Chapter Two (1785-1790): Going to Africa Via Boston
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
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| 15. Quaker Grave Yard at Fat Hog Bay, Tortola |
In May 1785, Thornton left London, but before he did he seeded the laurels that might crown his return. The day before he boarded a ship to Tortola, he sent two embalmed ptarmigans from Scotland and some geodes to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. He asked him for seeds of Alexandrian senna which Banks had told him might grow in Tortola. He closed by asking Banks' “commands to a country which contains so very ample a field for observations and study.”1
Thornton came to Tortola to assume his birthright as a gentleman of fortune. What better way to communicate that to Sir Joseph than to offer him the island's natural beauties. With the Comtesse Beauharnais, he preferred to couch it in sentimental terms. He was going to Tortola to see his mother. To men of affairs like Sir Ludovick Grant, he added a touch of noblesse oblige: “my property will require my paying a visit there.” Of course, his property had been doing quite well without him for the past quarter century.
Some biographers describe Thornton returning with an overriding sense of the evils of slavery.2 However, he had been around aristocracy and knew the pleasure of being outnumbered by servants. Evidently, thanks to his memories of early childhood or his unbiased scientific curiosity, he was at ease around blacks. There was no organized opposition to slavery on the island. The Quaker Meeting in Tortola disbanded in 1760. The issue of slavery arose in the Meeting minutes in 1759, but the death and departure of members, leaving only six behind, was the more likely cause.3 A heartfelt conversation like the one Thornton had with Wilkinson in London could not be repeated in Tortola. On the island with just over 100 working plantations , there were 1,000 whites and 10,000 blacks. The Thornton family of four owned 160 slaves. There is no evidence of his having any immediate revulsion to slaves at work for his benefit.
Nothing he might have written about the visceral experience of homecoming was published or has been found and quoted by his biographers. Shortly after he arrived, he wrote “Some Account of Lettsom's Island” as a favor to his mentor. Although about a much smaller island next to Tortola, it shared the same flora.
16. Lettsom's Island, detail of engraving based on Thornton drawing
“There is the greatest variety of beautiful corals, sea-ferns, sea eggs, and various productions that I almost ever beheld.... The sea looks purple with them sometimes, when very clear.” There was also “the great American aloe. The whole hill abounds with them, in great perfection. I have seen some of these plants forty feet high, and could easily distinguish them seven miles.”4
It is easy to picture him in 1785, ecstatic with the vegetable kingdom of Tortola and eager to draw and catalog it. A high point in his sojourn on the island was a note from Sir Joseph Banks that he received on June 25, 1786, about a year after his arrival. Back in London they had talked about “seeds of the Senna Alexandrina.” Banks enclosed some with a note predicting that success in growing it would “bring considerable profit” because of demand for it in London. Thornton wrote in his account of Lettsom's Island: “I planted the seeds with great care but succeeded in only raising one. It was very flourishing, and a negro child seeing my attention paid to the plant was led by curiosity in my absence to pull it up to examine it and that blasted my hopes.”5
Thornton also hoped to practice medicine in Tortola. He did but not with the success that Lettsom had, and for good reason. He decided not to take any fees. One letter Thornton wrote to Lettsom during his first year in Tortola was primarily about his medical experiments with plants, chiefly cinchona, the curative powers of which Europeans had learned from the Incas. He also briefly boasted about his curing patients: “I have given very often and have cured with it not only many fevers, but dropsies, that were deemed incurable....” Lettsom didn't seem to believe him and asked for no particulars. 6 7
Thornton talked about slavery with his parents, likely during a discussion of Lettsom's experience. He gathered that his mother would not abide having any of their slaves freed unless they were removed from the island. Whites blamed crimes and demoralization among the slaves on Tortola's free blacks. Thornton made a point of not suggesting that he wanted to free the slaves that made up his half share of the plantation. He did not want to distress his mother.
