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. In order to bolster the assets side of an accounting prepared shortly before his death, Thornton described Pleasant Valley: "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." However, that only described how the profits were divided. As for the land itself, that was more complicated. 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.
While there is no evidence that Thornton ever tried to take a hand managing the plantation, there is also no evidence that seeing that female slaves did most of the work bothered him. He liked bantering with the male field hands. 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
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.
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| 17. Thornton owned half of plantation #27 |
On the other hand there was much to say about the benefits of slavery. Thornton's older cousin Isaac Pickering managed to support a country estate in England, but he had full ownership of six plantations. Thornton seemed to grasp that maintaining a personal fortune would require owning 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. However, in a July 16, 1784, letter to Lettsom outlining his ideas for a republic of freed slaves sent back to Africa with a guarentee of favorable trade relations with Britain, Smeathman added: "Dr. Franklin tells me he has no doubt that I should get it adopted at Boston; but, alas! I cannot carry my poor brat a-begging from continent to continent on uncertainties."
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 brought a slave with him, a teenager named Tatham. 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. He evidently did get advice from someone to go to Newport, Rhode Island, because that is where he started his crusade. Samuel Hopkins, the Congregationalist minister there, embraced the idea of sending black Christian missionaries to Africa and then extended that idea to sending all blacks back to Africa. 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. 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!”
Such missionary zeal was not an outgrowth of Thornton's Quaker roots. In a letter he wrote to Lettsom that summer, he did not credit his upbringing but the shock of slavery for inspiring 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.”
The legislative committee to which the African Society's memorial was sent did not report before the session ended, but it seemed receptive to the idea of financing an investigation of the possibility of a returning black to Africa. Evidently, Thornton decided not to wait for news from Lettsom that land was available and that the powers-that-be endorsed Thornton as the man to lead blacks when they came to occupy it. In an October 1787 letter written after Thornton left New England from Philadelphia, Antony Taylor was still excited by the possibility of legislative support for a trip to Africa.
Meanwhile, on January 19, 1787, Thornton 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. Such appointments were reported throughout the young republic. In a sense the news called Thornton home to his other identity as a man of science. To be sure, as he planned a settlement in Africa, he leavened his letters with ideas about crops and ores to mine, but he shifted his focus to making life easier for Everyman. He attended his first meeting in July 1787. Twenty-two members were present. At that meeting they elected 12 new members including Joseph Banks of the Royal Society.
What he might have said at the meeting is unknown, but, after all, he had actually met Sir Joseph. Thornton had no trouble switching from moral crusader to scientific reformer. In an 1800 letter to Thomas Jefferson, principally about yellow fever, he recalled how he presented himself as a man of science to the new friends he made in Philadelphia. 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)
Madison never gave his version. Both men were addicted to making puns, and became good friends.
Thornton missed the next five meetings. 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." 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. Dickinson finally decided not to part with his daughter, and remained Thornton's friend.
Thornton revealed Dickinson's decision 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. 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. Jacques Brissot de Warville, a French journalist, was also 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 |
In the spring of 1790, with a new small condenser designed by Fitch, 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. Thornton extolled it in a letter to a June 1790 letter to a Delaware congressman: "Mr. Fitch's labours are now perfected. The boat is the admiration of all the philosophic and ingenious...."(36) Thornton did not brag on his contribution to the boat's performance. In a letter to Lettsom, he did report that Franklin thought he should present a paper on his steam-cannon to the Philosophic Society. He was also working up a dissertation on distillation, but, Lettsom didn't press him for information about the steamboat. He was tickled by Thornton's gifts of flying squirrels and a bear.
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) He also came up with a scheme to increase the company's capital with the more loyal stockholders increasing their stake in the company by promising more money to finance the new ship.
Of the many men Brissot interviewed in America during his travels in late 1788, he wrote that Thornton was the most impressive with “vivacity” and “agreeable manners” very much like a Frenchman. However, Brissot was somewhat skeptical of the steamboat. He came to America primarily to report on slavery and he embraced Thornton's African crusade. If Brissot accurately reported what Thornton said, then he had claimed that he 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 didn't temper his vanity in the letters to those who knew how little he had actually contributed to the cause. He opened a letter to Lettsom with the boast: "I find that in London you were obliged to compel the Africans to go to Sierra Leone. In America, I could raise some thousands of free, good and industrious people, who are desirous of going." In a letter, to Granville Sharpe, the British anti-slave trade advocate, Thornton dismissed the problems that caused the failure of the expedition by boasting that they would have been easily solved if he had been in charge of the expedition.
The men, black and white, that he proselytized in New England stopped corresponding. Thornton tried to renew his correspondence with Hopkins by describing what he planned to do when he returned to Tortola to make life better for blacks who returned to Sierra Leone: "I have been engaged in many studies for their advancement, and am daily making preparations for their future benefit. The reduction of language to the eye, in the most philosophical and easy manner, has lately engaged very much my attention - by which they may be taught to read their own language in a few weeks." In Tortola, he would "make a vocabulary by which the blacks of Sierra Leone may have intercourse with the surrounding nations."(32A)
He evidently didn't proselytize Philadelphia blacks. In 1789, the Newport Union 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.”1 However, plans to send slaves back to Africa resonated with whites, especially in Virginia. Ferdinando Fairfax, a godson of General Washington, said as much a 1790 magazine article and offered his own plan. In 1789, James Madison allowed Thornton to quote him anonymously in support of Thornton's ideas in a letter to a French abolition society.
