the power to see his words into print. and later his in his presidency to use the telegraph to get messages out quickly. fdr had, which was network was brand new in 1930 233. president kennedy had brilliant advisors and television on and he was brilliant in his press conferences. the state department and, barack obama understood that was a new thing called the internet. and he, you know, had a web site which was the first. and donald trump understood twitter as a mechanism for reaching people. i think those were the top presidential communicators. excellent. well that's a that's a nonpartisan of presidential command. thank you all so much to our panelists and to all of for your wonderful questions. you managed to find.

good afternoon. i'm michelle crowell. i'm the secretary of the lincoln forum, and i will be your moderator for session two of the forum today. i'm not entirely sure that our it's probably facing better. if not, i'll just use my teacher and screaming at you. i'm not entirely sure that our next presenter actually sleeps. and you already know who i'm talking about because no one could be as productive he is and actually get a good night's. but we are all the beneficial of mr. sandman's deficiencies as year after year. jonathan white continues to enrich us with new sources and

scholarship on abraham and the civil war. for those of you who are not familiar already with john, john white's many accomplishment arts, he is a professor of american studies at christopher newport university, where he's taught since 2009, in 2019, he received state council of higher education, virginia's outstanding faculty. that's a really long name, jonathan the highest honor bestowed upon college faculty by the commonwealth of virginia. he is the author or of at least a dozen books. more than 100 articles. essays, reviews about the civil war slave and emancipation. african-american history, abraham lincoln and the u.s. constitution, even the books that he's written or would cut substantially into speaking time. so i'll just say some of the more recent titles, including emancipation, the union army and reelection of abraham lincoln, midnight america, darkness, sleep dreams during the civil war.

our little monitor, the greatest invention of the civil war to address you, my friend. african african-americans to abraham lincoln shipwreck. a true civil war story of mutinies jailbreaks, blockade, running and the slave and a house by slaves. african-american visitors to the lincoln white house, the of which made him a co-recipient of the 2023 gilder lehrman lincoln prize. now, unless he's published something in the last couple of days. yes. oh, -- he's like, he's which which i was going to say, which is entirely possible as these kind of nodding his head over there. john's most recent publication is this year's final resting places. reflections, the meaning of civil war graves, which which john co-edited with bryan matthew jordan and which we will hear about in a session tomorrow. and if that is not enough, john is the editor of both lincoln law and the lincoln forum

bulletin. serves as a director or advisor there on the boards of several lincoln and civil war organizations. and as importantly, or maybe more importantly, he somehow manages to have a personal life in which he is a devoted husband to his wife, lauren, and a very involved to his two daughters, charlotte and clara, who wish they could have been here to with us this year. we often see charlotte and claire running around the halls between sessions. and you know who are because they're the more petite and cute attendees in the stovepipe hats. but we in the lincoln forum family know him best, as are incredibly hardworking vice chairmen. so it is my honor to call to the stage my colleague and good friend, dr. jonathan white. well, it's funny, as i sat down next to michel, i told her that i woke up an hour before, wanted to both yesterday and today, and she said, well, that'll blend

really well with. the first line of my introduction. i, i really appreciate the lincoln forum really is a family and we say this a lot here but it's like a family reunion where we get to know each other and year after year after year, we all back to gettysburg to talk about greatest president. and i think the greatest american and daughters were devastated that they couldn't come today or this week. not so much because they wanted to hear me, but because love seeing all of you and. it's really been nice. how many? you have asked me if charlotte and clara would be here, and michelle told me she was going to mention them in in her opening. this is charlotte and clara here. in 2017. they don't let me dress them up like that anymore. now it's either harry potter or a hobbit. that's what they to be. now the last thing i heard charlotte say wednesday morning as she went out the door to school was, i don't want to go to school. i want to go to the lincoln forum and.

