Chapter Two (1785-1790): Going to Africa Via Boston [Pages 28 to 42]
Table of Contents [page 28] Index
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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 nobility and knew the pleasure of being outnumbered by servants. Evidently, thanks to his memories of early childhood or his unbiased scientific curiosity, he was as at ease around blacks as he was around the illiterate Celtic bards. He had spent his money freely in Edinburgh, London and Paris and understood from where that money came. It [page 29] also bears remembering that just after his father died in 1760, the Quaker Meeting in Tortola disbanded. 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
The conversation Thornton had with Wilkinson in London would not be echoed in Tortola. All that suggests that as he landed, his only predicament was that he was not sure how much he owned and what it was worth, which was a curious position for a young man about to marry a bride with a dowry calculated into a nice round figure. There is no evidence of his having any immediate revulsion to slaves at work for his own benefit on an island where 10,000 blacks outnumbered 1,000 whites.
Nothing he might have written about the visceral experience of homecoming was published or has been found and quoted by his biographers. He did write “Some Account of Lettsom's Island” as a favor to his mentor shortly after he arrived. 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 “Some Account of Lettsom's Island: “I planted the seeds with great care but [page 30]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. He also briefly boasted about his curing patients, but Lettsom didn't seem to believe him.
In the 18th century the bark of the cinchona tree, the curative powers of which Europeans had learned from the Incas, was used to treat fevers. Thornton investigated the properties of the Caribbean cinchona: “I have made some experiments on it but my train is not yet finished.” He described how the bark tastes, its color, etc., but “I will say nothing of my experiments now, because I will send the bark itself, which I collected some time ago.” Then he focused on other barks, cinchona officinalis, and added “I am preparing a Dissertation on them, and mean to send it to my friend, at some future period.” Evidently, he never did. Then he referenced other barks to other tomes, and finally returned to the Caribbean bark and concluded: “I have given very often and have cured with it not only many fevers, but dropsies, that were deemed incurable....”6
In his reply, Lettsom dismissed Thornton's reference to medicines with a sentence: “I acknowledge the receipt of the barks and iron sand, on which experiments are making.” He didn't ask for more details on how Thornton reduced swelling hitherto thought to be incurable.7
Thornton did talk about slavery with his parents, likely during a discussion of Lettsom's experience. Thornton gathered that his mother would not abide having any of their plantation slaves freed unless they were removed from the island. Lettsom's handful of freed slaves had been joined by many more freed by a Quaker family that went to America and left their freed slaves behind. 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. Tortola plantations terraced the
mountain sides of the island. Thornton's parents owned 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 It could not be easily divided.
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| 17. Thornton owned half of plantation #27 |
There is no evidence that he had anything to do with plantation work. He found his refuge on the top of the mountain, an oasis above a world of cane. All he knew was that he got half the profits and owned half of the slaves, but he had no idea which ones. He did like to banter with the slaves. In April 1793, when trying to get a loan secured by his share of the property, he speculated on what parts of the plantation would be his if the property were divided. He wrote to his agent: "You will observe in choosing the Negroes that I prefer good field Negroes to house Negroes, and good clowns to gentlemen and ladies."10
[page 31] Meanwhile, it is not certain when Thornton's marriage plans fell apart. According to his future wife's short memoir of her husband, 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 She probably learned of the affair during her sojourn in Tortola from 1790 to 1792. 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 thought of this in the broadest terms and envisioned 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 never said why. Thornton did not go for a better life and certainly not to be free of his own slaves. As Lettsom put it in his letter to Franklin, Thornton had a "personal fortune." That fortune was based on slavery. Thornton even brought one of his slaves with him, a teenager named Tatham, who likely took care of the horses he also brought. Blessed with a fortune, Thornton came to America in pursuit of fame. There seemed little hope of gaining that in Tortola. With scant competition, he could not even replicate Lettsom's earning 2000 Pounds in six months. So he channeled Faujas and Smeathman and made America his scene of action.
