You are hereby commanded to bring before me the body of one negro man, supposed to be forty or forty-five years old, with one leg off, rather dark complexioned, name unknown; also one negro man, supposed to be twenty-five or thirty years old, with one short leg, supposed to be occasioned by the white swelling, dark complexioned, name unknown; also one negro boy, supposed to be nine or ten years old, copper color, name unknown; also one negro woman, supposed to be forty or forty-five years old, copper color, name unknown; and also one negro girl, about five or six years old, copper color, name unknown; as it appears from an affidavit made before me that the above described persons are runaway slaves, and believed to be without free papers, and placed in the jail of the said county. Given under my hand and seal, this 16th day of January, A.D. 1850.
A writ issued by a justice of the peace in Illinois, 1850,
for the apprehension of two men, one boy, one woman, and
one girl, runaways from Missouri63
Louis Belmonti was in no doubt where his slave had gone—she had fled to the house of that German butcher’s wife in Lafayette. He arrived there early one morning and began pounding on the door. Francis Schuber had already left for work, and Eva and Salomé Müller huddled inside as Belmonti shouted at them through the mail flap. Mary was his and he wanted her back, he yelled. He rattled the door and stamped his feet. She was his property. He kicked the door, and became even angrier when Eva Schuber told him to go away. He would have them both imprisoned, he yelled. The longer Mary defied him, the more he would make her suffer.
After half an hour of shouting at a closed door Belmonti left, but not before threatening them that when he got his hands on Mary he would take her in chains to the public auctions and get rid of her for good. The episode badly shook the two women, especially the vow to auction her. They knew that if Belmonti reclaimed Mary Miller, he could sell her within hours and she would be on her way to some remote plantation, or out of the state, never to be heard of again.
There was no squeamishness in New Orleans about slave auctions—they were conducted under the colonnades in front of the Supreme Court, in the garden behind St. Louis Cathedral and under the lofty rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel. According to the City Directory of 1842, there were 185 slave dealers operating in the city. The most famous of all the auctions was held in the opulent St. Charles Hotel in the American Quarter, where, after dining on the exquisite cuisine the hotel had to offer, men would bid for black men and women standing on blocks at each end of the bar. Over twenty slave pens were located within several streets of the hotel, and one, owned by Theophilus Freeman, was directly opposite. Solomon Northup was sold there in 1841. He described what happened:
With an occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the younger slaves, it was not long before they were all astir, and wide awake. Mr. Theophilus Freeman bustled about in a very industrious manner, getting his property ready for the sales-room, intending, no doubt, to do that day a rousing business.
In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads. We were now conducted into a large room in the front part of the building to which the yard was attached, in order to be properly trained before the admission of customers. The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other. The tallest was placed at the head of the row, then the next tallest, and so on in the order of their respective heights. … Freeman charged us to remember our places; exhorted us to appear smart and lively—sometimes threatening, and again, holding out various inducements. During the day he exercised us in the art of “looking smart,” and of moving to our places with exact precision….
Next day many customers called to examine Freeman’s “new lot.” The latter gentleman was very loquacious, dwelling at much length upon our several good points and qualities. He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave’s back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale.64
Now the Schuber family took precautions. Salomé was never let out of the house by herself, the front door was always catched, the back gate was padlocked, and Francis Schuber arranged for some young men in the street to have billy clubs ready in their hallway. So constant was the fear that Salomé might be taken that plans of her working as a domestic in one of the mansions along St. Charles Avenue had to be abandoned.
These sorts of arrangements couldn’t be tolerated for long. Salomé paced the house like a caged animal, complaining that she had more freedom when Belmonti owned her. Eva and Francis sympathized and the three of them sought counsel from several elders in the German community. What was needed, they advised, was a declaration from a high-ranking official, a court, the legislature, some such body, the governor perhaps, saying that Salomé Müller was a free German woman. Only then could they rest in peace.
The next day, Eva hurried off to consult an attorney who had been recommended to her. He was Mr. L. J. Sigur, principal of the firm of Sigur, Caperton & Bonford, which had its offices in Customhouse Street in the First Municipality. Mr. Sigur listened patiently as Eva described how her goddaughter had been discovered after being held in bondage for twenty-five years. It is truly a strange story, he said, when Eva had finished. She then told him how her owner had been threatening to seize Salomé and auction her. His face clouded in concern. But Madame Schuber, you and your husband are harboring an escaped slave. I must tell you, it is a most serious offense. The courts treat offenders most harshly.