i have that documented on my ring. i can prove it and when we talked, we had some. and so we decided that the girls come this week. that's why they're not here. but clara was so heartbroken that was weeping when we told her that they couldn't come and she said, i want see jay and molly. and so jay and molly have very agreed to do a special for them saying hi to charlotte and clara. so they wish they're here in spirit. that's them. two years ago. so i'm going to tell a story today that's going to actually have to take us back to. the founding of the nation, the u.s. constitution, and had a provision that congress could not outlaw the slave trade for 20 years. but if congress wanted to, they could outlaw the trade after a 20 year period. and this was a compromise measure that allowed the deep south states like south carolina and to import africans for a set period of time. but most americans by the early 19th century, even if they were

pro-slavery, they recognized the horrors and the evil of the transatlantic slave trade. and in the summer of 1807, congress and thomas jefferson signed, a law that outlawed the slave. and this went into effect january 1808. but just because something is made illegal doesn't mean that it no longer continues. and so it did contain you. and by 1820, congress amended the law to declare that slave would now be piracy. so now it is punishable death by even with slave trading a capital crime american has continued to participate in the slave trade. and this is an 18th century image that have been produced. abolitionists, to show you a sense of what the holds of these looked like full of their cargo. now, the first story i'm going to tell is one that might be a little bit familiar and this involves a man named nathaniel gordon. nathaniel gordon was from portland. he was an experienced slave

trader, had done at least four slave trading voyages in the 1850s. and in 1860, he made another to the west coast of africa. and in august of 1860, he loaded up a cargo of 897 africans into, the bottom of his ship. he was very experienced, very skilled. he used a blade to cut off the of the clothing that the men and were wearing. he then used that blade to separate them male and female into the ship. but most the people on the ship were actually women and children. it's not something we would imagine. but he was going after the weakest, the weak. and in just 45 minutes he loaded these 897 human beings into the bottom of his ship, the eri. he then set sail heading east or heading west. and as goes he is approached by another ship. the high seas now under international law at this time british ships were not allowed to search american vessels. the british had treaties with

many of the powers of the atlantic world to be able to search ships for evidence of slave trading. but the americans had the memory of the war of 1812 and they did not want british sailors coming on to their ships because they british sailors impressing sailors into the royal navy. and so under international law this point in 1860 if it is a british nathaniel gordon does not have allow them on to search if it's an american ship they can go board and search. and so he has a decision make do i think they're british or america and and he takes a gamble and he runs up an american flag as opposed another nation's flag. thinking it's a british ship. but it turned out to be the uss mohican and so they approach and they search ship and they find the 897 human beings below deck, and they arrest nathaniel gordon. now, this is not an image of the men, women and children who were captured, who were saved,

gordon's ship. but these were africans who were saved on another vessel. and again, you look at this, you can see in this photograph half the range of age how young some of these captives were. now, gordon was to new york city for trial. new york was the commercial hub of, the united states, and it was also the financial of the slave throughout the 1850s. and by the sixties, new york is the center of maritime trials. and so gordon is sent to new york city for trial. but the problem that we into in this story is that the president, a pennsylvania doe face named, james buchanan, and calling him a doe, he was a northern democrat, southern principles. so he was a pro-slavery northerner and everybody knew that nothing bad would happen to nathaniel gordon. and so the jailer allowed him for a $50 bribe to walk around the streets of manhattan and have dinners at. someone said as a gentleman and knew he had nothing to fear

because the reality is the slave had been piracy for 40 years and not a person had ever faced the full penalty of the law. what usually happened was a would be bribed and or a a guard be bribed and either the jury would be a hung jury or the guard would allow the person the defendant to escape. well the first trial took place and the jury was not sequestered and it was almost certain that some of them were bribed and it led to a hung jury. but then abraham became president. and in may of 1861, he instructed his interior department, his secretary of the interior, to destroy the slave trade. and he instructed his u.s. marshals to make sure that. they went after slave traders and new u.s. marshal in new york city, a named robert murray moved gordon. out of what we would today call a minimum security prison and moved to what we would today considered a maximum security

prison, a place known nicely as the tombs. and gordon was longer allowed to walk around the streets of manhattan for a $50 bribe. he kept under lock and key and. they went to a new trial in november of 1861. this time, lincoln's prosecutors sequestered the jury that they could not be bribed. and this time, nathaniel gordon found guilty and sentenced be executed. now you, might think that this is a great step in the history of humanity, that someone who is engaged in one of the worst crimes possible will finally receive the punishment he deserves. but believe it or not, fowler, dozens of americans wrote letters and, petitions to abraham lincoln, asking lincoln to either pardon gordon or to commute the sentence and not execute him. and this an example of one of the petitions. this is from portland, maine. and you can see the long number of signatures on the right hand side of this of this. and i don't know if you can make out the printed what's printed

