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AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Selected titles in ABC-CLIO’s Perspectives in American Social History series

African Americans in the Nineteenth Century: People and Perspectives

American Revolution: People and Perspectives
Baby Boom: People and Perspectives
British Colonial America: People and Perspectives
Civil Rights Movement: People and Perspectives
Civil War: People and Perspectives
Cold War and McCarthy Era: People and Perspectives
Colonial America: People and Perspectives
Early Republic: People and Perspectives
Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives
Jacksonian and Antebellum Age: People and Perspectives
Jazz Age: People and Perspectives
Making of the American West: People and Perspectives
Reconstruction: People and Perspectives
Vietnam War Era: People and Perspectives
Westward Expansion: People and Perspectives
Women’s Rights: People and Perspectives
 PERSPECTIVES IN
AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

African Americans
in the
Nineteenth
Century
People and Perspectives
Dixie Ray Haggard, Editor
Peter C. Mancall, Series Editor
Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without
prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

African Americans in the nineteenth century : people and perspectives / Dixie Ray Haggard, editor.
p. cm. — (Perspectives in American social history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59884-123-7 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59884-124-4 (ebook)
1. African Americans—History—19th century. 2. African Americans—Social conditions—19th
century. 3. United States—Race relations—History—19th century. I. Haggard, Dixie Ray.
E185.18.A375 2010
9730 .0496073—dc22 2009049683
ISBN: 978-1-59884-123-7
EISBN: 978-1-59884-124-4
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
 Contents

Series Introduction, vii

Introduction, xi
About the Editor and Contributors, xxiii
Chronology, xxvii

1 Africans and African Americans to the 1820s, 1

Dixie Ray Haggard

2 Free Blacks in Antebellum America, 17

Shelby Callaway

3 Still Rising: An Intricate Look at Black Female Slaves, 33

Crystal L. Johnson

4 Safety in the Briar Patch: Enslaved Communities in the Nineteenth-

Century United States, 45
Karen Wilson

5 Uncovering the True Relationship between Masters and Slaves, 63

Jennifer Hildebrand

6 ‘‘Yes, We All Shall Be Free’’: African Americans Make the Civil War a
Struggle for Freedom, 79
David Williams and Teresa Crisp Williams
vi CONTENTS
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

7 African Americans during Reconstruction (1863–1877), 95

Dawn J. Herd-Clark

8 African American Responses to Early Jim Crow, 111

Mary Block

9 ‘‘Their Plows Singing beneath the Sandy Loam’’: African American

Agriculture in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South, 133
Mark D. Hersey

10 African Americans in the Nineteenth-Century West, 149

James N. Leiker

11 Black Indians: America’s Forgotten People, 171

Dixie Ray Haggard

12 African American Leaders, 185

Paige Haggard

Primary Documents, 203

Reference, 221
Bibliography, 231
Index, 253
 Series Introduction

S ocial history is, simply put, the study of past societies. More specifi-
cally, social historians attempt to describe societies in their totality,
and hence often eschew analysis of politics and ideas. Though many
social historians argue that it is impossible to understand how societies
functioned without some consideration of the ways that politics works on
a daily basis or what ideas could be found circulating at any given time,
they tend to pay little attention to the formal arenas of electoral politics or
intellectual currents. In the United States, social historians have been
engaged in describing components of the population that had earlier often
escaped formal analysis, notably women, members of ethnic or cultural
minorities, or those who had fewer economic opportunities than the elite.
Social history became a vibrant discipline in the United States after it
had already gained enormous influence in Western Europe. In France,
social history in its modern form emerged with the rising prominence of a
group of scholars associated with the journal Annales Economie, Societe, Civi-
lisation (or Annales ESC as it is known). In its pages and in a series of books
from historians affiliated with the E  cole des Hautes E  tudes en Sciences
Sociale in Paris, brilliant historians such as Marc Bloch, Jacques Le Goff,
and Emanuel LeRoy Ladurie described seemingly every aspect of French
society. Among the masterpieces of this historical reconstruction was Fer-
nand Braudel’s monumental study, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, published first in Paris in 1946 and in a revised
edition in English in 1972. In this work Braudel argued that the only way
to understand a place in its totality was to describe its environment, its
social and economic structures, and its political systems. In Britain the em-
phasis of social historians has been less on questions of environment, per
se, than on a description of human communities in all their complexities.
For example, social historians there have taken advantage of that nation’s
remarkable local archives to reconstruct the history of the family and
details of its rural past. Works such as Peter Laslett’s The World We Have
Lost, first printed in 1966, and the multiauthored Agrarian History of Eng-
land and Wales, which began to appear in print in 1967, revealed that
viii SERIES INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

painstaking work could reveal the lives and habits of individuals who
never previously attracted the interest of biographers, demographers, or
most historians.
Social history in the United States gained a large following in the sec-
ond half of the 20th century, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Its de-
velopment sprang from political, technical, and intellectual impulses
deeply embedded in the culture of the modern university. The politics of
civil rights and social reform fueled the passions of historians who strove
to tell the stories of the underclass. They benefited from the adoption by
historians of statistical analysis, which allowed scholars to trace where
individuals lived, how often they moved, what kinds of jobs they took,
and whether their economic status declined, stagnated, or improved over
time. As history departments expanded, many who emerged from graduate
schools focused their attention on groups previously ignored or marginal-
ized. Women’s history became a central concern among American histori-
ans, as did the history of African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos,
and others. These historians pushed historical study in the United States
farther away from the study of formal politics and intellectual trends.
Though few Americanists could achieve the technical brilliance of some
social historians in Europe, collectively they have been engaged in a vast
act of description, with the goal of describing seemingly every facet of life
from 1492 to the present.
The sixteen volumes in this series together represent the continuing
efforts of historians to describe American society. Most of the volumes
focus on chronological areas, from the broad sweep of the colonial era to
the more narrowly defined collections of essays on the eras of the Cold
War, the baby boom, and America in the age of the Vietnam War. The se-
ries also includes entire volumes on the epochs that defined the nation,
the American Revolution and the Civil War, as well as volumes dedicated
to the process of westward expansion, women’s rights, and African Ameri-
can history.
This social history series derives its strength from the talented editors
of individual volumes. Each editor is an expert in his or her own field who
selected and organized the contents of his or her volume. Editors solicited
other experienced historians to write individual essays. Every volume con-
tains first-rate analysis complemented by lively anecdotes designed to
reveal the complex contours of specific historical moments. The many
illustrations to be found in these volumes testify too to the recognition that
any society can be understood not only by the texts that its participants
produce but also by the images that they craft. Primary source documents
in each volume will allow interested readers to pursue some specific topics
in greater depth, and each volume contains a chronology to provide guid-
ance to the flow of events over time. These tools—anecdotes, images, texts,
and timelines—allow readers to gauge the inner workings of America in
particular periods and yet also to glimpse connections between eras.
The articles in these volumes testify to the abundant strengths of his-
torical scholarship in the United States in the early years of the twenty-
first century. Despite the occasional academic contest that flares into public
 SERIES INTRODUCTION ix
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

notice, or the self-serving cant of politicians who want to manipulate the

nation’s past for partisan ends—for example, in debates over the Second
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and what it means about potential
limits to the rights of gun ownership—the articles here all reveal the vast
increase in knowledge of the American past that has taken place over the
previous half century. Social historians do not dominate history faculties
in American colleges and universities, but no one could deny them a seat
at the intellectual table. Without their efforts, intellectual, cultural, and
political historians would be hard pressed to understand why certain ideas
circulated when they did, why some religious movements prospered or
foundered, how developments in fields such as medicine and engineering
reflected larger concerns, and what shaped the world we inhabit.
Fernand Braudel and his colleagues envisioned entire laboratories of
historians in which scholars working together would be able to produce
histoire totale: total history. Historians today seek more humble goals for
our collective enterprise. But as the richly textured essays in these volumes
reveal, scholarly collaboration has in fact brought us much closer to that
dream. These volumes do not and cannot include every aspect of Ameri-
can history. However, every page reveals something interesting or valuable
about how American society functioned. Together, these books suggest the
crucial necessity of stepping back to view the grand complexities of the
past rather than pursuing narrower prospects and lesser goals.