[page 32]He landed in Philadelphia on October 18, 1786. The city of 44,000 ranked just behind London as a center for Quakers. Those in Tortola had as many relatives and connections in America as they did in England. Thornton seemed to make a point of not giving the impression that he was emigrating. He would stay until October 1790 and during those four years never had a job or asked for a position. He also didn't buy any property. But why try to make a mark in such traditional ways? Thornton would ever overestimate his own accomplishments. He thought he had already gained a measure of fame. He was an M.D. and had left behind a portfolio, yet to be completed, that captured the flora of Tortola. Of course, that would pale to what he planned to accomplish in America.
He did bear one burden. His desire to free his slaves "as well as accompanying them to Africa is unknown to my mother." He could not let his mother know about his crusade. He knew it would trouble her and, filial devotion aside, he depended on her support in negotiations to fully claim his share of the Tortola plantation. That's why he did not go directly to Boston where destiny awaited. How could he have explained that to his mother? Landing in the arms of Quaker relatives would also be far more comfortable. But he would not tarry with them.
With his usual charm and enthusiasm, he acclimated himself with the Quaker elite rapidly. His relatives quickly thought as highly of Thornton as he thought of himself. All that was accomplished without his revealing to them what would assure his enduring fame. His mother would get only good reports. Even when he hobnobbed with the city's leading emancipator, he gave the impression of barking up an entirely different tree.
On November 9, 1786, James Pemberton invited Thornton to dinner. He was one of the city's wealthiest Quakers and a leader of the Abolition Society. Mrs. Ann Warder also dined there, and she kept a diary. At the dinner party, she noted the presence of “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.” On the 28th, she had more on him: “Conversing with William Backhouse, I was much surprised to learn that the greatly talked of and much admired Dr. Thornton is a relative of my husband's – little did I think so when I was in his company recently.”13 Backhouse was Thornton's cousin who likely introduced him to Pemberton.
It is easy to assume that Thornton dined with Pemberton to forward his mission to free slaves and that in her diary entries Warder expressed genuine admiration for that.14 But that's not what she wrote. The only book he could boast about writing was the unfinished Flora Tortoliensis. A natural history pertaining to America was likely the book he boasted of planning to write. That she didn't mention Thornton's crusade to send freed slaves to Africa suggests that he didn't brag about that.
The day after the dinner, November 10, Warder hosted a large dinner party for which she hired a free African American cook to prepare turtles. She wrote in her diary: “I admired the activity of the lusty cook, who prepared everything herself, and charged for a day and a half but three dollars.”15 Wouldn't she have made a retrospective comment on Thornton's proposition to lead the likes of the cook back to Africa?
Within a
week of the Pemberton dinner, Thornton was on his way to Boston. To
launch his crusade, Thornton took the advice
Franklin gave to Smeathman: to go where free blacks were
eager to return to Africa. However, he was careful to distinguish his
crusade from Smeathman's. Thornton also never credited Franklin, who
had returned to Philadelphia, for pointing him toward Boston. In his
only written recollection of meeting Franklin in Philadelphia,
which he made in an 1821 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Thornton only recalled Franklin's offer to pay his way to "travel in the Service of the United States & only keep a regular Journal of every thing which I might think worthy of Observation." He told Jefferson, from whom he wanted support for his scheme to join South American revolutionaries on behalf of the US government, that he turned down the offer because of his "delicate State of health soon after." Evidently, he didn't mention any trip to Africa to Franklin. 16 He soon wrote to Lettsom, who had written his letter of introduction to Franklin, and didn't mention Franklin or Philadelphia or Boston.
As it turned out, Thornton did not start his crusade in Boston. Perhaps, by quietly quizzing a few people, so relatives wouldn't tell his mother what he was up to, [page 33] he heard about a preacher in Newport who had the same idea.
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.
Another reason for going to New England that Thornton likely found attractive was that 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 second cousin Robert Foster.
On November 18, forty days after landing in Philadelphia, Thornton wrote a very long letter to Lettsom from New York City, where he stayed with another Backhouse relative. It was 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. His mother insisted that if he freed his slaves that they had to be removed from the island so they wouldn't be a bad influence on the slaves who remained. Although he didn't tell his parents, Thornton decided that he would free his slaves that were worthy, that is to say, others he deemed "improper companions,"and take them to Africa. 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.17
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. [page 34] 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.18
Thornton gloried in his meetings 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.19
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 |
[page 35]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."22
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!”
