Tea at Trianon: Christmas and Slavery

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, January 4, 2021

Christmas and Slavery

Preparing for Christmas (Plucking Turkeys) by Francis William Edmonds, 1851

From History:

How did Americans living under slavery experience the Christmas holidays? While early accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often painted an idealized picture of owners’ generosity met by grateful workers happily feasting, singing and dancing, the reality was far more complex.
In the 1830s, the large slaveholding states of Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas became the first in the United States to declare Christmas a state holiday. It was in these Southern states and others during the antebellum period (1812-1861) that many Christmas traditions—giving gifts, singing carols, decorating homes—firmly took hold in American culture. Many enslaved workers got their longest break of the year—typically a handful of days—and some were granted the privilege to travel to see family or get married. Many received gifts from their owners and enjoyed special foods untasted the rest of the year.
But while many enslaved people partook in some of these holiday pleasures, Christmas time could be treacherous. According to Robert E. May, a professor of history at Purdue University and author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory, owners’ fears of rebellion during the season sometimes led to pre-emptive shows of harsh discipline. Their buying and selling of workers didn’t abate during the holidays. Nor did their annual hiring out of enslaved workers, some of whom would be shipped off, away from their families, on New Year’s Day—widely referred to as “heartbreak day.” (Read more.)

The mystery of William Costin. From The Journal of the American Revolution:

Many Virginia slaveholders fathered mixed-race children with enslaved women. Those offspring were born into slavery and thus increased the owners’ wealth. Thanks to studies by Annette Gordon-Reed, formal tours at Monticello now announce that Thomas Jefferson had four mixed-race children with the enslaved Sally Hemings. Martha Washington’s first husband had a mixed-race half-brother. In the nineteenth century, mixed-race Virginians claimed descent from Martha Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis.[8]
No records survive of Ann Dandridge, in part because the Dandridge family’s home was in New Kent County, a “burned-record county” east of Richmond. The term, familiar to Virginia historians, reflects Union Army soldiers’ tendency to burn Southern courthouses during the Civil War. New Kent County stands out in this community of archival destruction. Its courthouse was first incinerated nearly eight decades before the Civil War, then again in 1865.[9]
Consequently, no public records or family records survive of the persons enslaved by John Dandridge, Martha Washington’s father. The notion that Ann’s enslaved mother was half-Cherokee is equally impervious to research, though it invites skepticism. The Cherokee lived in Virginia’s southwestern tip, far from New Kent County. More plausible is another recounting of the Costin family tale that described Ann Dandridge’s mother as “an Indian squaw of the Pamunkey tribe,” since Pamunkey lands were closer to the Dandridge home. That version, however, is equally unsupported.[10]
Some facts focus the tale of Ann Dandridge. Martha was born in 1731. For a mixed-race half-sister to be her “playmate,” Ann must have been born by at least 1736; otherwise, the age gap between the girls would have been too great. A woman born in 1736 would have been forty-four when she gave birth to Will in 1780, a late age for a birth mother, but not impossible. (Read more.)