Stars and Stripes (pages 179 thru 192)
(page 182, par. 4, line 9) curmudgeon Anthony Hutchins (ca. 1725-1804) was an original holder of a 1770s English land grant, and became one of the largest slave owning plantation owners of the Natchez region. He fell victim to the Americans’ 1778 Willings raid. where he suffered the seizure of Afro-American slaves from his plantation. The next year the Spanish occupied Natchez. Remaining in place and promising to become a peaceable Spanish colonial, Hutchins soon turned on the new regime. He and a dozen other British Loyalists staged a daring bloodless rebellion, reclaiming Fort Panmure at Natchez by stealth for the English Crown. They replaced the Spanish administration with one of their own. Their little victory for the British Crown at Natchez was short-lived: Hutchins and his co-agitators were horrified to discover that British dominion over all of West Florida had collapsed with the surrender of British Pensacola to Bérnardo de Gálvez’ conquest.
Hutchins could anticipate that the restored Spanish in Natchez might deal with him harshly. An analogous scenario had played out with fatal consequences for rebellious French Creoles who had challenged then-new Spanish rule in New Orleans, where the Spanish had assumed sovereignty over French Louisiana following the French and Indian War. Alejandro O’Reilly, a vengeful Spanish governor, reasserted Spanish control over the rebels, seized the French conspirators, and summarily executed some of them. O’Reilly arrested the conspirators at a dinner to which he invited them, a betrayal of trust that elite French Creoles long resented.
The Spanish overlords remained a minority in their own province of Luisiana and Spanish West Florida. The Spanish and French soon achieved a détente in business and social realms, in which French language and culture continued to dominate in the lower Mississippi Valley, outliving France’s formal colonial possession or the region by generations. See: Nasatir, Abraham P. Borderland in Retreat – From Spanish Louisiana to the Far Southwest.
A quarter century later, and in their more recently acquired West Florida, Governor Bérnardo de Gálvez took a more conciliatory approach to Hutchins’ rebellion. Rather than condemning Hutchins to a grisly death, as traitors to the King of Spain might expect, they instead stripped him of his land and property and sent him into exile.
The reality was far from draconian. The Spanish overlords allowed Hutchins’ wife to assume title to the land and the “human property” in his absence. Plantation work and business proceeded without interruption, and to the benefit of the Hutchins family. Hutchins himself was forgiven and returned to Natchez in a few years after an overseas trip to London. He was doubtless grateful to a regime willing to treat his treason as but a minor indiscretion, though Hutchins’ loyalty to Spanish in the region lasted only as long as their regime was dominant. See: McMichael, Andrew. Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810; Narrett, David. Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803; Weeks, Charles A., and Christian Pinnen. A Borrowed Land: Colonial Mississippi, in preparation; and Smith, Gene Allen, and Sylvia L. Hilton, eds. Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s – 1820.
The Hutchins family thrived in succeeding years, importing more enslaved labor, expanding plantation production, and taking full advantage of the guaranteed prices for tobacco at the royal Spanish warehouse in New Orleans. See also: Ill-Fated Frontier, Ch. 14, Note 13
(page 183, par. 6, lines 1-2) “a refractory and turbulent spirit prevailed” Sargent, Winthrop. In: Winthrop Sargent Papers. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. Reel 4, 1795-Feb. 1799. Reel 5 Mar 1799-1801.
(page 184, par. 2, lines 1-2) unilaterally decreed a criminal code Laws of the Mississippi Territory, 1799, published by A. Marschalk. In: Early American imprints. First series, no. 35828.
(page 184, par. 5, line 7) “Stephen Minor…completed the survey” Holmes, Jack D. L. “Stephen Minor: Natchez Pioneer.” Journal of Mississippi History, 1980, Vol. 42:17-26.
(page 185, par. 2, line 1) “Dunbar’s scientific writings gained Thomas Jefferson’s attention” Strang, Cameron B. Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, Ch 10, p. 133
(page 185, par. 3, lines 2-3) “a Founder of the Bank of Mississippi” In 1818 James Steer wrote to Estevan Minor to decline purchasing shares in the bank: “After reflecting, I feel disposed to decline taking any bank stock. For a young man just commencing in life, the best stock in which he can invest is, I think, negro stock. When cotton can command twenty to thirty cents per pound, negroes will yield a much larger income than any bank dividend.” In: Kane, Hanett T. 1947. Natchez on the Mississippi, p. 7.