Meanwhile, Thornton's
step-father was not eager to make a division of a property, half of
which had not yet been planted with sugar cane.8 The property was not easily divided. Generally, Tortola plantations terraced the
mountain sides of the island. Thornton's parents owned "Pleasant Valley," a rectangular
plot, a half mile long and a quarter mile wide that was about a half
mile up from the southern shore of the island. They also owned a
narrower strip of land that climbed about a mile to the top of the
mountain.9
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| 17. Thornton owned half of plantation #27 |
The fabulous wealth of West Indian sugar plantations is one of the cliches of Western Civilization. Thornton seemed to have embraced that claim and only in time understood mitigating factors: hurricanes, wars and demographics. Fevers that left slaves dispirited culled whites. Plantations fed the market for sugar but not for slaves. Virginia slaves owners had excess slaves to sell, not so in Tortola. There is no evidence that Thornton ever tried to learn the business. In order to bolster the assets side of an accounting prepared shortly before his death, Thornton put a shine on the plantation: "a sugar plantation in Tortola containing 120 slaves, with buildings, stock capable of making 120 hogs. of sugar of rum etc. worth 6,000 Pounds but say 3000 annually or 1,000, half coming to me." Thornton did not note the years when there were no profits.
Thornton's older cousin Isaac Pickering did manage to support a country estate in England, but he had full ownership of six plantations. When he died, his other cousin, Dr. Lettsom, wound up owning Pickering's 1500 slaves, and died before figuring out what to do with them. Thornton grasped that maintaining a personal fortune would require more plantations. What else could a Tortola dowry entail?
It is not certain when Thornton's marriage plans fell apart.
According to his future wife, his
courtship of a rich heiress was “broken off by some
treacherous means, ... [which] occasioned a serious illness and
caused his visit to America."11 There is no reason to discount what Thornton's future
wife learned. In 1786, the embarrassment of the marriage negotiations
was followed by a fever. The fever led to isolation on the mountain
top. There he had his epiphany. He would free the slaves he owned but
not before satisfying his mother's stricture and establishing a
republic of free blacks in Africa where he could take the slaves he
freed.
He saw himself as the leader of a movement that, if successful, might soon end the slave trade, and eventually slavery itself. If he took free blacks to Africa, that would encourage slave owners to free their slaves. They could no longer justify keeping their slaves because freed blacks only joined the ranks of the burdensome poor and committed petty crimes. Anyone escaping slavery in Africa could find refuge in a republic of free blacks in Africa. Once the country prospered, it could outbid African slave traders and free the slaves it bought.12
It would seem that the logical upshot was to return to England and join Smeathman. Instead, Thornton decided to go to America. He didn't have to explain why to his parents who had Quaker relatives, merchants all, in Philadelphia and New York. It made sense for their son to see the western horizon of the Quaker world. However, Thornton saw those relatives as stepping stones to Boston. He evidently remembered what Franklin told Smeathman. Blessed with a fortune, Thornton came to America in pursuit of fame.
He landed in Philadelphia on October 18, 1786, and had to finesse a problem. As he would explain in a letter to Lettsom, his plan to free his slaves "as well as accompanying them to Africa is unknown to my mother." He could not let his mother's relatives in America know about his crusade and he didn't. A fellow guest at a dinner party hosted by a leader of the city's abolition society wrote in her diary that she met: “a young man lately
from the west Indies named Thornton, who is eminent for his great
understanding, being an author, and traveling now for information to
publish a new book.” She was surprised later to learn that Thornton was related to her husband. He also dispelled any hint that he was fleeing a world bottomed in slavery.
He took a slave with him, a teenager named Tatham, who likely took care
of the horses he also brought. 13 14
Within a week of that dinner, Thornton was on his way to Boston. Franklin was back in Philadelphia. Thornton likely dropped in to see him, but in a letter he would soon write to Lettsom, he didn't allude to having Franklin's or anyone else's blessing or instructions. On November 18, he wrote from New York City where stayed with a relative. He gave Lettsom an intense rehearsal of his plans and his sacrifice. The gist of it was that he had determined that his parents had no interest in freeing slaves, and "if I am disposed to free them, I must take them entirely away." He would free his slaves that were worthy and take them to Africa. He labeled those left behind as "improper companions." He knew that Smeathman was trying to drum up support for a return visit to Africa in which he would take destitute blacks. Thornton characterized Smeathman's mission as commercial and a mission of charity. Thornton would take free blacks who were already civilized and prepared to create a republic to end the slave trade.
