Episode 32 - Think My Dear Mistress

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 32 - “Think My Dear Mistress”
Published on April 5, 2022

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is a Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early nineteenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Katherine Gehred. This week, we're going to be talking about a letter from Sarah Stewart. She's an enslaved woman at James Madison's Montpelier. It's a letter from her to Dolley Madison written on July 5, 1844. Now, I've been wanting to do this letter for a long time. I found it a while ago, but I put it off because I didn't have a strong enough grasp of the subject matter. So, I was very excited when Hillary Hicks, Senior Research Historian at James Madison's Montpelier agreed to come on the show and talk about it with me. So hello, Hilarie

Hilarie Hicks

Hello, thank you for having me. 

Kathryn Gehred 

First of all, can you tell us a little bit about what you do as a research historian in Montpelier?

Hilarie Hicks

Sure, the way I usually explain my job is I look stuff up for people who ask me questions.

Kathryn Gehred

 That sounds great!

Hilarie Hicks

It is. In a broad way, there are sometimes I'm doing research for particular projects that are going on at Montpelier exhibitions, archaeology might be investigating a new area, and they want to know what we have in the documentary record related to it. I field a lot of research questions from scholars and from the general public, and then I have some research projects that I've been pursuing on plantation operations and writing blog posts for Montpelier's digital doorway, including our newest project, the Naming Project, where we're developing biographies for the 300 people who's names we know who were enslaved at Montpelier.

Kathryn Gehred 

That's a really cool project. So, the letter that we have here, it's by an enslaved woman named Sarah Stewart, what do we know about Sarah Stewart?

Hilarie Hicks

She's about 50 years old at the time, she writes the letter. And she's a member of the Stewart family we know a number of different people with the surname Stewart at Montpelier. Unfortunately, for Sarah, we don't know how she is related to the other Stewart's but she was an enslaved domestic worker, and many of the Stewart women did work as domestics.

Kathryn Gehred 

I saw there's a couple letters from her in the Dolley Madison Papers, was she literate? Or did she have somebody else write these letters for her?

Hilarie Hicks

She had someone write letters for her. She often seems to be the person who is at Montpelier, and writing to Dolley Madison when Dolley is in Washington, and updating, updating Dolley on information, but also passing information about members of the enslaved community who are at Montpelier, and sharing news that she wants Dolley to pass on to the enslaved people who are up in Washington at that particular point.

Kathryn Gehred 

Dolley was 76 years old at the time this letter was written what is going on in her life at this point? 

Hilarie Hicks

Well, she's a widow at this point, and ever since James Madison had died in 1836, Dolley's been dividing her time between Montpelier and a house at the Madison's owned in Washington, DC. And she's spending more and more time in Washington, DC, and just about a month after this letter is written, she's actually going to sell Montpelier. So, she will be living permanently in Washington, DC, and at this point in time, Dolley's finances were not in particularly good shape. So, it was financial hardship that was pressing her to sell Montpelier, and when you think about it, in comparison to today, the Madison's did not receive any kind of presidential pension. So, their income came from the sale of crops raised on the property by the enslaved laborers. And, due to a combination of things, bad weather, pests, low crop prices, none of the crops really did that well. None of the crop years were really that good throughout James Madison's retirement, and then there were a lot of expenses. We talked a lot about Dolley Madison's son, James Madison's stepson, John Payne Todd, and he had issues with drinking and gambling. So, Madison spent a great deal of money, bailing him out of debt. But sometimes we don't always realize that Madison was bailing other people out of debt too and, in fact, the house that the Madison's owned in Washington DC, was the house of Dolley's sister and brother-in-law, and the Madison's had purchased that house to keep Dolley's sister and brother-in-law from losing it. So, that was a big outlay of cash at a point when the Madison's couldn't really afford to do that. And, then on top of everything else that is going on, right at this point when the letter is written Dolley is in the midst of a lawsuit, and she has countersued her brother-in-law James's brother, William, had sued Dolley for $2,000. It was money that he believed that he was owed from the settlement of his and James's father's estate. And so, Dolly does not believe that she owes him this money. And so, so she countersues him. So, that's kind of what's going on and Dolley's life at the point she receives this letter.

Kathryn Gehred 

It is crazy how many of these Virginian founding fathers are in so much debt.