Peter C. Mancall
Series Editor
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

H istory is the key to understanding our present and the light that illu-
minates the path to our future. In 2008, the United States celebrated
a landmark event in its history, the election of an African American
to the presidency of the United States. Many scholars trace the origins of
this event to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 20th century or
Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in the 19th
century, and in part, they are justified in their argument. These scholars,
however, miss the proverbial forest by looking at a couple of large trees.
Since 1800, millions of African Americans made sacrifices that blazed a trail
that led directly to the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the
United States. Specifically, in the 19th century, people like Gabriel Prosser,
Charles Deslondes, Paul Cuffe, Levi Coffin, Richard Allen, Denmark Vesey,
Edward Jones, David Walker, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner
Truth, Dred Scott, Edward Alexander Bouchet, Henry O. Flipper, Booker T.
Washington, George Washington Williams, Ida B. Wells, Homer Plessy, W.
E. B. Du Bois, and the communities they represent literally sacrificed every-
thing including their lives to lay down a foundation for the eventual free-
dom of all African Americans. These individuals paved a path to a future in
which an African American could be elected president of the United States.
Probably no one person did more for the betterment of the African Ameri-
can community in the 19th century and the achievement of their hopes in
a later century than did Frederick Douglass.
Frederick Douglass is the perfect, singular example of the African
American experience in the 19th century. He experienced life in a slave
community in the South and in free African American communities in the
North before the Civil War. In 1818, Douglass was born a slave in Mary-
land, and while a slave, he became all too familiar with the brutality,
inhumanity, and inherent evil of the slavery institution.
While still a child and a slave, Douglass learned how to read even
though it was forbidden by law. Eventually, he was forced to labor for his
owner as he reached maturity. In 1838, Douglass managed to escape to
the North and freedom, and by the early 1840s, he became an outspoken
xii INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

and public advocate of abolition, despite the risk to his freedom due to his
status as a runaway slave. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography
to further the cause of abolition, again at great risk to his freedom. After
publication of his autobiography, Douglass left for a lecture tour of Great
Britain. While there, British friends of Douglass raised funds to purchase
his freedom.
During the Civil War, Douglass worked tirelessly to ensure the war
would guarantee an end to slavery and for African Americans to be
allowed to serve in the Union Army. After the Civil War, Douglass cam-
paigned vigorously to achieve civil, economic, and social rights for African
Americans, and he lectured constantly, albeit in vain, to have the Civil
War remembered primarily as a war for the emancipation of slaves. Doug-
lass was politically active in the Republican Party and held several govern-
ment appointments, including the marshal for the District of Columbia
and minister and consul general to Haiti. Douglass passed away on Febru-
ary 20, 1895.
Frederick Douglass’s life story vividly reveals the basic contradictions
of a democratic republic that espoused the concept of equality for all, at
the same time it allowed the enslavement of some of its population. Few if
any American writers have so clearly and succinctly revealed and attacked
the moral and economic nature of slavery, and few have argued so elo-
quently for the potential of civil, economic, and social equality in the nat-
ural rights tradition.
The purpose of this volume is to introduce the reader to the social
world that Douglass and other African Americans experienced during the
19th century and help the reader explore and understand that world. This
was a world that few 21st-century Americans fully appreciate. It was a
world of struggle and fulfillment, justice and injustice, civility and brutal-
ity, and acceptance and racism.
More specifically, this monograph seeks to describe the social life of
African Americans in the 19th century. Much has been published about
the cultural, economic, environmental, military, and political accomplish-
ments of African Americans in that century, but little has been written
about the day-to-day affairs and the face-to-face interactions of African
Americans with each other and others in American society. Although
social history is the focus here, the cultural, economic, environmental,
military, and political activity of these people will be used as methods of
historical exploration to provide gateways into the social life of African
Americans.
Frederick Douglass’s birth came at a transition point in African Ameri-
can social history. Slave communities in the South were quickly becoming
African American in their makeup rather than African because of the ban
on the importation of slaves into the United States beginning in 1808.
Before this ban, slaves born in Africa exceeded the number of those born
in America. This had been the case since the first Africans were brought to
North America in 1619. The history of Africans and African Americans in
the Colonial and Revolutionary eras led up to and shaped this transition
 INTRODUCTION xiii
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

period, and this transition period is important to understanding African

American history during the rest of the 19th century, because it created a
division among African American leaders as to whether or not African
Americans should seek inclusion in American society.
The first Africans to arrive in America probably ended up as inden-
tured servants rather than slaves, but as the 16th century progressed,
American colonists developed African chattel slavery as a replacement for
indentured servitude. Chapter 1 describes how African chattel slavery, and
the racism that accompanied it, provided the framework within which
African and African American, free and enslaved communities developed
socially and culturally in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Although this
framework existed throughout America during this time, the nature and
structure of African and African American society differed from time to
time and place to place.
In the colonial period, the social structure and the culture produced by
slave communities was influenced heavily by which African ethnicities
lived within them and by when these ethnicities arrived. The different eth-
nicities from varying parts of Africa arrived at different times in different
combinations to different places. The varying ways whites employed slaves
in the different regions of North America combined with the white-to-
black ratio to produce altering social settings for African slaves. This fact
prevented enslaved and free blacks from developing any concept of racial
unity during the colonial period.
The rhetoric of freedom and liberty that accompanied the revolution-
ary era caused black societies to reorganize at the end of the 18th and be-
ginning of the 19th centuries. This trend combined with the reduction of
African-born slaves and resulted in the development of a nascent, racial
consciousness throughout black America. The rise of economically success-
ful, black elites during this same period, the Revolutionary era to the
1820s, formed a classism that hindered and restrained the growth of an
African American racial consciousness.
These two differing visions of the black future in America solidified af-
ter the 1820s. One vision looked toward inclusion in America, hoping that
eventually the promise of liberty would be extended to them due to the
influence of Christianity and the rhetoric of freedom. Frederick Douglass
can be counted among those who adhered to this view. The second vision
recognized that American racism would not accept anyone of African
descent as equal. Therefore, those that followed this last view continued to
develop their own African-influenced institutions and organizations and
attempted to preserve their communities and their African heritage apart
from white society. This division among African Americans continued to
affect black society throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the
20th century. It manifested itself at the turn of the 20th century as some
chose to follow the leadership of Booker T. Washington, and his focus on
developing black economic independence first and the acquisition of civil
rights later, and others chose to follow Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du
Bois and their pursuit of immediate civil and social equality.
xiv INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

When Frederick Douglass made his escape and gained his freedom in
1838 he found, as Shelby Callaway writes in Chapter 2, that ‘‘the American
practice of associating slavery with race made the existence of free black
people a thorny issue’’ in the North as well as in the South for white Ameri-
cans. Free blacks disrupted a system based on blackness equaling slavery,
and this fact affected the legal, economic, and social makeup of antebellum
America. During the early 19th century, free blacks established their posi-
tion in American society and began to create a distinctly African American
culture and society. Separate and distinct from the slave culture of the South
and heavily influenced by their African heritage, ‘‘African American culture
and society grew out of the free black communities and institutions of the
1800s.’’ Black Christian churches and their leaders served as the focal points
of these communities. The church ‘‘produced most of the social and political
leaders, founded schools, started mutual aid societies, and contributed to a
more distinct and unified African American consciousness and culture.’’
Most of the members of the free black communities during the early
19th century were the descendants of freed slaves or were freed slaves
themselves. Many of these gained their freedom during the Revolutionary
era as some white Americans and many black Americans took the concepts
of liberty and equality literally. Those that were freed at this time and their
descendants merged African culture and revolutionary American ideals
into a distinctly African American society. Antebellum free blacks did not
try to escape their African roots and never lost solidarity with Africans in
bondage despite divided opinions about whether or not to seek inclusion
with whites in American society. Frederick Douglass and others like him
campaigned for the rights of all black people, free and slave. Churches,
schools, and social organizations, the abolition societies and the Under-
ground Railroad all spawned from the free black society.
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass exposed the abuses and the
harshness of slavery as it existed in the South during the 19th century. In
several sections, Douglass clearly and poignantly illustrated the affect that
slavery had on female slaves. Because of the nature of slavery, as Crystal
L. Johnson demonstrates in Chapter 3, female slaves occupied four basic
roles: an oppressed object, the resistant foe, the center of the slave family,
and a survivor.
Overseers and owners viewed black female slaves as objects or as pieces
of property. As a result of these white attitudes, slave women often faced
abuse and cruelty. White owners and overseers stripped these women of their
sense of femininity and replaced it with the deplorable notion of the black
female slave as a breeder and a commodity to sell, buy, or trade at will. Com-
monly, sexual exploitation proved to be the method used to objectify black
female slaves. It was not uncommon for white men to rape female slaves.
The female slave as a resistant foe was also a role black women fulfilled
under the oppression of slavery. Black female slaves exhibited the wits and
desire to resist the immoral atrocities of slavery. From the boarding of the
slave vessels to the point of settling into slave quarters, black women par-
ticipated and assisted in slave insurrections and work slowdowns, broke
tools, set fires, and even in some case, poisoned their owners.
 INTRODUCTION xv
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

