A Disease in the Public Mind (49 page)

I must also thank the many librarians who have been helpful in my toils. Mark Bartlett and his staff at the New York Society Library have again been indispensable. Also valuable have been Gregory S. Gallagher, librarian of the Century Association in New York City, and Lewis Daniels, director of the Westbrook (Connecticut) Public Library. Lew's readiness to hunt down obscure and out-of-print books in the Steady Habits state's libraries made my summer months as productive as my winter ones in New York City. At least as helpful in exploring the Library of Congress and other Washington, DC, collections, as well as trolling years of microfilms of southern newspapers, was Steven Bernstein, a talented researcher I have called on for several books. Steve has recently published a superb Civil War history of his own,
The Confederacy's Last Northern Offensive
, about Jubal Early's 1864 raid on Washington, DC. My son, Richard Fleming, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Library Science, used his access to his alma mater's great collections with equally helpful results.

A very large thank you goes to my literary agent, Deborah Grosvenor, and my editor at Da Capo Press, Robert Pigeon. I have wanted to write this book for two decades. Thanks to their openness to new ideas, it has come to life. Bob's steady encouragement and his suggestions for improving the manuscript were equally invaluable.

Finally, I must thank my favorite West Pointer, Colonel Charles M. Adams, who helped me realize Robert E. Lee's central role in understanding the history of the Civil War. Charlie was my escort on the day in 1964 that I began researching my history of the U.S. Military Academy. Over the next four years, as I pondered the lives of the men who made that fateful commitment to Duty, Honor, and Country, Charlie and I became close friends. After the book was published, he invited me and my wife to spend a weekend with him and his wife, Cindy, at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The visit ended with a tour of the nearby Gettysburg battlefield under
his tutelage. When we reached Cemetery Hill, we paused, gazing up that harrowing slope in the deepening twilight. Charlie turned to me and said, with just a hint of his native Texas in his voice, “I was brought up to believe Robert E. Lee was the greatest man that ever lived. I believed it until I came here, and saw what he asked Pickett's men to do.”

THOMAS FLEMING

NOTES

PREFACE

1
. J. David Hacker, “Recounting the Dead,” Opinionator, Exclusive Online Commentary from the Times,
New York Times
, September 20, 2011. Mr. Hacker is an associate professor of history at Binghamton University in New York. I have found further evidence for the probability of Mr. Hacker's figures in the research I did for World War I casualties for my book
The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I
(New York: 2003). At the end of the war, the total number of reported deaths was 120,139. In 1930, the Veterans Bureau estimated that war-related diseases, wounds, and other kinds of trauma inflicted on the Western Front had raised the total to 460,000.

2
. Laird W. Bergad,
The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba and the United States
(New York: 2007).

3
. Thomas Fleming,
1776: Year of Illusions
(New York: 1975) and
The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I
(New York: 2003).

4
. Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” May 23, 1792, Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University. Abraham Lincoln, Special Session Message [to Congress], July 4, 1861, Presidential Speech Archive, Miller Center, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3508
. Adlai Stevenson, speech given in Albuquerque, NM,
New York Times
, September 12, 1952.

5
. A good example is the recent book
The American Public Mind
, by William E. Claggett and Byron E. Shafer (New York: 2010). It is a study of what Americans think about politics and public policy in four key areas: social welfare, international relations, civil rights, and cultural values.

6
. Nathaniel Hawthorne,
The House of the Seven Gables
(Columbus, OH: Centenary Edition, 1965), 7–8.

PROLOGUE: JOHN BROWN
'
S RAID

1
. Merrill D. Peterson,
John Brown: The Legend Revisited
(Charlottesville, VA: 2002), 92. James M. McPherson,
Ordeal By Fire
(New York: 1991), 117.

2
. David S. Reynolds,
John Brown: Abolitionist
(New York: 2005), 240–241.

3
. Edward J. Renehan,
The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown
(New York: 1995), 1–8.

4
. Oswald Garrison Villard,
John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After
, reprint (Gloucester, MA: 1965), 426–427.

5
. Peggy A. Russo and Paul Finkelman, eds.,
Terrible Swift Sword: The Legacy of John Brown
(Akron, OH: 2005), 119–137. Kenneth A. Carroll, the psychologist who diagnosed Brown, noted, “The manic's enthusiasm for his project does not issue from careful logical thought but is a product of his emotional illness that intoxicates the subject with a grandiose and unshakable faith in the supreme importance of himself.” Carroll cites affidavits from Brown's neighbors in Ohio, where he grew up, full of recollections of Brown's manic behavior. “The evidence that he was mentally ill is clear and abundant.”

6
. Villard,
John Brown
, 430.

7
. Renehan,
The Secret Six
, 197.

8
. Villard,
John Brown
, 433.

9
. Reynolds,
John Brown
, 319–320.

10
. Villard,
John Brown
, 439–440.

11
. Reynolds,
John Brown
, 322–323.

12
. Douglas Southall Freeman,
R. E. Lee: A Biography
, vol. 1 (New York: 1934), 394–396.

13
. Villard,
John Brown
, 448–449.

14
. Freeman,
R. E. Lee
, 399.

15
. Villard,
John Brown
, 451–455.

16
. Reynolds,
John Brown
, 329–333.

CHAPTER 1: SLAVERY COMES TO AMERICA

1
. Genesis 9:18–27 (Revised Standard Edition).

