A Nation Rising (12 page)

The military panel that Jackson had stacked with his loyal officers quickly convicted the men, both British nationals. But when the panel failed to pronounce a death penalty for both men, Jackson stepped in and passed his own sentence. In late April 1818, the two were executed: Ambrister was killed by a firing squad; the elderly Scotsman was hanged from the yardarm of his own schooner.
²⁵

The case caused a brief but relatively minor diplomatic furor with the British. And Jackson would be reminded of it often in future partisan battles when enemies would taunt him with political ditties like this—

But in the eyes of most Americans, Andrew Jackson was a hero cut from the same cloth as George Washington. And he had accomplished exactly what the Monroe administration tacitly expected. America soon went on to conclude a treaty with Spain in which Florida was turned over to the United States. The long border between Spanish and American possessions, stretching to the Pacific,
was also mapped. Andrew Jackson was named the first military governor of the territory. With Florida in hand, Jackson cast an eye toward Cuba, another valuable Spanish possession, but he was reined in by the administration.

A
FTERMATH

T
HE STORY OF
the massacre of Indians at Wounded Knee in the late nineteenth century, an episode in which U.S. cavalrymen cut down Sioux Indians, has been made familiar to many Americans. But the deaths at Fort Mims, the killings of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, and the many who died at the Negro Fort have mostly disappeared from popular memory and schoolbooks. Andrew Jackson remains, in the view of most Americans, a good if not great president; after all, his grim visage stares out at them from the $20 bill.

That long view overlooks Jackson's record—or at least this early phase of his career. And there are critics who think the view needs to be balanced. “The Creek War of 1813–1814 and Seminole War of 1818 proved to be the most disastrous conflicts in Native American history,” concludes Sean Michael O'Brien. “The conflicts shattered the power of the once mighty Muscogee nation forever and paved the way for the removal of all the southeastern tribes from their lands east of the Mississippi.”
²⁶

And it was largely the vision and work of a single man, the man who sat down with Aaron Burr to discuss his invasion plans, but
then walked away from his alleged treason, Andrew Jackson had fulfilled a large part of Burr's quest.

Summarizing Jackson's actions in Alabama and Florida, the historian Andrew Burstein writes, “He was much like his predecessors, a man of ambition and enterprise who thought of land as the key to personal and national wealth alike.”
²⁷

But if Andrew Jackson thought that Florida's Indians, free blacks, and “maroons”—free and mixed-race blacks living in established secret communities in the wilds—were finished fighting, both he and the rest of America were seriously mistaken.

1804
Haiti is declared an independent republic after years of bloody slave rebellion.

 

1807
The British Empire abolishes slave trading.

 

1808
The importation of slaves and the transatlantic slave trade are prohibited by the United States.

 

1812
Louisiana is admitted to the Union as a slave state (the eighteenth state).

 

1816
Indiana is admitted to the Union as a free state (the nineteenth state).

1817
Mississippi is admitted to the Union as a slave state (the twentieth state).

 

1818
Illinois is admitted to the Union as a free state (the twenty-first state).

 

1819
Spain cedes East Florida to the United States.

1820
The Missouri Compromise is passed. It allows for admission of Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state; under the terms of the compromise, slavery is to be prohibited in any new states that are north of Missouri's southern border. Maine (the twenty-third state) is admitted on March 15; Missouri (the twenty-fourth state) joins the Union on August 10, 1821.

1821
Monroe appoints Andrew Jackson military governor of the Florida Territory.

1822
Denmark Vesey's slave rebellion is uncovered and suppressed in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

1824
In the presidential election, no candidate receives a majority of Electors, although Andrew Jackson clearly wins the popular vote. On February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives decides the election; John Quincy Adams receives enough votes to become the sixth president. When Adams names Henry Clay secretary of state, Jackson angrily denounces them for making a “corrupt bargain.” The vote splits the Democratic Republicans into two factions; the Adams-Clay faction will become known as Whigs.

 

1826
On the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both die. To many, this extraordinary coincidence symbolizes “divine approval” of the United States.

