I too have claims, I too will seek justice.…
John Fitz Miller, 1845135
She is now free. … Free by judgment of the Supreme Court, but not all the rain in “the sweet heaven,” can sweeten her into a white woman—no, not even the honor of joining hands in the same dance with her counsel and deliverer Wheelock S. Upton Esqr. at the grand ball given in honor of the triumph— “
Where he was the bravest of the brave,
She the fairest of the fair.”
So wrote John Fitz Miller, in white-hot fury, in his pamphlet A Refutation of the Slander and Falsehoods Contained in a Pamphlet Entitled Sally Miller.136 Not anonymously, but with a byline of his own name, in inch-high gothic type. Hatred beyond rationality brewed in Miller toward the people who had brought him low, and he had decided to fight back by publishing a pamphlet to counter the one written by his adversary, Wheelock S. Upton. Miller wrote of his ex-slave:
She has been metamorphosed by the “Grace of God” and the decision of the Supreme Court, with which Louisiana is now blessed, from Sally Miller, my former Slave, into Salomé Müller, a free white German Redemptioner. … I will expose to the best of my ability, the tissue of perjury, folly and corruption, of which this case was made up, and in which I was made the victim. Victim did I say? No, thank God, that was beyond their power. Counsel, witnesses and client, they were all worthy of each other, and I defy and despise them all.137
In a document thick with grandiloquent justification, selfpity, and blustering bravado, Miller lauded the decision of Buchanan (reprinted in full) and ridiculed the decision of the Supreme Court (also reprinted in full). In Miller’s eyes, the judges of the Supreme Court were “southern men with northern feelings.” The “Plaintiff’s witnesses were perjured, her counsel were dupes and asses, and the court was most effectually mystified and humbugged.” Upton was a man of “low cunning and a rapacious disposition combined.” Mrs. Schuber was a “great romancer” who was part of a “well conducted and unprincipled scheme devised … to defraud me, put money in their own pockets and gratify the bad feelings of a very bad servant.”138
Then, after writing sixteen pages of invective and sarcasm, in the closing paragraphs Miller made an astonishing claim. A claim to confound and confuse his enemies. A claim to turn everything on its head. A claim to restore his reputation and utterly destroy the plaintiff and her counsel.
He announced that he had discovered the real Salomé Müller. She was alive and married with children. She was called Mrs. Polly Moore, and she lived “twelve or fourteen miles, north of Bastrop, in the Parish of Morehouse, on the Chemani creek, near a place called Fort Wedge.”139
Miller claimed that it was Upton’s passion for publicity that had led him to discover the woman who was the real Salomé Müller:
This is another instance of how the machinations of the wicked draw down punishment on their own heads. Had the plaintiff and her counsel, Wheelock S. Upton Esq., been satisfied with the ordinary publicity which the decisions of the Supreme Court confer, the Truth might not have come to light. Mystery had still hung over these transactions and I might have gone down to my grave, with suspicion on the minds of many to darken my memory. But no, the plaintiff or her counsel thought it necessary to prepare the mind for another suit and the pamphlet was the result.140
Immediately after the shattering disappointment of the appeal, Miller had retreated to the sanctity of the house of Joachim Kohn in Bienville Street, New Orleans. Kohn, a commission merchant in the city, had known Miller for many years and had been a witness in the trial held before Buchanan. In times past he had dined on Miller’s generosity, and he wasn’t prepared to abandon him now, not at the time of Miller’s public shaming when he needed him most. Kohn assured his friend that people would soon forget, but Miller didn’t believe him—not in the few years he had left in his lifetime.
In the following days, as Miller read newspaper accounts of the case and of the self-seeking activities of Upton, he became even more convinced that the story of the lost German slave wouldn’t be allowed to fade away. The Daily Picayune, in reporting the outcome of the appeal, reproduced a large section of the judgment. The Daily Tropic, after exclaiming: “Truth is stranger than fiction!,” declared that it would soon issue “a complete history of this case prepared by an able member of the New Orleans Bar, and we venture to say that few publications have appeared possessing so much of singular and romantic interest as this narrative of events happening in our midst.”141 Soon after, the Daily Tropic published a feature on the celebratory ball, including Upton’s and Roselius’s speeches. Then, if anyone in New Orleans was likely to soon forget Sally Miller, Upton’s pamphlet, bearing her name on the title, appeared.
