Black slave woman poses as white soldier!?

John Hartwell

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This from Vanity Fair, 18 July 1861:

vfair_zps9724807a.jpg


http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acg4267.0004.000/28:19?page=root;size=100;view=image

*** grano salis:smoke:

jno
 
Well, and perhaps... I was just reading about a similar situation farther East not long ago, with an escaping female slave dressing in Confederate uniform during her (successful) escape.

The thing here is, of course, we don't know at this remove how dark- or light- complected a person was. The "one-drop" idea could result in some "negroes" that were fairer than some "whites" (further highlighting how ridiculous a racial definition is to begin with).
 
This is the best report I can find so far, from the Jun 17, 1861, Evening Star (Washington DC), p. 3:

"A Fugitive.--A slave woman belonging to John Little having eloped, Mr. Little made diligent search and ascertained that she was in one of the Ohio camps. He made a visit to the camp and told the colonel commanding what he wanted, and the reply was, "You shall have her, if she is here." Search was made and the fugitive was found, completely rigged out in male attire. She was immediately turned over to the custody of Mr. Little and was taken to jail. Every opportunity is afforded loyal citizens of loyal States to recover their fugitive slaves."

However, it may just be a fancifully expanded version of the little snippet that was going the rounds of the newspapers.

In its shorter version:
Lewiston [Maine] Daily Evening Journal
June 18, 1861
"A slave woman belonging to John Little, was found in male attire in one of the Ohio regiments and returned."

Or in a slightly longer version, from the Boston Post, June 20, 1861:
"A slave woman belonging to John Little was found in male attire in one of the Ohio regiments recently, and returned to her owner, he being a sound Union man and faithful to the laws and Constitution of his country."

The implication is that he was from Kentucky, and there are a dozen or so John Littles old enough to own slaves in the 1860 census, but only two that actually owned them in the 1860 slave census, each owning just one. John Little in Fulton County owned a nine-year-old black female and the other, in Breathitt County, KY, owned a 13-year-old female mulatto. Obviously the latter one is the best guess.

There are actually several John Littles in the Breathitt County census, a 22-year-old with no property, and two duplicate entries probably for another 22-year-old who was married within the year in both entries, with $150 of personal property. He is marked in one place as "guard city jail." Maybe the most likely candidate is John Little Sr., 68, farmer with $1300 personal property.

That's the best information I could come up with.
 
Well, it gets more complicated. There's no indication, of course, that the Ohio troops were in Ohio, and in fact, this woman is already named and claimed as Hortense Prout, slave of John Little of Washington, DC.

Here's the NPS's site on John Little's farm, talking about her. Note the part I've bolded:

http://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/ntf_member/ntf_member_details.htm?SPFID=12632

In the spring of 1861, at the start of the Civil War, 20-year-old Hortense Prout made a daring bid for freedom from this site in Washington, DC, where she worked as an enslaved servant in the manor house of John Little. Little held 12 enslaved African Americans on his cattle farm, including 3 generations of the Prout family. Hortense fled during a time of great excitement in DC, as thousands of newly organized Union troops poured into the city to quell the rebel uprising in VA. We know of her escape only because the Washington Evening Star on June 17, 1861, reported on her capture: she was found in an encampment of OH soldiers, about 2 miles east of John Little's house. She was, according to the newspaper , "completely rigged out in male attire." As punishment, John Little put Hortense in the City Jail for "safekeeping," before taking her back to work in his home. Less than a year after her escape, President Lincoln in April 1862 declared all enslaved African Americans in DC free. Hortense Prout thus became one of the last Washingtonians who chose to risk her life to win freedom.

But wait. The article in the Washington Even Star is the same one I posted above, which mentions no name or even a location for the event.

If the only evidence of her escape is that article, how did they connect the name Hortense Prout to the incident? It certainly sounds logical that the Ohio troops were in Washington and that she escaped there from a nearby owner, but there are John Littles all over.

I can find Hortense Prout, 21, female, black, 5'1" listed on Ancestry.com as being freed April 30, 1862 along with the DC slaves, but don't see an owner, though I figure there's probably some record of her being owned by John Little that they're using.