on this slide. they write to lincoln and they say, you, nathaniel gordon, has a lovely and an infant child and a nice and fond sisters and a respectable circle of friends. and so for all these reasons, it wouldn't be right to execute him. other people wrote to lincoln and said, nathaniel gordon never saw coming. no one's ever been executed for this crime and it wouldn't be right to execute because he didn't think he would be executed. and so you just can't do it. gordon's wife and went to the white house in february 1862 to plead with lincoln for gordon's life. and as many of you know at that, in lincoln's personal life, his two little boys were very sick and one willie lincoln would be dead within two or three weeks. he would die at the end of february, 1862. and lincoln, the pressures of the war and his personal life falling, he just not could bear to meet with these two women. and lincoln then did what we

often can see in hindsight is a characteristically esque move, he granted, a two week stay of execution and lincoln did this he said so that gordon could for the awful change which awaits him. i mean there's lincoln's gallows humor for you you're going to meet your maker. you better get ready to give an account for what you've done and this is a little bit of the the actual document that's in the national archives the stay of execution as dan weinberg will tell you, that is not abraham lincoln's handwriting on this. but lincoln said in granting this respeot, it becomes my painful to admonish the prisoner that relinquishing all expectation of pardon from hume by human authority. he himself alone to the mercy of the common god and father of all men and can see what lincoln is doing here. he was reminding a slave trader

that africans were human beings, made in the image of god who deserved and respect. they were not of merchandise to quote tawney, to be bought and sold whenever a profit could be made. and so lincoln gave gordon two weeks to think about what he had done. and then two weeks later, the execution is scheduled to take place. well, the night before the execution, some friends of nathaniel gordon snuck some cigars in to him and they had poison hidden in cigars. and the night before the execution takes place, gordon opens cigar and takes the poison, and the guards hear him writhing in pain and they in and they find him on the floor. and they but they will not allow him to cheat the gallows. and so they a doctor who pumps out the poison his stomach. and the next morning they take him to the gallows in, the tombs, and he is executed. the only person to be executed for slave trading in american history and. it was lincoln's showing to the

nation, to the world. how thoroughly he was set on destroying great evil that had been taking place for more than a century now the nathaniel gordon story familiar to many in the lincoln world. my friend rod stewart alter has done an excellent book called a hanging captain gordon and at one point i wanted to do history of the slave trade during the war, and i was going to write about gordon and a lot of other people and i eventually captivated by another story of a man named appleton oak smith and appleton oaks. and the story up until now has been virtually unknown. and as i began to research it, i found that it unfolds more. how much lincoln to kill off the slave trade. and so what i'll do with the remainder of my is tell you about captain appleton smith and some of what i tell this story in this book called shipwrecked now appleton oak smith was born into a prominent literary family in portland, maine. his mother was a very important

first wave feminist named elizabeth oak smith, and she was prominent writer, poet, lecturer, novelist, playwright she was in all sorts of literary worlds, and she was very prominent her day. everyone who she was, if they were in or upper class society and. i am convinced that if the story i'm about to tell you hadn't taken place, we would all know her name the same way that we know people like elizabeth stanton and susan b anthony. when elizabeth was six years old, her married her off to a man in his thirties named sieber smith. and i am convinced that at the beginning of their relationship it was a happy marriage. but over time it deteriorated. he was not very successful in the different he took in life and she ended up being much of the financial support their family. and by the end of her life she looked back on their marriage with. great bitterness and disdain and complained. in the 1880s that when she married him, she was 16 and he

was about 33 when she married him. he was old and very bald. now, first, i have to say i don't see anything wrong with that. and i know about a quarter of you in the room can sympathize with me, but even more so, this photograph taken more than 30 years later and i would kill for a head of hair like that. well, stephen smith, a prominent journalist by his own right in the 1830s, and he created a fictional character that some of you probably familiar with. it's a guy named jack downing and jack downing was a made up figure who would travel from maine down to washington, dc and give sort of country advice to president andrew jackson and jack downing. stories became very, very popular in the united states. and it didn't matter if you were a whig or a democrat. everyone loved downing, henry clay, daniel webster, abraham lincoln, in his twenties devoured the jack stories. but democrats like andrew