Upton’s pamphlet was passed hand to hand the length and breadth of Louisiana, and eventually a copy fell into the hands of a merchant who made frequent visits by keelboat along Bayou Bartholomew in the extreme northeast of the state. He was immediately reminded that years ago he had heard something of two orphan girls of Dutch descent being raised by farmers in Morehouse Parish. Through an intermediary, the merchant passed what little information he had about the girls on to Miller. The area he described was a wild and remote territory with a sparse population of Dutch and French woodsmen. Miller left the next day on a steamer. It was a journey of many days, up the Mississippi for several hundred miles, and then following twisting tributaries: the Red River, the Black River, the Boeuf River, and finally the Ouachita River, as it headed toward the Arkansas border. In Bastrop he spoke to people who recalled two orphan Dutch girls arriving in the county of Ouachita over twenty years ago. He was given other names. He traveled by horse collecting statements from everyone he could find who had the slightest recollection of what had happened to the girls. He asked about them in taverns, eating houses and produce stores. He was told of a middle-aged Dutch woman, the widow of John Parker, who lived near Point Pleasant. Miller journeyed to a small farmhouse on the banks of a creek. The woman, surrounded by several children, greeted him. Miller introduced himself and asked her name. She replied with a strong accent. She had remarried only last winter to David Moore, so she was now called Mrs. Polly Moore. Miller asked about her father. She said his name was Daniel Miller and he came from Germany.
News that Miller claimed to have discovered Salomé Müller, in the form of Mrs. Polly Moore, a farmer’s wife of Morehouse Parish in northeast Louisiana, spread quickly throughout New Orleans. It was yet another twist in a saga that had captivated the citizens of the city for the past couple of years. The German community dismissed the claim as more lies from a desperate man; even for Miller’s allies, the existence of a second Salomé Müller was hard to believe. Many thought that Miller had topped even his own reputation for eccentricity by inventing people in remote locations.
Miller’s claims were unable to be verified by anyone living in New Orleans—his witnesses were about as far north as one could go and still be in Louisiana—nevertheless, his pamphlet with its overblown literary style, heavy sarcasm, and scurrilous attacks on the Supreme Court made entertaining reading. Copies of it were much in demand. There was an expectation that it would be a battle royal when Salomé Müller’s damages claim came up for hearing.
The suit against Miller and Mrs. Canby showed every indication of being a mammoth and unwieldy affair. Upton estimated that his client would need to call a dozen witnesses or more, and Miller, not to be outdone, supplied a list of twenty people whom he wanted to give evidence, adding that this was by no means the entirety of them. Whereas most of Salomé’s witnesses lived in New Orleans, many on Miller’s list lived in isolated districts where transport was primitive, and several of them resided outside the state.
Miller’s lawyers overcame some of the difficulties of distance by arranging for those who knew Polly Moore to be examined by a specially appointed commissioner at a location near their homes. By late November 1845, the process had begun. Copeland S. Hunt was appointed as the commissioner, and Miller’s lawyers compiled a list of interrogatories they wanted him to ask each witness. Before Hunt set off on his journey to northeastern Louisiana, he sent Upton a copy of the interrogatories. Upton was invited to add some questions of his own, if he so desired.
Upton examined the interrogatories in his office. Miller had gathered the names of a dozen people who would presumably say that they had known Polly Moore since her arrival in Morehouse twenty-seven years earlier. The interrogatories followed a similar pattern: How had they come to know Polly Moore? What was her age? What language did she speak? What nationality did they suppose her to be? What did she say of her life? What did they know of her history? Did she have a sister and, if so, what did they know of her?
As Upton flicked through the questions he was surprised that Miller had assembled so many witnesses who would assist in his game of saying that Polly Moore was Salomé Müller. He noticed that most were farmers and merchants, but one was a lawyer, Robert McGuire, who practiced in the town of Monroe in Ouachita Parish. Another was Oliver Morgan, a judge of the parish. Upton thought it odd that a lawyer and a parish judge had joined in Miller’s foolishness. Perhaps the explanation was that there had been some sort of court proceedings involving Polly Moore that would tend to show who she was.