The heartfelt passages in this and his other letters to Lettsom were less about the evils of slavery and more about the sacrifices Thornton proposed to make: “Be kind enough my dear friend, to give me thy advice and assistance, but consider attentively every attention of mine in this affair. It is the most important which certainly ever engaged the attention of one man.” He hoped Lettsom would raise money by subscription for “equipping” the mission. He noted his own financial sacrifice: “If it be considered that I sacrifice eight or ten thousand pounds, besides my practice; which, with the pains I have taken in the study of my profession, would doubtless bring me a good living, it might serve to stimulate others to do something of consequence.” All that said, he told Lettsom not to drum up support too loudly: “For fear that I might meet with any interruption in the execution of this, I would not have it made generally known, therefore beg thy secrecy” except with people who might give money for the cause.(16)
In this and other letters to Lettsom, he didn't reveal who in Philadelphia gave him the road map on which to chart his course to save the world. Thornton evidently did get advice from someone to go to Newport, Rhode Island, because that is where he started his crusade. Philadelphia was the home town of Benezet who remained an honored figure after his death in 1784. He never mounted a campaign to take or send blacks to Africa. He opened a school for black children in Philadelphia. However, his ideas found fallow ground among non-Quakers. In 1773, a decade after Benezet's book appeared, two Congregationalist ministers in New England, Ezra Stiles and Samuel Hopkins, discussed whether two talented blacks who came out of Africa to learn about Christianity should be supported in a mission to return to Africa and spread the Word. Then Stiles veered toward white supremacy, the Lord would simply make blacks disappear. Hopkins expanded the missionary idea to include leading blacks back to Africa. Meanwhile, free blacks themselves who organized self help organizations in Newport and Boston made returning to Africa one of the tenets of their societies.
Thornton had a reason to look for non-Quaker allies. He could avoid the moral scruples of Quakers. Thornton had likely learned from Smeathman that while Quakers offered money to take blacks back to Africa, they refused to buy guns for them. Thornton liked being a Quaker. He would never flirt with another faith. Sitting in silence and seeking direction from God was a tonic. However, he rightly sensed that seeking support for his scheme in Philadelphia would only invite the formation of a committee that would let moral imperatives overrule military necessity. One attraction of taking blacks back to Africa was that it would possibly entail a naval exploit to rival the storied service of his cousin Robert Foster.
By mid-December, Thornton was in Newport, Rhode Island, and found not only Hopkins there but also the Newport African Union Society. Thornton spoke to the society and boasted in his next letter to Lettsom that 2,000 of them wanted to return to Africa. He also wrote an essay to sow seeds of hope before unveiling his plan. A Newport newspaper printed an offering from "T" written in the style of Ossian, a faux bard then the rage who rhymed about characters who had superhuman emotions expressed in vague but suggestive words. “T” wrote that the hero Morni was filled with the urge to free slave when he saw the light of the dawn on a mountain top.
Thornton gloried in his meeting with free blacks whose respectful attention to his ideas impressed him. But judging from what the leader of the Newport African Union Society, Anthony Taylor, wrote to Thornton, they didn't want him to lead them. They wanted money to finance their own exploratory trip to the coast of Africa and assurances that they would own the land once they settled on it.(17)
While in Newport, Thornton learned of Smeathman's death in London and that his assistant sailed with a ship load of blacks and white prostitutes. Authorities more or less forced both groups to go to Sierra Leone. That news gave Thornton some credibility because he knew of early planning for the trip. That validated what he had been telling the members of the African Union and Hopkins. Indeed, the 67 years old preacher
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| 18. Newport, Rhode Island, Washington Square Long Wharf 1818 |
When Thornton moved on to Boston, he found that the society of blacks there had already petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to help them return to Africa. In an 1816 letter recalling those days, Thornton credited the enthusiasm he created in Newport for inspiring the petition in Boston, which is highly unlikely. One of the Boston blacks, Samuel Stevens, wrote to Taylor on June 1, 1787, that they "do not approve of Mr. Thornton's going to settle a place for us."(19)
Thornton's obsession with keeping his name out of the newspaper likely blunted his impact. He wrote to Lettsom about reaction to his plan: “Samuel Adams, with whom I am very intimate here, has examined it particularly, and approves of it wholly. I am afraid to publish it, lest it might be handed to my mother before the scheme be ripe for execution, and I would not that my mother should have unnecessary uneasiness. I love her, and all my relations, but I hope if they do not approve of my making a sacrifice of a few years of my life, my mind will rest satisfied with the approbation of a higher Being.”