jackson and stephen douglas also loved jack downing. and so this is the family that appleton smith is born into. but by the late 1840s, the marriage is dirtier operating and elizabeth is becoming very prominent in literary circles new york city, and she's invited parties, literary soirees in manhattan. and her husband doesn't go with her. and so instead she brings her oldest sons and appleton would go these soirees and some of them were hosted this beautiful young woman and lynch and i can't prove this because appleton only refers to this woman. elle but in the late 1840s, he fell in love with a beautiful woman named elle. and i think it's got to be an lynch. and for some reason, the relationship fell apart. and by the early 1850s, he decides has to get out of town. and so he leaves new york and travels around coast of south america and heads to san francisco. and he gets to francisco thinking, this is where he's

going to spend the rest of his life is the time of the gold rush. there's a lot of opportunity, but he also arrives and he finds that san francisco is rife crime. there's a tremendous amount crime and in fact, a lot of arson. the city was burned down several times in 1851 and 1852. and group of local men formed what called the san francisco vigilance committee. and this was an extremely organization of people who decided we're going to put down the crime through extralegal means. and this committee arresting people and putting them trial in their own courts and then executing them. and appleton got involved in this but he was a little uncomfortable with this extralegal judicial process and so by 1850 152 he resigned from the vigilance committee and he acquired an interest in this ship, the mary adeline. he set sail from san francisco back the coast of south america, looking a cargo that will take

back to new york city. back home. but he can't find one. instead, when he gets to rio de janeiro, he finds a portuguese firm that says we have a cargo bound for the west coast of africa and to make money. he agrees, take on that cargo. and so he loads the cargo and takes on several of the portuguese businessmen and they head across the atlantic ocean for the congo river. when he gets to the congo river, he finds the current is very strong and it takes him several days to fight the current, make it around the point into the river. and during this time british ships of british africa squadron approach him and remember international law. at this time does not have to allow them to board, but he does. and presumably they look around for evidence of slave trading and presumably don't find any. and i know that they were good at what they did because a week earlier they had found a slave trader and records of that are in the british national archives. and so the british leave and

appleton eventually makes it around the coast of of the river into the congo. and again, the current is so strong that his ship gets beached and three thousands. an african warrior see his ship and assume that he's a slave trader and attack him and he would have been killed except for those two british ships that had boarded earlier come to his rescue, give him a cannon. they fight off the african and they rescue him and help get his ship off the bar, the river. this incident, international headlines all the atlantic world and it becomes known as the battle of the congo. well, appleton makes it back to the united states settles in new york city with his family and he gets caught up in a number of other international. he becomes a right hand man for william walker. the gray eyed child of destiny or blue eyed child destiny. i forget his nickname, guy who tried to form a pro-slavery in nicaragua through the

filibustering campaign, he became a gunrunner for the cuban liberation movement in, 1850 556. and then in 1855, he meets a woman named isadora rabbit cheyney. and after ten days of knowing her, he marries her in maine and as a bit of advice for students in the room, it's probably never a idea to marry someone after ten days of knowing them now. maybe some of you have had better luck with that, but they get married after ten days acquaintance and it becomes a very rocky, unhappy marriage. by the time the civil war comes around, they have three young children by the end of the 1850s, appleton is flat broke and he he and his wife and three kids and his brother and his and their kids all move in. mom and dad on long island of you have probably lived that where the kids come home later in life and they try to make money by forming a newspaper called the great republic. this would be a national literary magazine, but it never

takes off in 60. appleton okay. smith gets involved in working with the tammany democratic political machine in manhattan. and when the secession crisis he puts on rallies to try to fight for the union, he writes to new york senator, william seward, and says, will you join us in a bipartisan effort? but he asks seward to sign on to pro-slavery resolutions. and that's something that seward will not do. and seward simply ignores him. now, i mentioned that appleton flat broke living with mom and dad at this point, and he somehow gets with a fish oil factory owner, long island, and they they need whaling vessels to go out and hunt for whales to bring back whale oil, to use in the fish oil factory. now, many of you probably know the whaling industry had been very large in this country up until about 1859 and in 1859, patrol boom was discovered in titusville, pennsylvania and