Johnson notes that ‘‘while the role of resistor empowered the female
slave, the one significant role that has passed from generation to generation
is that of the black female being the center of the family.’’ Because male slaves
often were sold away from their families or kept away from their families,
female slaves were forced to take care of their families alone or with the help
of other female slaves. In so doing, they demonstrated self-sufficiency, inde-
pendence, and female solidarity that helped the slave family survive the
institution of slavery.
Johnson emphasizes that female slaves also had to take on the role of
survivor to perpetuate their lineages. ‘‘The psychological, sexual, and men-
tal anguish suffered by the black female slave created a woman with
thick skin.’’ The female slave embraced the different roles thrust on her
and survived. ‘‘It took phenomenal women to endure the pains, tribula-
tions, and the daily injustices of the institution of slavery. These women
had the will to survive a barbaric institution.’’
Frederick Douglass, through his writings and his talks on the lecture cir-
cuit, often discussed the nature of social life in slave communities. His discus-
sions used these communities to demonstrate the humanity and ingenuity of
enslaved African Americans to enlighten a primarily racist, white public in
the North as well as the South. He illustrated the willingness of slaves to band
together to help each other and their ability to maintain connections with
friends and family beyond the immediate confines of their own plantations.
Before the Civil War, the majority of African Americans lived in slave
communities in the United States. To survive the harsh realities of the insti-
tution of slavery, they established bonds inside and outside their home com-
munities, as Karen Wilson demonstrates in Chapter 4. If friends and family
members were sold to nearby plantations, slaves managed to maintain ties
with these same friends and family members by visiting at night. Members
of slave communities built a network of support that extended beyond the
home plantation by sustaining family and friendship connections.
These networks kept individuals informed as to what was going on in
the outside world despite the fact that slaveholders wanted to keep their
slaves ignorant. This network helped slaves connect with the Underground
Railroad when they wanted to escape, and with the coming of the Civil
War, it helped many slaves track the advancement of Union armies to time
the abandonment of plantations en masse. This last activity put pressure on
Abraham Lincoln to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation, specifically
because the U.S. government needed a policy established to guide the mili-
tary’s response to thousands of ex-slaves flooding into Union camps.
Within the institution of slavery, whites expected slaves to act childish,
subhuman, and dull. Knowing this, slaves presented this expected image
to the world outside of their slave communities. This facade hid a society
that flourished. On plantations, the young were trained to avoid the dan-
gers of slavery and survive. Slaves used stories, songs, dance, and other
creative forms of expression to train the young. The most famous of these
stories include the Brer Rabbit stories. Specifically, children were taught to
act as whites expected and hide their true nature. Additionally, they were
taught to keep the activities of their communities secret from all whites.
xvi INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

At the same time children were taught how to survive, the elders also
taught them about Africa. Many of the African traditions that survived in
slave communities centered on religion and religious ceremony. Elements
of African culture that slave communities preserved include but are not
limited to the ring shout, voodoo, hoodoo, and various forms of dancing.
In a way, slave communities were the archives for slaves to store and
maintain African traditions. Just as Douglass revealed the nature of slave
communities in his writings and in his talks, he also exposed the true state
of interactions between slaveholders and the slaves to expose the false
claims of paternalism on plantations and uncover the stark inhumanity of
these relationships.
Slavery was a coercive, brutal institution, but according to Jennifer
Hildebrand in Chapter 5 slaves survived the horrors of the peculiar institution
because of their psychic and spiritual strength. Despite the unequal power
relationship that existed between master and slave, the relationship between
the two was not one-sided. Slaveholders wanted to believe that slaves were
childlike and simple. To preserve this belief, they created a system in which
slaves were dependent on them for most of their needs. For example, many
slaveholders forbid their slaves from growing their own gardens so that their
slaves depended on the owner for food. The helplessness forced upon the
slaves reinforced the owner’s belief that he had a paternalistic relationship
with his childlike slaves. When they were beyond the owner’s view, most
slaves supplemented their diets by growing secret gardens, hunting, gather-
ing, and fishing. Despite what the owner believed he knew about his slaves
and his relationship with them, however, the reality was far different from
those perceptions. Just as they hid the ways they supplemented their diets,
slaves quickly learned to keep the owner in the dark about the inner work-
ings of their society, and they used his desire to be seen as paternalistic as a
means to ease their circumstances within the institution of slavery.
Slaves expressed their desire for freedom and their frustration with the
institution of slavery through their singing. The songs they sang revealed
their feelings in a veiled form often hiding their true meaning with Biblical
themes. Their folktales allowed them to protest their condition in a veiled
fashion.
Despite the slaves’ abilities to keep their owner in the dark about
much of their activities and improve their situation, some things the slaves
could not prevent. They could not escape beatings. Depending on the tem-
perament of their specific owner, some slaves were exposed on a regular
basis to violence. In some cases, no appeal to paternalism could spare the
helpless victim of the slaveholder’s wrath, and a slave could suffer a beat-
ing for doing little more than being too slow. Thankfully, the Civil War
brought an end to this evil institution.
During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass fought to make emancipa-
tion the primary goal of the war, and he constantly urged the govern-
ment to allow African Americans to serve in the military. Once African
Americans were allowed to serve, Douglass worked tirelessly to recruit
African Americans to enlist. Importantly, as David Williams and Teresa
Crisp Williams argue in Chapter 6, the activities of blacks (free blacks like
 INTRODUCTION xvii
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

Douglass and slaves) during the Civil War and not the efforts of the Lin-
coln administration led to the emancipation of the slaves. Basically,
enslaved blacks took freedom for themselves by heading for Union lines
as soon as possible. The farther south the Union Army went, the more
slaves stopped working and set off for freedom. This forced Lincoln to
grudgingly recognize what slaves had already forced on his administration
and what free blacks in the North had been demanding all along.
From the beginning of the Civil War, Douglass had advocated the enlist-
ment of African Americans in the Union Army. However, the Lincoln
administration and the military leadership resisted with many in the military
questioning the capacity of blacks to perform on the battlefield. Yet despite
these racist fears, the casualty rate Union troops faced forced their hand.
Eventually, 200,000 blacks served in the Union armed forces with 80 percent
coming from southern states. Another 200,000 worked in auxiliary support
services for the military helping in logistics and other capacities. By the war’s
end, African Americans had played a major and important role in the defeat
of the Confederacy and the final abolition of slavery in North America.
Happily experiencing the abolition of slavery after the Civil War, it
appeared to Frederick Douglass, albeit briefly, that his dream of black equal-
ity and inclusion in American society might be achieved, but he quickly
learned that the promise of Reconstruction in the South would be short-
lived. As Dawn J. Herd-Clark points out in Chapter 7, for African Americans
living in the former southern states Reconstruction brought substantial
changes. Reconstruction began with the implementation of President Abra-
ham Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for reconstructing the South in 1863, and it
continued through Congressional Radical Reconstruction until the last of the
federal troops were removed from the former Confederate States in 1877.
During Reconstruction, former African American slaves experienced
freedom for the first time. As a result, African Americans could receive an
education, own land, vote, and hold political office for the first time.
Unfortunately, by the end of the 19th century after Reconstruction ended,
racism and discrimination by southern whites and northern white apathy
stripped many of these civil liberties from freedmen living in the South.
The rights African Americans fought to achieve during Reconstruction
were lost until the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Douglass experienced the implementation of segregation in the North
in the years preceding the Civil War, and the rise of Jim Crow in the South
in the years after the termination of Reconstruction. According to Mary
Block in Chapter 8, ‘‘The Jim Crow system entailed not only the customary
and legal racial segregation and political disenfranchisement of African
Americans, but also the violent and brutal tactics that whites employed to
gain and maintain dominance over blacks. The function of Jim Crow was
to maintain white supremacy through the denigration and humiliation of
African Americans. Although Jim Crow is associated with the South . . . it
also existed in the North and the West.’’
‘‘Laws mandating racial segregation and black disenfranchisement ori-
ginated in the North, where states had abolished slavery by the 1820s,’’
Block writes. ‘‘A majority of northern whites shared the belief with their
xviii INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