The petition sent by the blacks was sent to a legislative committee that never reported back. In a 1789 letter to a French activist, Thornton hailed the legislature for promising assistance "as soon as a proper place could be secured...." In his 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 [page 36] prey to both...."23
However, in an October 1787 letter written well after Thornton left New England, Taylor was still excited by possibility of legislative support for a trip to Africa.24 In any case, the blacks did not get what they wanted, which was fortunate. The shipload sent to Sierra Leone resulted in the death of most of the whites and demands to be returned to England by the blacks.
Lettsom didn't 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. Thornton's long letters to Lettsom were mostly about his taking blacks to Africa, but he also shared botanical information and observations on American character. For example, unlike in Britain, it was impossible to find out how much a young lady was worth. Lettsom told him how much he enjoyed such information and begged for more.
That may have blunted Thornton's purpose, and he also got a cold shoulder from Philadelphia blacks. When Thornton returned to Philadelphia in June, he took a room in a boarding house near the Pennsylvania State House. The Constitutional Convention was then in session nearby. In Thornton's papers there is a exhortation to Pennsylvania's blacks to join Boston and Newport blacks and sign up for voyages to a free settlement in Sierra Leone provided "by the English." He likely wrote it and hid his role in the project. There is no evidence that Thornton published or distributed it.25
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.”26
If Philadelphia was not interested in sending blacks back to Africa, Thornton found it easy to adjust his sights. While he was in Newport, on January 19, 1787, Lettsom and Thornton were elected members of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia along with 18 others including 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, the impression Thornton made on him in Paris and, possibly, Thornton's claims about his publications.
Or maybe he was elected simply because he was an M.D.. Thornton attended his first meeting in July. Twenty-two members were present and half of them were doctors. At that meeting they elected 12 new members including Joseph Banks of the Royal Society. Then Thornton missed the next five meetings and didn't come to another until mid-October.27
Of course, absence from the Philosophical Society didn't make Thornton any less of a philosopher. As Mrs. Warder noted, Thornton gave the impression of understanding everything. It became characteristic for Thornton to claim that he had anticipated ills to come and had offered preventatives. Take, for example, 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.” 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 [page 37] the Privy; & no sooner had it mixed with the fæculent matter, than the vapour was changed & rendered innoxious & without the least smell.28
In 1787, Madison and Thornton became friends, and the few letters between them that are in their respective papers don't suggest why. Science, medicine and architecture didn't excite Madison, then or later. Perhaps the coincidence of their both keeping secrets at the time they met fed their mutual impish regard for language and they laughed together despite their burdens. With regards to slavery, delegates to the Convention were sworn to secrecy. Thornton had to triangulate the possible relationships of men to his mother's relatives. A friendship that would serve Thornton well was probably based on their senses of humor and mutual delight in puns.
That summer Thornton also became acquainted with his Philosophical Society colleagues Dr. Benjamin Rush, two young Quaker doctors, Casper Wistar and Thomas Parke, and David Rittenhouse, the elderly clock maker who after Franklin was the city's resident genius. Thornton also met John Dickinson, Delaware's delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and took aim at his 15 year old daughter. 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.29
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 young 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 [page 38] that he didn't have 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.30
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. 31
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, who could make the rudiments of a steam engine. They made a trial run of their steamboat before delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Fitch and Voight had an improved boat that could carry passengers in the spring of 1788 33
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 |
[Page 39] 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 |
After 1810, Thornton would claim that his ideas were crucial to the success of Fitch's boat. By 1819, he had convinced himself and tried to convince others that he had invented the steamboat. In his retelling, in 1789 he oversaw the remake of Fitch’s basic design that reached a speed of 8 miles an hour. Fitch’s boat had done no better than 3 miles an hour. Actually, with a new small condenser designed by Fitch, in the spring of 1790, the steamboat consistently plied to Delaware 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 for the briefly commercially viable steamboat, 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 |
[page 40] That Thornton would later exaggerate his role shouldn't detract from the figure he cut in Philadelphia in 1788, 1789, and 1790 as a man of vision, if not genius. He, Fitch and his fellow directors were not content with and saw no future in a steamboat service centered in Philadelphia. They focused on the Mississippi River and New Orleans, then under Spanish control, with the Ohio River as one way to get there. They planned and began to build the "Perseverance," a larger boat designed for service in the West. At the same time, Thornton refined his plans for a Republic in Africa.