A few days later, Sigur journeyed to Eva Schuber’s house to interview Salomé Müller. He was admitted to the front parlor, where waiting for him was an olive-skinned woman, dressed in the clothing of a German frau. This is Miss Müller, said Eva. Salomé gave him a welcoming smile. While Eva busied herself in the kitchen, they exchanged pleasantries. With an easy grace Salomé thanked Sigur for handling her case. He noticed immediately that she had no trace of a German accent. He said he was pleased to be of service. She said that she hoped her freedom could be quickly settled. Nor was there any slave’s deference in her demeanor. Eva returned from the kitchen carrying a tray of coffee and oatmeal biscuits. Sigur dipped his pen in the silver inkwell he had brought with him and opened a fresh page in his journal. And where have you been for the past twenty-five years? he asked.
And so Sigur learned of John Fitz Miller’s involvement in the story of Salomé Müller.
He knew Miller. Everyone in New Orleans knew Miller. He had a number of business interests in the city and several plantations across the state. He used to own a stable of horses. Sigur remembered seeing him riding along the levee in the mornings with important men in politics and in the military. Sigur also knew Miller as a man with an irascible temper. He was not someone to be lightly crossed.
Mr. Belmonti had only owned her for five years, Salomé told him. Before that, Miller had held her as a slave for as long as she could remember. He had a sugar plantation in Attakapas. She had been there once. He had his own racecourse and a large house.
It was there that Miller took her, said Eva.
Sigur asked her what she meant. Eva told him that the last time she had seen Salomé she was a little girl. Her father, Daniel Müller, had brought Salomé and her brother and sister to where she was working as a domestic in Madame Borgnette’s boarding school. Daniel had said that he was going to Attakapas where the family had been engaged by a landowner. After that, they were never seen again. It was there, on his plantation in Attakapas, that Miller had made Salomé into his slave.
The vehemence of her words took Sigur’s breath away. Was she suggesting, he asked, that Miller had knowingly enslaved a young white girl? She was. But it was an extraordinary thing to say. He could think of few accusations against a Southern gentleman as foul. But that is what happened, insisted Eva. He urged caution. They would have to petition the court to seek Salomés freedom, and Miller would be bound to fight such a charge. No one could say what would happen.
This wasn’t what Eva wanted to hear. Salomé was white, she insisted. The judge must see that. Sigur interrupted to say that she must be realistic. Why would someone as wealthy as Miller need to take a white girl as a slave? He had many slaves already.
But not a pure, white one, retorted Eva. Not a German girl.
Sigur looked at her in astonishment. But where did he keep this German girl?
At his plantation in Attakapas, of course, replied Eva.
Sigur paused for a moment. It would be a difficult case, he warned. Eva Schuber and her husband could well be found guilty of enticing Salomé Müller from her owner and be ordered to pay damages. The legal expenses would be substantial. Who would pay?
Eva didn’t hear his question; instead, in a tumble of words, she told how she had recognized Salomé the moment she saw her on her doorstep. So had others. People who had been on the same ship with her. There was Mrs. Fleikener, Madame Hemm, Madame Koelhof-fer, and Mistress Schultzeheimer. All of them had recognized her. So had Madame Carl. They had all known Salomé’s mother. Mistress Schultzeheimer had been at Salomé’s birth. They had all come from the same village. They knew her. They couldn’t be mistaken. How could there be any doubt?
Sigur shrugged his shoulders. He was willing to take on the case, he said, so long as Madame Schuber understood that he would be looking to her to pay his legal fees, not the woman to be freed from slavery.
So, money would be needed. Eva Schuber started to collect it.
