Intrigue and Betrayal in Saigon—The Surprising First American Death in Vietnam

OSS Lt. Col Peter Dewey as a captain.  The dashing and well connected young officer accidentally became the first American casualty in Vietnam.

 

Lt. Col. Albert Dewey cut a dashing figure and had distinguished himself as Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative behind the lines in France when he got a sensitive assignment to help repatriate Allied prisoners of war (POW) in Indochina in September of 1945.  He was considered perfect for the job because he spoke flawless, perfect French and had the kind of idealistic democratic zeal common to the OSS—the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during World War II.  Within weeks, on September 26 he became the first American fatal casualty in Vietnam killed in a case of mistaken identity by Viet Minh troops he was sympathetic to.

Albert Peter Dewey was born in Chicago on October 8, 1916 into a distinguished family with important connections.  His father was a banker who served in the Navy World War I, served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Mellon, served as a financial adviser to the Polish Government and director of the Bank of Poland, and was elected as a Republican to Congress in 1940.  His father was a cousin of Spanish American War hero Admiral George Dewey and the family was also related to New York Governor and Presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey.  His mother, Marie Suzette de Marigny Hall, was descended from a distinguished Louisiana Creole. 

The boy learned French from her as was dually fluent by the time he entered school.  He was educated in Switzerland at the Institut Le Rosey, before attending at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire). He graduated from Yale University—the cradle of many OSS officers, where he studied French history and was a member of the Berzelius Secret Society with other well connected students.  Later, Dewey also attended the University of Virginia School of Law.

After graduation from Yale in 1939, Dewey became a journalist for the Chicago Daily News, the leading liberal and Democratic competitor of the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune in its Paris bureau. 

In Paris Dewey reported on the German invasion of France for the Daily News.  But he could not resist getting personally involved in the struggle against the Nazis.  He enlisted as a lieutenant in the Polish Military Ambulance Corps with the Free Polish Army in France. Enlisting in the medical service protected him from possible prosecution for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act by being a combatant. Following the defeat of the French army, Dewey made a daring escape through Spain to Portugal, where he was interned for a short time.

Back in the U.S. he worked for family friend Nelson Rockefeller in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs as part for Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy meant to discourage German and Japanese influence in Latin America.   Rockefeller once sent him to meet secretly with General Charles de Gaulle.

General William “Wild Bill” Donovan the creator and commander of the OSS recruited Dewey from his oft-tapped pool of Yale alums.  On August 10, 1944, Dewey parachuted into southern France as the leader of a 10-man OSS team which operated behind the lines for six weeks transmitting intelligence reports on German troop movements. For his service, General Donovan personally awarded him the Legion of Merit and the French gave him the Legion of Honor and a second Croix de Guerre.

Rather than further service in Europe or Latin America Donovan had other plans for his young hero.

As the war was drawing to a close the OSS turned its attention to the post-war world.  The organization operated with remarkable autonomy from the War Department, State Department, and even the President.  It saw that American interests and the interests of its Allies would diverge and even clash.  Nowhere was this truer than in Asia and the Pacific.  The British, French, and Dutch hoped to quickly re-establish colonial rule when the Japanese were defeated and expelled but nationalism and anti-colonialism had spread in the occupied areas.  The OSS had supported and supplied guerilla resistance led by local forces who expected independence.  That was especially true in Indo-China where they had worked closely with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh insurgency. 

The OSS considered the Viet Minh to be essentially nationalist and democratic although it recognized that Ho and other leaders had Communist connections.  That didn’t bother the agency which had worked with Resistance groups throughout Europe that included Communists and socialists.  In Asia the assessment was that re-establishing colonial rule by war weakened and weary imperialist powers was ultimately untenable.  In Vietnam it looked to the Viet Minh to establish a republic that would be pro-Western or at least neutral.  It counted on ancient Vietnamese hostility to Chinese encroachment to check advances there if the People’s Army ousted Chang Kai Shek’s ruling Kuomintang.

OSS Deer Team members pose with Viet Minh leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap during training at Tan Trao in August 1945. left to right are Rene Defourneaux, Ho, Allison Thomas, Giap,, Henry Prunier and Paul Hoagland, far right. Kneeling, left, are Lawrence Vogt and Aaron Squires.