Hilarie Hicks

Yes, well, I think some of it comes just from the agricultural lifestyle that I think you tend maybe to feel like you are wealthy because you have a lot of land. But, you don't necessarily have a lot of cash, and there's kind of a circle of indebtedness where, rather than today, when we borrow money from the bank, or we run up debt on our credit cards, people borrowed money from each other. And, everything was fine until somebody calls the debt in and then everybody in a circle is having to call a debt in.

Kathryn Gehred 

And then of course, who gets caught in the crossfire the enslaved people who count as property and have no control over this, this circle of debt. Alright, so I think that's pretty good context of what's going on. I'm going to go ahead and read the letter

Hilarie Hicks

Sure.

Kathryn Gehred

From Sarah to Dolley, if that's all right. Sarah Stewart to Dolley Payne Madison, 5 July 1844.

"My mistress, I don't like to send you bad news, but the condition of all of us, Your servants, is very bad. And we do not know whether you are acquainted with it. The sheriff has taken all of us and says he will sell us at next court unless something is done before to prevent it. We are afraid we shall be bought by what are called Negro buyers and sent away from our husbands and wives. If we are obliged to be sold, perhaps you could get neighbors to buy us that have husbands and wives, so as to save us some misery, which will in greater or less degree, be sure to fall upon us at being separated from you as well as from one another. We are very sure you are sorry for the state of things, and we do not like to trouble you with it. But think, my dear mistress, what our sorrow must be. The sale is only a fortnight from next Monday, but perhaps you could make some bargain with somebody by which we could be kept together. I get a young lady to write in my name, but it is intended for us all. The husband of Katie is with you what is to be done with her and her children. Your dutiful servant, Sarah."

This is a pretty tough letter. This is really heartbreaking one, the line that really gets me. I mean, all of it's terrible. But the line that always sort of hits me that she says "Think my dear mistress, what our sorrow must be." And this, to me gets to the real core of some of the issues of the way historians write about slavery. I think a lot of times there's a lot of emphasis on the struggles of white people. But it seems as though people forget that the black people are also human beings that are dealing with the same issues and have huge consequences from these issues. So, it's just as have somebody at that time think but think about our perspective as well. And she's not denying that Dolley has her own problems, that financial problems are very real and serious, but she might be separated from her husband how terrifying that you might never see your children again.

Hilarie Hicks

Well, it is this heartbreaking letter, certainly. And I like your point that Sarah is really asking Dolley to see things from her perspective, and I don't know to what extent Dolley was able to do that. Then there are some points in time when you get a sense that that Dolley does have some compassion for the feelings of enslaved people. So, for example, Paul Jennings who had been James Madison's personal body servant, and continues to be enslaved by Dolley after Madison's death, Paul Jennings was married to a woman, Fanny Gordon, who lived on a neighboring plantation. And at a point when Fanny is dying, Dolly gives Paul Jennings leave to go and be with her and he stays with her for a period of time until she passes away. So, that's certainly an instance where she is showing some compassion towards the feeling of enslaved people. And then there are other situations that we know of where she does appear to sell people without regard for their feelings. So it's, it's very complicated.

Kathryn Gehred 

The obvious question that comes up is was there a sale? Did these people end up with the Negro buyers as she describes them? Or did Dolley Madison try to keep the families together?

Hilarie Hicks

Not quite either, I would say.

Kathryn Gehred

Okay.