(page 185, par. 4, lines 4-5) David Bradford, former Whiskey Rebellion leader …received a presidential pardon President Adams’ pardon of William Bradford for his role in the Whiskey Rebellion is dated March 9, 1799, wherein Adams expressed concern about the “sufferings of the said David Bradford, an exile in a foreign land.”
(page 185, par. 4, lines 3-7) irascible Anthony Hutchins was also described as possessing a ”long and vindictive memory” Grant, Ethan A. “Anthony Hutchins: A Pioneer of the Old Southwest.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, 1996, Vol. 74 (4 Spring): pp. 405-422. Hutchins’ American loyalty and eligibility for office were understandably doubtful, though his faction ended up winning the day by the ouster of Winthrop Sargent as territorial governor. Jeffersonian William C. C. Claiborne won the appointment. See: Spanish papers – Early Mississippi Territory, In: Early Times in Natchez District and Mississippi Territory, Jackson: MDAH. Book E, Papers and Letters connected with the history of Colonel A. Hutchins and the “Committee of Safety,” Peter Walker, D. Clark, Andrew Ellicott, Winthrop Sargent, Lieutenant Pope, et al.; Oath of Anthony Hutchins, January 2, 1799.
In 1801 Sargent published two pamphlets in his own defense, Papers in Relation to the Official Conduct of Governour Sargent; and Political Intolerance, or the Violence of Party Spirit, Exemplified in a Recent Removal from Office. For an old school overvierw of the entire Sargent administration in Mississippi Territory, see Rowland, Dunbar, History of Mississippi – The Heart of the South, pp. 337-375.
(page 185, par. 5, line 9) Sargent…lost the governorship in 1801. “pursued scientific interests” Sargent was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Winthrop Sargent was afterward joined in the Natchez area by his sister, who, as a widow, relocated from Newburyport, Massachusetts. Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) was an important female essayist, playwright, and poet of the Early Republic. She is currently celebrated as an early feminist proponent of Republican motherhood, equality of the intellectual capacities of women and men, and the fostering of female education. See Harris, Sharon M., ed. Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray. Recent biographies include Skemp, Sheila M. Judith Sargent Murray: A Brief Biography with Documents. Most works generally do not focus on Sargent’s opinions on slavery and her family’s links to the emerging South. Judith Sargent Murray’s feminist advocacy seems not to have extended to women of color. She was not an abolitionist. Rather, she was comfortable with her brother Winthrop, her daughter, and herself relocating to the South to join the highest echelon of Southern plantation-based society. See Schloesser, Pauline. The Fair Sex – White Women and Racial Patriarchy in the Early American Republic. for opinions on racialized aspects of proto-feminist elite women of the Early Republic. “In Murray’s letters, blacks are characterized as uneducated, irrational, and dishonest.” pp. 173-174.
Ms. Murray’s extensive letter books, long thought lost, were discovered in the attic of Arlington Plantation in Natchez. MDAH has published them on microfilm, comprising a primary source fueling recent scholarship on Murray’s works, life, and legacy.
(page 186, par. 1, line 3) Gayoso’s extensive and well-used personal library The contents of Manuel Gayoso de Lemos’ library reveal the broad range of his interests. “Gayoso had a curious spirit, exploring authorities and some literature in English, French and Spanish. Some titles were proscribed by the inquisition, suggesting that it was unevenly executed in different locations.” Curiously, his library included volumes that had been banned by the Indice ultimo of the Inquisition. Leonard, Irving A. “A Frontier Library, 1799.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 1943, Vol. 23 (1): p. 30. Holmes, Jack D.L. Gayoso: The Life of a Spanish Governor in the Mississippi Valley; and Din, Gilbert C. “Manuel Gayoso de Lemos” In American National Biography
(page 187, par. 2, lines 11-12) “…Steady and Compleat Assumption of the Ameracan Government” Benaja [sic] Osman to John Adams, November 15, 1797. Adams Papers, Boston: MHS.
(page 187, par. 3, lines 9-10) post $10,000 bail on Burr’s behalf Osman posted the bail money along with Lyman Harding.
(page 188, par. 1, lines 6-7) just why Jerry earned his freedom Benajah Osman died in June 1815 in Natchez, Mississippi, unmarried, and was buried on his Windy Hill plantation. In his will, dated May 17, 1815, Osman requested that his slave Jerry was to be emancipated and freed from slavery. The issue was considered controversial and came before the Mississippi legislature, where it was memorialized in the Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi for 1824.
(page 188, par. 2, line 5) Sarah actively took part in David Forman’s estate as co-administrator Guardian or New Jersey Advertiser, May 15, 1798 and May 29, 1798.