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| 19. Boston State House in 1801 |
The plan he gave to Adams was likely his “General Outlines of a Settlement on the Tooth or Ivory Coast of Africa.” It distinguished his crusade from that sent to Sierra Leone. He also discarded the rhetoric of his essay about Morni. His “General Outlines” celebrates the Christian dimensions of the crusade. Indeed, he notes the importance of “northern” blacks. West Indian slaves well knew tropical crops but they had been denied the blessings of Christianity. “W. T.” closed his outlines with this exhortation: “...my friends what infinity of happiness shall be theirs who deliver from bondage and call unto Christ so many thousand souls!” In this letter, Thornton did not credit his Quaker roots for his crusade: "When I was in England I thought the sugar sweet but saw not the bitter tears that moistened the ground, but when I had been awhile in my native country, and viewed the situation of the blacks, I regretted often that I was born a slave-keeper." Then, "again and again" Thornton thanked God "and thought it was for an end of his own.”
Within two months, Thornton was back in Philadelphia. A year later, July 1788, he complained in a letter to Lettsom that he received no to a letter he wrote to London for the blacks asking for help. He claimed that the legislature wanted to help but that depended on finding "a proper place" to settle them. He also claimed he was then ready to lead a group or a small party to Africa. In an 1816 letter, Thornton recalled why the legislature backed down after showing great enthusiasm: "When however I explained to them the intention of taking the Blacks to Sierra Leone—then Members of the Legislature expressed an unwillingness to send them out of the limits of the U.S., & wished a Settlement to be made in the most southern part of the back Country between the whites & Indians. I informed them that I would never be instrumental in placing those men, who were now comparatively happy & in a state of protection, between the Indians & Savages on their Borders, where they would become a prey to both...." In the official record, the petition sent by the blacks was sent to a legislative committee that never reported back. However, in an October 1787 letter written after Thornton left New England, Taylor was still excited by possibility of legislative support for a trip to Africa.
The free blacks in Philadelphia organized their own self-help group in April 1787. If he talked to any of them about his Africa plans, it did not have any impact. In 1789, the Newport union of blacks asked the Free African Society of Philadelphia to pray with them for a return to Africa. The Philadelphia society responded: “with regard to the emigration to Africa that you mention, we have at present little to communicate on that head, apprehending that every pious man is a good citizen of the whole world.”
Lettsom did not want Thornton to go to Africa, but he did cater to Thornton to the extent of acquainting the leaders of the
British abolition and African colonization movements of Thornton's
plans and zeal. All of Thornton's future ideas about his creating and leading a republic of freed slaves in Africa were worked out in letters to those worthies in Britain and also anti-slavery advocates in France. There was one exception. In a letter Thornton wrote to France in 1789, without naming him, he quoted the thoughts of James Madison on the issue. He was a full agreement with Thornton as to the need but didn't speculate on the means. Madison wrote them out himself in the draft of the letter.
Thornton
must have eventually realized that wanting to send blacks back to Africa
won him many friends among whites and no enemies. In a 1790 article
in the American Museum magazine, Ferdinando Fairfax, a young Virginia
slave owner, addressed the issue of emancipation. He began by noting
the popularity of the topic in general, and then argued that sending
freed slaves to Africa was the only solution.(32)
He wrote the article in Richmond, Virginia, and did not mention
Thornton. They would soon get to know each other. In 1794, Fairfax
would write to his godfather, President George Washington, and suggest that he
give Thornton a job in the new federal district on the Potomac River.
Thornton and Madison became friends when they boarded in the same house in the summer of 1787 when Madison wrote the Constitution. Then he was briefly in Philadelphia in 1789. But nothing came of Thornton's collaboration with Madison on his Africa plans. A friendship that would serve Thornton well was probably based on their senses of humor and mutual delight in puns not in their mutual belief in African colonization.