The OSS worked closely with Ho to help it quickly move to assume power before the French could effectively return.  In the north, for example OSS sent in Deer Team, commanded by Maj. Allison Thomas, who parachuted into the Viet Minh base area to train them for operations against the Japanese. When Thomas and his team arrived in late July, they were greeted by a large banner proclaiming, “Welcome to Our American Friends.” With the tone for their work set, the Deer Team went about training the Viet Minh in the proper use of bazookas, carbines, and grenades. Before long, a Vietnamese-American Force was born.  Together they marched on Hanoi in August after the A Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and easily took the city.

With the full support of their American allies the Viet Minh quickly occupied administrative offices and began de-facto rule.  This was validated by an official American Mission led by OSS Capt. Archimedes Patti.  Patti witnessed the first parade of the Viet Minh troops and the first “international” ceremony where the Vietnamese flag was displayed alongside those of the Allies and the new Vietnamese national anthem was played after the Star Spangled Banner.  On September 2, Patti and his team watched as Ho Chi Minh read Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence before a cheering crowd. This apparent U.S. recognition of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese independence inflamed French opinion as most colonials had expected the Americans to refuse to deal with this up-start government and help France restore control over the colony.

Dewey’s mission to Saigon was expected to do the same in the South but he found a different situation in the old French colonial capitol.  Already on hand was British General Douglas David Gracey and 20,000 troops from the 20th Indian Regiment, mostly Gurkhas fresh from the long campaign in Burma.  By agreement among the Allies the Douglas was to take temporary control of Vietnam in the South and given wide authority.  He firmly supported the eventual restoration of French rule and was staunchly hostile to the Viet Minh.

20th Indian Infantry Regiment Gurkhas display Viet Minh trophies during the street fighting for control of Saigon.

None-the-less the Viet Minh had already occupied many government offices although there were soon skirmishes between them and the British.  Dewey’s mission was to facilitate the liberation of Prisoners of War.  In direct negotiations with the Viet Minh, he arranged the repatriation of 4,549 Allied POWs, mostly French but including 240 Americans, from two Japanese camps near Saigon.  He also indicated support for the Viet Minh assuming administrative control of Saigon.

This made General Douglas irate.  He declared Dewey persona non grata for ordered his expulsion from the country—an extraordinary slap in the face to an ally albeit one of considerably lower rank.  

Douglas was determined to oust the Viet Minh.  His Gurkhas were insufficient in numbers to do the job, so he issued arms to the released French POW and to some of the many French civilians in the city.  As Dewey waited in a hotel to leave the country wide-spread fighting began in the city.  In his last report to OSS Headquarters in Washington.  He wrote “Cochinchina is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.”

As street fighting raged Dewey was finally told he would be evacuated from Tan Son Nhat Airport on September 26.  He requested permission to fly the American flag on his Jeep to identify him knowing that the Viet Minh were only targeting the French and British.  Douglas curtly denies the request saying only generals were permitted by custom to fly national flags on their vehicles.

Dewey made it to the Airport but found that his flight had been delayed or canceled.  On his way back to the hotel he tried to wave past a Viet Minh checkpoint shouting in French that he was American.  That was a fatal mistake.  Assuming he was French the troops fired on his Jeep striking him in the head and killing him instantly.  another OSS officer, Capt. Henry Bluechel, managed to escape on foot.

A lurid U.S. press account of Dewey's death.

Upon examining Dewey’s body, the Viet Minh must have quickly discovered that he was an American.  Perhaps in a panic his body was dumped in the river and never recovered.  In Hanoi Ho quickly recognized that the shooting was a disaster.  He sent a letter of condolence about Dewey’s death to President Harry S. Truman.

Meanwhile Douglas was still having trouble asserting control of the city and even armed Japanese troops to join in the campaign.  That further inflamed the Viet Minh and rallied many ordinary Vietnamese to his cause.

British General Douglas Gracey welcomed French General Philippe Leclerc to Saigon with full military honors.

By December he had some control over the city and staged a welcoming parade and ceremony to honor French General Philippe Leclerc who assumed command in the name of France but advocated for a negotiated settlement.  That advise was rejected, Leclerc relieved of command and died in a plane crash in 1947. The war of independence finally ended after the infamous Battle of Diem Bien Phu in 1954.  Vietnam was divided with Ho Chi Minh in power in the north and a pro-Western monarchy in Saigon—a solution much like that which had been recommended by Leclerc.

