The Bondwoman's Narrative (43 page)

p. 150
: “My husband … occupies a high official position in the Federal City” Wheeler held a number of government jobs.

Wheeler’s diary for 1854 [p. 19] reads as follows:

Wed. 2 Aug. [1854]

My Birthday—48 years of age—This day I received a commission from the President [Pierce] appointing me by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate Minister Resident of the U.S. near the Republic of Nicaragua, Central America.

Thurs. 10th [August 1854]

Resigned my commission as Assistant Sec[retar]y to the President and Henry E. Baldwin of New Hampshire appointed my successor.

p. 150
: The “Federal City” was a commonly used nickname for Washington, D.C.

p. 150
: “swarming with the enemies of our domestic institution”: slavery.

p. 150
: “and if strangers called on her during my absence, or she received messages from them” Crafts here echoes Wheeler’s
command to Jane Johnson not to speak with abolitionists or free colored people while they visited Philadelphia.

p. 150
: “Those who suppose that southern ladies keep their attendants at a distance, scarcely speaking to them” This is one
of the several keen observations about slavery that Crafts makes throughout her text, reflecting her experience of slavery—and
especially of the master- or mistress-slave relationship—from the inside, that is, as a slave. As William Andrews observes,
Elizabeth Keckley, in her slave narrative,
Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House
(1868), states that such scenes between mistress and slave are not uncommon. Andrews, author of the definitive study of the
slave narratives, finds this passage convincing proof of Crafts’s authenticity as an African American woman and a former slave.
I quote Andrews’s argument at length:

In chapter 14 of
Behind the Scenes
Keckley notes that soon after the war is over, her former mistress, Ann Garland, asks her to come back to see the family
in Virginia. The idea that such a reunion would appeal to her former owners is incredible to Keckley’s northern friends, who
think that since Keckley was a slave she couldn’t possibly care about the Garlands or they about her. Keckley goes on to recount
her reunion with the Garlands to show that they think very highly of her even after the war.

Of course, Mrs. Wheeler doesn’t think highly of Hannah, but the fact that the narrator of that story is at pains to point
out to her reader that female slaveholders treat their female slaves with a great deal more intimacy than standard abolitionist
propaganda acknowledges allies the Crafts narrative to that of Keckley, who also insists to her northern white friends, equally
convinced by antislavery propaganda that black women and white women couldn’t possibly have any basis for communication after
the war, that there was an intimate connection between her and her former mistress. In Keckley that intimacy is based on genuine
mutual concern—at least that’s the way she portrays it—whereas in Crafts’s, Mrs. Wheeler cares nothing for Hannah as a person.
The key similarity, however, is that in both texts, a black woman is trying to get her white readers to realize that the relationship
between white and black women in slavery was not one of mere dictation, white to black, or mere subjugation of the black woman
by the white woman. A white woman in the North in the antebellum era who wanted to preserve her antislavery credentials would
have found it hard to make such a characterization of intimacy between women slaveholders and their female slaves. A white
southern woman sympathetic to slavery might make such a claim, but she wouldn’t suggest that Mrs. Wheeler is as shallow and
self-interested in cultivating Hannah as Crafts makes her out to be. Thus only a black woman who had herself been a slave
would be in a position of authority to make such a claim about this kind of intimacy between white and black women in slavery.

(Letter to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., October 26, 2001)

p. 151
: “Did you try to recover them? … he disliked making a hue and cry.” As is clear from Wheeler’s diary entries, a protracted
attempt was made during the next few years to secure Jane Johnson’s return; failing in this, Wheeler attempted without success
to obtain an indemnity for her value from the state of Pennsylvania. These overtures were made through legal channels, “making
a hue and cry” of enormous proportions. Crafts here is mocking the Wheelers for their desperate efforts to retrieve Jane Johnson.