 

1828
Following a vitriolic campaign, Andrew Jackson is elected the seventh president.

 

1831
Nat Turner's rebellion terrorizes Virginia.

1832
The Anti-Masonic Party holds the first presidential nominating convention in Baltimore, choosing William Wirt, a former Mason.

 

1833
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.

 

1835
Chief Justice John Marshall dies. Andrew Jackson nominates Roger B. Taney to replace him.

 

1836
The Republic of Texas is founded after breaking away from Mexico.

1837
Michigan joins the Union as a free state (the twenty-sixth state).

1839
Slaves on the Spanish ship
Amistad
revolt and are brought to America, where they successfully sue for their freedom.

 

1840
William Henry Harrison, a hero of the Indian wars, defeats incumbent Martin Van Buren to become the ninth president. He dies a month later and is replaced by John Tyler of Virginia, the tenth president and the first to succeed to the office upon the death of a president.

 

1841
Slaves being transported to New Orleans mutiny aboard the
Creole
.

November 7, 1841

Z
EPHANIAH
C. G
IFFORD
, the first mate of the
Creole
, never saw it coming. How could he? Perhaps he thought that the slaves on board a ship were too ignorant, lazy, or afraid of the lash to fool its officers.

Gifford was standing watch on a balmy autumn night in 1841, surveying the
Creole
's silent main deck and the soft glow of the moon on the calm Atlantic. Most of the brig's dozen or so crew members and its seven white passengers were asleep as the two-masted ship gently rode the swells about 130 miles northeast of the Bahamas. In one of its cargo holds, the
Creole
carried tobacco destined for the markets in New Orleans. The other holds contained approximately 130 slaves bound for the auction blocks in New Orleans, which had been one of America's most significant ports since it was purchased in 1803.

Suddenly, the stillness of the dark night was broken when Elijah Morris, one of those slaves, bolted from the cargo hold where the male slaves were kept. He shouted to Gifford that one of the other slaves had gone into the women's quarters.

Startled and wary, but not overly alarmed, First Mate Gifford called for help from William Merritt, who was serving as a guard on the
Creole
in exchange for his passage to New Orleans. The male slaves were strictly prohibited from entering the women's quarters, but they were unchained on this voyage. A brig moving slaves from Richmond to New Orleans in the 1840s did not keep its human cargo in the filthy, over-packed, degrading, and deadly conditions that had once been the shame of the transatlantic trade. Wanting healthy, attractive, able-bodied slaves for the New Orleans auction blocks, the
Creole
's owners and its captain were more interested in the price their cargo would fetch, and seemed unconcerned about security.

Assuming that one of the male slaves was trying to sneak into the female quarters for illicit sex, Gifford and Merritt must have thought they would catch the slaves in the act, give the man a good whipping, and return him to the cargo hold. Gifford sent Merritt into the hold where the women slept.

Lighting his lamp, Merritt was startled to see the face of a slave known as Madison Washington. Washington had been selected as cook for the
Creole
's cargo of slaves, preparing the twice-a-day ration of hardtack—a brittle, unleavened biscuit—and salted or boiled meat, along with some “coffee” brewed from grain. Addressed as “Doctor” because he could read, Washington was also, according to testimony given later, “a very large and strong slave.”

Gifford soon joined Merritt, and the two men attempted to wrestle Washington out of the women's hold. But Washington had other ideas. Jumping through a hatchway, he shouted, “I am going up; I cannot stay here.”

The mutiny aboard the
Creole
was under way.

Elijah Morris, who had first raised the alarm as part of a ruse to lure Gifford into the hold and overwhelm him, emerged from the darkness and fired a shot that grazed Gifford's head.

Then Washington shouted to the other slaves in the hold, “We have commenced and must go through; rush, boys, rush…. We have got them now.” Realizing how frightened many of them were, he called out, “Come up every damned one of you; if you don't lend a hand, I will kill you all and throw you overboard.”
³

Slightly wounded, Gifford raced belowdecks, shouting that a mutiny was under way. Asleep in his stateroom, the
Creole
's captain, Robert Ensor, roused himself, as seventeen other male slaves rushed out of their hold to join Madison Washington and Elijah Morris. Merritt extinguished the lamp he was holding, but he was still caught by the mutineers, who threatened his life.

