History: Anti-Slavery and Washington, D.C.
The Subversives
Not sure about you, but I tend to think of abolition, the move to end slavery, and the Underground Railroad, the escape from it, as the entire story of those who fought back.
Now I know better.
Stanley Harrold, in his 2003 book, Subversives, Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C. 1828–1865, reminds us that D.C. was the center of a multifaceted, biracial effort to jam the gears of slavery in the region surrounding the Chesapeake bay.
During much of the period covered in the book, the District of Columbia (D.C.), comprised a swath of Virginia, including the city of Alexandria.
D.C. was nestled between the slaves states of Virginia and Maryland and itself allowed slavery, much to the consternation of John Quincy Adams, Joshua Giddings and other members of Congress.
Both Washington and Alexandria were the locations of slave pens and notorious auctions with enslaved blacks being sold south and southwest.
But there were thousands of free blacks in the city, some middle class, and they, along with a cohort of anti-slavery whites, formed a biracial community adopting a varied approach to slavery disruption:
-Universal emancipation or abolition
-Assisting escapees from the Chesapeake region and further south on their way north
-Buying the freedom of slaves about to be sold south
-Contesting “ownership” of blacks in the federal court system
-Forcing Congress to stop slave auctions in the city
-Starting schools to educate free blacks
-Assisting newly freed blacks
It’s as messy and complicated a story as you would expect with so many competing goals (and egos.)
Each objective had variants and was also often in conflict with other objectives.
Looming over it all was the idea that free blacks should leave the U.S. and migrate to Liberia, Africa, a movement called “colonization” of which Abraham Lincoln was a prominent member.
The white contingent was both influenced and populated by men and women from Western New York and northeastern Ohio, an area known as the “Burned Over District” referring to religious revivalism and radicalism in the early 19th-century. Joshua Giddings, a member of Congress from that area, was a fearless opponent of slavery.
Myrtilla Miner, a northern white woman, moved to Washington and started a school for young black girls. She, like many whites, could be patronizing and preachy towards her students and their parents, yet she took real risks pushing back against the anti-slavery community.
There has been an elementary school named after her in the northeast part of the city for over 100 years.
Thomas Smallwood, a former slave who lived and worked in Washington, is a central character in the early Underground Railroad movement for several reasons. He joined with Charles Torrey, a white abolitionist, to plan and carry out slave escapes. He was also an established black man in the city who worked at the Navy Yard, owned property and started a literacy effort. Smallwood apparently enjoyed a bit of bravado about his activities, especially when it came to outsmarting slavecatchers. Even he favored African Colonization in the 1820's.
Black churches, black newspapers and the abolitionist press served as key institutions. Black churches functioned as dominions of anti-slavery power but association with anti-slavery newspapers was always a dangerous business because they were targeted for destruction.
Mt. Zion church, the oldest black church in the city, is located about a mile from my home. The church cemetery, which I walk by frequently, was said to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.
It’s a sure thing to say that all the anti-slavery participants were courageous and radicalized around a human rights ideal.
They were quirky, unyielding, combative and insistent; a positive force for change.
Stanley Harrold documents that a great social movement need be neither neat nor coordinated to triumph in the end, dedication to an ideal is the essential requirement.