In the midst of his making plans to end the slave trade and perfect the steamboat, Thornton assigned himself a relatively simple task. In July 1789, he saw an advertisement soliciting designs from "ingenious artists and friends of the institution" for the new Library Company of Philadelphia building: 70 by 48 feet, two stories, and "the present funds will not admit of any kind of turret or cupola." The prize was a share in the Library Company worth $40. 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) The second prize was given to Thomas Carstairs, one of the city's leading builders. The cornerstone was laid on August 31, 1789. Franklin topped the list of men honored, followed by the board of directors, and ending with the librarian. There was no mention of an architect or designer. 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) The new library began serving patrons in October 1790.
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| 25. The Library Company in 1800 |
By then Thornton had other priorities. In a 1789 letter, to Lettsom, he noted that his being single also qualified him for sacrificing his all for his crusade. On October 13, 1790, he married a 16 year old bride at Christ Church on 2nd Street. Mrs. Ann Brodeau ran a finishing school for girls, and ran it intelligently. When Dr. Benjamin Rush addressed the issue of women's education, he consulted with her before publishing his essay. Thornton likely met her through his friend Rush, also a fellow of the American Philosophical Society. In October 1790, President Washington's secretary called on her to see if her school was a suitable place to board the president's niece. He found her references impeccable and the school respectable. She appeared "to be a Lady of about 35 or 40 years of age, and of very easy and pleasing manners." In his letter to the president, he added that she "has acquired a handsome property in the pursuit of her business."1 There was no father Brodeau on the scene which Thornton may have appreciated. A father had thwarted his last attempt to win a teenage bride.' Mrs. Brodeau's sister also lived in Philadelphia and likely vouched for any explanation of Anna Maria's birth in England. In 1775 when she opened her school, Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin attested to "recommendation she has been favoured with in her native country." Otherwise, Mrs. Brodeau didn't talk about her past.
Mrs. Brodeau did her due diligence by quizzing his Rush, who, she wrote to her daughter, assured that Thornton "was a man not only of great learning but of the greatest benevolence and humanity of the purest morals, at war with nothing but vice and folly, a man whose company I have not enjoyed so often as I could have wished, but whenever I have had that pleasure it has never been without improvement." Although he had seemed obsessed with getting one, Thornton evidently did not ask for a dowry.2 That in turn increased Mrs. Brodeau's confidence in his personal wealth. Even after her 31 year old son-in-law asked her to pay his due to the steamboat company, she allowed “I think you might live on a farm as elegantly and independently as any gentleman need to wish with but little assistance from your possessions in the West Indies....”3
Of course, while Mrs. Brodeau would live with the Thorntons for 33 years until his death, he did not marry her. He married her daughter, Anna Maria. In a 1791 letter to Wilkinson, he would describe her: "My wife, to whom I have been only married about eight months, is one of the most virtuous and delicate-minded woman I ever saw. She is just turn'd seventeen but speaks and writes French and Italian with ease and correctness. She has uncommon genius in all works of art and fancy - draws excellently; sings, and plays on the piano forte and pedal harp with uncommon skill - is a capital accomptant, a critic in the English language, and possesses all the inferior accomplishments in an eminent degree; and besides a beauty which makes her much admired, has a heart suited only for benevolence and kindness, and a mind that never suffers itself to be, in the least, agitated by any cross."
For their honeymoon and to meet his mother, husband and bride left for Tortola three days after they married. At a minimum that meant a six months absence. Thornton expressed no regrets that he would miss what everybody had been talking 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 in December 1790. 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. However, the president had not and no one expected that he would publicly solicit ingenious artists to submit plans for the city or its public buildings. Armed with a letter of introduction from former Maryland governor Thomas Johnson, the president's partner in promoting the Potomac River as the best river to serve the nation's Western territories, one worthy did approach him. In November 1790, Joseph Clark, an English born builder and architect who designed and was then working on the dome of Maryland State House, went to Mount Vernon and showed the president plans for a capital city. It described a city that would have roughly two-thirds the number of houses in London. The president kept the plan but already had his man.
Back on July 23, 1788, the New York City celebrated the ratification of the Constitution with a procession honoring trades and professions that would benefit from the new federal government. The Federal Ship Hamilton stole the show as it maneuvered through narrow streets and "sailed" over hilly greens. The procession of 5,000 people extended a mile and a half and ended where three temporary pavilions were joined. Supported by ten colonnades, they covered ground enough, 880 feet by 600 feet, to accommodate 6,000 people, and were built in less than 5 days. An official account described the middle building as "majestically rising above the whole terminated with a dome, on top of which was a figure of Fame trumpeting a New Era...." The account concluded "the taste and genius of Major L'Enfant (so often displayed on other occasions) and to whom the city is indebted for the design and execution, appeared in the present occasion to have derived additional brilliancy from the dignity of the object on which it was employed...."4
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| 23. 19th century illustrator's conception of Fitch's second boat |
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
32A. WT to Hopkins, 29 September 1790, Harris p. 118.
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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