XXVII DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA—SLAVERY ABOLISHED—1862
The District of Columbia, acquired by the United States in 1791 for the purpose of founding the city of Washington as the permanent Federal Capital, was, by the laws of Virginia and Maryland, slave territory. The District was originally ten miles square, and included the city of Alexandria. Later (1846) the part acquired from Virginia (about forty square miles) was retroceded to that State. Congress had complete jurisdiction over it, though the laws of Maryland and Virginia, for some purposes, were continued in force. It was, however, from the beginning claimed that Congress had the right to abolish slavery within its boundaries.
Congress is given the right "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District."(120) But slavery was claimed to be excepted because of its peculiar character.
The institution of slavery was therefore perpetuated in the District, and in the Capital of the Republic slave-marts existed where men and women were sold from the auction block, and families were torn asunder and carried to different parts of the country to be continued in bondage. In the shadow of the Capitol the voice of the auctioneer proclaiming in the accustomed way the merits of the slave commingled with that of the statesmen in the Halls of Congress proclaiming the boasted liberty of the great American Republic! Daniel Drayton (1848) was tried in the District for the larceny of seventy-four human beings, his crime consisting of affording means (in the schooner Pearl) for their escape to freedom.(121)
Under the laws of the District many others were punished for like offences.
As late as 1856, when the sculptor Crawford furnished a design for the Statue of Liberty to crown the dome of the Capitol, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis ordered the "liberty cap" struck from the model, because in art it had an "established origin in its use as a badge of the freed slave."(122)
We have seen how much the consciences of just men were shocked, and how assiduously such men labored to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and with what tenacity the slave party fought to maintain it there, and even by constitutional amendments to fix it there forever.
But when slavery had brought the country to war, the emancipation of slaves in the District was early considered.
Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, December 16, 1861, introduced a bill in the Senate, which, after a most memorable debate in both Houses of Congress, passed, and on April 16, 1862, became a law, with the approval of President Lincoln. This act emancipated forthwith all the slaves of the District, and annulled the laws of Maryland over it relating to slavery and all statutes giving the cities of Washington and Georgetown authority to pass ordinances discriminating against persons of color.
(120) Con. U. S., Art. I., Sec. 8, par. 17.
(121) Drayton did not succeed in the attempt to afford these slaves means to escape. He was tried on two indictments for larceny, convicted, and on each sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. The Circuit Court reversed these convictions on the erroneous charge of the trial judge (Crawford), to the effect that a man might be guilty of larceny of property—slaves—without the intent to appropriate it to his own use. On re-trial Drayton was acquitted on the larceny indictments; but verdicts were taken against him on seventy-four indictments for transporting slaves—not a penitentiary offense—and he was sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000, and to remain in prison until paid. He was most ably defended by Horace Mann of Boston, and J. M. Carlisle of Washington, D. C., either as volunteer counsel or employed by Drayton's friends, he being poor. There were 115—41 for larceny, 64 for transportation—indictments against Drayton, which led Mr. Mann to remark of the threatened penalty: "Methuselah himself must have been caught young in order to survive such a sentence."—Slavery, Letters, etc. (Mann), p. 93.
President Fillmore, being defeated in 1852 for nomination for
President, pardoned Drayton after four years' and four months'
imprisonment, which pardon, it was claimed, defeated Scott, the
Whig nominee, at the polls.—Memoir of Drayton, p. 118.
(122) Correspondence in War Department between Davis and Quartermaster- General Meigs.
The present nondescript hood, giving the statue crowning the dome its appearance, in some views, of a wild Indian, was substituted for the Liberty cap.