southern counterparts that white folks constituted a superior race of peo-

ple and justified segregation and disenfranchisement on the grounds that
blacks were innately inferior and therefore could not meet the vital
responsibilities of citizenship. . . . southern legislatures modeled their re-
spective post–Civil War Jim Crow statutes on the North’s antebellum dis-
crimination laws. Most northern states had barred free blacks from voting,
office-holding, and jury service, and mandated the separation of the races
in public schools and public accommodations. Blacks were discriminated
against in employment. These discriminations were not uniform in all
northern states, and they were not enforced consistently from jurisdiction
to jurisdiction.’’ This was not the case in the South after the end of Recon-
struction. By the end of the 19th century, Jim Crow evolved in the South
into a rigid and reasonably uniform code of laws and customs that prohib-
ited African American civil, economic, and social equality with whites and
attempted to guarantee the complete and perpetual ‘‘denigration and hu-
miliation of African Americans.’’ As a result of the development of Jim
Crow, African Americans in the South had to make choices as to what
they should do to survive and persevere.
In the late 19th century, Booker T. Washington began to advocate the
pursuit of economic self-sufficiency by African Americans in the South
rather than civil and social equality with whites. Frederick Douglass opposed
this position feeling that African Americans needed to demand equality in all
aspects of life. W. E. B. Du Bois carried Douglass’s campaign forward after
Douglass’s death in 1895. The divide between Washington and Douglass/Du
Bois continued the divisions in African American society that started early in
the 19th century. Douglass and Du Bois looked toward inclusion in America,
hoping that eventually the promise of liberty would be extended to them.
Washington and his followers believed that American racism, especially in
the South, prevented African Americans from being seen as equals,
and therefore, African Americans should keep to themselves and seek to
provide their own economic security separate from white society.
Washington’s belief, argues Mark D. Hersey in Chapter 9, was based on
the fact that most African Americans remained in the South after the Civil
War, and most were ‘‘caught in an economic system that more or less
trapped them in a position of debt peonage. The various sorts of farm ten-
ancy that marked the South from Reconstruction through World War II
emerged out of two principal factors: the economic devastation attended
the South in the aftermath of the Civil War and the prevailing social mores
of the region. . . . Ultimately, the tenant system that emerged in the years
following the Civil War remained in place through World War II, and for
its duration, black tenant farmers carried on in much the same way.
Indeed, the lives of black tenants in the late 1920s differed but little from
those of the 1880s. Though the prospect of financial independence was
comparatively bleak for most black farmers in the South, they continued to
hope for better things, contribute to their communities, and follow the sea-
sonal rhythms of their vocation.’’ While some African Americans chose to
stay in the South and cope with Jim Crow and growing white hostility as
best they could, others chose to abandon the South.
 INTRODUCTION xix
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

After the termination of Reconstruction, many freedmen feared for

their future in the South because of the increase of black debt peonage
created by share-cropping and tenant farming, the rise in lynching, and
the expansion of Jim Crow laws. Therefore, many turned to the West as a
land of opportunity, despite the protests of leaders like Frederick Douglass
who believed African Americans should remain in the East and aggres-
sively pursue civil and social equality there. Those who ventured West
during the late 19th century found other African Americans there with
roots deeply embedded.
African Americans moved into the West throughout the 19th century.
Sometimes they worked in what James N. Leiker in Chapter 10 calls ‘‘ster-
eotypical ‘western’ jobs such as ranching and soldiering, but more often
engaged in mundane but important tasks such as building schools, estab-
lishing towns, and creating black communities that would champion the
civil rights causes of the 20th century.’’ Most of the blacks who went west
did so, however, after the conclusion of Reconstruction.
As southern leaders began to reassert ‘‘the primacy of local rule after
the end of Reconstruction, African Americans saw their hopes for civil,
economic, and social equality vanish.’’ In response to this loss of hope,
many African Americans turned to the West as a place of refuge where
their dreams might be fulfilled. Racism followed them into the West, but
opportunity was also found in the region.
Few people are aware that Frederick Douglass had some Native Ameri-
can ancestry, which, in essence, made him a Black Indian. Chapter 11
relates how the tragic conquest of Native America and the horrific enslave-
ment of Africans created Black Indians as the circumstances of history
brought the two oppressed people together in North America. Black Indians
managed to persevere and survive despite America’s historic problem with
accepting racial and cultural diversity; however, because of the denial of
racial and cultural plurality in the United States, Black Indians continually
had to negotiate their identity in the face of white, and sometimes Native
and African American, denial of their dual heritage.
From the first arrival of Africans to North America in 1619 until the
end of the 19th century, European colonists, and later white Americans,
worked continually to prevent blacks and Native Americans from uniting
against whites by playing the two groups against each other through the
exploitation of racial differences and ethnic rivalries. White Americans
used Natives as slave hunters and eventually turned some in the southern
tribes into slaveholders. They transformed Africans and African Americans
into Indian fighters to further antagonize potential relationships between
these two groups. Thus, by creating real and fictional animosity between
the two groups, white Americans successfully hid the cultural similarities
between them. This allowed both groups to be exploited by white society
well into the 20th century. Yet despite the efforts of Europeans and Anglo
Americans, Africans and Native Americans intermingled from the begin-
ning, survived the 19th century into the present, and added to the social
and cultural milieu that is the United States.
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 C H A P T E R X LV I .
I N S TA L L AT I O N .