Wed. 18 [July 1855]

I went to the Marshal’s [sic] Office and with his Deputy, Mr. Mulloy, went to Judge Kane, who ordered a Habeas Corpus—returned
to town about 10 o’clock, to Mr. J. C. Hazlitt the Dep[uty] Cl[er]k— took out the writ, then we went to the House of Williamson
who had absconded. At 1 o’clock I left Phila. and arrived at New York at 6— and put up at the Washington House.

p. 151
: “The Senator from Ohio” is a thinly veiled reference to Passmore Williamson, the head of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery
Society, who facilitated Jane Johnson’s escape.

p. 152
: “while Mrs Wheeler requested me to read for her” Crafts is demonstrating her mastery of literacy at this point in
her life, implicitly establishing her credentials as an author. This reversal of the topos of a white person reading to an
illiterate slave is a very powerful rhetorical gesture, underscoring Crafts’s intellectual superiority over other slaves and
her equality—or superiority—of intellect with her white mistress. Similarly, on p. 153, Crafts writes of how “that afternoon
she [Mrs. Wheeler] dictated a letter for me to write.” Frederick Douglass equates learning to read and write with the desire
to be free, to run away.

p. 153
: “you prefer the service of a lady to that of a gentleman, in which probably you would be compelled to sacrifise [sic]
honor and virtue” Crafts foreshadows the event that will force her to escape—the sacrifice of her virginity to rape sanctioned
by her master and mistress.

Chapter 13

p. 156
: Although Ninevah is mentioned four times as a “great city” in the short Book of Jonah, it is never described as “full
of people” in the Bible. However, in Jonah 4:11, Ninevah is said to have “sixscore thousand persons.” Crafts’s reliance on
the oral tradition, while inaccurate, certainly conveys the meaning.

p. 156
: “perhaps a Python might be caught by another Apollo” According to legend, Delphi, home of the famous Greek oracle,
was protected by a dragon or serpent (Python) in the pre-Hellenic period. Greek mythology states that the god Apollo slew
the Python, ousted the deity (Mother Earth) it was guarding, and founded his oracle there.

pp. 156–157
: “where a negro slave was seen slipping and sliding but a moment before Alas; that mud and wet weather should
have so little respect for aristocracy” Crafts is parodying the snobbery of white governmental officials in this passage.

p. 158
: The Italian medicated powder that turns Mrs. Wheeler black appears to be a product of Hannah Crafts’s wit and imagination.

p. 159
: “Report said that he [Mr. Wheeler] had actually quarreled with the President, and challenged a senator to fight a
duel, besides laying a cowhide … over the broad shoulders of a member of Congress.” Wheeler states his difficulties in office
at this time in entirely circumscribed terms, ignoring his indiscreet support of the self-styled General Walker’s exploits
in Central America, which led to his dismissal from his position in Nicaragua.

Diary for 1857 [p. 10]:

Monday, March 2, [printed “February,” struck out, replaced by hand printed “March”]

Went to President’s, heard him reply to a com[mittee?] from Texas—had a conference as to Nic[aragu]a. He resolved to have
no diplomatic relations with Nic.a and of course no use for me—[I] resigned on this ground alone.

Later in 1857, after the Wheelers’ visit to North Carolina and Hannah’s escape from the plantation there, Wheeler’s political
fortunes changed for the better. At some point after his return, he was appointed clerk of the Department of the Interior.
Later, he was selected for another post, as appears below, but he apparently did not accept it.

Diary for 1857 [p. 109]:

Tuesday, December 22 Met Mr. Craig who informed me that I had been selected by the Com.[mittee] for For.[eign] Affairs as
their Clerk—

There are references in this diary to Mr. Wheeler’s own pugnacious nature, as remarked by Crafts, but notices of other attacks
occur later in his diary for 1860. Crafts is most probably referring to the attack of Preston Brooks of South Carolina with
a cane on Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate on May 22, 1856. This event is not recorded by Wheeler, though as
it occurred a day before the last surviving entry in his diary of 1856, it may have been reported by him in a later, now lost,
entry. Wheeler’s diary reports two other incidents of violence following Hannah’s escape:

Diary for 1860 [p. 55]:

Friday 13th [April]

Went to Capitol; Pryor of Va. Challenged Potter of Missouri; accepted to fight with bowie knives—declined by Pryor as unseemly
& so the matters end—Friends of both claim for each the triumph— which will produce other difficulties.

