Adelicia Acklen

[18thVirginia]

Here's a link to the 1860 Census in Tennessee where you can see Joseph and Adelicia's wealth listed as $2,000,000 in property and $1,000,000 in slaves. http://haygenealogy.com/hay/patriots/civilwar/1860census-acklen.jpg


And a link to a page of the slave schedules for the Acklens for 1860 in Louisiana.
http://haygenealogy.com/hay/patriots/civilwar/1860census-acklen-slaves.jpg

A painting of Belmont in the 1850s

 

[18thVirginia]

The family dining room at Belmont

Formal dining room at Belmont

 

[18thVirginia]

An interesting account of Joseph Acklen's relationship to the slaves at Belmont, from a diary by Elvira J. Powers, who was a hospital matron in Nashville during the ACW

An intelligent chattel, who has been on the place twenty years, informs us that Achlen was a kind master. . That when he visited his plantations in Louisiana, the negroes would welcome him at the wharf, and if it was the least muddy, would take him upon their shoulders and carry him to the house. But despite this fact, the negroes have somehow got the impression that freedom is preferable to slavery. So strongly are they impressed with the desire of owning themselves, that out of 900 who were on the estate and plantations at the commencement of the war, but five remain at the former place, and these with wages of $15.00 per month, while about the same number are at each of the plantations, these kept also by wages.

http://belmontmansion.com/mansionhistory/enslavement/accounts/

From this account of the slave schedule at Belmont, apparently there were 32 slaves on the property, with the larger portion of the Acklen slaves on the plantations in Louisiana.

http://belmontmansion.com/mansionhistory/enslavement/1860-slave-census/

 

[Northern Light]

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Adelicia Acklin

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Belmont Mansion

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1

Did any one else notice that she has brown eyes in the horse painting and blue eyes in the smaller one?

 

[18thVirginia]

http://belmontmansion.com/mansionhistory/

 

[18thVirginia]

Dr. Cheatham

There were 2,000 guests at the wedding reception at Belmont for Adelicia Acklen and Dr. Cheatham.

http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/adelicia-acklen-belmont-mansion-and-women-of-civil-war#slide=11

 

[18thVirginia]

Adelicia Acklen Passport

http://belmontmansion.com/mansionhistory/

 

[18thVirginia]

Letter from Joseph Acklen to Adelicia Acklen

http://belmontmansion.com/mansionhistory/

 

[18thVirginia]

Adelicia's cousin Sarah Ewing Sims Carter on helping her cousin Adelicia save her cotton:

My cousin's husband Col. Acklen died in Louisiana, leaving a large amount of cotton on the plantation, unprotected. She insisted on my going down with her, thinking she could sell the cotton in New Orleans, which would have been impossible, as it was in Confederate lines and being watched. The (Federal) navy gunboats were on the river nearby. I went one hundred and fifty miles eight times, in the Confederate lines - to Jackson and Clinton, Louisiana, and finally got permission for her to ship the cotton to Europe. Then we got from (Federal) Admiral [David] Porter and Capt. Ramsey, of the [gunboat] Choctaw, a permit to take it to New Orleans.... It was a tremendous undertaking, and I felt very proud that I had been the cause of saving her cotton, which so few had succeeded in doing.

http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2014/07/adelicia-acklen.html

 

[Patrick H]

That Miss Adelicia was a shrewd business woman! That mansion is really over the top in terms of sheer extravagance. The interiors are quite tasteful, though. I haven't been through your most recent posts (inventory, etc.) but will look at those tomorrow. Thanks for posting this.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Yes, what a super post 18th, thank you- I know you had as a project looking into how the war affected some of the women of plantations in general but boy- she's an exception probably? Not many would have insisted on maintaining control of their money? Or maybe they did and we don't hear of them- the whole strong, Southern female thing came from her kind of story, too.

I agree- you can learn an awful lot from picking details out of era paintings. No expert here, love to listen to experts point out the things artists included plus the era dress, tack as they were discussing, and I wonder if the scarf her husband was sporting is a tartan?

So odd, the apparent bafflement on why enslaved people would prefer freedom to any kind of confinement. This family seems to have offered honorable employment to some ex- enslaved people, who accepted which speaks well for a relationship there. It was awful, finding work post- emancipation, and scary as heck, good to have been able to not launch oneself into the chaotic world of reconstruction.

All in all, remarkable woman! Some novelist would dream her up, with ridiculous chapters of romantic padding- the painting would be the cover, given some wispier clothing right? She's fine exactly like she is, her brain the main feature, God bless her.

Little preoccupied out here in the non-cyber world, thanks for holding down the fort for a bit in Ladies Tea- will be hopefully bringing threads again soon. Little crazy! What a stroke of great good fortune, you showing up all that time ago and agreeing to help and Southern toboot! Couldn't pull threads like this together by a Scots, Nova Scotia-New England heat intolerant Yank.

 

[18thVirginia]

And you probably wouldn't have traveled in the vicinity of Angola penitentiary to have an idea of just how remote the Louisiana plantations were. I haven't been in the prison, but have been down the road and taken the ferry across the Mississippi nearby.