The last set of interrogatories was for Polly Moore herself. The inquiries of her were more specific: Did she know when and where she was born? Who were her parents? Did she have sisters or brothers? Who were they? What had happened to them? Was her name ever changed? Were her parents dead and, if so, what caused their deaths? Had she or her sister ever had marks on their thighs?
As Upton considered what to do about the interrogatories, he continued to be troubled by the number and range of witnesses Miller had obtained. But surely there was nothing to Polly Moore’s claims? There was no reason to worry. Miller’s new evidence would be soon exposed for the silliness it was. After some thought, Upton concluded that the best tactic would be to disdain to take part in this farce. He wrote across each of the documents: “No plaintiff’s interrogatories” and sent them back to Commissioner Hunt.
During the first two weeks of December 1845, after a long journey upriver, Hunt set himself up in the Monroe courthouse and made arrangements for the witnesses named in the interrogatories to appear before him. After requiring each to swear on the Bible to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Hunt dutifully asked the questions specified for him and recorded the answers. He then read his notes back to the witnesses and had them swear, then sign, to their accuracy. The statements (called depositions) were then sent to the United States Circuit Court in New Orleans.142
Meanwhile, Miller had yet another revelation with which to amaze the people of New Orleans. He claimed he could now trace the history of Bridget Wilson from her birth in Georgia to her sale by Anthony Williams to himself in 1822. He now even knew who Anthony Williams was.
Even after the jubilation of discovering the real Salomé Müller in northeast Louisiana, Miller didn’t rest. If he could find Salomé Müller, was it possible he could find Anthony Williams? Or a slavemaster named Wilson who had once owned a girl named Bridget? Immediately he set off to Alabama, accompanied by a commission merchant from New Orleans named Thomas B. Lee. The two men traveled by steamer along the inner shore of the Gulf. Once in Mobile, they asked everyone they met if they knew Williams or Wilson. They walked through the streets of the city speaking to traders in the slave markets, farmers in the dry goods stores, clerks in the mayor’s office, and sailors along the waterfront. Eventually, someone remembered that there used to be a poor farmer named Wilson, long since departed this earth, who had run a few slaves, years ago, on a property a few miles out of town. They were directed along a track to Wilson’s house where his daughter, Mrs. Coward, now lived. Mrs. Coward welcomed them with the hospitality that had made Alabama famous. Yes, her father had owned some slaves, she said, and she clearly remembered a palecolored girl who was their servant. Her name was Bridget, and her mother was a mulatto woman named Candice, and her father was a white man.
Miller sat at Mrs. Coward’s kitchen table and copied down all she knew. She told him that when Bridget was born in 1809 the family had lived in Tatnall County, Georgia. They had moved to Leaf River, Alabama, in 1810, and Bridget came with them. Mrs. Coward’s father, John Wilson, had given Bridget, when she was aged about thirteen, to his daughter, Peggy, as a nurse for her children. Peggy (a sister of Mrs. Coward) lived in Mississippi. Peggy’s husband, Enoch Rigdon, had fallen badly into debt and Bridget was exposed to sale at a sheriff’s auction held out the front of the Perry courthouse in Mississippi. The successful bidder was Jonathon Thomas—although it was Mrs. Coward’s recollection that Thomas didn’t keep Bridget for more than a month before he sold her to his son-in-law. His name was Anthony Williams. What happened to the child after that, she didn’t know. Nor did she know where Anthony Williams could be found.
Miller wrote down the name of every person Mrs. Coward had mentioned, and in the coming months, with the unerring devotion of a gun dog, he tracked them down. But first he rushed back to New Orleans to add Mrs. Coward’s story to the pages of his pamphlet before it went to the printers.