With the defeat of France, the U.S. stepped in to shore up the shaky South Vietnamese.  Under the leadership of staunch anti-communist Allen Dulles, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which became the successor to the OSS in 1947, pushed for ever greater involvement into what became the Vietnam War to Americans and conducted operations in country and in neighboring Laos and Cambodia for many years.

If only the U.S. had heeded the stark warning from the first U.S. casualty in Vietnam.

A Prophet Gets the Word on Polygamy—Latter Day Saints Conform to Protestant Morality

Church of the Latter Day Saints President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff said God told him to do it.

On September 25, 1890 Wilford Woodruff, President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints came down to his office looking haggard.  He had not slept much the night before, he told his secretary.  He had been in consultation with God and in the night God had given him a vision of the fate of the church and its people if the practice of polygamy did not end—the Temples would be sized and violated, the President and the Apostles would be imprisoned, and the possessions of all the people confiscated.  With this revelation in hand, Woodruff went to the Apostles—a council of Twelve senior members—who approved a Manifesto renouncing plural marriage.  On October 1 the Manifesto was made known to the national press.  It was confirmed, at the insistence of the Federal Government at a Church General Conference on October 4.

Although Woodruff insisted he was acting only in accordance with instructions from God and not out of any worldly political considerations, it looked to much of the nation like the Mormons were caving to decades of escalating pressure against them by the Federal government.

Plural marriage, the preferred Mormon term for polygamy, was not part original Mormon practice as reveled to the Prophet Joseph Smith.  It seems to have been introduced through proselytizing and the absorption of a small polygamous sect in rural Maine.  In 1843 Smith received a private revelation approving of plural marriage, at least for himself and the Apostles.  The justification was the need to “rise up the seed of a new priesthood”—rapidly grow the society.

Smith and the Church continued to publicly condemn polygamy and deny participation in it, but it became an open secret in the Illinois settlement of Nauvoo, where the first Temple was built.  Much of the public antipathy to the Mormons grew out of the suspicion that polygamy was sanctioned or practiced and it helped lead to Smith’s assassination and the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo.

Polygamy was not publicly proclaimed until 1852, five years after the Mormons arrived in Utah, and eight years after Smith’s death. Smith’s successor Brigham Young, who had led his people halfway across the continent to their promised land, was an open polygamist.

John D. Lee, former right hand man to Brigham Young, sits next to his coffin at Mountain Meadow, the site of a massacre of an emigrant wagon train he was accused of leading, just prior to his execution by firing squad.  Lee's sacrifice was  the cost of ending the Federal Government's Mormon War in 1857, saved the church, and preserved polygamy.

The practice scandalized those back East and political pressure began to build to suppress the practice.  President James Buchannan dispatched the Army to Utah Territory in 1857, beginning the so-called Mormon or Utah War.  The church had over-played its hand in persecuting non-Mormons in the territory when a Mormon militia attacked and massacred an immigrant wagon train from Missouri at remote Mountain Meadows because some of its leaders were thought to have participated in past persecution of them.  The Army eventually occupied Salt Lake City.  Brigham Young was stripped of his post as Territorial Governor and was replaced by an eastern Gentile. Young delivered up elder John D. Lee as the responsible person for the massacre and continued to run a parallel, shadow government.

The infant Republican Party made the suppression of polygamy an important part of its platform.  When Abraham Lincoln came to the Presidency, however, he needed the support of Young and Mormon power in Utah to keep open the overland route to California and as a bulwark against Confederate ambitions in New Mexico.   When the Republican Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act which outlawed polygamy in States and Territories in 1862, Lincoln privately assured Young that he would not attempt to enforce it if the Mormon’s continued support of the Union cause.  A temporary truce of sorts over the issue was in force.

Then in 1874 Congress passed the Poland Act which facilitated charging individuals with violations of the polygamy ban.  As a show of force prominent Mormon leaders, including Brigham Young’s personal secretary, were arrested and prosecuted for plural marriage.  The Mormons reacted with defiance.  In the 1876 the doctrine authorizing plural marriage was officially published in a revised version of the Church’s Doctrine and Covenants for the first time. 