Diary for 1860 [p. 102]:

Sunday 8th [July]

Lovely day but very cool for the time of year. Bathed and called to Gen[era]l Bowman, my opposite neighbour, who was attacked
on yesterday morning by E. B. Schnabel, with a cane, and severely wounded. He made a speech at a Douglass [sic] meeting on
Tuesday evening last, which the Constitution (Genl. Bowman’s paper) spoke of, and of Schnabel—hence [?] the attack.

p. 160
: “Riggs of the Naval Department” I have found no record of a Riggs working in the Naval Department at this time. Crafts
could be referring to George Washington Riggs (1813–81), a prominent banker and co-owner of the Corcoran and Riggs Bank in
Washington, D.C., between 1837 and 1848, when Riggs resigned his partnership. In 1854 Riggs took over the bank, renaming it
Riggs and Co., and expanded it considerably. Riggs, in other words, was a prominent name in Washington when Hannah Crafts
lived there.

p. 166
: Mr. Wheeler points out that Mrs. Wheeler’s face is “black as Tophet.” Tophet is the Hebrew Bible’s name for hell,
and Tophet is mentioned nine times in the Book of Jeremiah. In Isaiah 30:33, Tophet’s history is explained as follows:

For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire
and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.

Obviously, Tophet’s “blackness” relates to the ash and burned wood present in large amounts.

p. 168
: “Why Cattell, and his clerks” “Cattell,” as spelled by Hannah Crafts, probably refers to Mr. Cotrell, a government
officeholder and associate of John Hill Wheeler’s.

Diary for 1855 [p. 106]:

Thurs. 19 [July 1855]

Friend Cotrell aided me with all his power.

[p. 116]:

Sat. 1 Sept. 1855

Cotrell was selected as consul [to San Juan del Norte] and his commission ordered—

[p. 117]:

Wed. 5 [1855]

Packing up and preparing to leave [for Nicaragua]—At 3 1/2 left New York in the steamer Star of the West, Capt. Turner in
company with Dr. & Mrs. Van Dy[ke] Thos. V. Dandy—Cotrell.

p. 169
: “Mrs Wheeler like Byron” George Gordon, Lord Byron, the great Romantic poet, author of
Don Juan.
See note to Preface.

p. 170
: The Wheelers owned a substantial home in Washington at this time. In the first entry in the “Memoranda” section of
his diary for 1857 (dated 1st January 1857), Wheeler lists a “Town House & Lot in Washington City,” valued at $6,000. Later,
Wheeler owned at least two residential properties in the city, one of which was located on I Street and provided rental income.

p. 170
: “Mr Vincent” Several Vincents are listed as living in Dinwiddie County and Henrico County, Virginia, in the U.S. federal
census between 1830 and 1850. Henrico County is twenty kilometers from Milton, while Dinwiddie County is thirty kilometers
from Milton.

p. 170
: “Mr Cosgrove” The Cosgrove family lived in Henrico County from 1840 to 1860.

Chapter 14

p. 172
: The passage used below is located rather generally as from the “Bible.” The citation is Psalm 74:20:

Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.

p. 172
: “Our master … took a great fancy to beautiful female slaves” Lizzy’s tale of Mr. Cosgrove’s infidelity is an unusually
explicit account of master-slave sexual relations on the plantation. In the slave narratives, these relations are usually
referred to in veiled, or metaphoric, language.

p. 175
: “To think that she had been rivaled by slaves” Here, Crafts seems to be speaking as a person who had directly experienced
or witnessed this tension over sexual rivalry.

p. 177
: “and with a motion so sudden that no one could prevent it, she snatched a sharp knife which a servant had carelessly
left after cutting butcher’s meat, and stabbing the infant … she had run the knife into her own body” The most famous case
of slave infanticide—the murdering of one’s child to prevent its sale as a slave—was that of Margaret Garner on January 28,
1856. Garner’s case became the basis of the plot of Toni Morrison’s magnificent novel
Beloved
(1987).

Garner; her husband, Robert; their two children, Mary—age two—and Cilla, an infant; and Robert’s parents were escaping to
freedom from a plantation in Kentucky. Pursued by her master, Archibald Gaines, Garner chose to slit her daughter Mary’s throat
with a butcher knife rather than allow her to be returned to slavery. Gaines was thought to be the child’s father. Garner
was returned to slavery and sold to another slave owner. She died in Mississippi in 1858. This story was widely discussed
because of its sensational aspect and because of its implications in light of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Crafts most
probably knew this story. Garner’s actions, of course, echo those of Medea, in the tragedy of Euripides. It is quite possible
that Crafts knew both sources.