IN BRITAIN, DECEMBER 17, 1852 was departure day for Stella and the Garnets, including the latest addition to the family, an infant son born on British soil whom Henry called “his little black John Bull.”1 All the Garnets could do for Stella’s family was wonder about them and pray. The early part of their voyage did nothing to lift the depression. After setting off aboard a steamer from Southampton, the family sheltered themselves from the strong winds in their second-class cabin. The weather soon became so severe that a huge wave destroyed part of the ship, carrying away the figurehead and the breakwater. Terrified, each of the one hundred passengers on board thought they would sink to the bottom of the Atlantic at any time. With the Weems case fresh on his mind, Garnet took solace in the thought that even if they never reached their destination, at least they would all be together. The captain and crew employed their considerable nautical skills before deciding to limp into the Spanish port of Madeira. They stayed there until repairs could be made, and then continued their frightening and lengthy course for the Caribbean.2
Tragedy again struck the beleaguered family when the ship arrived in Jamaica. The Garnets’ baby, whose birth they had celebrated so recently, died. The grief-stricken father held firm to his faith as he painted a peaceful and comforting picture in a letter written to his friends back in England: “Of course you have heard that little R. sleeps in Jesus. His remains, beautiful in death, lie in Kingston, where we laid them on the day of our arrival. He died instantaneously of a convulsion occasioned by teething, at the very moment the ship touched the shore of Jamaica. He died while playing in his mother’s arms, with a little white dress on. We lent him to the Lord, and He took him altogether to Himself. Blessed be His holy name.”3
Despite their seemingly relentless trials, the move to the tropical paradise of Stirling, in Jamaica’s Westmoreland Parish, offered some consolation. Garnet had the distinction of being the first black missionary ordained and employed by Scotland’s United Presbyterian Church.4 In contrast to the financial uncertainty of some of his earlier positions, he was guaranteed an annual salary of 150 pounds. In a gracious gesture, the presbytery had agreed to pay Stella’s passage to accompany her adoptive family. In addition, one of its ministers was actively raising money to send to John Weems in America, to help him purchase his wife and children. By February 15, 1853, that minister had raised 150 pounds to bolster the fund, which was approaching a total of one thousand pounds.5
The Reverend Garnet felt greatly encouraged that “after a long life of wandering up and down, we are at last at home.” His family was pleasantly surprised at their new English-style cottage, set on three acres of land surrounded by a cactus hedge and stately trees. The flowers were in bloom year-round, hills surrounded them on three sides, and the sea was in the distance. Both the church and the schoolhouse were large and comfortable. The people were attentive and welcomed them with kindness. All of his remaining family, including Stella, were healthy and well. He optimistically asked in one of his letters to England if the Weems family were on their way to being liberated, adding that Jamaica would make an ideal home for all of them.6
But the months passed slowly, with little news to comfort John Weems, other than the fact that his daughters, Catharine and Ann Maria, were still being held in nearby Unity, from where they might be sold at any time. The girls were held by Charles M. Price, who listed his occupation as an innkeeper on official documents but was building a reputation as a notorious slave trader. Although he often worked independently, Price had also formed a partnership with a John C. Cook who had moved to D.C. from Charles County, Maryland, in 1843 after his trading business there became insolvent.7 Both were no doubt involved at some level in the widespread network of agents of George Kephart, the largest trader in the area and Price’s grandfather-in-law.
The two fledgling dealers were beginning to expand their business into the lucrative southern market and by November 12, 1852, the firm of Cook & Price was dealing in slaves in the growing town of Eufaula, Alabama.8 To supply demand in the South, they transported their wares overland and by steamship along the eastern seaboard. Mandatory slave manifests intended to ensure that no ships defied the U.S. law prohibiting the transatlantic slave trade (but ironically allowing domestic traffic to thrive) reveal that Price shipped thirteen slaves – ranging in age from one to twenty years, but predominantly teenagers – from the port of Charleston, South Carolina, to Savannah, Georgia, aboard the steamer Calhoun in 1853. John Cook sent sixteen slaves ranging from one to forty years along that same route on the Metamora.9 Before being allowed to proceed to the next port, both Price and Cook dutifully listed the name, sex, age, height, and “class” or colour of each individual and signed the manifests as follows: “Owner of the within specified Slaves, do solemnly swear, to the best of our knowledge and belief that the Slaves, herein described, were not imported into the United States, from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eight, and that under the law of this State, they are held to service and labor.”