The Edmunds Act of 1882 made “cohabitating with more than one woman” a crime. Those who believed in polygamy could not try polygamists either as a judge or juror and polygamists and their spouses were banned from holding any office and territorial voting.   With most Utah’s residents thus excluded from voting anti-Mormons filled the Territorial legislature and took control of the educational system.

Mormon leaders in Federal Prison for polygamy during the period of the Great Raid.

By the mid-80’s authorities, led by Federal Marshalls, began what the Mormons call The Great Raid.  Communities across Utah and adjacent southern Idaho were visited, homes raided at night, and children separated from their parents and questioned about their parents.  Hundreds, probably thousands of men and their families fled to Mexico or Canada.

The aim to actually destroy the church was made clearer in yet another piece of legislation, Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.  The Territorial Militia, composed mostly of Mormons was abolished and ordered to disarm.  Fornication and adultery became Federal crimes meaning that polygamists could be charged with multiple offences.  Children born to polygamist fathers could not inherit from them.

Most ominously, the legislation disincorporated the Church, confiscated its properties, and even threatened seizure of its Temples without which believing Mormons could not uphold the requirements of the faith.  The Mormons were in disarray and despair.  In Utah alone there had been more than 2000 prosecutions for polygamy, adultery, and fornication.  Many men were convicted on multiple counts for each year married to each wife and were essentially held in prison indefinitely.  Courts held the ban against cohabitation even extended to women in separate households if they were financially supported in any way, instantly impoverishing thousands of women.  Much of the church leadership was in hiding and many had active warrants out against them.  President and Prophet John Taylor died while in hiding.

Taylor’s successor Woodruff was desperately seeking a solution.  In 1887 and 1888 he had asked the Quorum of Apostles if the Church should abandon polygamy.  In both cases Woodruff was told that they could not bend to temporal law in violation of revealed truth. Only the revealed word of the Lord could end the practice.

A polygamous Mormon family circa 1890.

In 1890 the Supreme Court upheld the Edmunds-Tucker Act and legal action to seize church properties, including the Temples, was begun.  Additional legislation was introduced in Congress that would bar all Mormons from holding office or voting whether they practiced plural marriage or not.

It was in this context that God apparently finally spoke to the President.

Even though the Manifesto as approved by the General Convention allowed previously married men to keep their wives and families and skirted the issue of sanctions for violating the ban, it was enough to relieve pressure on the Mormons.  Raids and prosecutions fell off sharply and movement on the suit to seize church property was halted. 

In 1893 Church property was returned and in 1894, exactly four years after Woodruff’s chat with the All Mighty, Democratic President Grover Cleveland issued a general amnesty and the Church replied by the dissolving the Mormon dominated People’s Party.  Although Mormons generally tended to support Democrats because their persecution was spearheaded by the GOP, Church leaders split affiliation with the two parties to assure support for both for the final push to the long cherished dream of statehood.

In 1896 Utah was finally admitted to the Union and the Church issued another Manifesto, this one supporting the separation of Church and State.

But the controversy was not entirely over.  Senate Republicans blocked seating Senator elect Reed Smoot because polygamy had not been eradicated in Utah.  Indeed, some plural marriages continued to be sanctioned in Utah by some members of the Apostles.  New President Joseph F. Smith, a great-nephew of founder, issued a Second Manifesto on Polygamy which explicitly excommunicating those practicing polygamy.

To this day Church leaders flatly declare that no recognized members of the church, practice plural marriage.  Yet it persists, largely in remote and rural areas.  A tiny Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and other break-away groups have been organized and continue to endorse the practice.  Prosecutions are once again on the rise in Utah in the early 21st Century.

 

Women in polygamous marriages and their children after raids on a break-away Mormon sect in Texas generated considerable sympathy for the families.

Meanwhile some sympathy and tolerance for the practice has grown with reports of suffering caused families in remote areas by occasional continuing raids and arrests.  The best public relations coup of all, however, was the long run of Sister Wives on the cable channel TLC, a reality show that has painted one polygamous family in a mostly positive light. 

The long running TLC reality series portrays a polygamous family in a mostly favorable and wholesome light.