I have already said that nature had gifted me with strong legs,
and it was in days like the present that I appreciated the gift.
As yet, I knew not sufficient of Paris to be enabled to extricate
myself from the labyrinth of streets which joined the Rue St. Honoré,
and which stretched from the Rue Aubry le Boucher to the Rue
Boucherat, so that I spent six or seven minutes in making the
necessary inquiries, and at last arrived.
I saw a sombre house in a sombre street. It was No. 7. I mounted
a dark-looking staircase, and arrived at the second floor.
Three doors opened on the landing: one of them bore an
inscription:—
“Le Citoyen Maximilian de Robespierre, et Deputé à l’Assemblée
Nationale.”
I knocked.
I heard footsteps approaching the door, and then stop cautiously.
“Is it you, Maximilian?” asked a voice, in which could be discerned
traces of emotion.
“No, mademoiselle,” I replied; “but I bring news of him.”
The door was quickly opened.
“Nothing has happened to him?” asked a stately female of about
forty years.
“Here are a few words to reassure you,” I replied.
I then handed her the letter.
 It was too dark for her to be enabled to read it in the passage on
the landing.
Mademoiselle de Robespierre re-entered the apartment, inviting
me to follow her.
I entered a sort of dining-room, opening on a study and bed-
room.
All was cold, cheerless, and almost unfurnished. If not actually
miserable, it was far below mediocrity.
Mademoiselle Robespierre read her brother’s letter.
“When my brother thinks it needless to tell me where he is, he has
his reasons. You have seen him, sir?”
“I have just left him, mademoiselle.”
“Nothing has happened to him?”
“Nothing.”
“Give him my congratulations, sir, and thank for me those people
who have been hospitable to him. I would that, after the long walk
you have had, I could offer you refreshment; but my brother is so
sober, and has such few wants, that we have naught but water in
the house.”
At this moment, the tramp of footsteps was heard in the corridor.
A woman showed herself at the door of the dining-room, and, dimly,
a man could be perceived behind her.
Despite the semi-darkness, I recognised the female, and could not
resist crying out, “Madame Roland!”
Mademoiselle Robespierre repeated, in an accent of astonishment,
“Madame Roland!”
“Yes, I, myself, mademoiselle, and my husband, who, hearing that
Robespierre has been threatened by his enemies, are come to offer
him a shelter in our little house at the corner of the Rue
Guenegaud.”
 “I thank you in my brother’s name, madame,” replied
Mademoiselle Charlotte, with dignity. “He has already found the
asylum which you so nobly offer him, and which I know not myself.
Here is the gentleman who brought the news,” continued she,
pointing me out to Madame Roland.
“That proves, mademoiselle,” said, in his turn, the Citizen Roland,
“that other citizens are more favored than we;” and remarking that
he was unwilling to intrude longer on her privacy, he bowed, and
departed with his wife.
As my errand was fulfilled, I followed them, and returned in close
conversation with them. Madame Roland was at the Jacobin Club
when the paid guard made an irruption among them.
The terror was such among the few members of the society
present, that one of them, anxious to escape, escaladed the gallery
set aside for women. Madame Roland made him ashamed of himself,
and compelled him to descend the way that he had come.
They asked me about Robespierre. I told them that I was not
authorized to inform them of his place of shelter, but only could
assure them that he was in a place of safety among people who
would die for him.
Madame Roland asked me to tell Robespierre that they would
bring him to trial—that is to say, accuse him that evening at the
Feuillants. In that certainty, she and her husband were going to M.
Buzal, to pray him to defend his colleague.
We separated at the top of the Pont Neuf—M. Roland and Madame
to go down the Rue du Roule. I to follow the Rue St. Honoré.
It was quite night when I arrived at Duplay’s. Félicién had rejoined
the family during my absence; they were at table, and he regarded
askance the new arrival, who took the place of honor between
Madame Duplay and Mademoiselle Cornelie. I told M. Robespierre all
about the fulfilment of my message, and reported to him his sister’s
reply.
 I told him also that M. and Madame Roland had paid a visit to his
house.
Here he interrupted, and repeated after me,—“Citizen Roland!
Citizeness Roland!”
He appeared so astonished at the visit, that he was some time
asking me the cause.
I took my place at the table.
“Monsieur,” said Robespierre, after a moment’s silence, with his
habitual politeness, “does it please you to serve me to the end?”
“Not only will it be an honor, and a pleasure,” replied I, “but a
duty.”
“Well,” said he, “this time you have only a few steps to go, and I
shall not have to write a letter. Go to the Rue St. Anne; on the left-
hand side, in going up the street, by the Boulevards, you will see the
Hotel de Berry; there you will inquire for a young man named St.
Just. He lives on the fourth floor, in a room overlooking the court. If
he be at home, tell him that I want him. My kind host, I hope, will
allow me to receive him here. At present, this young man is of no
account, but one day he will lead us all. If he be not at home, well;
you leave your name and the address of this house, where I have
found such good friends, and such noble protectors, and under the
address you write, ‘Urgent for the sake of the public safety.’
Whenever he returns, he will come straight here, you may be sure.”
I wished to leave the table, but, placing his hand on my shoulder,
he said, “Finish your supper. I am not in so great a hurry, and we
have all the night before us.”
Five minutes after, I was proceeding up the Rue St. Anne.
The Hotel de Berry led out of the Rue Neuve des Petits-champs
and the Rue Neuve St. Augustin.
I asked for Citizen St. Just.
 The concierge threw his eyes over the keys hung on the wall, and
saw that of St. Just was not there.
“No. 19, fourth story, at the bottom of the corridor.”
I mounted a dark staircase, and found the indicated corridor, and
in that corridor, No. 19.
I knocked; a powerful voice said, “Come in!”
I turned the key in the lock, and saw a young man in his shirt-
sleeves, working by an open window at the correction of proofs.
He was so absorbed in his work, that I approached and touched
him before he turned round.
The book, the proofs of which he was correcting, was, I could see,
entitled, “Mespasse temps ou le Voirvel organe.”
The preoccupation of the young poet was caused by the desire to
find a rhyme.
The rhyme found, he turned to me.
“Pardon,” said he; “what want you?”
“Citizen St. Just,” replied I, “I come on behalf of Citizen
Robespierre.”
“You?”
“Yes. He desires your presence immediately.”
“Where?”
“If you are not prepared, I will leave you the address; but if you
are, I will conduct you thither.”
“Is he at the Rue Saintange?”
“No; he is close by here—in the Rue St. Honoré.”
“At the Jacobins?”
“There are no longer Jacobins. The club is dead.”
 “Who dared do it?”
“The paid guard, who, an hour before, dared do another thing.”
“What was the other thing?”
“Fire on the people at the Champ de Mars—slay, perchance, six or
seven hundred persons!”
St. Just shouted with rage.
“What! you a patriot—the friend of M. Robespierre,—and not know
better than that what takes place in Paris?” said I.
“I promised my publisher to have those proofs corrected by
Thursday; and in order to accomplish this I told the servant not to
disturb me for anything. He brought my breakfast in my chamber,
and here is my dinner already served. I have not had time to eat. I
knew last night from the Jacobins they must withdraw the petition;
and I doubted not that, the petition withdrawn, there might be a
disturbance at the Champ de Mars. But let us not lose a moment.
Since Robespierre requires me, I am at his orders.”
The young man put on a white waistcoat, irreproachable in its
cleanliness; a gray coat; a sword and dagger he hung at his side;
then took his hat, and said but the words, “Show the way!”
I went in front, and he followed.
 C H A P T E R X LV I I .
A BREAK.