Thornton himself later described a more revealing episode in their friendship. In a May 7, 1800, letter to then Vice President Jefferson, on how to end the yellow fever epidemics that had ravaged Philadelphia since 1793. Thornton urged cleaning Philadelphia's necessaries. He recalled that “during the sitting of the Grand [Constitutional] Convention at Philada. [in 1787] our amiable and enlightened friend Madison...lodged in the same house with me.” James Madison asked him what he “thought was the best mode of correcting the effluvium,” which is to say, the stench arising from what passed for toilets back then. Thornton's answer was vintage Thornton, at the ready and conclusive.
I
observed the Servants preparing Ley (a lixivium of Wood Ashes) for
making Soap, & some lime Waggons going bye at the same time, I
told him the Materials were at hand & he should witness the
immediate effect.—I
threw some quick lime into the Ley, & when it was slaked &
mixed, the whole, (then become a caustic Alkali) was thrown into the
Reservoir of the Privy; & no sooner had it mixed with the
fæculent matter, than the vapour was changed & rendered
innoxious & without the least smell.(22)
In 1802, Secretary of State Madison would put Thornton in charge of what became the US Patent Office.
Thornton's self regard as a man of science had gotten a boost while he was in Newport. On January 19, 1787, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia along with 18 others including Lettsom and several other foreigners. Thornton was listed as living in London. It's not known who nominated him. Franklin likely did based on Lettsom's opinion of the young man, and the impression Thornton made on him in Paris. He attended his first meeting in July. Twenty-two members were present. At that meeting they elected 12 new members including Joseph Banks of the Royal Society. Then Thornton missed the next five meetings and for good reason.(21)
He more or less moved to Wilmington, Delaware. While Thornton's long letters to Lettsom were mostly about his taking blacks to Africa, he also shared observations on American character. For example, unlike in Britain, it was impossible to find out how much a lady was worth: "to ask after a lady's fortune is a great affront." So he began to eye girls. That summer Thornton met John Dickinson, Delaware's delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and took aim at his 15 year old daughter.(23)
The Convention finished its business on September 17, 1787. Shortly after that Thornton moved to Wilmington. It must have been a long and interesting courtship of the father in order to get permission to “address” his daughter, but no documentary evidence remains, save that Thornton became a citizen of Delaware in January 1788. Other than an interest in his daughter, Thornton had other matters in common with Dickinson. Delaware was a slave state and Dickinson didn't unconditionally free his slaves until 1786 despite his being a Quaker. Dickinson finally decided not to part with his daughter.
Thornton revealed that in a long letter to his parents in which he also revealed that his mind was very much on Tortola. In an earlier letter he asked how much the plantation produced and his step-father took that as a criticism of his management. Thornton assured them that he only wanted to know more to improve his position in marriage negotiations. Everyone could see that he didn't have a job so it behooved him to explain his means of support.
His parents had asked him to come home and he cheerfully said he would. He instructed them on how to spread word that he was coming back to practice medicine. Before he had cured and not charged a fee, now he would. He also wrote notes to several slaves including Tatham's mother telling her that her son was a good boy and would soon be home. There was no mention of Africa to either his black or white correspondents. He also intimated to his parents that he might be interested in buying another plantation which would mean owning more slaves.(24)
A few days after writing the letter in Wilmington, he was back in Philadelphia and bought stock in John Fitch's steamboat company. He never explained why he did not immediately go back to Tortola. Perhaps knowing that he was a member of the Philosophical Society, a rich West Indian planter, and a Quaker, other investors, who were mostly Quakers, encouraged him to invest. In July 1788, he informed Lettsom that he invested to the extent of owning one-tenth of the boat, which was probably an investment of $200. Thornton likely decided that his talents were needed in Philadelphia more than in Tortola. He explained to Lettsom that he was "much engaged in the steam-boat and find it an object that requires much study to effect."
To what degree “much study” led to hands-on tinkering is hard to establish. Thornton had experimented with a steam-cannon which was an idea that Leonardo Da Vinci had sketched. In Philadelphia, Thornton demonstrated its ability to shoot bullets before three witnesses including two members of Fitch's board of directors.(25)
John Fitch, the genius behind the steamboat, was a clock maker by trade, and more a visionary than a fabricator. He had lived as if in a picaresque novel after he left Connecticut for the West. While watching the Ohio River flow by he got the idea of a steamboat. Then he was captured by Indians and taken to England as a prisoner by the British army. Released after the war, he returned to America.