A general live-and-let-live attitude on sexual and family matters has largely culturally usurped traditional American Puritanism.  In a way, just as the most vocal opponents of marriage equality had warned, tolerance of same gender matrimony, has left the door ajar for other traditionally so-called deviant arrangements, including plural marriage.

Meanwhile the Mormons have carefully burnished a public image of fostering an idealized, if paternalistic, nuclear family life featuring clean living, close relationships, and fervent support for traditional values.  On social issues, particularly abortion and marriage equality, they have sought to make common ground with the Evangelical Religious Right, and conservative Catholics.

Can the Saints ever shake the stained heritage of polygamy?  Can they find safety and security from persecution as part of a broader Conservative movement?  Will the Evangelicals who, in their hearts-of-hearts regard Mormonism as a satanic cult long allow political expediency to override their urge to smash heretics and perceived others? Stand by for the results.

Devils Tower—Native Holy Site Becomes First National Monument

   A 1950's era National Park Service poster promoted visits to Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

My old home state of Wyoming has a lot of memorable, iconic sights—the Yellowstone geyser Old Faithful, the front range of the Grand Tetons, Independence Rock on the old Oregon Trail.  But nothing is more unusual or more recognized than the formation that looks like a giant tree stump rising high above the winding Belle Fouche River in a remote corner of the state—Devils Tower.

After 10 years of futile efforts by the Wyoming Congressional delegation to have a much larger area including the formation declared a National Park on September 24, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt, proclaimed Devils Tower a National Monument. It was the first ever use of that designation.  Only 1,152.91 acres of the originally proposed park were protected.  

Two years later the rest of the abortive park in the drainage, including the nearby Little Missouri Buttes, were opened for public use—a victory for both timber interests and cattlemen seeking yet more open range grazing.

No one is exactly sure when the imposing feature was first seen by Whites.  Likely early trappers caught a glimpse, but accounts have not been found.  In 1857 Lt. G. K. Warren’s expedition to reach the Black Hills from Ft. Laramie was turned away from the area by a large party of hostile Lakota.  Warren’s log mentions seeing the Bear Lodge—one of several indigenous names for the rock—and the Little Missouri Buttes in the distance through a powerful telescope.  But some scholars believe, because he did not remark on its unusual configuration, that he was probably referring the Bear Lodge Mountains also nearby.

On July 20, 1859 topographer J. T. Hutton and Sioux scout Zephyr Recontre reached the formation.  They were a small party from the larger Capt. W. F. Raynolds Yellowstone Expedition.  But once again neither Hutton nor Raynolds left a detailed account.  

A 1900 photograph of Devil's Tower.  Few visitors came to the remote location far from rail lines and improved roads of any kind.  Most visitors packed in by horse and mule for days to see the marvel.

It wasn’t until 1875 that a U.S. Geological Survey expedition and its military escort under Col. Richard I. Dodge the formation was studied and described in detail.  Expedition member Henry Newt wrote:

Its remarkable structure, its symmetry, and its prominence made it an unfailing object of wonder. . . It is a great remarkable obelisk of trachyte, with a columnar structure, giving it a vertically striated appearance, and it rises 625 feet almost perpendicular, from its base. Its summit is so entirely inaccessible that the energetic explorer, to whom the ascent of an ordinarily difficult crag is but a pleasant pastime, standing at its base could only look upward in despair of ever planting his feet on the top.

Dodge was credited with giving the formation its now familiar English name.  As was so often the case, it came from a misunderstanding about a native name.  An interpreter mistranslated one of the native names—most of which were some variation of Bear’s Lodge in several different Plains tribe tongues—to Bad God’s Tower.  Expedition members converted this to “Devil’s Tower.”  Following standard topographical practice, the apostrophe was dropped from the official name given the formation.  We can be fairly certain that the translation somehow went awry because none of the many native legends associated with the rock have anything remotely to do with a “bad god.”

Of course, Native tribes had been aware of the Tower.  It was considered magical or sacred by many tribes—in addition to the Lakota and other Sioux the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, and Kiowa.  The Lakota, the dominant tribe in the area since their arrival from the area around the headwaters of the Mississippi in the late 18th Century and spectacularly successful adoption of the horse centered Plains Indian culture, regarded the Bear Lodge—Matho Thípila—as a sacred location second only to the Black Hills.