Upton decided it was time for a counterattack. The rumors circulating in the city about Miller’s discovery of Polly Moore and the history of Bridget Wilson were taking their toll on the credibility of his damages claim. On December 16, 1845, he filed a writ of habeas corpus in the United States Circuit Court seeking the release of Madison and Adeline. Here, he thought, was an opportunity to put Miller on the back foot and regain the initiative in the battle for public opinion. The supporting petition relied on only one contention: the mother of the two children was “a free white woman—so proved and decreed by the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.” This was one action Upton was convinced he couldn’t lose.
The writ of habeas corpus was set down for determination at 10 am the very next day, December 17. The response of Miller’s lawyers was as immediate as it was surprising. Overnight, Grymes worked on a petition to the New Orleans District Court asking for a ruling that the judgment freeing Salomé Müller be declared null and void. It was filed early the next morning, prior to the hearing in the United States Circuit Court. Grymes had relied on an article in the Louisiana Code of Practice saying that a judgment “may be annulled in all cases where it appears it has been obtained through fraud, or other ill practices.” According to the petition there had been fraud aplenty. Grymes wrote that Sally Miller:
… well knew she was not of free birth and that she was rightfully and lawfully held in slavery by the said Belmonti.… [She had] fraudulently, maliciously and deceitfully, combining with certain persons, more particularly with F. Schuber and E. Schuber, his wife, and Daniel Miller, induced these persons and others to give testimony to the effect that she, the said Sally Miller, was the child of a certain Daniel Müller.143
Other paragraphs alleged that the testimony that the real Sally Miller had moles on her thighs was “wholly false and fictitious,” as was the claim that she looked like her deceased mother, or that her relatives and friends could recognize her.
When the parties assembled later that morning at the United States Circuit Court, Grymes produced a copy of his petition. He declared that the sole foundation in support of the writ of habeas corpus had been the Supreme Court judgment, and the filing of the nullity petition intended to cut the ground from under that. The woman was a fraud and this is what his client would show when the nullity proceeding commenced in a few months’ time.
The writ of habeas corpus was adjourned off. The attempt to gain the freedom of Madison and Adeline was effectively stymied. The children’s fate depended entirely on whether their mother was a slave or a free white woman, and that issue was now the matter of raging controversy being litigated in both the state and federal courts. The fate of Madison and Adeline would have to wait another day.
The failure to obtain the release of the two children badly shook Upton. He had all but promised Salomé that she would have Madison and Adeline back with her for Christmas. With dismay, he realized that Miller intended to fight them every inch of the way and to take every possible point in every court he could find.
In the days leading up to Christmas, Upton drafted a response to the petition of nullity. It was filed on New Year’s Eve. In it he strenuously argued that there had been no fraud. He then added his strongest point: the decision of the Supreme Court was “final and conclusive and cannot be disturbed.”
The warring sides couldn’t even agree on her name. Grymes in his petition had called her “a person calling herself Sally Miller held in slavery”; while Upton, in his response, described her as “Salomé Müller, an alien, native of the province of Alsace upon the lower Rhine in Germany.”
Upton dropped into his office late one afternoon in January. The courts were still closed for the law vacation, and he planned to clear up a few items of paperwork remaining on his desk. When he opened the door he found a bundle of papers waiting for him. During the New Year’s break the marshal of the United States Circuit Court had dropped off copies of the depositions that had been compiled by Commissioner Hunt during his visit to Monroe in search of Polly Moore. Upton decided to read them. He sat on a sofa next to his desk, and after adjusting his oil lamp so that it directed light over his shoulder onto the pages, he quickly flicked through them. Hunt had collected twelve depositions. Eleven of them had something to say about the life of Polly Moore, and the twelfth was from Polly Moore herself. He would leave that one until last. He placed it on a small table at his elbow.
The first four depositions he read were from the children of Mr. Thomas Grayson, a merchant, now deceased, of Prairie Boeuf. They said that from time to time their father would go to New Orleans to pick up supplies for his store. In those days no steamer made the journey up the Ouachita River, so a neighbor, John Thomasson, ran the passage in his keelboat. After one such journey in 1818, their father had returned with five German children. They were all orphans. According to Betsy Stewart (the daughter of Thomas Grayson), the children had cost her father five hundred dollars. Betsy Stewart’s brother, Wiley Grayson, said that two of them were girls—aged “about six, seven or eight.” Wiley Grayson’s sister, Narcissa Garrett, recalled her father saying that the father of the girls was “a very good shoemaker and that he was thought to have died of grief from having lost a child, a little boy.” Lucetta Rutland, yet another sister, said that the two girls’ names were Dorothy and Sally, and her father had said that “the brother of the girls was drowned coming up from New Orleans and that their father had died suddenly.”