Here comes a break in my personal adventures during the course

of the great struggle for liberty throughout France. I leading the
way, and St. Just following, we went down the Rue St. Anne, and
had almost reached the Rue Neuve des Augustins, when the
powerful voice of St. Just (one that was soon to be heard by the
Nation, which was to hush at his first word) addressed me.
“Citizen!”
“Citizen St. Just?”
“Give me the address whither we are going!” he said.
“Why, I am leading you! Do you mistrust me?”
His face flushed.
“I mistrust no man,” he replied.
“Then why do you ask for the address?”
“By way of precaution.”
“What need is there of precaution?”
“Was not the Citizen Robespierre in danger not an hour since, by
being in the streets?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Citizen St. Just is equally in danger of a bullet from the
barrel of a paid guard.”
“I shall not desert you.”
“But——”
 “Yes, citizen.”
“What if you are killed?” St. Just replied calmly. “I should not know
whither you came.”
“True,” I replied; and he taking out his tablets, wrote upon them,
from my dictation, the address of the Citizen Duplay.
In this act may be seen an example of that forethought and
preparation which gave St. Just a position to which otherwise he
never would have attained.
“Good!” he said, having carefully taken down every particular. “Go
forward.”
How necessary was his precaution, the next few minutes showed.
We had only reached the end of the Rue St. Anne, when a sudden
rush of people along the Rue Neuve des Augustins warned us that
danger was at hand.
I turned and looked at St. Just.
Without regarding me, while apparently his sight was on the alert
on all sides, he repeated his direction, “Go forward.”
Suddenly, shots were heard, and, in a few moments, the street
surged with people, who poured out from the houses and joined
those who were speeding down the street, running by their sides
and asking what the commotion meant. So far, very few of the
citizens were aware of the massacres that had taken place upon the
altar of the country.
Paris, in fact, was that day, for the first time, wholly shadowed by
the red flag—which was not to be furled again until a reign of terror,
never equalled in the history of the world, was to be followed by the
inauguration of Napoleon’s splendor.
We were proceeding as rapidly as possible past the current of
excited people, when, unquestionably, a deadly fire opened from a
small turning on the left.
 Suddenly, I turned to the left, to see who had struck me; for I felt
that a blow had been aimed at my shoulder which had nearly sent
me off my feet.
As I turned, no man faced me, and I was wondering where the
blow came from; when, as suddenly and unexpectedly as I received
the blow, I felt sick and weak.
It was a woman who screamed, “Blood!”
She pointed to the ground.
As though looking through a mist, I followed the direction of her
pointing finger.
There was blood upon the ground.
All this had passed in a space not longer than six moments.
“Citizen” said the voice of St. Just, “you are wounded; the ball,
however, was meant for me.”
The last words sounded faintly in my ears, and I thought that he,
too, was hurt.
“And you, citizen—are you wounded?”
“No,” he replied, in a still fainter voice, as it appeared to me; but it
was my senses forsaking me.
“Citizens,” I heard him say, “if I fall, you will find an address in my
pocket, which is the home of this lad.”
That was all I heard. Suddenly, the earth appeared to slip from
under me, and there was an end of my consciousness.
When next I knew myself, I awoke to life with the feeling of a
beating red-hot hammer upon my left shoulder; I appeared to be
struggling out of a state of fearful horror. When this cleared off and I
knew myself to be once more alive, once more Citizen Réné Besson,
I was in a little room, which I soon learnt was an apartment
belonging to Citizen Duplay; and, at my side, reading a book, was
Citizeness Cornelie Duplay, who had constituted herself my nurse.
 And inasmuch as this history is not so much one of myself as of
the Revolution, and of my part in it, I will only briefly recount the
events of the next few weeks—of the next few months, in relation to
myself.
It appeared that I had been wounded in the shoulder, not
dangerously; but the loss of blood was very great, and I was weak
as a little child. I could not raise my hand even to my head, while I
had scarcely voice sufficient with which to thank my kind nurse for
the offices she performed about me.
For weeks I lay upon that narrow bed, my constitution, and the
temperate life I had hitherto led, fighting well in my favor. I could tell
through chapters how gradually the memory of Sophie Gerbaut
faded from my mind, and of how Cornelie Duplay took her place in
my heart.
But I said nothing of my love; and when, weak, but quite safe, I
sat once more at Citizen Duplay’s hospitable table, I still kept my
passion to myself.
Released, however, as I was, from my bed, I was still a prisoner in
the house, which I did not quit for a couple more months.
Meanwhile the Revolution was progressing.
The sight of the altar of the country, after the flight of the people
from its steps, was terrible. It is said that the great mass of the dead
lying bleeding upon that mighty structure was composed of women
and children.
As the National Guard marched back to the city, after this
massacre of many hundreds—a massacre which would have been
multiplied by ten, had not Lafayette thrown himself before the
cannon—they were greeted with low cries of “Murder!” “Murder!”
“Vengeance!”
That day utterly parted the people from the thought of royalty.
Paris was now ready to spill blood, for massacre would now take the
name of vengeance. In many a street in the common parts of Paris
were to be found the surviving relatives of those who had been
slain. These were naturally prompted by a spirit of revenge—by a
determination to pay blood with blood.
Nothing could wash out this hate—no words uttered by the weak
and vacillating King could now stem the torrent of hate. Louis XVI
and Marie Antoinette were already condemned to death in the hearts
of the people. Nothing could save them.
The people were now ripe for rage, and therefore the terrible
Danton gained power. The total reverse of Robespierre, they were to
rise to power together. Robespierre was feeble, small, thin, and
excessively temperate. Habitually, he ate little, drank water, and
used perfumes when he was not surrounded by flowers; for he was
as passionate an admirer of flowers as Mirabeau himself. Danton, on
the other hand, was a huge monster—athletic, rude, coarse. He
pleased the worst rabble of the city, because he resembled them. His
eloquence was as thunder, and his very phrases were short, clear,
and plain, like the words of a general accustomed to command. His
very gestures intoxicated the people, who, however, more than by
anything, were attracted by his wit, which, coarse, brutal, and often
unjust, was never obscure, and always to the point. Men who went
to hear his wit, remained to be converted to his ways of thinking.
His one quality was ambition—his one passion, excitement. He
was quite devoid of honor, principles, or morality—he was already
drunk with the Revolution; but it was a drunkenness which produced
madness—not sleep. Moreover, he had the peculiar power of
controlling himself even in his most excited moments—times when
he would launch a bitter joke in the midst of his denunciations—a
joke which should compel his hearers to yell with laughter, while he
himself remained perfectly impassive. He laughed contemptuously at
all honesty. He despised a man who could pity. In a word, he was a
wild beast gifted with speech, but who could no more think beyond
himself and his wants or desires, than can the beasts that perish.
The first great act of the people after the massacre upon the altar
of the country, was the expression of a desire to honor the remains
of Voltaire—the man whose writings, together with those of
Rousseau, had actually sown the seed of revolution against that
royalty which in Gaul and France had unceasingly mastered the
people through two weary thousand years, before the death of
Voltaire, in 1778—thirteen years before the events I am now
recording. The power of the Court and the Church still maintained
such sway over the minds and hearts of the people, that it was
impossible to hope to bury the great man without creating a popular
outrage. His nephew, therefore, secretly removed the body from
Paris, where Voltaire died, and bore it far away to the Abbey of
Sellières, in Champagne, where it found a resting-place.
Now it was the National Assembly ordered the removal of
Voltaire’s remains to the Pantheon, the cathedral of philosophy,
where lie buried many great men—that building upon the face of
which has been carved “France, in gratitude to great men.”
“The people owe their freedom to Voltaire!” cried Regnault de St.
Jean d’Angely; “for by enlightening them he gave them power.
Nations are enthralled by ignorance alone; and when the torch of
reason displays to them the ignominy of bearing these chains, they
blush to wear them, and they snap them asunder!”
Like a conqueror, seated on his trophies, they placed Voltaire’s
coffin in the midst of the spot upon which the horrible Bastille had
stood, and upon a great heap of stones which had formed part of
that stronghold; and thus Voltaire, dead, triumphed over those
stones which had gained a victory over him in life, for Voltaire had
been a prisoner in the Bastille.
On one of the blocks which formed this second altar of the
country they carved this inscription:

“R eceive on this spot , where despotism once fettered thee , the honors
decreed to thee by thy country .”

All Paris poured out to walk in the triumphal procession which

accompanied the quiet ashes to their last resting-place. The car
upon which the coffin lay was harnessed by twelve horses, four
abreast, their manes plaited with golden tassels and beautiful
flowers, the reins being held by men dressed in ancient Greek
costume. On the car was a sort of altar upon which lay a waxen
statue of the philosopher crowned with laurel. This was placed over
the remains.
The money spent upon this pageant was immense; whence it
came, no one has ever learnt. It was almost miraculous. Meanwhile,
the people were living upon a couple of ounces of bread apiece, and
a few miserable vegetables. That passion and vengeance could have
been kept alive upon such reducing diet, is the truest evidence of
the justice of the national cause.
The military formed a portion of the procession, while cannon
boomed incessantly during the march. Finally—and it is the most
significant fact of this remarkable pageant—a printing-press was
made to take part in the procession. At this press, agile printers
were taking off impressions of sentences in honor of Voltaire, the
printed papers being cast to the seething multitude fresh printed as
they were.
Here and there the red cap—the cap of liberty—might be seen,
surmounting the ominous pike.
Every actor and actress in Paris followed, dressed in the costumes
of the characters of Voltaire’s plays. Members of all the learned
bodies followed; a gigantic pyramid was carried along, bearing the
titles of all his works; and, finally, the statue of the demigod himself
—a statue of gold—was borne upon the shoulders of men dressed in
Grecian costume, this being followed by a casket of gold, containing
a copy of each of his works.
Troops of singing-girls dressed in white met the quiet cause of all
this demonstration, and showered white flowers upon the
catafalque; hymns to his genius were sung, the air was sick with
perfume, and the city trembled with the roar of adoration.
 Night fell before the procession reached the temple dedicated to
the remains of great men, and here Voltaire was enthroned, for he
was King of France in that hour; and the weak, vacillating, and
kindly Louis XVI, away there in the Tuileries, was crownless, awaiting
to pay in his person—he the least odious of his race—for the
unceasing crimes and cruelties of his forefathers.
 C H A P T E R X LV I I I .
T H E T H R E AT I S L O U D E R .