(page 189, par. 2, line 3) the general’s three surviving daughters. All three lived in the North. Those daughters were:
1) Emma Forman Cumming (born Oct. 12, 1785, died 1853) had married Robert Cumming of Baltimore, another source places their residence as Newark, NJ;
2) Malvina Forman born July 30, 1788, died at an advanced age as the longest surviving of her siblings); and
3) Rivine Forman (born December 30, 1791, d. 1816), had married Col. James Neilson of New Brunswick, NJ. When Rivine died in 1816, her husband championed her interests in General David Forman’s estate in close cooperation with the surviving two of the general’s daughters Malvina and Emma.
From the standpoint of the flow of capital over time, James Neilson channeled wealth originally amassed by the Formans’ enslaved labor force in Natchez, via tangled estate litigation, into his investments in entrepreneurial transportation and industrial ventures back north in New Jersey. Neilson is considered an important regional innovator and successful investor in the antebellum industrialization of Northern New Jersey.
None of the Forman daughters left documentation of their views on slavery.
Shields, a Southern historian of a generation extolling the Lost Cause, bitterly opined that antebellum Northerners “sold their slaves to the more genial people of the South, pocketed the proceeds and then, having abolished slavery, raised their eyes to Heaven and thanked God that they were free of the sin of it.” Shields captured a very real dynamic by putting words into the mouth of an imaginary minstrel show stereotype: “How’s dis, ole Massa? You say you’s free from de sin ob slabery, yit we’s got ter wuk hard as eber; we don’t un’erstan’ dat.” Though his mode of expression is offensive to modern observers, Shields had a point about those Northern families who decried slavery in the antebellum period while still managing to profit by it. Adding to the complexity, and perhaps to selective memory of their family members’ business dealings in the Early Republic and antebellum periods, many of the same Northern families sacrificed their sons in an effusion of blood during the Civil War, a conflict fought in part to end the “peculiar institution.” See Shields, Joseph Dunbar. Natchez – Its Early History, pp. 34-35.
In the case of General David Forman’s New Jersey heirs, the human chattel sales were done in the South on their behalf, out of their sight and apparently of mind, by agents and lawyers acting in the impersonal realm of fiduciaries executing an estate. The result was the same to the displaced African Americans as if the New Jersey Formans had personally sold their slaves “down river.” Technically, such sales were possible in New Jersey only with the consent of the enslaved. I doubt that such consent was ever freely given, Such sales proceeded in any case, a sub rosa involuntary exodus contributing to the dramatic decrease in the population of New Jersey’s enslaved residents, predating and accelerating the impact of the 1804 slow emancipation state law.
Decennial Census data for New Jersey reveals the diminution of the enslaved and increase in free African Americans extending well into the 19th century:
|
Census Year |
Enslaved Persons |
Free People of Color |
|
1790 |
11,423 |
2,762 |
|
1800 |
12,422 |
4,402 |
|
1810 |
10,851 |
7,843 |
|
1820 |
7,557 |
12,460 |
|
1830 |
2,254 |
18,303 |
|
1840 |
674 |
21,215 |
|
1850 |
236 |
23,810 |
|
1860 |
18 |
25,318 |
For a more systematic treatments of the protracted end to slavery in Northern states, see: Nash, Gary B., and Jean R. Soderland. Freedom by Degrees – Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North; Hodges, Graham Russell. Slavery, and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County; and McManus, Edward. Black Bondage in the North.
In: Hartog, Hendrik. The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the antebellum North, the author details the case of Minna and delves into the dynamics of residual slavery in New Jersey well into in the antebellum period.
(page 189, par. 3, lines 2-3) sell Wilderness Plantation to his brother at a low price Thompson, Robert J. Colonel James Neilson, pp. 51-53.
(page 189, par. 6, line 4-5) “I believe I have been of great service in effecting their plans” Samuel S. Forman to Col. Jonathan Rhea, March 1803. Samuel S. Forman papers, In: Fairchild Collection, New York: NYPL, Ms Coll 969, box 2 Letter Books 1799-1804
(page 190, par. 1, lines 1-2) Samuel S. tried without success to induce the estate to pay the $100 with interest Samuel S. Forman papers, In: Fairchild Collection, NYPL. From an 1801 accounting by Samuel S. Forman of unpaid charges to the estate of General David Forman from the 1789-90 trip, and a letter from Samuel S. to Jonathan Forman dated March 21, 1802.