after that discovery, the whaling plummets and. it looks really suspicious that a new guy is getting into whaling and so somewhat so. appleton out and starts buying buying whaling ships in new bedford, massachusetts and new york city. and the guy in new york sold him the ship, said, yeah, i'll take your money, the ship. and then immediately goes to robert murray, the u.s. marshal in manhattan, and says, i think this guy is going to go on a slaving voyage. you should arrest him. now, they had no real evidence against, appleton, oakes, smith at this point. and so what they did was they said, well, we're going to suspect that, a, he is disloyal. well, maybe he's pro confederate and everyone knew that appleton wasn't pro confederate. he had been putting on these pro-union meetings earlier in 1860 and 61, but they used that as a pretense to go and arrest under lincoln's suspension of, the writ of habeas corpus. and again part of the story going to be how lincoln went to extraordinary means to kill off the slave trade. so they throw appleton into fort

lafayette in new york harbor and he is in this case made here casement number two. and he's in there other political prisoners who are suspected of disloyalty and for including a u.s. senator from california and appleton is in prison and his mother a very prominent person writing to everyone she can think to try to get him released. and this is a letter that she wrote to abraham lincoln talking about how patriotic appleton was. and she enclosed a patriotic that appleton had written. and i believe that lincoln knew who she was because lincoln kept, this letter and it is now actually michelle's care at the library of congress in the lincoln papers there, appleton's wife also to abraham lincoln. lincoln didn't know who she was. that letter is buried in the national archives. he didn't keep that one. the mother in law and the the wife were working together to try to get appleton released. even they actually hated one another at this point.

eventually the federal government decided to move william seward decided to move appleton to fort warren because they believed it would be to get a conviction in a court than in a new york city court. and appleton, at this point didn't know why he was moved to fort warren on christmas day, 1861. appleton there with a lot of other political prisoners, members of the maryland state legislature, and all these political prisoners just hated william seward and the way they celebrated christmas in 1861 was they made up a doll that looked like seward and they put him on trial for treason against the united states for destroying the constitution. they put him on trial. they had judge and a jury and they found him guilty. then they executed the little doll. and one of the legislators who was there said the guard watching got drunk on eggnog. and so they hoped that next morning he wouldn't remember what he had seen on christmas night. well, word comes in january 1862 that appleton is to be released

and he thinks he's going to be set free. but when he comes out of the fort's gates, he is greeted by the u.s. marshal and the federal prosecutor. boston, he is arrested and he is taken to the charles street jail. and i'll throw in as an aside here. i know there are some of you from boston. you go to boston today if you've ever to the liberty hotel, that was the charles street jail. it had opened in 1851. by 1973, it had fallen apart. and a federal judge ordered that it be closed. and now for a mere six or $700 a night, you can stay in a prison cell at the street, jail. so appleton is thrown in prison there he is taken to trial. the prosecutor charges him with being the head of an enormous trading ring in appleton. innocence to this charge. he goes to trial in june of 1862 and he find a lawyer to defend him. seward and the prosecutors and the marshals worked pretty

strategically to keep him from being able, to get adequate counsel. and so uncle represented him. and from what i know, never want to hire a relative to be your lawyer. and his relative did not him. well and i mean part it may be he didn't have a lot to work with but the strategy that they came with was they had about a dozen women, girls sitting next to him, including his mother, his sister in law, and of his daughters and. they hope that this would appeal to the jury. oh, look at what a nice man he is, all these women around him. and at one point, his sister in law, fanny, testifying and as she was testifying from the witness stand, passes out and appleton gets up from the defense table and runs up and catches her and they get smelling salts and they wake her up in the jury just thinks wow look at this but it wasn't quite enough to get an acquittal so he is sent to the charles street jail and in doing the research for this book, i pretty well convinced that his jail cell is now part of a restaurant called

clink. and so you can have a really nice expensive meal right outside appleton oakes in his cell. well, appleton was a really interested in guy. and the guards talking to him. and so night they would allow him to stay the guard room while they locked up everyone else, and they would just talk about and politics and world travels because he had been all over the world and then at night he would typically go back into his cell and they would lock him in. so the night of, september 10th, 1862, they do this and they're in the guard room and they're talking reading the newspapers and a word comes that one of the prisoners up on another floor medicine. and so the guards to take the medicine to this other prisoner. and when they come back, appleton is gone and they he's gone to his cell. so they go in, they lock the cell door. well, the next morning they slide the breakfast under his cell door and he doesn't get up to eat it. and about 2 hours later, they go

