercy.edu/academics/special/black-abolitionist.php.

  24. John S. Rock, speech at Music Hall, Boston, April 5, 1855, as in Frederick Douglass’s Paper, April 20, 1855.

  25. National Anti-slavery Standard, May 19, 1855.

  26. Charles Sumner to William Jay, October 7, 1855, in Sumner, Memoir and Letters, p. 3:420.

  17. Private Life, Boston, October 1855

  1. Annie Russell Marble, Thoreau: His Home, Friends, and Books (New York: AMS Press, 1902), p. 199. George Tolman, “the custodian of the treasure-house” and former resident of the Thoreau house, became the secretary of the Concord Antiquarian Society when Thoreau’s home became a museum.

  2. Sumner to William Schouler, June 14, 1855; Sumner to Frances Seward, May 21, 1855, in Sumner, Selected Letters.

  3. Caroline Andrews Leighton quoted in Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: A Story of His Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), p. 154.

  4. Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 146.

  5. Higginson, quoted in Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Story of His Life, p. 152.

  6. Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 147.

  7. Higginson quoted in Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: A Story of His Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), pp. 153–54. The recipient of this letter is unknown. I believe this member of Congress could be Daniel Alvord, which would explain the care his daughter Caroline Alvord Sherman placed in the copy daguerreotype image of her erstwhile sister.

  8. Higginson to unknown recipient, “Dear Madam,” March 23, 1857, in “Higginson, Adoption of Mary Mildred Williams,” A-110, M133 #13, Alma Lutz collection of documents by and about abolitionists and women’s rights activists, 1775-1943, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Along with archivists at the Schlesinger library, we have examined the original letter for identifying marks and found none. I have called “Madam” a reformer because Alma Lutz collected documents about women’s rights activists; however, this item could have been preserved because of Higginson’s activism, not that of his unknown recipient.

  18. “The Crime Against Kansas,” Washington, May 1856

  1. Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), pp. 87–88.

  2. Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” speech delivered in the Senate, May 19, 1856.

  3. Stephen Douglas, “Kansas Affairs,” Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st session, May 20, 1856, pp. 544–46.

  4. Henry Wilson, in Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st session, pp. 1357–58.

  5. Preston Brooks to James Hampden Brooks, May 23, 1856, in Preston S. Brooks Letters, #1842-z, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  6. Edwin Morgan, in Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 2nd session, May 27, 1856, p. 1357.

  7. According to James A. Pearce, in Congressional Globe, House committee report on Sumner’s assault, 34th Congress, 1st session, 1355.

  8. Hon. L. F. S. Foster, in Congressional Globe, p. 1356.

  9. Edwin Morgan, Congressional Globe, p. 1357.

  10. Ambrose Murray, in Congressional Globe, p. 1357.

  11. Preston Brooks, letter, Congressional Globe, p. 1353.

  12. Dr. Cornelius Boyle, in Congressional Globe, p. 1353.

  13. Charles Sumner, testimony to the House committee on the assault, May 26, 1856, Congressional Globe, pp. 1353–54.

  14. In The Caning: The Assault that Drove America to Civil War (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2013), Stephen Puleo locates the responses to Sumner’s speech along a “reaction continuum”: “Un-American” (Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan); “Language intemperate and bitter,” “offensive” to hear from “a man of character” (former Massachusetts governor Edward Everett); “Majestic, elegant, and crushing” (New York Times); “a brave and noble speech you made, never to die out of the memories of men” and “the greatest voice on the greatest subject that has ever been uttered” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow); elevating “the range and scope of senatorial debate” and that “no man now living, within the last five years had rendered the American people a greater service to won for himself a nobler fame” (New York Tribune). See also Sumner, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Edward Lillie Pierce (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893), p. 3:457.

  15. For more on Brooks and codes of chivalry, see Puleo, Caning, and David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), chap. 11.