(page 190, par. 3, lines 2-3) The two married sisters dispatched their husbands to Natchez to obtain their estate shares See: Neilson Thompson, Robert J. Colonel James Neilson: A Business Man of the Early Machine Age in New Jersey, 1784–1862. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1940.
(page 190, par. 4, lines 1-3) William G. and his four-year-old daughter set off… on the arduous Natchez Trace Forman Genealogy, Ibid, pp. 98-99; and The Reporter, Lexington, KY, October 10, 1812.
(page, 190, par. 4, lines 4-5) access his deceased wife’s dowry, which evidently had not been dispersed William Gordon Forman already had signed a series of notes with his father-in-law Reverend John Woodhull General David Forman Estate Papers, Monmouth County Historical Society, Archives and Library.
(page 190, par. 5, lines 3-4) William G. had died of natural causes A family genealogy, asserts that William G. was “murdered by Negroes” Forman genealogy p. 98-99; Woodward, Ruth L. and Wesley Frank Craven. Princetonians, 1784-1790: A Biographical Dictionary. Biographical information on William Gordon Forman and relations. The circumstances of William Gordon Forman’s death, appearing in the Forman Genealogy, pp. 98-99, and Princetonians, are incorrect. These sources state that he “was murdered in Lexington, KY, it is supposed for the purpose of robbery, by negros or men in the house where he was stopping.” A contemporaneous newspaper account describes his death due to natural causes. The Reporter, Lexington, KY, October 10, 1812, printed, ”…Major Forman in a bad state of health, arrived in Lexington on a journey to the State of New Jersey, with his only child, a daughter not quite four years old…” Woodward, RL and WF Craven Princetonians, 1784-1790, A Biographical Dictionary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. See entry for William Gordon Forman, Class of 1786, pp. 114-117.
(page 190, par. 6, lines 1-4) enslaved Forman African Americans, still resident on Wilderness and Second Creek plantations… I invite Afro-American genealogists, interested in their Forman surname, to examine closely the manuscript sources employed by Thompson. They contain names and descriptions of black people sold off, apparently in groups over a period of years, of the slaves who had arrived in Natchez as members of the Forman pioneer party and their descendants. Combined with the comprehensive inventory of the Forman enslaved immigrants made in 1795, and due to the nature of the litigation, a longitudinal picture of several extended enslaved families, who had immigrated as a group from New Jersey to Mississippi, could be constructed covering decades during the early antebellum period. Genealogists working with Afro-American lineages refer to the Civil War as the “brick wall.” A variety of factors render construction of family trees prior to 1865 extremely difficult.
(page 191, par. 1, line 1) Estate litigation dragged on into the 1830s Woodward, Ruth L., and Wesley Frank Craven. Princetonians, Op. cit., pp. 114-117. The article on William G. Forman contains a succinct description of General David Forman’s estate administration and the amounts claimed by and eventually paid to the General’s heirs. Also see: Thompson, Robert J. Colonel James Neilson: A Business Man of the Early Machine Age in New Jersey. Thompson provides a more granular description of the litigation, properties, and proceeds, with which James Neilson was intimately involved.
William Gordon Forman’s death revealed the extent of his complicated and insolvent dealings. Joseph Forman, his brother and executor to William G.’s estate, calculated $272,000 in assets and $306,000 in debts $45,000 of which was owed to the General’s heirs. Joseph Forman had been complicit in the curious circular sale of Wilderness Plantation in 1800, so the other heirs made their own calculation. They figured that they had $200,000 coming to them, notwithstanding some prior partial distributions. Forman heirs, after byzantine and protracted litigation, finally recovered a portion of the amounts to which they felt entitled, from William G. Forman’s father’s estate in Delaware.
(page 192, par. 1, line 6) cut out and ate his heart Heath, William. William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest, pp. 381-386; and Carter, Harvey Lewis. The Life and Times of Little Turtle. Insert pp. 232-233.
(page 193, par. 2) Jonathan Forman (1755-1809) Jonathan was a Revolutionary War veteran, who afterwards distinguished himself as leading the New Jersey Federalized militia, one of three army divisions reporting directly to George Washington for suppression of the Whiskey Rebels. Jonathan would recount in his journal, and doubtless to friends and family, “Considerably to my satisfaction, being afterwards invited to his [President and General Washington’s] quarters” in Western Pennsylvania during the Whiskey Rebellion deployment. See: Journal – Militia Deployment from New Jersey to Western Pennsylvania, September 1794, In: Jonathan Forman Papers, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Library Center.