to the door and they say, appleton, get up and he doesn't move. so go and they get the guards and the guards come in unlock the they unlock door and they go in and they rip off covers and there are piles of clothes, other things that he had put under the blanket make it look like there was a man asleep under there and somehow he made his escape. appleton went to havana, cuba from there, his brother's sydney was living in havana at this time and his brother working as a photographer in havana. and so appleton gets out of jail, makes his escape, and goes down to havana where he recuperates his health for the next few months. and then he turns to confederate blockade running. at this point, he very bitter and angry against lincoln, seward and the union and he wants to do what he can to help the confederate cause and for the next year or so he runs cotton between galveston, texas

and havana for the confederacy and has some speed chases as high speed as they can get in the 19th century on the gulf of mexico now normally at this point my talk i would tell you all that this image is on ebay for sale now and that as a college professor, i don't quite make money to be able to buy this. and i would say to the audience, if you want to get me an early christmas present, i would be very grateful now i have to tell you, and i hope don't tear up with this. so in so our our board member, patrick anderson, has been an event at carthage college, kenosha, wisconsin. that's his alma mater. and he's on the board of trustees there. and so i told that joke in carthage college, and i got about the same low level of laughter when i told it, too. and what i didn't know that patrick's wife, kim, elbows him and says, you know, you got to get that forum and patrick's sydney went on ebay and bought

it. and last night i'm choked up. where's patrick? in the back. last night patrick comes to me and he says, i have an early christmas present for you. and he hands me this little thing wrapped up. and i have no idea it is. and there is this photograph that sydney oaks smith took, and i'd like to believe this is right from the roof of the house where they had been living in in havana. so thank you, patrick, for all you do for forum and for me, i really appreciate it and thank you to kim and sydney so appleton is the lam here in havana. but american authorities still to get him back. and this is where fate comes into play. there was a cuban slave trader named jose agustin ah gillis, who had been involved, a really horrific slave trading deal in cuba. and he escaped to manhattan in early 1864. and the cubans wanted to get our guy ellis back and the wanted to

get appleton smith back. and the problem was there was no extradition treaty between the united states and spain so there was no legal to do this. but william. seward as far as i can figure out. williams the secretary of state gets together with spanish minister in washington, d.c. and says, how about this? you kidnap guy and send him back and we'll kidnap your guy and send him back and we'll both get what we want. so robert murray, the u.s. marshal in new york city, goes and finds margolis, arrests him and sends him back to cuba, where he gets 19 years at hard labor for his crime. the leader of cuba, domingo dolci sends the cuban police to, sidney oaks, from his home in the middle of the night somewhere between 11 and 11 p.m. and midnight to arrest appleton. okay. and they go in, they break the house, and they find a very sick in bed and they say, get of bed and come with us. and he says, i'm under orders. i'm very ill. i'm on medication, can't move. and they say they don't care.

you get out of bed. and so they drag this sick guy out of bed and they take him to the front of the house and they're talking with each other. it him. is it him? it's him. it's him. and one of them goes back in and finds a servant and says, can you get us a photograph of appleton oak smith. and so the servant gets picture and they bring it out and. they look at the picture and then they look at the guy that they've arrested and they realize they got the wrong guy. they got appleton's brother, and somehow appleton had found out this is attempt was going to come and he escaped from cuba and this made international headlines or at least national again the conservative members of lincoln's cabinet were at what had edward bates the attorney general said that william seward these are bates his words was led the hazardous measure a very doubtful policy at least if not clearly illegal by his that it would be a capital hit to win the favor of

the extreme anti slavery men and gideon wells, the secretary of the navy said caused a traditional limitations are to seward unnecessary restraints and seward was not didn't take this well, seward responded and said this a nation is never bound to furnish asylum to dangerous criminals who are offenders against the human race. in other words, slave traders are people who are committing a crime against and they can't have the to asylum in another nation. they can be detained and sent back. this became an issue in the democrat in the presidential election of 1864. the democrats put it into their party platform and believe it or not, the radical republicans with john c fremont put it in their as well criticizing lincoln for this lincoln staged silent until after the election and in his annual message congress. he said this december 1864 for myself, have no doubt of the

power duty of the executive under the law of nations to enemies of the human race from an asylum in the united states. in other words, a slave trader will not get protection here and again, i wanted to make the point the gordon story shows us that lincoln was willing to fight to the slave trade and the appleton folks. this story shows us he was willing to conceivably violate national law through suspension of habeas corpus and him and then violate international law to have him kidnaped and swapped in this way. well, the story of appleton smith as a few more twists turns and i'll just give you a flavor because there's a lot more i could tell you but it's in the book as well. apple tin somehow made it out of and up to canada now he a curious thing here i mentioned that he had his wife. i saw her for ten days before they married. and i mentioned that they had a very unhappy marriage and their