When, many months later, Eva told her story to the court, she said she hadn’t left New Orleans since her arrival twenty-five years earlier and had never been into the Third Municipality until the day she asked Belmonti to return her goddaughter. Yet now, in her search for contributions to Salomé’s legal expenses, she traveled the length and breadth of the city, seeking out Germans in Carrollton, the Faubourg Marigny, and across the river in Algiers and Gretna. She knocked on the door of all the German businesses she could find, starting at Jackson Avenue and moving toward the city, then downriver and beyond. She pleaded with German bakers with flour on their hands, impatient to be away, as she explained to them the story of the lost German slave. She spoke to laborers on the wharves, and carpenters at their turning machines. She waited outside the Kaiser Dance Hall on a Saturday night and the Clio Street German Church on Sunday mornings, cajoling, pressing, and shaming. The story was too fanciful for some, but if they attempted to walk off they found Eva at their side, chattering into their ears, imploring them for help. A pure German woman had been taken by an American. Her fate depended on them.
Sigur completed drafting the petition in the last few weeks of January 1844 and arranged for Salomé to come to his office to sign it. Because the terms of the petition had such an important influence on the course of the subsequent trial, the substantive parts are reproduced below:
Sally Miller
vs.
Louis Belmonti
To the Hon. the First Judicial District Court of the State of Louisiana.
The petition of Sally Miller, a free white woman, residing in the City of Lafayette, respectfully represents:
That she was born of Bavarian parents, who emigrated to this country some time about the year 1817, that her mother having died on the passage, her father, brother, sister and herself, she then being not much above the age of three years, were sold or bound to service as Redemptioners to one John Miller, who took them into the Parish of Attakapas, and that her father died before they arrived at their place of destination, all of which Petitioner having among other things since learned, she being then of too early an age to have them deeply impressed on her memory.
She further represents that being deprived then of her parents and entirely in the power and under the control of said Miller, he, in violation of all law human and divine, converted Petitioner into his slave, and as such, did for a long series of years, compel her to perform all the work, labor and services which slaves are required to perform, reducing her in all things to the level and condition of that degraded class.
She further represents, that in the year—she was sold by said Miller to Louis Belmonti, the defendant in this suit, residing within the jurisdiction of this Court, to wit: in the City of New Orleans, who has retained her in the bonds of slavery up to a very late period, she having but a short time since left the service of said Belmonti and gone to live with her relations who reside in the City of Lafayette, and she expressly charges that at the time she was sold to said Belmonti as aforesaid, he well knew she was free, it being then a matter of common notoriety that she had been illegally reduced to slavery.
She further represents, that since the time when she manifested her intention of pursuing her rights judicially, said Belmonti has adopted a cruel system of persecution against her, threatening to throw her into prison, to force her to work in the Chain Gang, and even to expose her for sale at public auction, said Belmonti having had ample means of ascertaining that she is a white person, and having devised these means of torturing her from the most malignant motives, and for the purpose of throwing every possible obstacle in the way of her recovery of her rights, and she has good reason to believe that said Belmonti intends to remove her out of the jurisdiction of this Court during the pendency of this suit.
In the closing paragraph, Sigur, with the customary flourish of the times, prayed that Belmonti be cited to appear “and condemned to pay one thousand dollars damages on account of the illegal and vexatious treatment of the Petitioner.”
Oddly, there wasn’t one word in the petition about the moles on her inner thighs. Perhaps Sigur wasn’t told about them. Perhaps he was, but decided that the petition was no place to reveal all his evidence. Instead, what was included was a vitriolic attack on Miller and Belmonti. The charge against Miller was vicious—he “in violation of all law human and divine, converted [the] Petitioner into his slave, and as such, did for a long series of years, compel her to perform all the work, labor and services which slaves are required to perform, reducing her in all things to the level and condition of that degraded class.” These words set the scene for the bitterness that characterized the litigation that followed. They made it inevitable that Miller would join the action to defend his character—he would be shunned in Southern society unless he did so. Compromise became impossible in the face of such allegations.
The damning of Miller wasn’t an essential step in Sally Miller gaining her freedom. Sigur could have merely outlined the evidence in support of her German heritage, explained that Belmonti had purchased her from Miller, and left it at that. If Sigur had felt the necessity of explaining how Miller obtained her, he could have left open the possibility that Miller held Sally without realising she was freeborn, or that he had purchased her in good faith from another. Perhaps, behind it all, was the determination of Eva Schuber to blacken Miller’s name. To punish and humiliate him for stealing the childhood of her goddaughter. Or it may be that the tactic, the hope, was that Miller and Belmonti, horrified by the possibility of a public airing of their misdeeds, would settle out of court and acknowledge that she was a free white woman. It is possible that Belmonti may have been so cowered, but anyone who knew John Fitz Miller would have known he had never retreated from a fight in his life.
