Slavery's Reach by Christopher Lehman

Author:Christopher Lehman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Swisshelm’s home and office in St. Cloud, about 1860

Free statehood and Swisshelm’s reports caused little damage to Lowry’s Addition. A new slaveholder owned part of the city that June, when John B. Johnson joined the business Allison, Anderson, & Company. In the fall, George Sweet chaired the district’s Democratic convention. Colonel Caruthers’s choices for candidates for the new state legislature won the party’s nominations, but none of his candidates claimed victories in the general election. Instead, two antislavery Democrats and a Republican won representation of the district. Still, Caruthers’s ability to lead the local Democrats showed how powerful he had become in central Minnesota after just two years in the region.40

Nevertheless, more hardship awaited the Lowry’s Addition community in the following year. Calhoun died in a road accident in February 1859, and his death resurrected the controversy about Mary and John Butler. St. Cloud resident Christopher C. Andrews, who had become a friend of the Lowry family, admitted in the St. Paul Pioneer and Democrat that the deceased was a slaveholder who “had three or four slaves in Tennessee,” and he recalled that Calhoun allowed them to stay enslaved there “at their request … retaining what they earned and living in comfort.” More importantly, Andrews wrote, “One accompanied his family in Minnesota,” thus confirming that Calhoun indeed owned a slave in the free state. On the other hand, according to Andrews, the minister allowed her to return to Tennessee because “she became disoriented away from her acquaintances and desired to return,” and he even handled her travel expenses. By describing the disappearance of Mary and John from St. Cloud in this manner, Andrews tried to definitively answer Swisshelm’s unresolved query of whether his friend had sold the mother and son as slaves in Tennessee.41

Swisshelm addressed the validity of Andrews’s remarks, noting that there was no proof of the claims, only his own word. To avoid any criticism that she was soiling a dead man’s reputation, she observed that Andrews had initiated this discussion and that she was merely responding to him. Her central question to him was, “Did Mr. Calhoun, according to his promise, emancipate this woman?” She inquired about evidence, “Are her free papers here? Did he take the necessary precautions to prevent that freeborn Minnesota baby from being reduced to slavery?” Reinforcing the point about the Butlers as local slaves, Swisshelm referred to John as “the little boy born, perhaps in his [Calhoun’s] kitchen.” She tied the fate of the mother and son to the fate of the state’s status concerning slavery: “The people of Minnesota have a right to know whether this is slaveholding soil and whether men may here raise babies for the Southern market.” She continued to take up the issue for many weeks after her first response to the late clergyman’s friend. “Come, Brother Andrews, report about the woman who was not returned to bondage,” Swisshelm jibed. “Where is she if she is not in bondage, and where is the baby?”42

The editor also dragged General Lowry into the controversy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.