Charles Price was demanding the inflated price of $1,600 for Catharine Weems, a value based not on her ability to work in the household or in the fields, but on her beauty. The budding slave trader was acquiring a knack for judging the intent and the purse of would-be buyers. He knew that soft hearts and a large ransom fund would give him a tidy profit on his investment in a short time. A precedent had already been set in another case that Jacob Bigelow, William Chaplin, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, Henry Ward Beecher, had been involved in. The slave driver who three years previously had purchased Mary and Emily Edmonson for $1,500 had demanded and received $2,250 because the girls’ “comeliness, intelligence and piety” would hold a special attraction for any hot-blooded owner.10
By now the ransom fund was large enough for John to buy one of his daughters, and he was forced to make the agonizing choice of whom to free. The very thought of what lay in store for Catharine would send convulsions through the mind of any parent, and made the excruciating decision a little easier. He hoped that Ann Maria had a little more time before she would be looked upon as a mere object to satisfy her master’s sexual pleasure.
On a Monday morning in early March 1853, Catharine Weems was a slave. By noon of that same day, she was suddenly free. Catharine’s manumission was duly recorded at Washington’s city hall so there could be no ambiguity about her status.
Later that day, Catharine accompanied her father for a joyful reunion at the home of her aunt, who lived in another part of the city. From there she went to live temporarily in the home of a family named Boynton, who belonged to the same church as Jacob Bigelow. Sylvanus Cobb Boynton, a smart, fat and comical man, was an up-and-coming lawyer and had attended Oberlin College in Ohio, which had a strong anti-slavery tradition.11 He and Eliza had been married for only two years, but the couple opened their home to this young person in need. Catharine’s supporters hoped that she could stay until she got “used to herself as a free woman.”12
The transition from slave to free person was not an easy one. Liberty was a foreign concept to those who had never experienced it. As Benjamin Slight, missionary to former slaves in Amherstburg, Canada West, explained, “their former bondage has shackled their minds.”13 When fifteen slaves from Louisiana were told that they would be freed, their equally perplexed owner wrote: “The good news seemed to have little effect upon them. They had come to consider that slavery was their normal condition. They did not know what freedom meant.”14 Harriet Tubman, upon first crossing the line into freedom, had to look at her hands to see if she was the same person. She reflected that “I grew up like a neglected weed, ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it … Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is.”15 Similarly, Mrs. Joseph Wilkinson movingly and simply said: “I considered my clothes and the little things I had when in slavery my own but I didn’t see it as I do now. I see now that every thing I considered mine didn’t belong to me, but could be taken away from me at any time. I didn’t set the same store by my little things that I do now, for I didn’t see things then as I do now.”16
Catharine and her father visited Jacob Bigelow’s office, where they expressed prayerful gratitude to those who had contributed money to pay her ransom. The experience was so moving that Bigelow felt no one who had witnessed such a scene could ever again question the propriety of buying slaves for the sole purpose of freeing them. He passed along the heartfelt appreciation of himself and the Weems family in a letter intended for the British humanitarians who had helped them: “With all my heart I thank you and the dear friends who have so nobly responded to your call for the redemption of this family from slavery. The Lord is very rich. In his own way, which is the right way, may you and they be rewarded.”17
A noted abolitionist at the time had likened attacking slavery by freeing a single slave to “an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon.”18 But sometimes a teaspoon was all that it took.