As visionaries were wont to do, he asked congress for money. It was then meeting in New York City. Then he visited legislatures and political leaders from New York to Virginia. Finally, in 1786 in Philadelphia, he found monetary support and a craftsman. A watchmaker named Henry Voight was able to make a steam engine. They made a trial run of their steamboat before delegates to the Constitutional Convention. In the spring of 1788, Fitch and Voight began building an improved boat that could carry passengers.(26)
As the earliest historian of the company put it, “perfect as were Fitch and Voight in the theory, they were embarrassed in practical success by their ignorance of the respective proportions which the boiler, cylinder, condenser, and air pump ought to bear to each other.” Thornton's suggestions for each stream engine component didn't improve the performance of the engine. Fitch wrote in his notebook that Thornton's condenser "is undoubtedly one of the best calculated to condense without a jet of water, but...." A smaller condenser did the job better. Still, Fitch reveled in the doctor's enthusiasm.34
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| 21. Thornton drawing from Westcott's John Fitch: Inventor of the Steamboat |
When the steamboat was ready for trials in September 1788, Thornton gave the impression of being the sole moving power. A French journalist was on board:
I went to see an experiment which was being tried near the Delaware, on board of a boat, the object of which was to ascend rivers against the stream. The inventor was Mr. Fitch. He had formed a company to carry out his enterprise. One of the stockholders and his most zealous advocate, was Dr. Thornton,... who I saw was assailed with jokes on account of this steam-boat. He was annoyed by these pleasantries which appeared to me to be very much out of place.36
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| 22. 19th century illustrator's conception of Fitch's first boat |
With a new small condenser designed by Fitch, in the spring of 1790, the steamboat consistently plied the Delaware River at speeds of 5 to 7 miles an hour. The company soon began collecting fares to ferry passengers. At the time it was made, no one gave Thornton credit, except his future mother-in-law. There is one known issue in which Thornton overruled Fitch that became a notable but not essential part of the design. Thornton insisted on a handsome cabin where passengers could sit. Fitch objected that it was too high and would slow the boat. Thornton's fellow directors supported Thornton. (37)
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| 23. 19th century illustrator's conception of Fitch's second boat |
His ultimately marginal influence on the boat shouldn't detract from the figure he cut in Philadelphia in 1788, 1789, and 1790 as a man of vision, if not genius. When John Fitch killed himself in 1798, he gave most of his estate to Thornton, who was then advised by a Kentucky congressman not to to touch what was essentially controverted and worthless. Jacques Brissot de Warville, the Frenchman who hailed Thornton's work on the steamboat, thought he was the most impressive man he met in America. Thornton had “vivacity” and “agreeable manners” very much
like a Frenchman. (Brissot also peddled Thornton's Africa saga. He had sent someone to investigate West Africa, and had led the blacks in Boston to petition the government there to support their return to Africa. Of course, Smeathman and Boston's blacks had acted independently of Thornton. He also assured Brissot that if settled in the West, savages would kill the freed slaves.)
Then Thornton jumped ship. The
boat that had carried passengers across and up the Delaware several
times, as per newspaper advertisement, was not repaired. Fitch and his directors saw no future in a steamboat service centered in Philadelphia. The company planned to build the "Perseverance," a larger boat designed for service in the West. They focused on the Mississippi River and New Orleans, then under Spanish control, with the Ohio River as one way to get there or, by adding a sail, down the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico. That excited Thornton who drafted a letter to be sent to Spanish officials in New Orleans. Thornton took upon himself the task of arming it with cannons.