When I read initially about Adelicia Acklen, I thought the story about getting her cotton sold and the fact that she had a pre-nup in the mid 1800s was interesting enough, but her whole life story was fascinating. Her first fiancé was also a lawyer, one who'd graduated from Harvard Law School but died of typhoid before they could get married.

And all four of her children from the marriage to Isaac Franklin died before the age of 11, how tragic that must have been.

 

[18thVirginia]

Adelicia and one of her children

A later photo of Adelicia

http://www.examiner.com/slideshow/adelicia-acklen-belmont-mansion-and-women-of-civil-war#slide=11

 

[RobertP]

I visited Angola once while in college with a friend whose family was close to the Warden. We had lunch in the Warden's big house up on the natural levee overlooking the prison complex. It was a experience I've never forgotten. The man lived in what seemed to me then a palatial setting where he was obviously master of all he surveyed. He even wore, no kidding, a white suit. The place had the feeling of one of those breezy tropical island homes, always on a hill, where Brit officers planned WWII strategy in old war flicks. Trustees, all convicted murderers - trusted because their status and bit of freedom was coveted - served the meal, mostly fresh vegetables from the prison farm. There was no escaping that place because it was inside a sharp bend of the Mississippi River and still known as one of the toughest prisons in the country.

Adelicia would be stunned indeed.

 

[18thVirginia]

Not sure why Adelicia would be stunned. Angola prison was designed and operated initially to be as close to American chattel slavery as possible. What you've described is simply a situation that shamefully continued that tradition into the late 20th Century.

 

[RobertP]

We took the tour, led by the Warden's daughter. There were a significant number of white inmates among the population, probably a third, and if we believe in the Justice System, all of them were serious felons. This was 1967, they weren't slaves, they weren't being hired out to landowners as was done 75 years before. Sorry, your analogy is wrong but I'm sure it will appeal to a certain segment around here.

 

[18thVirginia]

Sorry, my analogy is correct. But that leads into a discussion of modern politics and criminal justice practices which is way outside the topic of this thread.

 

[18thVirginia]

It makes it very difficult to admire this lovely house when you know from where some of the money that built it came. Sigh,......but I guess it isn't the house's fault. Thanks for posting this interesting thread.

Northern Light, you seem very interested in the details of the artwork, you might enjoy this article by Laura Lessing about the sculpture collection at Belmont Mansion. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=lauren_lessing

Lessing gives all kinds of interesting details that aren't mentioned on biographies of Mrs. Acklen elsewhere. For example, she points out that she and her second husband, Joseph Acklen, broke the first husband's will, which mandated that her portion of the Franklin estate become a children's school when she remarried. Her last child with Franklin was still alive at the time and the Louisiana and Tennessee Supreme Courts ruled the will invalid. In doing so, Adelicia went far out of the rules which governed the elite Southern woman, about whom Lessing notes,

Particularly in the tense decades surrounding the Civil War, ideal Southern womanhood became an emblem of Southern culture. Authors brandished it like a flag, comparing the instinctively delicate "true women" of the South to shrewish, masculine, fame-seeking female reformers in the North. One author noted, in reference to such reformers, "Our ladies blush that their sisters anywhere descend to such things. Our ordinary women much prefer to follow the example of genuinely womanly feeling, set them by the ladies around them, than that set by Northern ladies, and so they are above [them]." http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=lauren_lessing

In his letter shown above, Joseph Acklen mentions his fear of his cotton being burned. Lessing indicates that he provided information on Confederate naval operations to Union authorities. Apparently, Adelicia's cousin, quoted above in this thread, bargained with Confederate authorities while Adelicia entertained Union officers at the plantation house in Louisiana. Between them, the two women managed to gain Gen. Leonidas Polk's permission to move the Acklen cotton and David Dixon Porter's to allow them to ship it past the Federal blockade. Lessing suggests the likelihood that, like Joseph Acklen, they offered information to both Confederate and Union authorities.

Apparently, Adelicia's activities rendered her post-war position in Nashville difficult with both Confederate and Union sides. She had placed the goal of saving her family's wealth over that of the Confederacy or of a relative, not an acceptable position for a Southern lady. When she journeyed to Europe to secure her cash, she returned with furnishings for her home as a way of renewing her position within Nashville society.

Lessing gets into quite a detailed discussion of furnishings and sculpture. She also gives details about the marriage to Dr. William Cheatham that don't surface elsewhere. He served the Confederacy as a physician and his brother in law was General John Hunt Morgan. Sort of explains why there were 2,000 guests at a reception for a third marriage.

She also mentions that 6 of Adelicia's children died within a 10 year period, a high number even for the time when many children died before reaching adulthood.

 

[18thVirginia]

Here are some of the sculptures:

http://belmontmansion.com/collection/catalog/artwork/statues/

 

[Northern Light]

I would imagine she was a woman who set her self above politics, and survival was her muse. I'm not being accusative at all. She did what she felt she had to do to survive. Maybe she , or women like her, were the examples for Margaret Mitchell's heroine.