Any joy that came to the Weems family and their supporters arrived in small doses. British newspapers reported that Arabella and the boys had been sent south in a coffle, possibly by the dealers Cook & Price. Transporting them by ship would have been much simpler and quicker, but it was more economical to send them on foot. It would have taken fifty days to make the punishing walk from Washington to New Orleans. The total cost for slave drivers, wagons that carried supplies and food, and additional expenses along the way was $44.40 per slave in a coffle, whereas the direct cost would have been $46.40 if they were sent by sea. Costs such as insurance, fees to notaries to register purchases, losses by escape or death, and money transfers between districts could add $31.85 per slave.19
A coffle of slaves in chains passing the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress image cph 3a06254)
In 1836, while travelling on a topographical surveying mission, George William Featherstonhaugh, the first U.S. government geologist, witnessed a slave coffle on its way south. He later included the scene in the published account of his travels, Excursion Through the Slave States from Washington on the Potomac to the Frontier of Mexico.20 Although this trek took place several years before Arabella and her sons made that same trip, it is easy to imagine them experiencing the same horror:
Just as we reached New River, in the early grey of the morning, we came up with a singular spectacle, the most striking one of the kind I have ever witnessed. It was a camp of negro slave-drivers, just packing up to start; they had about three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night in chains in the woods … It resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages, for the purpose of conducting the white people, and any of the blacks that should fall lame, to which they were now putting the horses to pursue their march. The female slaves were, some of them, sitting on logs of wood, whilst others were standing, and a great many little black children were warming themselves at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the march, stood, in double files, about two hundred men slaves, manacled and chained to each other. I have never seen so revolting a sight before! Black men in fetters, torn from the lands where they were born, from the ties they had formed, and from the comparatively easy condition which agricultural labour affords, and driven by white men, with liberty and equality in their mouths, to a distant and unhealthy country, to perish in the sugar-mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for a sugar-mill does not exceed seven years! To make this spectacle still more disgusting and hideous, some of the principal white slave-drivers, who were tolerably well dressed, and had broad-brimmed white hats on, with black crape round them, were standing near, laughing and smoking cigars.
The January 29, 1853 edition of Glasgow’s Christian News reported that although nothing had been heard from Arabella and the boys, it was not yet time to be discouraged. A determined Jacob Bigelow encouraged the readers, writing that “somehow or other, their benevolent purposes will be accomplished. It is plain that every nerve will be strained to gain the desired end.” He suggested that perhaps John Weems would travel south to try to seek out his family. John’s supporters had gone so far as to contact “one of the most noble-hearted men in the House of Representatives,” to ask for his assistance in the search for them. John’s allies hoped that the Weemses’ case would come up for debate before the U.S. Congress and that the entire country would hear of this outrage against humanity.
Word reached Anna Richardson in Newcastle. She was heart-broken at the news that Arabella and all of her sons had been lost to the South. She and her husband, Henry, had intimately felt the grief of Stella, who had been a guest in their home. “Oh the enormity of this traffic in the flesh and blood of our fellow creatures,” she wrote in a letter to Charles Ray. Even though she was on the other side of the ocean, she vowed on behalf of many others that “if God grant us grace and strength to continue the conflict, some of us do not mean to rest till the direful iniquity is searched out, in the present instance, to its very core.”21 Anna went on to express her well-considered thoughts:
Thou wilt have observed the increasing earnestness of the British public to carry their point, and their fixed determination to rescue the captives. As the present information is not very definite, we defer printing anything about it till more comes in, and we are not even saying much about it to our friends. As soon as ever it is known how the case stands, be very sure, my friend, that British blood will be up, and that there will be one loud continuous shout through the land, that agitations and remonstrances must be set on foot, and that we will not rest till the Weimses are free. My husband and I had not ventured to expect in an early instance that so much interest could be felt in this case, as it may be considered comparatively a common one, without any special atrocious features, but perhaps the masses in this country did not know till Uncle