Throughout August, affairs were tending more and more to

dangerous threats. The National Assembly were ostensibly framing a
new constitution; but the delegates proceeded very slowly, except in
the matter of contradiction, at which they were very brisk.
The King’s brothers became still further estranged from him; while
the efforts made beyond the frontier, tending to liberate the royal
family from the state of imprisonment in which they lived, only
tended to hasten the growing belief of the people that by the death
of the King, alone could the nation hope to destroy the chances and
the plans of those Royalists who had escaped from France, and were
blindly endeavoring to serve their own interests by inducing foreign
Courts to declare war against France, and march upon Paris.
Throughout this period the King gave little expression of opinion,
worked and read incessantly, and bore the threatening aspect of
affairs about him and his family with great patience. He was an
estimable man, honest to a degree, but stupid, hopelessly
prejudiced, and apparently without any capability of experiencing
tenderness or sorrow.
It was now that Roland, the husband of the celebrated Madame
Roland, rose to eminence. Nothing in himself, he became notorious
through his wife—one of the most beautiful, accomplished, and
brilliant, as one of the most unfortunate, the world has yet seen. Her
husband was much older than herself—cold, deadly, impassive; but,
on the other hand, his steady principles were never for one moment
shaken.
 She was a republican, heart and soul; and when the people,
towards the close of the year 1791, began to believe that the
differences between the King and the nation would be amicably
settled, she never swerved one moment in maintaining that a
republic, and only a republic, could save France from invasion.
General Dumouriez was also rising to power. He was rather a
courtier than a soldier, although he was destined to win victories:
especially amongst women, he was very successful. He attempted to
obtain favor from Madame Roland herself; but that single-hearted
lady, true to her ice-cold husband, put down the General’s
pretensions with calm contempt. He, however, gained much
attention from Marie Antoinette, as the man who, amongst those
who had acquired the confidence of the people, was the most
aristocratic, and who had, therefore, the most sympathy with the
falling royal cause. The Queen was right. After gaining several
battles for France against the Austrians, he turned his army upon
Paris, intending to intimidate the Republicans. The army revolted,
and Dumouriez himself had to take refuge in the camp of those very
Austrians whom but a short time previously he had conquered. They
would have nothing to do with him; and, finally, he fled to England,
always open to the refugee, and there he died in obscurity.
This general, therefore, helped to destroy the royal family. At his
first interview with the King, he said, “Sire, I devote myself wholly to
your service. But a minister of to-day is no longer the minister of
yesterday. Without ceasing to be your Majesty’s devoted servant, I
am the slave of the nation.”
The Queen sent for him privately when he had become the idol of
the people.
“Sir,” said she, “you are all-powerful at this moment; but it is
through popular favor, and that soon destroys its idols. I tell you I
oppose the changes which are being made in the constitution, so
beware!”
 “I am confounded,” the General replied; “but I am more the
servant of my country than of your Majesty. Think of your safety, of
the King’s, of that of your children! You are surrounded by enemies.
If, in the King’s interests, you oppose the new constitution made by
the Assembly you will endanger the royal family, and in no way
prevent the course of events.”
“Sir,” the Queen frantically replied, “this state of things cannot last
for ever. Beware for yourself.”
“Madame,” said Dumouriez, who had accepted the post of Premier
of the Ministry, and who, at this time, appears to have very faithfully
served the nation—his great fault was his fickleness,—“madame,
when I became Prime Minister, I knew that my responsibility was not
my greatest danger.”
The Queen shrank back. “Do you think me capable of having you
assassinated?”
Tears were upon the Queen’s face.
“Far be such a fearful thought from me, your Majesty. Your soul is
great and noble, and the bravery you have shown on many
occasions has for ever made me your Majesty’s most devoted slave.”
The Queen’s anger was appeased in a moment, and she placed
her right hand upon the General’s arm in token of reconciliation.
Thus it was that this unhappy woman, who had begun life so
extravagantly, while the masses were starving, irritated the people,
and especially all those who had dealings with her, by the apparent
childishness and weakness of her general character. It was felt that
no reliance could be placed upon her. Born of the great feudal
Austrian family about whom etiquette was so plastered, that only
nobles could sit down in the presence of the royal family, and then
upon a very low stool, she was brought to France at a very early
age, to a Court almost as ridiculous as the one she had left. But
while the Austrians had been excited to no feelings of hate against
their Emperor, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, had taught the French to
look upon royalty as made up of merciless, greedy puppets; and,
unfortunately, Marie Antoinette—a pure and noble-hearted woman in
herself—had the appearance of totally agreeing with this description.
While the people were starving, her passion for jewels became
absorbing; while mothers were begging meals for their little ones,
she was taking parts in little comedies at Versailles.
Her memory can scarcely be blamed. She had never seen the
people; and, as a proof that she knew nothing about them and their
wants, we hear about her the celebrated anecdote, which helped to
send her to the scaffold. Being told the people wanted bread, she
replied, “If there is no bread, why do they not eat cake?”
The people never forgave that—she washed those words only
partly out with her blood. Did she really mean what she said, or
were the words intended for a joke? Did she really think that if there
was no bread there must be cake; or did she utter that fatal
sentence as a witticism? I venture to think that she was ignorant of
the very meaning of starvation; for courtiers treat kings and queens
like children. A misfortune this, when the people expect them to be
men and women—the condition of things when the Revolution broke
out.
Louis XVI was incapable of managing anything but a lock; his wife
thought she could govern for him, and she made a sorry mistake.
The King’s grandfather, Louis XV, the preceding King, had said,
“After me, the deluge.” The deluge was upon the royal family,
sweeping around them, and was to overwhelm the family.
The popular feeling was far stronger against the Queen than the
King.
“See,” she said, one day, before Dumouriez and the King, and
pointing through a window near her; “a prisoner in this palace, I
dare not venture to present myself at a window that overlooks the
garden. But yesterday I wished to breathe the air, and went to the
window. An artilleryman used the language of a guard-room, and
hurled his words at me; held up his sword, and said he should like to
see my head on it. I have seen them murdering a priest, and
meanwhile, not ten yards away, children and their nurses are playing
at ball. What a country, and what people!”
That the Queen incessantly conspired to induce a foreign army to
march into France, is very certain.
The King soon mistrusted Dumouriez, who at once offered to
resign his position of Minister. The King at once accepted, and
another friend was lost by royalty.
On taking his leave, Dumouriez foretold what was to happen.
“Sire,” said he, “you think you are about to save religion. You are
destroying it. The priesthood will be killed; your crown will be taken
from you; perhaps even the Queen and the royal children——”
Dumouriez could not finish the sentence.
“I await—I expect death!” said the King, much moved; “and I
pardon my enemies.”
He turned away, with quivering lips.
Dumouriez never saw Louis XVI again.
He fled from Paris, and especially from La Belle Liègoise, who, in
her blood-colored dress, was now rising to utter power.
“Build the new parliament,” she cried, “on the site of the Bastille;
and let every woman give her jewels, that the gold may be coined to
pay for the work.”
And taking the golden earrings from her ears, the rings from her
fingers, she cast them before her hearers.
Her power was so great, that during every sudden outbreak her
“nod” condemned any man brought before her, to death; her “Let
him go,” set him at liberty.
She was mad for years before she was placed in the asylum where
she ended her days, twenty years after the death of the King and
Queen. Not a Frenchwoman, but born at Liège, she had been
brought up respectably; she was even accomplished; but at
seventeen she had fallen a victim to the snares of a young French
nobleman.
Thus fallen, she threw herself into all shapes of debauchery; and
when the Revolution broke out, she came to France, to hunt down
and destroy the man who had destroyed her.
This she did in the raging time to come, of which I have to tell,
and she showed him no mercy.
Neither found she any mercy for herself. The furies of the
Revolution—the tricoteuses—seized her, stripped her to the skin, and
whipped her in public, as an obscene prostitute. This act brought
into active force the latent madness from which she had been
suffering for some time. She was removed to a madhouse, and there
she dragged through twenty years of life. In fierce memory of the
indignity which had been put upon her, she would never put on any
clothing; and so she lived, clutching the bars of her den, screaming,
alternately, “Blood!” and “Liberty!”
It took twenty years to enfeeble her constitution, and to wear her
life away into the peacefulness of death.
She was the greatest enemy the Queen had. She declared Marie
Antoinette as frail as herself; for this demon in woman’s shape
insanely gloried in her condition. And when she gloried in this
statement against the “Austrian”—the most opprobrious name the
people could find to cast at the Queen—her hearers applauded
loudly.
So the months drifted on, the events of every day darkening the
fortunes of the royal family.
And now came the time when the palace was besieged. The King,
looking from his window, saw the meeting of a huge crowd without
any alarm: he was, by this time, accustomed to sudden crowds.
Again a soldier had led the way for the mob. An artillery officer,
instead of obeying orders, and retiring his guns to defend the
palace, pointed to its windows, and cried, “The enemy is there!”
 Two minutes after, the people had got possession of the Tuileries.
The king—who, whatever his faults, was no coward—rushed
forward towards the massive folding-doors, which the populace
finding bolted, were breaking open.
As he approached, the panels fell at his feet. He ordered a couple
of valets to open these folding-doors.
“What have I to fear,” he said, “from my people?”
A ragged man rushed forward, and thrust a stick, pointed with
iron, at the King. A grenadier of the guard struck it down with his
bayonet. And now the man fell, whether in a fit or not will always
remain a question. Certainly, as he rushed forward, he was foaming
at the mouth. All that is known farther of him is this—that the mass
pressing forward, he was trampled to death.
For a moment, the power of majesty was once more asserted.
He had left the Queen, the royal children, and his noble sister,
Madame Elizabeth, in an inner room, and had ordered the door to be
closed after him. This had been done.
The king now moved to another room, larger, pretending that
there he could speak to a greater number of citizens. Suddenly,
hearing a scuffle, the King turned, to find the mob surrounding
Madame Elizabeth, who was endeavoring to reach the King’s side.
“It is the Queen!” screamed several fierce voices. And they were
the voices of women.
In a moment, they turned upon her.
The abhorred Queen was before them, as they thought. In
another moment she would have been killed.
“It is Madame Elizabeth!” cried the soldiers.
The mob fell back with reverence. Even at that point they could
respect Elizabeth, the purity and simplicity of whose life formed the
one favorable point in the united lives of the royal family, and one to
which the whole mass of the people gave implicit credence.
But she was to die with her family.
“Ah! what have you done?” she cried. “Had they been allowed to
take me for the Queen, and have killed me, I had perhaps saved the
Queen’s life!”
By this time, about twenty of the King’s friends stood about him,
their swords drawn.
“Put up your swords,” said the King; “this multitude’s more excited
than guilty.”
“Where is the Austrian?” now resounded upon all sides.
The question which excited the multitude was against the
priesthood, whose members, known to favor royalty, were abhorred
by the people. The king had refused to sign an act by virtue of which
the priesthood would have been annihilated.
A butcher, named Legendre, cried to the King, “The people are
weary of being your plaything and your victim!”
Meanwhile, those who could not gain an entrance to the besieged
palace called loudly to those within, “Are they dead? Show us, then,
their heads!”
“Let him put it on!” cried the butcher, thrusting a coarse red cap of
liberty towards the King on the end of a pike.
The King smiled, and put the symbol of liberty upon his head.
“Long live the King!” now cried some voices.
The people now called upon the King to restore Roland—Madame
Roland’s husband—to power, from which he had been dismissed.
The King was inflexible.
“This is not the moment for deliberation,” said the King.
“Do not be afraid!” whispered a grenadier to Louis.
 “My friend,” said the King, “does my heart beat rapidly?”
And he placed the man’s left hand upon his breast.
The pulsation of the King’s heart was perfectly equable.
“If you love the people, drink their health!” cried a man in rags,
pushing forward a common bottle.
The King smiled and took the bottle, saying, “To the nation!”
And now the cries of “Long live the King!” were so strong that
they floated out upon the crowd waiting to see the King’s body cast
amongst them; and, instead, they learnt that once more the King
had—if only for a time—reconciled himself to his people.
Meanwhile the Queen was undergoing her agony.
Only the conviction that she was more immeasurable hated than
the King, prevented her from joining him before the people. She
feared her presence might exasperate the people beyond all control.
She remained in her bed-room, pressing her two children to her
heart.
Suddenly, a beating at the door, and the screams of many fierce
women, upon hearing the words, “The Austrian is there!”
But they had to call masculine help before they forced the door.
They found the Queen unprotected, except by her children, whose
presence probably saved their mother from assassination.
Only a few ladies were with her, one of whom was that unhappy
Princess de Lamballe, who would not remain in England, who
returned to France, and who was one of the first to fall a victim to
the Reign of Terror.
The Queen was found by the screaming crowd of women standing
as I have described, in a bay window, while between her and the
mob, a long, heavy table had been placed across the window.
By the Queen stood her daughter—near fourteen years of age.
 The Dauphin—then seven years of age, and extremely handsome
—was placed upon the table before her.
The men in the crowd were for the greater part silent; the women
were implacable: one of these thrust forward a republican red cap,
and told the Austrian to put it on Louis’s head. This she did.
The child took it for a plaything, and smiled.
And now a pretty, rosy, youthful girl came forward, and using the
coarsest possible language, upbraided the Queen savagely.
“Pray what harm have I done you?”
“Me?—perhaps not. But what harm have you not done the
nation?”
“Poor child!” the Queen replied. “You but repeat what you have
been told. Why should I make the people miserable? Though not
born a Frenchwoman, my children are French, and I shall never see
my native land again. I was happy when you loved me!”
The girl’s head fell.
“I did not know you,” she said; “and I see now that you are good!”
And now Santerre—good name for a leader of the people—
approached.
“Take the cap off the child!” he cried; “don’t you see that he is
stifling?”
The crowd was tremendous.
And approaching the Queen he whispered, “You have some
awkward friends here. I know of some who would serve you better.”
This was the first intimation the Queen really had that there was a
party amongst the people actually willing to raise the royal family
they had so utterly degraded.
Five hours that torture lasted before the palace was cleared. The
King and Queen had also been forced to put the national cockades
upon their heads. When once more the royal house was free, the
unhappy people could scarcely find strength with which to embrace.
Several of the members of the National Assembly wept.
To one, Merlin, the Queen said, “You weep, sir.”
“Yes, madame,” he replied, gravely; “I weep over the misfortunes
of the woman, the wife, and the mother; but, beyond this, my heart
is stone. I hate kings and queens.”
These words were the key-stone to French feeling. Louis XVI and
his wife were driven to the block, not as a man and a wife, as father
and mother—but as King and Queen.
 CHAPTER XLIX.
THE KING QUITS THE TUILERIES.