The various tribes have different origin stories for the great rock and many associations with mythic figures or great heroes.  Many used the Tower as the site of individual cleansing rituals, group spiritual practice such as the Sun Dance and Sweat Lodge purifications, and as a sacred burial ground for heroes and great shamans.  The Lakota associated it with one of their most sacred objects, the White Buffalo Pipe, a gift of White Buffalo Woman, a great spiritual mythic or semi-mythic presence. 

Of several origin stories from various tribes, the Park Service has heavily promoted the somewhat dubious Bear Legend connecting the tower to the Pleiades star formation--a Lakota tale grafted to stories of European origin.  This painting is on display at the visitor's center and is regularly used in Park Service literature.  

Among the many legends associated with the tower, the National Park Service, custodians of the Monument, heavily promoted one story in their literature.  In this tale, shared in slightly different forms by the Kiowa and Lakota, seven Indian girls were playing or gathering food near the river when a giant bear attacked them.  The girls fled and ran to a large stump.  They jumped on it and began to pray to the Great Spirit (this language is a tip-off that the story has been laundered through Whites and not collected directly from the people) for help.  Hearing their prayers, he began to raise the stump to the heavens.  As it grew and grew, the enormous Bear tried to climb the stump leaving his claw marks on the side and littering the base with the shredded bark.  The Bear could not reach the girls and went away.  But by then the stump had grown so high that the girls could not climb down.  Taking pity on their plight, the Great Spirit transformed the girls into seven stars directly above the tower, stars known to Europeans as the Pleiades.  It is difficult to tell know exactly how much of this popular story—I was entranced with it as boy—came from authentic tradition, and how much grafted from similar tales in Western mythology.

Standing in a spring snow, this Park Service Sign warns visitors to leave Native sacred objects alone.  Despite the admonition tourists steal or attempt to steal objects as souvenirs.

Today members of several tribes continue to hold ritual observances at the Tower, although burials are now forbidden by the Park Service.

It is also a popular tourist attraction, although it takes a fairly determined tourist to get there.  Located hours away from the nearest attractions in the Black Hills, far from any town of even modest size, well away from major highways, most visitors have to dedicate an entire day to seeing just this one sight.  There is only one café at road junction miles away and a Park Service concession stand on site for food.  There are a couple of 1950’s style motels nearby, a couple of dude ranches in the area, and camping at Monument.

 

Devils Tower became an alien landing place in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of a Third Kind sparking new waves of visitors to the remote location.

Yet people come.  Visits took a dramatic jump when Steven Spielberg featured the Tower as the alien landing spot in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  And it has become a Mecca for the growing sport of rock climbing.  Hundreds make the climb every season, as many as a dozen a day, using several well established routes to the top on every side. 

Native tribes, for home the site is sacred, objected to any climbing.  White climbers and the tribes were at odds for years until the Park Service brokered a “voluntary” compromise.  Since most tribes hold their holiest ceremonies at the Tower in June, the Park Service asked climbers to voluntarily refrain from ascending the rock in that month.  They estimate that 85% of climbers honor that agreement.  But authorities are powerless to stop those who do not.  And a climbing group and local tourist interests have sued the Park Service for even suggesting self-restraint.

On a nice summer day dozens of parties can be seen ascending the tower.  Here two groups are rappelling down from the top.

I visited Devils Tower several times as a boy.  A years ago, when my two oldest daughters were still children my wife and I made the long trip from the Black Hills to show it to them.  It was one of the few natural wonders that they saw on that Western trip that actually impressed them.  They even managed to hike the trail that encircles the rock, quite an achievement for kids allergic to walking.  

   

Speaking Up for Themselves at the First National Negro Convention in 1830

An early Negro National Convention.

As ever, it was hard—dangerous and hard—to be Black in early 19th Century America for Freemen as well as for slaves.  Take the Northern state of Ohio, for instance.  It had entered the Union in 1803 under an 1802 constitution that abolished slavery.  Although technically a Free State, Ohio was culturally Southern having been settled predominantly by frontiersmen moving west from Virginia and the Carolina through Tennessee and Kentucky before, during, and after the American Revolution and the widespread Indian wars that followed.  This was especially true of Cincinnati, which rapidly became the busiest port on the Ohio River.