Tom’s Cabin was in every one’s hand, what some of us knew – that these horrible things were of daily occurrence and comparatively a matter of as commonplace frequency as the holding of our own sheep and cattle markets. The British public knows it now and more than this is identifying itself with the present sufferers. The newspapers have voluntarily taken up the theme and it would have been impossible for £1,000 to have been thrown down with greater alacrity. It has not been given in large sums, not with a tone of taunt or defiance, but has come in, in little sums, in hundreds of cases from people of very small means and with a groan of pity – and with a determination for Christ’s sake to do the little that the giver could. Filled with this determination, there has been strength of purpose in the giving that will not relax till the object in view is gained. It has been given religiously, tearfully, prayerfully, and though all of us abhor giving money to bad men for the freedom of the bodies and souls of our fellow-creatures, this feeling has been overpowered by the stronger necessity of doing as we would be done by, in similar circumstances.22
Anna Richardson echoed the thought previously expressed by Jacob Bigelow: whether it would be safe for John Weems to travel south to seek out his family, or whether some other trustworthy person should be sent. However the ends were to be achieved, she and her husband agreed that whatever was reasonable and manageable should be done. They desperately wanted to be kept up with any developments in the case and hoped that the family would eventually be reunited with Stella in Jamaica.
John finally discovered the whereabouts of Arabella and their two youngest boys. They were in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, which had displaced Mobile as the largest slave-trading centre in the state. Two of the biggest traders in Maryland and the District of Columbia had recognized its importance and were among those dealing there: Bernard M. Campbell of Baltimore, who coincidentally had sent a possible relative of the Weems family, Martha Weems, to the slave port of New Orleans around the time that Arabella and the boys had gone south; and George Kephart, who had been selling slaves into that market for several years.23
Most citizens of Montgomery, like their southern neighbours, accepted slavery as part of life. No doubt expressing the prevailing sentiments of their readers, newspaper editors had little patience with the contrary opinions of outsiders. Showing that even in the mid-nineteenth century, the world was becoming a relatively small place, they observed the British anti-slavery movement with disdain. In a response to an appeal made by a group of British women to their American counterparts to speak out against slavery, the 1852 Christmas Day edition of the city paper Advertiser and State Gazette editorialized on the front page that “the efforts of Mrs. Stowe, and her sympathizers in England, to injure the moral standing – to say nothing of the property – of the women of the South, the best, purest, and most intelligent portion of God’s own fair creatures, should be repelled and counteracted.” A later edition applauded the response from Julia Tyler, the wife of former president John Tyler, which in essence told the British women to mind their own affairs and worry about conditions in their own country.24 James Hambleton Christian, one of the Tylers’ slaves, had no use for the president who, he claimed, treated his plantation slaves very cruelly, but Christian was fond of the first lady, who protected them and treated them well. His experiences as a domestic servant in the White House afforded Christian many uncommon luxuries and opportunities, and Julia Tyler failed to grasp that the lives of other slaves were radically different, he said.25
An article in the January 13, 1853 edition of the Advertiser lamented that “the effect of this pernicious book [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] in England has been to stir up among the pseudo-philanthropists of the Kingdom a prodigious quantity of sympathy for the sleek, well-fed and clothed negro slaves of this country.” The writer was quite certain that “the present form of Government of England will be blotted from existence much sooner than the system of slavery in this country will be abandoned.” Many of her critics repeatedly attached Harriet Beecher Stowe for having written what they considered to be a book full of lies and misrepresentations.
With the Montgomery newspaper clearly following events in the British press, the possibility arose that other readers below the Mason–Dixon Line would notice the coverage of the Weemses’ plight. Many only scratched their heads at all the fuss: the separation of families was certainly not news in the South.
Before being forcibly removed from the Washington slave pen, Arabella had promised her husband that she would somehow get word to him – a promise that John was uncertain she would be able to keep. Perhaps she did not truly believe it herself. No doubt thousands before her had made similar pledges. Faced with such a tragic fate, few slaves were able to fathom that life could be so cruel as to make the separation permanent – but it often was.