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| 24. James Madison in 1784 by Peale |
In the midst of his making plans to end the slave trade and perfect the steamboat, Thornton assigned himself a relatively simple task. He saw an advertisement for a design contest for the new Library Company of Philadelphia building. In an 1802 letter, Thornton described how he went about making a design: “...I got some books and worked a few days, then gave a plan in the ancient Ionic order, which carried the prize."(33)
He won a share in the Library Company worth $40. It is not known how many other designs were entered in the contest. But the second prize was given to Thomas Carstairs, one of the city's leading builders. The library board modified Thornton's design by making “an alteration in the steps and stone basement, and some deviation in the ornament and disposition of the doors and windows."(34)
There is no record of Thornton objecting to the changes in the design or having anything to do with construction, which proceeded quickly after the cornerstone was laid on August 31, 1789. On the cornerstone, Franklin led the list of names honored, followed by the board of directors, and ending with the librarian. There was no mention of an architect or designer. Then after Franklin died on April 17, 1790, money was quickly raised and a sculptor selected to honor the great man and a statue was soon placed in the library. That took the focus off Thornton's design of the building.
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| 25. The Library Company in 1800 |
On October 16, 1790, Thornton left Philadelphia for Tortola. By leaving when he did, he missed out on what everybody in Philadelphia had been taking about since July. That's when the congress, then meeting in New York City, worked out the Compromise of 1790 that brought the federal government, both congress and the executive, to Philadelphia for ten years. Not only would Thornton's friend Madison return, but President Washington would unveil his plans for the new nation's capital to be built along the Potomac River that would receive Congress in December 1800.
More to the point in Thornton's mind at that time was getting immediate congressional support for the steamboat both by awarding Fitch a patent and giving him Western land to compensate him for his work of such national import. Even though work on the new boat had hardly begun, Thornton extolled it in a letter to a Delaware congressman: "Mr. Fitch's labours are now perfected. The boat is the admiration of all the philosophic and ingenious...."(36)
However, Thornton had promised his parents that he would return and being in Tortola would bring him closer to Africa. He was still adamant that his plan to take blacks there would succeed. On November 13, 1789, he had written to Lettsom discounting the failure of the mission to Sierra Leone which resulted in the death of most of the whites and demands to be returned to England by the blacks. He ignored Lettsom's pleas that he benefit humanity in other ways. Thornton insisted on his destiny: "....I am confident that this settlement will be productive of more good than anything that could be offered in favour of the blacks. I must request thee, my dear friend, to forward it as much as lies within thy power, and do not consider the sacrifice I wish to make as any sacrifice; for I am young, active, weaned from the dearest connections, and single..." That said, when he left Philadelphia, three days after their marriage, he took his 16 year old bride with him.(35)
Thornton never retrospectively analyzed his visit to America. In 1821, when he was 61 years old, he wrote a long letter to Thomas Jefferson, and pleaded for his help in getting a diplomatic post so he could participate in the slowly unfolding revolutions against the Spanish crown in South America. To strengthen his bona fides, he told of aspirations he never had. He claimed that when he a student in Edinburgh, several years before the French Revolution, he was a warm advocate for South American revolution. He added that in Paris, through the agency of the Countesse Beauharnaise he asked permission from the Spanish government to explore the natural history of Mexico. That was also unlikely given how quickly he left the City of Lights for a tour to the Hebrides. In the letter to Jefferson, he also described a meeting he had with Franklin in Philadelphia, and claimed the sage offered to finance him "if I would travel in the Service of the United States, & only keep a regular Journal of every thing which I might think worthy of Observation, & which should be delivered to the Government." Thornton recalled that he declined because of ill health, not because he had to go to Africa.
Ironically, in 1821, the Monroe administration was about to get involved in sending America's free blacks to Liberia. In 1816, Thornton was not shy about claiming to be a founder of the movement, but Protestant ministers uncongenial to Thornton and Southern planters, including Madison, were the driving force. Thornton sat on the Colonization Society board but took a back seat as he busy bodily added Greek independence to his list of causes.
In the meanwhile, in 1814, he publicly shared his memories proving that he was responsible for the success of John Fitch's steamboat. By 1819, he privately claimed that he had invented the steamboat and prompted friends like Ferdinando Fairfax to insist to congress that he had. The degree to which Thornton distorted what he did during his visit to America betrays his hidden doubts about what he had accomplished. It certainly meant that his return to Tortola was not to be an idle honeymoon. He had to plot to make his mark in America, if not Africa. He decided to tap his knack for languages, excited by Celtic bards in the summer of 1782, to write a dissertation on the inadequacies of the alphabet. Then a notice in an American publication prompted him to capitalize on his talent for copying designs out of books and enter the design contest for Capitol of the United States.