Sigur’s petition had given her a new name. When Madame Carl rescued her she was Mary Miller. The Germans remembered her as Salomé Müller. Now she was Sally Miller. Why the change? It was, of course, the Americanization of “Salomé Müller.” Perhaps Salomé and her advisers, as they approached an American court, may have wanted to demonstrate loyalty to their adopted country by jettisoning a name so obviously foreign. Historians have frequently observed that of all the immigrant groups settling in the United States, the Germans were the least likely to remain sentimentally attached to the old country. They tended to avoid enclaves, they neglected national days, rarely held parades like the Irish and the Italians, and unlike the French and the Spanish had no hesitation in anglicizing their names. So she became Sally Miller—and the fact that she had the same surname as the man accused of taking her into slavery was dismissed as being of nothing more than an absurd coincidence.
Though it would have been a large expense for an immigrant family, Francis and Eva Schuber could have attempted to buy Sally Miller from Belmonti. A slave in her late twenties, trained as a servant, healthy and capable of bearing children—she would have been worth five hundred dollars or more. Belmonti might well have thought he could have demanded extra from desperate relatives. Perhaps Eva could have raised the money by subscription among the German community, but would Belmonti have sold? Possibly not. Cable described Belmonti as the “wifeless keeper of a dram-shop,” and there are more than a few hints to suggest that Sally was Belmonti’s concubine. His behavior in harassing Eva Schuber for Sally’s return was suggestive of a jilted lover; however, something more substantial emerged when, during the trial to free Sally Miller, a slave broker, Mr. A. Piernas, gave testimony. Belmonti had become acquainted with Sally while she was Miller’s slave. According to Piernas, Belmonti engaged him to ask Miller if he was thinking of selling her. Sally then assisted in the negotiations by telling Miller’s mother that she knew a person who would be willing to purchase her. This was Belmonti, and the deal was then done.65
But there was another, more cogent, reason why purchasing Sally Miller was no solution for Eva Schuber: the transfer of ownership wouldn’t have made Sally free. The result would simply have been that Eva would own her own goddaughter and, under the laws of Louisiana, it wouldn’t have been easy for Eva to release her.
When Spain and France ruled Louisiana, there were few restrictions on manumission. The colonial administrators believed that if a master could promise his slaves eventual freedom as a reward for fidelity and service, they would be easier to control and less likely to rise in revolt. The very word “manumission” is derived from a ceremony that goes back to ancient Rome. A Roman wishing to free his slaves would hold them by the hand (manus) then release his grip, touch them with a rod on the cheek, and turn them in a circle, thus demonstrating to all those witnessing the event that his slaves were now free to go wherever they wanted. In Spanish and French Louisiana, men and women were liberated in this way to mark weddings or anniversaries in the master’s family. It was also a ceremony followed during religious services by dying masters who desired to make peace with God for the sin of owning slaves, and by men freeing their own children.
In Spanish Louisiana, slaves could also purchase their own freedom. Remarkably, if a fair price couldn’t be agreed upon, slaves could ask the governor’s tribunal to have their price declared, and then work toward that amount by hiring themselves out at times when their owner didn’t require labor from them.
This was the system the Americans inherited when they purchased Louisiana in 1803.66 It wasn’t to last. In a series of crimping amendments, legislators set their hearts against freeing slaves. In 1807 the right of slaves to petition for self-purchase was abolished. Under the new regime, if a master wanted to free his slaves, he had to demonstrate to a judge of the parish that they had behaved well over the preceding four years. Running away or any criminal act disentitled a slave for life. Further amendments followed. In 1830 all newly emancipated slaves had to leave the state within thirty days, and masters had to post a bond of one thousand dollars to make sure they did. Provisions intending to limit the number of young slaves being freed into the community were also passed. At one stage, no slave aged under thirty could be freed, except where they “had saved the life of his master or the master’s wife or one of his children.” Later this was amended so those slaves under thirty could be liberated if a court of the parish agreed.