Arabella was perhaps not a typical slave. Time and again she overcame the most daunting of obstacles. Somehow she found a way to send John an envelope containing a small piece of a velvet vest that had belonged to him, along with a swatch of cloth from a pink muslin frock that had belonged to Catharine. Despite her terror at the prospect of travelling in a slave coffle to the Deep South, she had had the presence of mind to carry those pieces of clothing with her. Maybe it was an attempt to hold onto memories. Maybe it was a calculated act. It was common practice among slaves to send something of intimate sentimental value such that only the sender and the recipient could know that it truly came from a separated loved one.26 It was always a challenge to find someone in the new surroundings who could be entrusted to send the precious package to the north. Many southern postmasters would not knowingly handle such a parcel. John must have been moved beyond tears as he held the tattered mementoes between his fingers.
Once they had discovered the location of Arabella and her sons, those involved with the ransom fund assumed that it would be relatively easy to purchase the youngest boys, because these two were too young to be of immediate value to their owner. In fact, they would only be a distraction to the mother, whose work might be neglected as she tended to her children. Arabella, John Jr., and Sylvester had actually been the beneficiaries of a recent law passed by the governor of Alabama, which cited “relations which moral duty requires us to respect.”27 The law stated that no child under the age of ten could be sold without including the mother. However, considerations of the heart were not allowed to interfere with the business of slavery, so there was a clause that this restriction could be waived if it injured the purchaser’s interests. If so, a child could be sold separately, unless he or she was under the age of five. A further caveat stipulated that any slave offered for sale as a result of a legal decree or settling of a financial obligation “must be offered, and, if practicable, sold in families [i.e., the mother and her young offspring]; unless some party in interest made affidavit that selling them together would be to his material disadvantage.”28
Charles Ray and Jacob Bigelow were resolved that no legal loophole would be allowed in this case and that Arabella and both boys would be included in the purchase. However, an unforeseen wrench was thrown into the works. A rumour that the slaveholders of Alabama had heard of the British subscription appeared in the very same article that trumpeted the release of Catharine Weems.29 The rumour was indeed fact. The southern press had got wind of the international fundraising effort and put the story before their readers. Word quickly reached the traders and the planters. Just as critics of the practice of ransoming slaves had previously suggested, the news dramatically raised their price. The owner demanded $2,100 – far more than the $1,600 that the Washington slave traders had demanded of John just a few months before. Bigelow and Ray stood firm, refusing to knuckle under to the exorbitant request.
The abolitionists began to realize the harsh reality of their situation. In their zeal to raise the money for the family’s redemption, and in the intense interest that had ensued, they had been somewhat reckless in keeping the public too well informed. Britain was a long way from Alabama, but news travelled in both directions. When the abolitionists realized what was happening, private correspondence became just that. Rather than finding its way into the columns of the British anti-slavery press, the recipients of news about the Weems family kept silent. In a letter from Scotland, Reverend Somerville reluctantly informed the Garnets that it had been some months since he had heard anything about the Weems family.30 Anna and Henry Richardson’s monthly newspaper The Slave, which had been perhaps the most vocal, backed away from revealing further substantial details. It focused instead on unrelated stories, such as a tribute to the Church of England, which planned to form a branch of the “Colonial Church and School Society” to establish schools for fugitive slaves in Canada.31 Arabella and her children, who were to be the beneficiaries of this international goodwill, had become the victims of its public excess, however inadvertently.