Go to Chapter Three
Footnotes for Chapter Two
1 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Banks, May 1785
2 Gordon Brown, Incidental Architect, p.5
4 WT to Lettsom 26 Nov 1795, Pettigrew vol. 2 pp549-55
6 WT to Lettsom, 22 May 1786, Pettigrew, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of John Coakley Lettsom, Volume 3, pp. 222ff (google books)
7 Lettsom to WT 28 November 1786, Papers of William Thornton p. 36
8 WT to Dick, 2 June 1792, Papers of William Thornton pp. 189-91.
10 Jenkins, p 61, evidently quoting Thornton's will; Harris, p. 251
12 General
Outlines of a Settlement on the Tooth or Ivory Coast of Africa, "W. Thornton and Negro Colonization" pp 44ff. Harris dates the document "(1786)" which likely is when WT's ideas percolated. The document was likely not written until he met blacks in New England who were far more self-reliant than the blacks in Tortola.
13 Extracts from diary of Ann Warder (concluded) JSTOR and in Internet Archive, pp. 55-6
16 WT to Jefferson 9 January 1821; Pettigrew, vol. 2, WT to Lettsom, 18 November 1786, pp. 497ff. Although the published and footnoted letters in the Papers of William Thornton are the better source, they are not on-line. The letters in Pettigrew's collection of Lettsom's correspondence are and they are the sole source for the letters
17 Hopkins, Samuel, Works of Samuel Hopkins, p. 139; "Address to the Heart, On the Subject of African Slaver," Harris, pp. 49ff; Taylor to WT, 24 January 1787. Robinson, William H., The Proceedings of the Free African Union Society and the African Benevolent Society: Newport, Rhode Island 1780-1824, p. 16.
18. Hopkins; WT to Lettsom 15 February and 20 May 1787, Pettigrew, vol. 2, pp. 507ff;
19. Taylor
to WT, 24 January 1787. Robinson, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society. p. 16 (pdf); Hunt, G. "W. Thornton and Negro Colonization" p. 59; WT to Etienne Claviere, 7 November 1789. Harris pp. 103-4.
20 Pettigrew, pp. 507ff, 516; WT to Lettsom 15 February 1787, 20 May 1787; Lettsom to WT 17 July 1787, Harris pp. 58-61; Works of Samuel Hopkins p. 139; Robinson, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society. p. 18;W. Thornton and Negro Colonization. p. 59; WT to Etienne Claviere, 7 November 1789, Harris pp. 103-4; 25 for fate of the mission to Sierra Leone see Sharp to Lettsom, in Memoirs of Granville Sharp, pp. 315ff; Paulson,William Thornton, M D: Gentleman of the Enlightenment p. 77 (pdf); Annals of African Church, pp. 28ff
21. Minutes of American Philosophical Society, p. 266 https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/american-philosophical-society-minutes-1774-1787#page/266/mode/1up
23. He had freed his slaves conditionally in 1777 but retained them to work his farms; "John Dickinson: A Great Worthy of the Revolution."
24. WT to parents, 14 April 1788, Papers of William Thornton pp. 64ff.
25. WT
to Lettsom, 26 July 1788, Pettigrew 2 pp. 520-30; on his steam-cannon see Harris, p. 54.
26. Westcott, John Fitch Inventor of the Steamboat, p. 194
27. Westcott, pp. 270, 278
28. Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. Thornton" p. 184
29. Westcott, p. 283
30. Ibid., pp. 294ff; Brissot, New Travels in the United States, pp. 168, 308, 309. He conflated the loan to Smeathman to get back London as financing his trip to Sierra Leone.
31. Harris, pp. 105-7
32. Fairfax, Ferdinando, "Plan for liberating the negroes within in the united states." Encyclopedia of Virginia History has the article from American Museum December 1790
33. Jenkins fn. p. 60 quoting letter in LOC of 25 June 1802.
34. Peterson, Charles E., “Library Hall...” Trans. Am. Phil. Soc,, vol. 43, pt 1
35. Pettigrew 2, pp. 536-40; WT to Lettsom 3 February, 1789, Harris, Papers of William Thornton
36. WT to Vining, 16 June 1790, Harris, p. 116
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