2
. David Brion Davis,
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
(New York: 2006), 62.

3
. T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe,
Black Africans in Renaissance Europe
(New York: 2005), 281. Innocent VIII reportedly had sixteen illegitimate children, which won him the title “Padre della Patria” (Father of the Fatherland). Thomas More,
Utopia
, edited by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (Cambridge, England: 1989), 77–78.

4
. Robert W. Fogel,
Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
(New York: 1989), 18–19.

5
. Davis,
Inhuman Bondage
, 80.

6
. Edgar J. McManus,
Black Bondage in the North
(Syracuse, NY: 1973), 65–66. Unfortunately, Judge Sewall also believed that “Ethiopians” could “never embody with us and
grow up into orderly families, to the Peopling of the Land.” Both Sewall's pamphlet and Saffin's reply are available online, as part of the PBS documentary “Africans in America,” at
www.PBS.org/wgbh/aia/part1//
. Also see
Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810
, edited by James G. Basker (New Haven, CT: 2002), 37.

7
. Thomas P. Slaughter,
The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition
(New York: 2008), 103–104.

8
. John Woolman,
Journal of John Woolman, and A Plea for the Poor
, John Greenleaf Whittier edition text (Gloucester, MA: 1971), 15.

9
. Slaughter,
Beautiful Soul
, 232–233. Woolman,
Journal
, 113.

10
. This story is based on an oral tradition. It may be a dramatization of the overall reaction of the Meeting to Woolman's testimony. One man later said his “simplicity, solidity and clearness” made doubt and opposition “vanish as mists at the sun's rising” (Slaughter,
Beautiful Soul
, 344).

11
. Harvey Wish, “American Slave Insurrections Before 1861,”
Journal of Negro History
22, no. 3 (July 1937): 302–303. Wish cites several stories of slave suicides.

12
. The British slave ship
Zong
is a good example of this horrific practice. The captain threw 132 men overboard in 1781. Over the protests of a British antislavery advocate, the court awarded him the insurance money. See PBS, “Africans in America,” part 1. Also see Wish,
Insurrections
, 303; and Adam Hochschild,
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
(New York: 2005), 79–83.

13
. Peter C. Hoffer,
Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739
(New York: 2010), 103ff.

14
. Peter C. Hoffer,
The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741: Slavery, Crime and Colonial Law
(Lawrence, KS: 2003). Some historians have dismissed the plot as the product of wartime hysteria. A majority believe that a genuine conspiracy existed. The author spent a year studying it for his novel,
Remember the Morning
(New York: 1998), and is convinced the majority are correct. The conspiracy was real—and lethal. Like John Brown's foray, it had no hope of succeeding.

15
. George Washington, letter of July 20, 1774, Writings of George Washington, vol. 3, 232–234,
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng//files/20/15/52/f201552/public/WasFi03.html
.

16
. James Otis,
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
(Boston: 1763),
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1069&Itemid=264
.

17
. Robert Olwell, “‘Domestick Enemies': Slavery and Political Independence in South Carolina, May 1775–March 1776,”
Journal of Southern History
55, no. 1 (February 1989): 21–48.

18
. Michael Lee Lanning,
African Americans in the Revolutionary War
(New York: 2005), chap. 5, “Liberty to Slaves: Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment,” 51ff.

CHAPTER 2: SLAVERY
'
S GREAT FOE—AND UNINTENDED FRIEND

1
. Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
(Boston: 1948), 121–122.

2
. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Julian P. Boyd, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: 1950), 423–428. Also see Julian P. Boyd,
The Declaration of Independence
(New York: 1945), for illustrations of this “Original Rough Draft.”

3
. Carl Lotus Becker,
The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Ideas
(New York: 1922), “The Rough Draft,” Online Library of Liberty,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1177
.

4
. James Boswell,
The Life of Samuel Johnson
(New York: 1930), 747–748.

5
. Henry Wiencek,
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
(New York: 2003), 203–204.

6
. Ibid., 208–214. Washington later permitted his aide, Joseph Reed, to have the poem published in
Pennsylvania Magazine.

7
. Ibid., 261.

8
. Fritz Hirschfield,
George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal
(Columbia, MO: 1997), 148–150.

9
. Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the State of Virginia
, Writings, vol. 2. Also see Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
, 264–268.

CHAPTER 3: THE FIRST EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

1
. Gregory D. Massey,
John Laurens and the American Revolution
(Columbia, NC: 2000), 63.

2
. Washington feared that freeing some slaves to serve in the army would “make slavery more irksome to those who remain in it.” Hirschfeld,
George Washington and Slavery
, 150–151.

3
. Papers of Alexander Hamilton, edited by Harold C. Syrett, vol. 2, 17–19.

4
. Massey,
John Laurens
, 132–133.

5
. Ibid., 137.

6
. Ibid., 141–143. Dr. David Ramsay, one of Laurens's supporters, said the proposal was “received with horror” by the legislature.

7
. Laurens received invaluable aid and advice from America's ambassador, Benjamin Franklin, in this venture. See Thomas Fleming,
The Perils of Peace
(New York: 2007), 72–74.

8
. Massey,
John Laurens
, 207–208. A crucial opposition speech accused Laurens of fostering racial intermarriage, a fear that disturbed southerners almost as much as a slave insurrection.

9
. Washington, Writings, vol. 24, 421.

10
. Massey,
John Laurens
, 224–225.