John Hewell, a guard and overseer known for his cruelty, was asleep in his berth when he heard the shouts. Grabbing the only musket on board the ship, Hewell went up to the deck. But before he could get off a shot, the musket was wrestled away from him. Because of his reputation, and the misery he was capable of doling out to these slaves as he moved them from slave pen to boat to auction place, Hewell may have already been marked for death by the mutineers.

Captain Ensor emerged from his cabin, carrying a large knife.
He shouted furiously to the other crewmen, trying to rouse them from sleep and rally them to retake the ship. As crewmen joined the fray, a general brawl ensued, and in the close-quarters fighting, Ensor was stabbed several times with his own knife.

“Kill him. Kill the son of a bitch,” one of the mutineers cried.

Wounded and bleeding, Ensor clambered into the ship's rigging, where he concealed himself in the darkness, temporarily safe from his pursuers, but unaware of the fate of his wife, four-year-old daughter, and fifteen-year-old niece—all three of them passengers on board the
Creole
.

By this time, the captain's knife had fallen into the hands of two of the mutineers, who chased Hewell, the hated overseer. Hungry for vengeance, the men savagely assaulted Hewell once they caught him. Stabbed more than twenty times, he somehow managed to limp off to his stateroom, where he fell onto a bunk, dying shortly afterward.

In the darkness, with chaos and confusion raging across the decks and holds, the black mutineers had won nearly complete control of the
Creole
. They went from stateroom to stateroom, in search of the other white passengers and crew members. Three men, including a trusted slave who acted as the captain's steward, emerged from one of the staterooms and were spared.

In another stateroom, Theophilus McCargo—the teenage nephew of Thomas McCargo, who owned many of the
Creole
's slaves—dressed quickly and retrieved two pistols. When the mutineers burst into the room, in search of the wounded Hewell, McCargo fired but missed his mark. When his second pistol misfired, the young man was disarmed and taken captive, but he was spared
because of his youth. When the mutineers finally discovered the captain's wife and the two children with her, they too were spared.

 

H
AVING ESCAPED THE
onslaught and a near shooting, First Mate Gifford had climbed to the maintop and found Captain Ensor, bleeding and unconscious. Gifford secured the wounded master of the ship to the rigging to prevent him from falling into the sea, thus saving the wounded captain's life.

The violence was nearly over, as the remaining crew and passengers were overwhelmed and taken captive. The mutineers were now well armed with captured weapons. One witness later said that Hewell, the overseer who had been stabbed and died, was decapitated before his body was thrown overboard. A little more than an hour after the mutiny had begun, the
Creole
was in the hands of Madison Washington and his band of followers, fellow captives who were ready to die rather than be forced onto the auction blocks in New Orleans.

Madison Washington—whether that was his actual name or not is uncertain—already had a rather extraordinary tale to tell, having escaped bondage once before and made his way to Canada by the Underground Railroad. Many details of his life story remain sketchy—most accounts of his life and the mutiny were written years after the
Creole
incident, by writers who had never met him.

America's most prominent abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, wrote a highly fictionalized account of Madison Washington and the
Creole
called
The Heroic Slave
, a novella which appeared in 1852, eleven years after the mutiny. Based largely but loosely on the
Cre
ole
incident, Douglass's tale described how, desperate to rescue his wife from bondage, Madison Washington had left the freedom of Canada and returned to Virginia. Caught while climbing a ladder to her room, Washington was taken to Richmond, held in the slave pens there, and then forced aboard the
Creole
on its fateful voyage to New Orleans.