But how do they know she's the one, if all they've got to go on is that newspaper article? In the 1860 census, John Little of Washington owned 12 slaves, four of whom fit the possible demographics, though it would be hard for them to pass for white, since they're listed as black, not mulatto (the mulattos are much younger): an 18-year-old female, a 20-year-old female, a 21-year-old female and a 23-year-old female.

Even if they can show that Hortense was John Little's slave, and we assume that's the right John Little, which does sound reasonable, how the heck do they know she was the one in particular who escaped based on that article alone?
 
Hortense was indeed noted as John Little's slave on that list at Ancestry. I missed seeing his name at the bottom of the page. Here's lots more detail on the slaves he owned in 1862:

http://civilwardc.org/texts/petitions/cww.00744.html

The four who fit possible demographics for having tried to escape to the army the previous year are:

"Tabitha 25. Celeste 23. Hortense 21. Kalisti 20." They were all siblings born on his farm, daughters of a Prout, though Tabitha had the last name Rigney.

He described them: "Tabitha copper color[,] Celeste– black[,]—Hortense–black[,]—Kalisti black... Tabitha, looks well and presents a good appearance, but "complains considerably", is a first-rate cook reliable home servant—Celeste, Hortense, & Kalisti, are perfectly sound and healthy, honest, and industrious house servants."

Now, if I were certain that this was the right John Little, and had no other information, I'd put my money on Tabitha, not Hortense. She was the lighter of the four, therefore more apt to pass as white, and clearly unhappy.

But here's how they know it's Hortense:

http://kaloramapark.com/UGRRnomination.doc

How do we know the fugitive was Hortense? District of Columbia jail records on June 15, 1861, show that John Little committed a woman named “Hortence” to the City Jail for “safekeeping.” She was released to John Little 10 days later, on June 25.

The same link also hints at what regiments it might have been:

On May 27, the First and Second Ohio regiments--numbering about 1,750 men under the command of A.D. McCook--were sent to the northeastern boundary of the city, near a farm known as Bloomingdale, about two miles east of John Little’s farm

So there it is. The dates and names line up perfectly. Sounds logical to me.
 
I wonder if they issued her a spoon or a Springfield?

I wondered that, because being truly "black," not mulatto or any lighter shade apparently, it would be hard for her to pass as white and enlist.

If one reads the Washington newspaper article closely, she wasn't necessarily a soldier: "she was in one of the Ohio camps.... the fugitive was found, completely rigged out in male attire." Not in uniform, notice.

Even the shorter articles, which are probably rewrites of that one now that we know it did happen in Washington, say she was "found in male attire," not uniform, and they change "Ohio camps" to "Ohio regiments." But I wonder if "camps" was more accurate, and she found a job as an officer's servant, hoping to be able to march away with the regiment when they left the city.
 
I'm flattened. This whole thing was on my Christmas list for what would be GREAT to have found for the ' female soldiers ' thing, although please know I understand yes, falls short on some criteria. Like Andy said, fantastic story- personally got a huge kick out of the ' complains a lot ' kind of comment written next to th description- have to LOVE that. Good for her. Amazing, what James came up with just from a few lines in a paper, Holy Cow. And Thank You!

I'm not arguing, Combat Vet, just think if she were considered contraband, someone would have taken note of this?

With the female soldier thing, it just struck me that as a group, black women would have been incredibly likely to have gotten themselves onto the front lines- or tried. No one ever bothered to give the faintest thought to whether or not any of them were comfortable- living conditions as soldiers wouldn't be the shock it would have been for their white counterparts. Most were just, plain expected to pull off feats of labor which would have dropped most men- they'd have been physically up to the demands plus talk about a cause! Unfortunately, the same dismissiveness about black folks which makes it tough to track many genealogical paths for families makes it unlikely we'll find cases of black Americans who successfully pulled off the disguise. Rats.

Like you guys discussed, the one-drop rule probably ensured some of these women could have certainly passed for white. I don't know how strict the inner, social structures within the black troops would have been- would the men have tolerated women in their ranks as some seem to have done within white troops.

Anyway, please excuse slightly off-topic- the black female soldier thing is something I've been actively pursuing, SO odd to see it here, very nice!
 
I'm not arguing, Combat Vet, just think if she were considered contraband, someone would have taken note of this?

I agree. This was big legal news right then, if attempted as a precedent in the open.