But Jacob Bigelow would not allow such an impediment to halt progress in the case he had taken so much to heart. He arranged with the same slave trader who had originally carried away Arabella and her two youngest sons to purchase them and have them returned to Washington. With apparent disgust, Bigelow informed his British friends that “many shameful and mean pretences were set up” to inflate the price and to interfere with the transaction. When threatened with legal prosecution, the slave owner finally relented and honoured the previous agreement. The ransom price of $1,675 was withdrawn on July 8, 1853 by William E. Whiting, the American banker of the Weems ransom fund, and paid by Charles B. Ray, who served as Bigelow’s agent upon delivery of the “entire package” to Washington. Upon their arrival the free papers were “duly made and their freedom secured.”32 Unfortunately, Bigelow was out of town in Massachusetts when Arabella, Sylvester, and John Jr. were returned to the District of Columbia, so he missed the opportunity to witness the event and to receive the gratitude that he so much deserved.
By October 9, 1853, the news had reached England. In a letter to Charles Ray, Anna Richardson rejoiced “for Airay Weims and her two boys to be restored to their home, and sincerely thank the various parties concerned for the kind care they have taken in the matter.”33 John, Arabella, and the two boys took up residence in the countryside just outside of Washington, in the new home that John had secured in their absence. They were fortunate to find jobs that paid relatively well, and their relief and happiness were immeasurable.34
However, shortly after their reunion, a tragedy of Old Testament proportions again visited the family. Sylvester, the family’s youngest child, died just after he had been freed. Now, only John Jr. remained in his parents’ household. Stella, in faraway Jamaica, never got to meet her youngest brother. At least Catharine was living nearby and could share in her family’s sorrow. Sarah Tappan, a future friend, later surmised that “hard as it must have been to lay this little one in the grave, the bereaved parents had far less cause to weep for him, than for his brothers in bondage; for they could feel that he was gone.”35 Ann Maria, Augustus, Joseph, and Adam were still tightly held in the grasp of slavery. Only John and Arabella knew the degree of anguish they felt at this new loss; their sufferings were so many and so close together as to make it impossible to distinguish where one began and the other one ended.
It was decided that some of the money that had been raised would be used to send John Weems south in search of his sons. The uncertainty as to their final destination made it difficult to know where to begin. The slave-trading network was wide ranging across the South, and there were extensive dealings among traders. When the traders herded the slave coffles overland, shipped them by water, or boxed them by rail, there was always a chance that they might sell the slaves along the way. John Weems, under the guidance of his friends, made the educated guess to search first in New Orleans.
A sketch of slaves waiting outside a New Orleans slave pen before the auction. Judging from their clothing, these slaves might have been house slaves or body servants, rather than field hands. (New York Public Library image 812594)
John found no comfort as he wandered the New Orleans streets in the summer of 1853. Thousands of European immigrants were drawn to the bustling city to work at widening canals, digging ditches, installing water and gas mains, and building roads. Sanitary conditions were abhorrent and the levees and back streets were foul. Yellow fever arrived in May aboard a ship carrying Irish immigrants and quickly spread, killing hundreds and causing thousands more to flee in panic, blocking every route. According to one observer, the floors of the charity hospital were filled with sick paupers, who died at a rate of one every half-hour. By August 22, a victim was dying every five minutes.
John’s quest would have led him to the various slave marts and auction houses. A visitor to the city described his impressions of these:
I saw nothing especially repulsive in these places excepting the whole thing; and I can not help feeling a sort of astonishment that such a thing and such scenes are possible in a community calling itself Christian. It seems to me sometimes as if it could not be reality – as if it were a dream.
The great slave-market is held in several houses situated in a particular part of the city. One is soon aware of their neighborhood from the groups of colored men and women, of all shades between black and light yellow, which stand or sit unemployed at the doors. Accompanied by my kind doctor, I visited some of these houses. We saw at one of them the slave-keeper or owner – a kind, good-tempered man, who boasted of the good appearance of his people. The slaves were summoned into a large hall, and arranged in two rows. They were well fed and clothed, but I have heard it said by the people here that they have a very different appearance when they are brought hither, chained together two and two, “in long rows, after many days” [of] fatiguing marches.36
Dispirited after two months of unsuccessful searching for his three sons, John Weems returned to New York City on September 14, 1853 on the steamship Metropolitan.37