All of Grayson’s children recalled that their father hadn’t kept the two girls for more than a few days. He had sold “their time” to Thomasson, the man who owned the keelboat. Soon afterward, Thomasson had moved to the nearby town of Monroe, where he and his wife opened a tavern. Lucetta Rutland said she had heard of the “cruelty of Mrs. Thomasson to the two girls.”
Upton opened the deposition of Robert McGuire. He was a lawyer who had lived in Monroe since 1819. He said he had seen two Dutch girls frequently around Thomasson’s tavern “where they were treated as servants.” One of them was called Dorothy. Afterward, he “knew the girls by the names of Sally and Polly Miller until they were married.” “It was,” said McGuire, “commonly reported about town that Mrs. Thomasson treated them very cruelly. In consequence of that, some of the citizens made complaints to Oliver J. Morgan, the Parish Judge, who had the girls brought before him and considerable testimony taken.” Mrs. Thomasson had cut one of the girls with a large kitchen knife and stuck the flesh of the other with a fork. McGuire said he had seen the wounds.
Hunt also examined Judge Morgan. He recalled the case, but said he wasn’t required to make a ruling because Thomasson agreed to give up the girls. The judge said he had kept the two little girls at his house until he could find someone to take them. The year was 1823 or 1825, and one of the girls was then between ten and twelve, and the other between thirteen and fourteen. Eventually, the girls were given to James Gleason and his wife, Charlotte.
Both James and Charlotte Gleason made statements. Mrs. Gleason said the girls were named Dorothy and Salina, and they spoke Dutch and tolerable English. She changed Dorothea’s name to Polly and Salina’s name to Sally, because “she thought it was the English name for the Dutch.” Mrs. Gleason said, “Polly would speak of her distress in crossing the sea. … Polly used to say that her mother died on the water and that her father died after he had landed, and so did her brother.” Their being taken away from Mrs. Thomasson caused them to be much talked of in the county, said Mrs. Gleason.
Her husband said that one of the girls was called Salomé, but he had called her Sally. The other was Polly, and she had told him once that her father’s name was Miller.
Upton then picked up the statement of Elisha Thomasson, the son of John Thomasson. He said nothing about his mother’s cruelty to the girls, but he did say the two girls lived in the family until 1825. One was called Dorothy. The other was called Saline.
The remaining two depositions added little. Mary Headon, a resident of Franklin Parish, said she “knew two Dutch girls who lived in the family of Mr. Thomasson; they went by the name of Dorothy and Salina.” Richard King, an army major, said he saw two small girls at the house of either Mr. Grayson or Mr. Thomasson, but he couldn’t recall which.
Upton put the last of the supporting depositions aside. They had been somber reading. He had fully expected the evidence substantiating Miller’s claim to have found Salomé Müller to be laughable, but what he had just seen was anything but. He guessed that a jury would find the testimony persuasive, particularly since a parish judge appeared to be affirming the general thrust of what the others had said. Upton tried to think of ways to explain away the depositions. Perhaps it was true that two little girls of Dutch or German origin had arrived in Morehouse Parish in around 1818, but that didn’t make them the children of Daniel Müller. Hundreds of redemptioners had arrived in Louisiana at that time—it could be mere coincidence, even to the similarity of the names. Polly and Sally weren’t such unusual names. Yet, the depositions had identified the girls’ father as a shoemaker and got the details of his death roughly correct. They had said that their mother had died on the water. He wondered about that. There was also the mention of the death of their brother by drowning.
Reluctantly, Upton reached for the deposition of Polly Moore. He began to have a bad feeling about what it might say.
In his first question, Hunt had asked Polly Moore how old she was. She didn’t know exactly, but supposed she would be about thirty-two. Nor did she know where she was born. She said she now lived in the parish of Morehouse, near Point Pleasant, Louisiana.