Hilarie Hicks

There was not a sale right at that point. So, with the suit and the counter suit going on, they just seem not to have had a sale right at that point. And we have wondered, even though Sarah actually says the sheriff has taken all of us, we don't know that they actually were taken away from Montpelier and jailed. They may have just remained at Montpelier under a lien or something like that. So, there was not a sale at that point in time. And then, right about that time, in July of 1844, Dolley transfers all the people that she has enslaved to her son, John Payne Todd, which we kind of think was a legal maneuver to essentially strip her of her assets so that she couldn't be sued for them. And then, as this countersuit continues, Dolley is making the case that the document that her brother-in-law, William had pressed her to sign didn't represent what she had actually said to him. So basically, in the affidavits that she and her, particularly her niece are giving as to what transpired the day this bond was signed, apparently, William has come to her and said, I'm owed this money from the estate of our father, and James didn't give it to me, and you owe it to me. And she says, 'Well, I don't really think that's the case.' And he says, 'Well, you know, you could, you could just sign this bond that if, if this comes due, then it would be payable in money or in slaves' and, and they go, they both go back and forth. They write something down on a slate, and she alters it, ultimately, she says that what was written down as the bond was not what she intended to say so and, and eventually, the court decides in her favor, so they don't end up selling any enslaved people in order to satisfy this $2,000 that William believes that he is owed. But over the next several years, Dolley and John Payne Todd seemed, even though Dolley has deeded the enslaved people to John Payne Todd, they continue to act like they still belong to Dolley or they're kind of managing them as a joint asset, if you want to think of it that way. And, so over the next several years, John Payne Todd with Dolley's assent did sell people individually, and it doesn't seem to be with any particular regard for families.

Kathryn Gehred 

Before the Civil War, it seems like one of the sort of standards of being a quote unquote, "good slave owner" was to try to keep families together and to avoid family separations. And this comes up a lot in abolitionist writings, and in books I've read, there's literally there were literally books printed for women on how to be plantation mistress, that would tell you, this is how you get a good relationship with your slaves. It tells you like interpersonal things sometimes, but that's one of the big ones is to try to keep families together. I think something that is sort of interesting is how frequently, situations like this come up, where families are separated, even even if you are a slave that belongs to somebody who is really trying to keep families together. And these moments when there's financial difficulty at the end of somebody's life, these big inevitable life moments, it's almost impossible to do it.

Hilarie Hicks

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred

There's a million reasons that the institution of slavery was, was just a horrific evil. But I think this is one of the key examples of even people, if people were trying their hardest to make this a more humane institution, just from situations beyond people's control, sometimes, it was still going to end in these sorts of tragedies a lot.

Hilarie Hicks

One of the things that has struck me in writing some of the biographies from the Naming Project, is realizing that Madison's father each time one of his children married, Madison's father would give them a number of enslaved people, and then he confirmed those gifts in his will. And for one daughter in particular, who moved the farthest away, Nellie Madison who marries Isaac Hite, when she left and took the enslaved people with her that her father had given her that was really breaking up the extended families. So she had, she was given some women who appear to be the mothers of particular children, she was given some men but we don't know if they match up with if they're the husbands of those particular women, and even if well, for example, Eliza and her five children, even though she is with her five children, we don't know who she left behind at Montepelier, parents, aunts and uncles, and then in the next generation, when Nelly Hite's son gets married, she gives to her son, Eliza's daughter and several of Eliza's grandchildren. And, so we think of weddings being a time when families come together, which was true for the white families, but for enslaved families, weddings were a time when families were pulled apart.

Kathryn Gehred 

One of the names mentioned in this letter, Katie, who was Katie, do we know anything about her and her husband and children?

Hilarie Hicks

She's actually someone that we know a lot about. Her name was Catherine Stewart Taylor, and she was the daughter of Dolley's enslaved maid Sukie or Susanna Stewart, and this is a realization that we just came to recently, because we found Susanna Stewart's Will on Ancestry, and realize that Katherine Taylor was one of Suki's children, which we haven't realized before. Katie or Catherine is married to Ralph Taylor, and they have five children. Ralph was one of the people that John Payne Todd tended to send back and forth between Montpelier and Washington. So at the point, when this letter is written, Ralph is up in Washington, DC, but Katie and the children are back at Montpelier. Eventually, all the Taylors end up in Washington, DC after Dolley sells Montpelier, then Dolley dies in 1849. Her son, John Payne Todd dies in January of 1851, and he actually put in his will, that he wanted to free the remaining people that he's still enslaved. But it's hard to say whether he realized this at the time or not, so we don't know if he realized how much debt he was in, but as it turned out, his debts exceeded his assets and his assets were the enslaved people, and so by November of 1852, his executor is still holding the Taylor family, Katie and Ralph and children, and the tailors actually sued for their freedom on something of a technicality, because at that point, it was illegal to import slaves into Washington, DC. And if an enslaved person was brought into Washington illegally, they were able to sue for their freedom. The exception would be if someone moved to Washington DC, and they wanted to bring with them the people that they had previously enslaved at their former home. So, when Dolley became a full time resident of Washington, DC, she had a 12 month window to bring any people that she had enslaved in Virginia to bring them up to DC. But remember, she had deeded the people that she enslaved to her son, and he still lived in Virginia. So the Taylors sued on the grounds that John Payne Todd had brought them into Washington, DC illegally, since he was a Virginia resident, and they actually win their case.