Farming in Ohio was not naturally suited to the plantation system which relied on large numbers of slave laborers, so the ban on slavery mostly affected those in domestic service or hired out by their masters as laborers, craftsmen, and river men.  It was not a huge economic loss to forgo them and in actuality most masters effectively kept their personal servants in virtual bondage for their lifetimes.  But the white citizens were fearful that as a free state Ohio would become a magnet for free Blacks and for escaped slaves who would compete for wages and land.  Thus in 1807 the state enacted strict Black laws.

Similar to laws passed in border and other Northern States like Illinois, the 1807 act was meant to discourage migration to the state by requiring Blacks to prove that they were not slaves and to find at least two people who would guarantee a surety of $500—a prohibitive fortune worth years of income to small farmers, craftsmen, or merchants who might employ them—for their good behavior. The laws also banned marriage to Whites and forbad gun-ownership in a region where hunting was an important source of food, regulated occupations, and imposed numerous petty restrictions.  Needless to say, the rights and privileges of citizenship were denied to any Blacks who could jump through all of the hoops.  

In the early years of the century, the Black laws did discourage migration.  But it never eliminated it.  As circumstances and economic realities changed enforcement became lax, then spotty, and finally rare.  Part of that was due to a major shift in the population.  The threat of Indian warfare finally ended after the War of 1812 and the British evacuation of Ft. Detroit and the end of sponsorship of hostile tribes and helped open up the mostly unsettled northern half of the State.  That accelerated greatly after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made Lake Erie a major route to the West.  Most of the new settlers were decedents of the New England diaspora by way of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Up State New York.  These Yankees were in general anti-slavery and their influx was changing the political balance in the state.

But more importantly, the introduction of practical steamboats on the Ohio River created a boom in the trade on the river.  The larger steamboats required larger crews, especially deck hands and boiler stokers, as well as armies of dock laborers, warehousemen, and teamsters. 

A sketch of early steamboats and warehouses in bustling Cincinnati circa 1830 when Free Blacks were competing for jobs with White laborers.

Cincinnati and other river ports had no choice but to use Free Black labor or be undercut by the slave labor used at Virginia and Kentucky river towns like Wheeling or Louisville.  By the late 1820 the Queen City had a large Free Black population.   White laborers became increasingly resentful of competition from Blacks which undercut wages.  Under pressure, Cincinnati began to try to apply the long dormant Black Laws on local Freemen.  When that was not effective in driving out the population major rioting against Blacks broke out in July and August of 1829.  After bloody rampages and the burning of Black neighborhoods, churches, schools, and businesses 1200 Blacks were driven from the city and many resettled in Canada.  Not only were casual laborers affected, but a small but growing elite of Black businessmen and skilled craftsmen was devastated.  Many appealed to other Black communities, especially well established centers like Philadelphia and Baltimore, for financial assistance for re-location schemes to Canada. 

Eventually a Baltimore Free Black leader and activist, Hezekiah Grice issued an appeal to major communities to a national meeting to plan assistance for a major Canadian resettlement.  He argued that the U.S. would never be safe for Blacks and noted that there were already communities of former slaves who were freed during the American Revolution by the British and evacuated to the North along with Tories after the war.  A small number of escaped slaves were trickling into British North America as well, a number that would grow exponentially with the regular establishment of the Underground Railroad.

Grice found an ally, host, and a venue Philadelphia, home to the largest and most sophisticated population of Free Blacks in the U.S. thanks to the Quaker tradition of tolerance and relative proximity to slave states. 

                    Bishop Richard Allen, pastor of Mother Bethel and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Bishop Richard Allen was the most important Free Black leader of the first half of the 19th Century.  Born in 1760 as a slave to Benjamin Chew in Philadelphia, Allen and his family were sold to a Delaware Plantation owner.  While in bondage he began to attend Methodist camp revivals and eventually became a lay preacher to his fellow slaves.  As a skilled carpenter Allen was able to purchase the freedom of himself and his family and rode circuit as a saddle bag preacher before relocating to his hometown.  There he was invited to preach for the Black community at St. George’s Methodist Church.  Eventually restrictions on his community, especially segregated seating in the balcony and numerous snubs from White congregants caused him and his people to leave the church and establish their own Methodist community.  After meeting in homes and rental properties, Allen purchased, moved, and physically rebuilt an old blacksmith shop as his first church—the first African-American congregation worshiping in its own building in the country.  Eventually he was regularly ordained as a Methodist minister and his Bethel Church—now revered as Mother Bethel—became the nucleolus of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black Protestant denomination.  Allen became its presiding Bishop.