Driving this constant tinkering with the manumission laws was the fear of a color war, with blacks, free and slave, joining in a bloody massacre of the whites. To many white people in the South, the ideal society only had two racial categories: the master race and their slaves. The existence of a third class, freed persons of color, was seen as a bad example to slaves and contrary to nature, which intended all black people to be subordinate. If slavery was a positive good, as many believed, and black people were better off as slaves, those who feared a servile insurrection led by freed blacks asked why manumission was allowed. Surely it would be better to entirely stop masters from freeing their slaves. This view won out, and in March 1857, Louisiana, following a trend sweeping right across the South, passed a law totally prohibiting manumission. The ban operated retrospectively, sometimes with heartless results. A slave named Julienne and her children instituted their suit for freedom in April 1857; no matter that Julienne was relying on a promise of freedom made by her mistress in 1837, her petition was a month too late. An apologetic judge noted in his decision: “If it should hereafter become possible, the plaintiff will have a remedy. At the present she has none. The time for her to acquire freedom has not arrived.”67 Her time was to come five years later, when, in 1862, Union gunboats took New Orleans and Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves held in the Confederate states.
In 1844, when Eva Schuber consulted Sigur, the state of the law was that if she purchased Sally Miller, and then wanted to free her, she would have to file a petition with a judge of the parish. He would then post her petition on the courthouse door for forty days. If someone objected, there would be a hearing to ensure that Sally had “behaved well at least for four years” and she could earn sufficient income to support herself. Even after satisfying the controlling examination of the state, there was more—she had to leave Louisiana forever, unless a police jury of the parish, by at least a three-fourths vote, decided that she had been well behaved for at least four years or had been involved in some exceptionally meritorious service for her master.
This was hardly a satisfactory solution in Sally Miller’s case. Apart from the humiliation of being named on a notice posted on the courthouse door, there was no guarantee that she would be successful— after all, she was a runaway. All sorts of gawkers and opponents might turn up, John Fitz Miller included, arguing that she shouldn’t be freed, or if she was, that she shouldn’t be allowed to remain in the state.
And then, after running that judicial gauntlet, if finally she was freed and allowed to remain in Louisiana, she wouldn’t become a white person or a citizen of the state. Her status would be that of a free woman of color, with all the discriminatory accoutrements that entailed. Sigur’s petition was crafted to achieve something that could never be achieved by manumission: a judicial ruling that Sally Miller was white. By suing Belmonti for damages, Sigur hoped that the court would be forced to decide that she wasn’t a slave, was never a slave, and her detention was illegal. By such means, not only would Sally Miller be free, she would have been ruled by a court to be white.
Next to her new name, Sally Miller marked the petition with a large, firm cross. It was a crime in Louisiana to teach slaves to read or write, so it would have been surprising if she had written her name in full. Indeed, so patchy was the state’s education system that more than half of the population was illiterate, whites included.
It would be months before a court could rule on the petition and Sigur remained concerned about what might happen to Sally in the meantime. With Miller’s name about to be linked to the action, Sigur had no doubt that Miller, with his influence in the city, could easily pressure the police into seizing her, and even perhaps charging Francis and Eva Schuber with the crime of harboring a runaway slave. But Sigur had a solution and after watching Sally make her mark on the petition, he outlined it to her and Eva. On the same day that the petition was filed at the courthouse, Sally would present herself at the prison door, a hundred yards away. Sigur would then make an application with the sheriff for Sally to be released on a five-hundred-dollar bond, pending trial. Once the bond was set, Sally would no longer be a fugitive slave, a criminal charge would be unlikely, and anyone seizing her would be in breach of a court order.
On January 24, 1844, Sigur’s not-so-simple plan was put into effect. Sally Miller, accompanied by Eva and Francis Schuber, presented herself at the calaboose, a gloomy, dank prison tucked at the side of the Cabildo on the Place d’Armes. At the same time, Sigur filed his petition for Sally’s freedom with Deputy Sheriff Lewis at the First District Court, located in the Presbytere. Sigur placed the bond documents on the counter. Sheriff Lewis left the bond where it was and picked up the petition. His eyebrows rose as he read the document. And what have Mr. Belmonti and Mr. Miller to say about this? he inquired.
By the end of the day, Sally Miller hadn’t been released. Nor was she released the next day, or the day after that. Sigur was apologetic. He told Eva Schuber, who harassed him in his office each morning, that he couldn’t really say when she would be released. Things had become complicated.