  16. P. S. Brooks to J. D. Br
ight, president of the Senate, in Congressional Globe, p. 1347.

  17. Manisha Sinha, “The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 2 (2003), pp. 233–62.

  18. Puleo, Caning, p. 133.

  19. New York Evening Post, May 23, 1855.

  20. As recalled by Stowe’s publisher, Moses D. Phillips, in J. C. Derby, Fifty Years Among Authors, Books and Publishers (Hartford, Conn.: Winter & Hatch, 1886), p. 521.

  21. David S. Reynolds, John Brown: The Man who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Vintage, 2006).

  22. Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” speech delivered in Concord, October 30, 1859.

  19. Frederick Douglass, Boston, 1860

  1. Edward Everett, “The Common Schools of Boston,” dedication of the Everett School-House, New York Times, September 19, 1860. Everett closed this speech with a recommendation that women not be afforded the right to vote.

  2. Charles Sumner, “Argument for the Constitutionality of Separate Colored Schools,” in Sarah Roberts v. City of Boston, December 4, 1849.

  3. For a study on the Roberts Case, see Stephen and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).

  4. See Frederick Douglass, “Pictures and Progress,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 3, 1855–1863, ed. John Blassingame (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), Blassingame’s introduction, p. 452.

  5. In addition to memorializing Theodore Parker, these lectures also responded to Lincoln’s inaugural address. Douglass critiqued Lincoln’s decision not to arm black troops. See Laura Wexler, “ ‘A More Perfect Likeness’: Frederick Douglass and the Image of the Nation,” in Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, ed. Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).

  6. Douglass, “Pictures and Progress” (1864), p. 9, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

  7. Zoe Trodd, Picturing Frederick Douglass (New York: Norton, 2015); and private conversation with author.

  8. For more on Douglass’s theory of images, see Ginger Hill, “ ‘Rightly Viewed’: Theorizations of Self in Frederick Douglass’s Lectures on Pictures,” in Pictures and Progress: Early Photography, ed. Wallace and Smith, pp. 41–82.

  9. Douglass would revise his message about pictures between 1861 and 1864, when he gave four lectures on photography. The manuscripts are housed in the “Speech, Article, and Book File,” in the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress: “Lecture on Pictures [title varies]” (Box 22, reel 14), “Pictures and Progress” (box 28, reel 18). He delivered the first lecture, “Life Pictures,” in Syracuse, New York, on November 14, 1861. He delivered the second, “Age of Pictures,” at the Parker Fraternity series in Boston. He delivered the third, “Lecture on Pictures,” at Boston’s Tremont Temple on December 3, 1861; it is published as “Pictures and Progress” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, vol. 3, 1855–1863, ed. John Blassingame (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979). The fourth lecture was a revised, undated version of “Pictures and Progress,” delivered four years later. See also David Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), p. 13.

  10. Blassingame, introduction to “Pictures and Progress,” p. 452. For Lincoln, see the National Anti-Slavery Standard, December 7, 1861.

  11. Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (1893), Library of America edition, p. 792.

  20. Prudence Bell, Plymouth County, 1864

  1. See the catalog of the retrospective of Edward Mitchell Bannister’s work curated by Juanita Marie Holland for Kenkeleba House gallery in 1992. See also Marilyn Richardson, “Taken From Life: Edward M. Bannister, Edmonia Lewis and the Memorialization of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment,” in Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), pp. 94–115. Bannister belonged to the Crispus Attucks Choir and the Histrionic Club, and he served as an officer or delegate in several black abolitionist groups, including the Colored Citizens of Boston, the Union Progressive Association, and the New England Colored Convention.

  2. Arlette Johnson to author, May 2, 2016.

  3. The Johnsons donated the painting to Boston’s Museum of African American History, which holds the painting off-site at a storage facility. When I visited in May 2017, I crossed the main atrium of the Fortress, passing beneath dozens of containers of Boston’s treasures hydraulically suspended stories overhead. Then I was ushered into a small, brightly lit room, where I saw, sitting on an easel, the painting of Prue Bell.

  4. J. E. Weiss to C. H. Brainard, September 24, 1856, John A. Andrew Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  5. Adelaide M. Cromwell, “An Old Boston Negro Family’s Adjustment Through the Years,” in The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Black Upper Class, 1750-1950 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), pp. 221–24.