But his influence went far beyond his fervent religious activity.  He realized early on that he was de facto the leader of his community.  His first step was to form the Free African Society in 1787 to support community and aid recently manumitted slaves. It offered financial assistance to families and educational services for children or adults seeking employment.   As part of the effort Allen began the first school for Black children and adult literacy and Bible classes at his church.  He also published a Freemen’s newspaper, and numerous pamphlets and tracts on religion, temperance, and Black issues.

The Bethel AME Church--Mother Bethel--in its second building in which the National Negro Convention met.

Forty delegates, all Blacks from nine states attended the National Negro Convention at Mother Bethel from September 20-24, 1830.  Not surprisingly, Allen was elected to preside.  Debate focused on Grice’s Canadian resettlement proposal.

A minority were interested in the schemes of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to re-settle Blacks in Africa.  Supported by some well meaning religious folks, mostly Quakers and philanthropists it also drew support from “enlightened” Southern planters in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson who found slavery philosophically irreconcilable with liberty but were terrified by the prospect of freeing “savage and ignorant” slaves who would become violent and prey on White womanhood.  Convinced that Blacks and Whites could never live peacefully forever, shipping them back to their supposed homeland seemed the easiest solution.  Members of the convention recognized that for the virulent racism it represented.  Most of the established Freemen considered themselves culturally American and after generations had no connection at all to Africa.  Moreover the Colonization Society plan disregarded Africa’s ethnic and tribal divisions and the rights of native Africans to their own land.  By the end of the convention the Colonization Society plan would be flatly rejected.

But there was not total unanimity around the Canadian plan, although it was generally popular.  Canada offered a similar culture and climate and a common language—English—they already knew.  And with vast lands available for possible settlement, it seemed amenable and hospitable.  But many delegates were firm for striving for citizenship rights in American, which they considered home.

In the end, the delegates endorsed the Canadian plan and pledged to work towards it, but also decided to advocate more broadly for Freemen in the United States and offer sympathetic support to those still in slavery.  In the U.S. Free Blacks would demonstrate their worthiness for citizenship by undertaking a program of moral up-lift, temperance, strong families, chastity, education, hard work, and building black businesses and institutions.  Although sympathetic to those still in slavery, they took pains to separate and elevate themselves as Freemen.  Their political program was not radical, their method gradual.  It spoke only in general terms of a possible total end to slavery and held out the hope of winning over more sympathetic Whites.

                                    James Forten, leader of the American Moral Reform Society.
 

Allen was elected President of a new organization, American Society for Free Persons of Color to follow up on Canadian colonization and other parts of the program.  A second, parallel organization was established to promote dignity, morality, and respectability in the Black community.  American Moral Reform Society, led by Philadelphia businessmen James Forten and William Whipper emphasized temperance and virtue.

Bishop Allen did not long survive the Convention.  He died on March 26, 1831 at the age of 71.  But his work was carried on by others.

The scheme for Canadian resettlement eventually fizzled for lack of resources to promote large scale emigration and the establishment of Black communities.  Many Blacks, who did re-locate, found their welcome far less hospitable than expected and concluded that there was not much difference between White men on either side of the border.  Work turned more to American reform and rights and with the rise of a vigorous, mostly White-led abolitionist movement and the establishment of the Underground Railroad.  By the 1850’s a much more radical generation represented by Fredrick Douglass transformed the movement.

The 1830 Convention was the first of many Black Convention held in the years before the Civil War.  Philadelphia was the most common site, but gatherings were also held in New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.  National and state conventions were held almost yearly through 1864 and their proceeding reflected the growing changes and militancy in the Free Black movement.  New organizations were spawned and publications launched.

In 1859 a White newspaper observed, “Colored conventions are almost as frequent as church meeting.”

And it all began in Philadelphia.