In the answers that followed (her deposition went to four pages of tight handwriting), Hunt had written down what she had told him of her arrival in Morehouse. She confirmed the statements of the Grayson children that she had only lived a short time with them: “Witness does not recollect how she got to Grayson’s house. Mr. Grayson did not wish to keep witness with his family having several children of his own and witness was transferred to the family of Old Mrs. John Thomasson.”
Polly told Hunt that she and her sister “did not speak the same language as the family of Mr. Grayson … the Graysons called her Dorothy and her sister Salomé, but this was a mistake.” She said she was two years older than her sister. The two small girls then lived with the “family of the Thomasson for several years.”
Polly made no accusations of ill treatment by Mrs. Thomasson and gave no explanation as to why she was given to Mr. and Mrs. Gleason. She said Mrs. Gleason had changed their names again. She became Polly and her sister Sally. This continued the mix-up of their names that had commenced at Mr. Grayson’s house, because she was really Salomé and her sister, Dorothy. They didn’t stay with Mr. and Mrs. Gleason for long. She and her sister lived with James Owen, about two miles away, and then with John Stirling on the Ouachita River. Polly said she had then married John Parker of Ouachita Parish. They had been married for twelve years. After his death, she had married David Moore, only last winter. This was why she was now called Polly Moore.
Hunt had asked about her parents. She had said that “her father was a Dutchman, a shoemaker by trade.” His name was Daniel Miller and her mother’s name was Salomé.
Hunt had then asked her what she knew about the death of her father and mother. He copied down her reply:
Witness recollects getting on board the ship, getting up a very high place—it seemed to her now like a dream. Witness’s mother died on the vessel—her father died coming up the Black River. Witness’s mother was seasick and perish[ed] from the want of something to eat—witness does not know what caused the death of her father. He ate a very hearty dinner on board the boat which he cooked for himself. He then laid down on the boat. Witness heard him making a curious noise. She got up, not having finished her dinner at the table, and went to her father but he was then dead.
Polly also told Hunt that she had an older brother, but she had lost him in New Orleans. He “drowned or someone persuaded him off,” she said. Her sister had married Alexis Hamilton, who lived on the Ouachita. She had two children. Her sister has been dead for three years. She was known as Sally, but her real name was Dorothy Miller.
Hunt’s final question was whether she had any marks on her thighs. She did not. Nor had her sister.
Upton returned Polly Moore’s deposition to the pile with the other eleven. He sat in the gathering darkness of his office, thinking about what he had read. Was it possible? He dare not think about what it meant. There had to be some other explanation. Polly Moore had signed her deposition with a cross. So she wasn’t an educated person. Not that he thought this would make it any easier to shake her testimony—if it ever came to that. He imagined her to be a believable sort of woman, warding off with her own ordinariness any suggestion that she had composed such a complex set of lies. She had got one or two details wrong, like the name of her mother and her belief that she was older than her sister, but mistakes of this kind were explicable given that she had no relatives to pass on the stories of her family. She had said her father was a Dutchman, but again Upton saw nothing in that—in Louisiana, anyone of Teutonic stock was regarded as Dutch.
It became dark. He sat in his chair, buried in thought, as deeply rooted certainties began to decay. Perhaps he had misunderstood what he had read. He looked across at the depositions stacked next to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick them up again. No, he knew what they said all right, and it frightened him.
As rumor of the testimonies given by the witnesses in Morehouse Parish began to circulate in New Orleans, many in the German community who had welcomed Salomé Müller back into their fold began to have second thoughts. It was whispered by some who had met her that she had none of the social graces you might expect of a real German woman and her speech was entirely that of a slave. Admittedly, she was a beauty, but it was the olive-skinned beauty of a quadroon, not of a white person. Those who bothered to read the judgment of the Supreme Court reproduced at the back of Miller’s pamphlet saw that there hadn’t been a complete endorsement of Salomé Müller’s German heritage. In effect, she had been given the benefit of the doubt because she looked white, and no one knew where she came from, but now Miller was saying that he did know where she came from—she was born in Georgia, the child of a slave and a white man.