family life was was very rocky. well, you may not believe this but indiana a very lax divorce law in the 1850s in india in in the 1850s and sixties, you could get a mail order divorce and. there were lawyers in new york city advertising in the papers hire me and i'll procure a divorce for you in indiana. they would just make paperwork that said you lived in indiana then they could get you the divorce and somehow in august of 1864, appleton, oak smith procures a divorce from saying he's a resident of adams county, indiana. and the funniest thing about this, and i just remembered this last night as i was putting my slides together, he says that she him on the day he was. and i thought that's a curious way put it. so he procures a divorce from asada, he goes to canada and he promptly marries his cousin augusta mason.

he, his cousin slash new wife and his three children from his first wife over to england. and he settles there. he summons the jilted ex-wife, who does not yet know. she's a jilted ex-wife to come to england and she arrives thinking she's going to be reunited with her husband and children. and instead he says, here's some papers them or you'll never see the children again and not knowing what to do. she the papers and leaves while appleton spends the next. eight years in exile living in england, his mother, meanwhile, is still working for pardon. after april of 1865, she stops trying get lincoln to pardon and she turns to andrew johnson. and in 1867 she met with andrew johnson and johnson was on the verge of pardoning appleton oak smith when the jilted ex-wife i sort of finds out, and she to the white house meets with andrew johnson says my ex-husband's a scoundrel, don't

pardon him. and the great irony is that andrew johnson, the guy who pardoned every ex-confederate then refuses to pardon appleton oak smith. well, appleton remains in exile until 1872, when ulysses grant becomes convinced that he's innocent and grant grants the pardon and leaves england with his family and comes back to the united states, he lands the coast of north carolina and. he's walking through the streets of either beaufort or morehead city, one day, and he sees a land auction going and he decides, i'm going to help the auctioneer out. and so he puts in a very low bid on some land. and the next day he's walking the streets and someone comes up to him and says, you know, you got to pay for that land. you bought it. and he what are you talking about? and they say no one else bid. and so bought land in north carolina and that is where he would spend rest of his days and this is so i've done number of

interviews i've done civil war talk with jerry parker povich and i've aaron master program with the four score series. and both jerry and aaron have said me appleton is like the forrest gump of the 19th century. he shows in every moment and even in north carolina, he shows up in reconstruction, politics a really amazing way. now, he had been a pro-slavery before the civil war who was arrested and convicted of outfitting ships for the slave trade. now he settles in reconstruction. north carolina now. and in 1874, he gets elected to the state legislature as a probe, black civil rights, anti klan politician. and i don't know how to explain. and you look at this picture, do i have a pointer? here he is. i think that's him right there. and he's standing elbow to elbow with a black legislator.

he in this in this biracial full legislature fighting for black political civil rights. it's an incredible thing. and later in the decade, he travels to new york and he shares a stage at the cooper union with henry highland garnet, one of the great black preachers of the 19th century and fight for the abolition of slavery, the world. this is just a taste of the extraordinary story of appleton oak smith. and i hope that it gives a new window on how thoroughly lincoln administration was dedicated to destroying the slave trade during the civil war. thank you so much. we we've we've got about 10 minutes for questions. and so just please come to the microphones as that the audience and c-span can hear you.

okay. thank. i didn't pick up if you said was he guilty you knew i was right. what was he guilty of? was he really outfitting the ships for slave trading or was it really for whaling? that's the million dollar question. okay. and this is the part and i really with how to write about this in book in 52 with the battle of the congo, i do not believe he was on a slave trading voyage. i don't doubt that the portuguese intended to coerce him into a slave trading voyage. and that was unheard of, where people would take other people to the coast of the congo river and essentially force them into slave trading voyage. so that could have happened. but i don't think he intended to in 1852. as for an 1861, i don't. and the the evidence so a slave trading or sorry a whaling