The National Assembly had ordered the provinces to send 20,000

troops to Paris. With them they brought the revolutionary hymn, the
“Marseillaise.” It was written and composed by a young artillery
officer, named De Lisle. It was completed at the piano, after a night’s
bout. He fell asleep over the instrument, and at length awakening,
gradually recalled the air and words of a song, the fierceness of
which sent more French men and women to the block than did any
other motive.
That song drove revolutionary France mad, and took from the
royal family all hope of mercy.
The royal family, however, were still at the Palace of the Tuileries;
and while they remained there, the semblance of royalty was kept
up—albeit, in fact, they were utterly prisoners.
The Queen, early in August, still utterly relied upon Lafayette, who
did not disguise his desire to retain the monarchy, under a
protectorate—he himself to be the Protector.
“Mistrust Lafayette,” had said Mirabeau; but the Queen’s faith was
strong, and her confidence hastened events.
However, one Gaudet, only twenty years of age, was rising to
power amongst the Girondists; and he having intimated that he felt
great interest in the royal family, matters were so managed that he
had an interview with Marie Antoinette, who, poor lady, took him by
the hand, and led him to the little cot in which her child was
sleeping.
“Educate him to liberty, madame,” said the orator. “It is the one
condition of his life.”
 He kissed the child. Nine months afterwards he was one of those
who sent the King and Queen to the scaffold.
The royal family were now prohibited from shutting a door, and so
much did they dread poison, that they only pretended to eat of the
dishes prepared and set before them, and really subsisted upon
cakes, and other food brought to them in the pockets of their
attendants, who purchased the eatables at obscure shops.
The Queen made the King wear as a breastplate fifteen-fold silk;
but while the poor man complied, he said, “They will not assassinate
me, but put me to death like a King, in open daylight.”
He never appears to have thought of the possible execution of the
Queen herself.
“He is no coward,” she said of the King; “but he is calm in the
presence of danger. His courage is in his heart, only it does not show
itself—he is so timid.”
The family now only showed themselves when going to church on
Sunday, and then they were assailed with cries of “No King!” Louis
said it was as though God himself had turned against him.
One night, a chamber-valet, who slept at the Queen’s door, was
awakened, to find an assassin, dagger in hand, stealing into the
Queen’s room.
Murders now became quite common. One D’Epremesnil, who had
been a great favorite with the people, showed signs of moderation.
Suddenly turned upon by the mob, he was cut down, dragged
through the gutters, and was about to be thrown into a common
sewer, when he was rescued by a squad of the National Guard. As
he lay dying, Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, looked upon him, and
fainted. Recovering his senses, the victim said to the Mayor, “And I—
I, too, was once the idol of the people! May you meet with a better
fate!”
The sound of the soul-stirring “Marseillaise” had maddened Paris.
The hourly news of the march of the Prussians upon France fatally