  6. James K. Hosmer recalled his visit to Governor Andrew’s war cabinet, September 1862, in Edward Waldo Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855–1870 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918).

  7. See Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery (North Haven, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1999) p. 119.

  8. Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment: The History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1863–1865 (1894; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1969).

  9. All four of Robert Johnson’s sons served in the 54th. Henry Johnson would become the first commander of Post 134 of the Grand Army of the Republic and lead the fight for equal pay for colored troops.

  10. Kathryn Grover and Janine V. da Silva, The Historic Resource Study: Boston African American National Historic Site (December 31, 2002), https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/discover_history/upload/BOAFSRS.pdf.

  11. The song was published in the New York Times, May 10, 1891. See Brave Black Regiment, p. 494.

  12. “Sumter Watchman,” October 1864, Brave Black Regiment, p. 501.

  13. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870), p. 3.

  14. Higginson, Army Life, pp. 4, 7.

  15. Higginson, Army Life, p. 3.

  16. “Five Generations on Smith’s plantation in Beaufort, South Carolina,” a famous photograph of a black family taken by Timothy O’Sullivan in 1862, was made at this plantation. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98504449.

  17. Higginson, Army Life, p. 9.

  18. Higginson, Army Life, p. 17.

  19. Higginson, Army Life, p. 13.

  20. Joseph Keith Newell, ed., “Ours”: Annals of 10th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers in the Rebellion (Springfield, Mass.: C. A. Nichols & Co., 1875).

  21. In an accidental boon to this history, John Cornwell’s case was transferred to Spotsylvania County, and from there, it was heard at the Virginia Supreme Court, whose clerk carefully hand-copied and marked up the documents I have accessed.

  22. Manassas Democrat, February 16, 1911.

  23. According to a local historian, the 1855 census listed no people of color living in Lexington, and in 1860, only one. This increase, by seven, was attributed to emancipation. There was a small, active black community in nearby Concord. Richard Kollen, Lexington: From Liberty’s Birthplace to Progressive Suburb (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2001).

  24. For the Annie and Mary Lawrence story, see Mary F. Eastman and Helen Cecelia Clarke Lewis, The Biography of Dio Lewis (Fowler & Wells, 1891) chap. 11.

  25. Documents of the City of Boston 1888, vol. 3 (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1889), p. 79.

  26. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Part of a Man’s Life
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), p. 122.

  27. Higginson, “Madam,” the Knight family from Medford, and a man named Silas Ketchum who wrote Sumner to inquire about a child like Mary in 1856. Charles Sumner to Silas Ketchum, December 16, 1856, quoted in Mitchell, “The Real Ida May: A Fugitive Tale in the Archives,” Massachusetts Historical Review 15 (2013): 87n77.

  28. Maynard retired after twenty years of service in May 1917. In the 1910 census, she was living at another address, as another woman’s boarder.

  29. In 1900 the census taker was responsible for taking down the race of the person whose record he was making.

  Epilogue: Hyde Park, Massachusetts, 2017

  1. Jesse Nelson’s death record states that he was thirty years and one month old at time of death. There may have been some uncertainty around Jesse’s birthdate, a common problem arising from enslavement. Given that his family, present for his death, gave his age, and the hospital recorded the date of death, I have used February 18, 1848, as his likely birthdate for this book. See Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911, and entry for “Nelson, Jesse,” Vital Records of Abington, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (New England Historic Genealogical Society), p. 148.

  2. A group of students at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, for a class project, created a family tree for Nathaniel Booth and his wife Fanny, who boarded with the Williams family in the 1860. These student researchers added a Williams family tree on Ancestry.com that included Mary’s birth and death date. I followed this date through the records to the New York Department of Records and Information.

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  p. iii Courtesy American Antiquarian Society

  p. 70 Courtesy Boston Public Library and Digital Commonwealth

  p. 106 Image courtesy of Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, DigitalCommons@UMaine

  p. 120 Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

  p. 132 From the Collection of Joan Paulson Gage

  p. 136 Courtesy American Antiquarian Society

 

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