voyage in the 1850s generally would have been a three year voyage. so if were a young man who went off to the whaling voyage and you had young kids, by the time you came back, they would be years older. and if you had one or two year old in your family at that point, you knew you really had a problem. and so this the whaling voyages of that era were very long. and you would have to put a lot of things on to the ship for a whaling voyage like that. apollo ten and his business partner claimed that they didn't want to do a traditional voyage and that they were going to go out for a few months and they were going to hunt a few whales. they weren't going to load up a whole ship of whale oil. and and then they were going to use that, the fish oil factory. and so they claimed he claimed innocence his whole life his mother claimed his innocence whole life. the seward and lincoln and the prosecutors believed he was

guilty for their whole lives. they fought against him getting a pardon and in a sense caught him too early. nathaniel gordon there was no doubt 897 people are on his ship. they he was guilty, in a sense. gordon smith was caught before he actually did anything. now, the prosecutor said that he was he was the head of a large slave trading ring. and i don't believe was true. but whether he intended to do it on this voyage, i'll know for sure. and so i went through a number of iterations in the book and ultimately what i settled on was i tried to allow the story to unfold as if you were reading it in, the papers. so here, here are the arguments making. here is with the prosecutors saying. here's what lincoln's doing and in the end, and this may be unsatisfying to some readers, but in the end you read the story and think different readers will come to different. and that was the best way i thought to do it, just because i couldn't know for sure. that said, he certainly was up

to trouble at different points and i make bones about that. yeah. what was the fate? the 897 gordon captive. oh, that's a great. so the of the 887 captives the united states of the colony of liberia earlier in the century and was a place that we all are familiar with through the colonization movement that lincoln was a part of. and that was a big issue during the civil war. and when the american vessel. so when british vessels captured slave ships, my recollection is they would send those captives to sierra leone. and when american vessels captured american slave ships they would send them to liberia. but it's it's still sad story because not only are those people not returned home, they're taken to somewhere very far away, but they also then face racial discrimination in liberia, because they're there

was there were more light african-americans who had settled there and who would treat them terribly and put them in this observing status because they were africans, a much darker skin and of them died even just on the voyage to get there. and then they got there. they did not have equality even there. so it's really a tragic story in so many ways. yeah, going to san francisco at that time was not an easy jaunt. seems that did he just pick up on the spur of the moment and decide was going to go? what was his purpose for going? he so yeah that's a great so my favorite book on the the gold rush is leonard richards's richardson's gold rush and the coming of the civil war. and he shows just how hard it was to get there, what many young men would do is they would become part of companies and they would sort of, you know, a company would pool its resources and get a ship and you'd pay to go your way.

well, he did. he actually he had been a sailor since he was six years old. his family, a history of sailing going back generations. he did his first voyage to china when he was 16. and so got a job on a ship working as a purser. so he was the guy passing out the money and so he actually paid to go, which was a nice thing for him. he kept a journal the whole way around south america and it's incredible every stop he makes he writes about. so if there's anyone watching this who does american history you can actually a tremendous amount from his journal. yeah thank you very much for your research and thank for a very entertaining story the question would have is with all this, uh, running around the world. yeah. how did he finance us how did he finance it? that's a great question. let me answer an easier one first that you didn't ask, and that is i want to give a shout out one of my students at christopher newport.

a couple of years ago, i had a student named daniel and i had him as a research assistant through our summer scholars program, and i gave daniel a list of names and i said, look for guys i know they were slave traders and see what you can find. and one day he came into my office and said, have you ever heard of appleton oak smith? and i said, no. and he's if i ever heard that name, i wouldn't have forgotten it. and he said, well, his name keeps coming up all these articles and daniel, i well look into him. see, we can find a daniel the ball rolling of me uncovering this story and i really owe this and the research a large to one of my undergrads who's now a clerk for a federal judge in texas, really proud of how he's doing now. as for the financing, i don't how he financed he was running different maritime businesses. he had an office in, lower manhattan near the docks. he running chandler ship channeling businesses out of and commercial ventures out of.

so he was running businesses that were sending ships all over the place. his brothers for him in those if was involved in slave trading which again i'll never probably know for sure but if he was there were portuguese companies that also out of manhattan so brazil oil and i owe all this to john harris who's a phenomenal historian who's done incredible work on the slave trade. he has a book called the last slave ships brazil shut down slave trade in 1850. and after that, the portuguese firms moved to manhattan. and that becomes the financial center, the slave trade, until it's killed off a decade and a half later. so if he was getting financial backing from of his other business ventures, it would have been from those portuguese in new york city. thank you soit's my