My guess is he means they just kept her (him) without pay, unofficially, illegally. Even if she were hired, she may not have gotten any pay other than rations in the maximum of a couple weeks that she was there--the time between the Ohio troops arriving and her owner putting her in jail.

But the question is, did the soldier(s) she was working for consider her an escaped slave they had confiscated from the enemy (contraband of war), or a free black laborer?

The problem with the contraband idea is 1) she was the slave of a man in a Union area and 2) the idea was brand new. May 23-26 was when all that started going down, and it was happening with Virginia slaves at Fortress Monroe under Butler and was based legally on the fact they were escaping from a seceded state, which wouldn't apply to Washington DC slaves.

So there would be no legal or practical basis to confiscate Union men's slaves found in Union territory, meaning it would be outright slave stealing--which of course is why the colonel returned her as soon as her owner identified her.

So then the question comes, would these Ohio soldiers have been the type to try to steal a slave, either because they were underground railroad advocates who took pity or because they thought they could get away with stealing free help? It's hard to say. Ohioans had staged some famous slave rescues but the majority of course weren't taking risks to help slaves, whatever their personal feelings. These men were mostly new recruits, so they may have been trying to do things by the book, but on the other hand, they may have been testing the limits of what they could get away with.

Here's a brief summary of the Ohio soldiers' arrival in Washington under McCook in May, a few days or a week or so at most before Hortense escaped: http://books.google.com/books?id=iVVyFgyw9uYC&pg=PA31 Emotionally speaking, it looks like they might have had a quarrel with Maryland slaveowners and be glad to get revenge on one of them, but not so much with Washington ones.

The other question is, did they even know she was a slave or did she present herself as a free black? I'd think it would be more logical for her to present herself as a free black, because then there would be no possibility of looking for her master and returning her, and no one would need to fear charges of theft for keeping her with the regiment. In other words, as a runaway slave, she'd need to find someone willing to break the law for her, but as a free black, she'd just need to find someone willing to pay what she asked, which might have been no more than rations and shelter.

The fact that she disguised herself as a man shows she probably wasn't trying to openly ask for asylum, as the first true contrabands did at Fortress Monroe, because if she believed she would be openly and legally kept from her master, there would be no need for disguise. She certainly may have heard what was going on down at Fortress Monroe and used it for inspiration, though.

So that's my take on the "contraband" issue, but I'd be curious to read 101combatvet's theory about it.
 
Interesting! All of it, I mean- none of this occured to me simply because I did not know these points. And Ha! It would be an awfully good story if those men had helped her to the point of thinking up the disguise ruse, wouldn't it? Obviously I'm not going to start a rumour here, it's just a super perspective, makes a more involved and sympathic group of characters out of the Ohio soldiers. Given JamesB's descriptions of who they might have been, ( on one hand ) seems possible.
 
If she was dressed as a man than the Ohio men probably knew she wasn't a free black. For all we know they may have provided the men's wardrobe.

Well, there would be at least two possibilities:

She got the men's clothes on the farm or soon after (stolen off of a laundry line, traded for, bought with saved money, etc.), and changed into them before arriving in camp, presenting herself as male to the camp from the start until discovered. In that case, the soldiers who believed she was male wouldn't suspect she was in disguise and therefore wouldn't assume she was a runaway.

Or she approached the army camp as a female, presumably a runaway slave, and they offered to hide her in exchange for labor, sexual favors, for idealistic abolitionist reasons, or some combination of the above, and helped disguise her.

With the slim information, there's really no way to tell. If she was only a couple miles from home, even if her disguise as a male was successful to strangers, someone who knew her could have recognized her and tipped off her master. It would be easier to tell the real sex of a female that you knew, dressed up as a male, than a stranger.
 
Very interesting story. John Little's property was at Kalorama Road & Columbia Road, NW, Washington DC. Actually in 1861, the area was known as Washington County, District of Columbia, and was outside of Washington City, DC (Washington City was bounded by Florida Avenue, known at the time as Boundary Street). Here is the map witch marks Kalorama Park. I wonder if the park was part of the man's property.
kalorama.png

I think for the girl to run away like that, even though Mr. Little owned three generations of her family, it makes me wonder if she was being abused in some way.
 
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