Kathryn Gehred

Awesome.

Hilarie Hicks

And Katie's freedom papers survive in the collection at Dumbarton house, and lists Katie and the children. We assume since the cases were all tied in together, we assume that Ralph was freed at the same time, but his freedom papers don't survive.

Kathryn Gehred 

That's an awesome story.

Hilarie Hicks

It is a wonderful story. You know, so many of the stories that we tell through the Naming Project, either and without us knowing what happened to a person, or they end sadly, because the person's life ends while they're still enslaved, but the the people who lived long enough to see their freedom are really pretty uplifting stories and to see how well people did for themselves in the next couple of generations is just really inspiring.

Kathryn Gehred 

The network of free black people and enslaved people in DC is pretty cool, when you see some of those stories, but how terrifying to be working your job and to have the sheriff come and tell you all that you might be separated from your family in a week.  

Hilarie Hicks

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred

But so what ends up happening to Sarah where does Sarah end up?

Hilarie Hicks

Well, Sarah ends up going to Washington DC after the sale of Montpelier. So, she seems to be part of the core group of enslaved domestic workers that continue to wait on Dolley, including the Taylor family, and it took John Payne Todd a while to get it everything organized and vacate the property. So, it was around October or November of 1844, that he sent Sarah and the Taylors to Washington DC, and then eventually, Dolley sells her longtime maid Sukie or Susannah Stewart, and Sarah seems to take her place as Dolley's primary domestic worker, and then after Dolley dies in 1849, and John Payne Todd writes his Will, as we talked about before, Sarah Stewart is one of the people he lists by name in his Will, that he intends for her to be free, and but she ends up in the same position as the Taylor's still being held in bondage by John Payne Todd's executor, and so Sarah sue's for her freedom at the same time that the Taylors do, but we don't know the outcome of Sarah's suit. Hopefully, they were all the cases were all decided on the same grounds. But we don't have a freedom paper the way that we do for Katherine Taylor.

Kathryn Gehred 

If there's one thing about the history of slavery in Montpelier that you wanted more people to know about, what would it be?

Hilarie Hicks

I think it's really the complexity of it all. It's not about deciding whether the Madison's were good or bad. It's not about deciding that the good that Madison did for the country outweighs the harm that he did by depriving people of their liberty, that it's also not about deciding that because Madison enslaved people, that erases his accomplishments, it's just complicated. And when I give tours at Montpelier, I like to end in view of the temple, which is a garden folly. It's inspired by classical architecture, in the same way that the founders look to classical civilizations for their models of government, and the temple actually sits on top of an ice house. And enslaved laborers dug out the pit of the Ice House, they made the bricks to line it, and they cut ice from the pond in the winter to fill it, so that the Madison's would have a supply of ice during the summer. I like to ask visitors to think of the temple on a symbolic level, sort of representing the ideals of the founders. And, yet it sits on a foundation that was literally created by the hands of enslaved people. I think being at Montpelier can inspire us to reflect on the intersection of those two important themes in our history, the history of our form of government, and also the legacy of slavery that we still see in many ways today. And it's an opportunity to commit ourselves always to continue to work toward a more perfect union.

Kathryn Gehred 

That sounds like a good way to end a tour.

Hilarie Hicks

I like to end it that way. 

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you so much for telling me more about Sarah Stewart and the Madison's. I always like to get your letters from enslaved people as much as possible, because there's just so few of them compared to letters from white people. And I think they really tell a lot.

Hilarie Hicks

And this was a great letter to pick because there's just so many levels to it.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you again, I will link in the show notes to some further reading that you might have. There's a really good book about Paul Jennings. There's a really good book about Paul Jennings that I would recommend anybody to read. I feel like they need to make a bio movie about Paul Jennings ASAP. It's fascinating. So I'll share some notes there, and give you more information about how you can visit Montpelier, and take part in some of these really cool exhibits that they're working on. And as ever, I am your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.