 

W
HEN THE ACTUAL
fighting aboard the
Creole
was over, Madison Washington told Merritt, the man who had acted as guard in exchange for passage, that he wanted to sail the
Creole
to Liberia, the African state established twenty years earlier by the American Colonization Society as a refuge for emancipated American slaves. At least, that is what the white men who later testified reported. Lacking sufficient water and provisions for such a long voyage, Merritt told Washington that the ship could be taken to the Bahamas instead. Washington certainly would have known that the British had abolished slavery throughout the empire, including the Bahamas, and would free the slaves aboard the
Creole
once the ship had docked.

The
Creole
reached the port of Nassau on November 9, 1841, and the blacks on board were declared free under British law. The
Creole
was released to continue its voyage to New Orleans. Among its passengers were several black women who preferred to proceed back to America, and to slavery in New Orleans.

The seeming ease with which a few dozen slaves could take over a ship is surprising. More surprising still is that the captain and crew of the
Creole
were not more vigilant. In
The Slave Ship
, an account of
the barbarity and incredibly ruthless economic efficiency of the slave trade, Marcus Rediker details the threat facing slavers: “Merchants, captains, officers and crew thought about it, worried about it, took practical action against it. Each and all assumed that the enslaved would rise up in a fury and destroy them if given half a chance. For those who ran the slave ship, an insurrection was without a doubt their greatest nightmare. It could extinguish profits and lives in an explosive flash.”
⁴

But the ease with which the slaves aboard the
Creole
made their insurrection is confirmed in the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was lured into captivity, drugged, and sold into the slave pens of Washington City (later D.C.) and spent the next twelve years as a slave in Louisiana. Northup's elaborate description of the circumstances aboard the brig
Orleans
probably mirrored the situation on the
Creole
for Washington and his fellow slaves: “After leaving Norfolk [Virginia], the hand-cuffs were taken off, and during the day we were allowed to remain on deck. The Captain selected Robert as his waiter and I was appointed to superintend the cooking department, and the distribution of food and water.”

Then Northup describes a conversation with another of the captives:

Unfortunately for Northup and Arthur, one of their comrades, named Robert, caught smallpox and died aboard ship. The slaves were quarantined, and so their plan for mutiny died with Robert. Northup was taken to New Orleans, and (as noted above) spent twelve years in slavery before being rescued by friends who sued for his release. His memoir,
Twelve Years a Slave
, was published in 1853.

 

T
WO YEARS BEFORE
the uprising on the
Creole
, Americans had been shocked and divided by a controversy over another slave mutiny, on board the Spanish ship
Amistad
. While sailing from Cuba in June 1839 with a load of illegal slaves, the
Amistad
had been struck by an uprising. The arguments over who owned the ship, the legal status of the Africans aboard, and the very question of slavery's continued existence were going to be brought to the fore as the case wound its way through the American legal system all the way to the Supreme Court. The prominence of the case and the people who would line up on either side of that argument pointed to the sharp, growing divisions that slavery was creating in the United States.

In 1808, under a compromise struck when the Constitution was written twenty years earlier, the foreign slave trade had been outlawed in the United States. It was now a crime to bring slaves into the country, even if slavery itself and the domestic slave trade were still perfectly legal and flourishing. Slavers plying international waters with human cargo from Africa were pirates and criminals, in the eyes of Great Britain, which was aggressively sending the Royal Navy in pursuit of slave ships. But according to American laws, a slaver transporting slaves from one state to another, even in international waters, was a legitimate merchant going about his business.

In the years after the British announced the end of the slave trade in 1807 and then emancipated its slaves in 1833, the Royal Navy had begun an intensive campaign to put an end to the slave trade on the high seas. Illicit slavers sailing under any flag had to keep wary eyes for the ships flying the Union Jack.

By 1839, the work of slavers still bringing slaves from Africa was increasingly dangerous. British antislavery laws were harsh; slavers could be arrested and their ships confiscated. But there were also sizable profits to be made in illegal slaving, as there was a ready market for smuggled slaves in the United States. By reducing the supply of slaves, the end of the slave trade had actually forced up the value of slaves on the auction block, whether they were kidnapped free blacks—as Solomon Northup had been—or illegally captured Africans, like Segbe Pieh.