Jacques Brissot de Warville, the Frenchman who hailed Thornton's work on the steamboat, pumped Thornton, who had been in the country for about 18 months, for information about slavery. Brissot had dined with Madison and met with Hamilton and John Jay, but Thornton impressed him more. For one thing he had “vivacity” and “agreeable manners” very much like a Frenchman. Plus he had a simple story.
Evidently confident that anything Brissot wrote in French would not be read by his family, Thornton told him that he couldn't bear the slaves on his mother's plantation in the West Indies. “He should have set his slaves free if it had been in his power.” Instead, “He proposed himself to the the conductor of American Negroes who should repair to Africa.” Then Thornton regaled Brissot with stories not strictly true. He claimed that he had sent someone to investigate the coast of 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.38
With the help of Brissot, Thornton corresponded with the French Societe des Amis des Noirs. He evidently enlisted the help of James Madison. After the convention, Madison fulfilled his political duties in New York City where congress met. He only boarded in the same house with Thornton for a few weeks in the fall of 1789. He was sick most of the time. A flu epidemic was sweeping through the nation. Maybe that's why he spent a few hours with Doctor Thornton. [page 41] If he didn't get medical help, he at least got a dose of Thornton's enthusiasm.
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| 24. James Madison in 1784 by Peale |
The editors of Thornton's papers discovered that the draft of a letter that Thornton sent in October 1789 to leader of the French society included not only a long quote from a prominent Virginian but that in the draft letter that quote was written in the hand of James Madison. He agreed that leading blacks to Africa was the only solution. Otherwise Southern planters would never free their slaves. The editors of the Madison Papers now include that quote in volume 12, dated based on the date of Thornton's letter. Of course, at the time, Madison's name was not associated with the quote.39
Thornton must have soon 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.40 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.
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: “When I traveled I never thought about architecture, but I got some books and worked a few days, then gave a plan in the ancient Ionic order, which carried the prize.”41
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.”42
There is no record of Thornton objecting to the changes in the design or having anything [page 42] 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. 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.
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 and ignoring 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, he took his bride of three days with him. 43
His only going concern was the steamboat company. Judging by letters he would soon write to Fitch, Thornton had definite ideas about the new boat. The plan was to sail the boat to New Orleans, then under Spanish control, and ply the Mississippi River under steam. The boat that had carried passengers across and up the Delaware several times, as per newspaper advertisement, was not repaired. It had not made enough in fares to preclude the need for more investment. Thornton left it to his mother-in-law to pay his $125 for the new boat. The directors also banked on congress giving Fitch exclusive patents and rewarding him with a gift of Western lands. Thornton had joined another director to testify on his behalf before a state legislative committee. He also extolled Fitch’s invention in a letter to a Delaware congressman. He prematurely boasted that: "Mr. Fitch's labours are now perfected. The boat is the admiration of all the philosophic and ingenious...."
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.
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
17 Pettigrew, vol. 2, WT to Lettsom, 18 November 1786, pp. 497ff Although the published and footnotes 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
18 Papers of William Thornton , "Address to the Heart, On the Subject of African Slavery" Harris pp. 49ff.
19 Taylor
to WT, 24 January 1787. Robinson, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society. p. 16 (pdf)
20 Pettigrew, pp. 507ff; WT to Lettsom 15 February 1787, Works of Samuel Hopkins p. 139
21 Pettigrew, pp. 516, WT to Lettsom 20 May 1787, Papers of William Thornton
22 Robinson, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society. p. 18.
23
W. Thornton and Negro Colonization. p. 59; WT to Etienne Claviere, 7 November 1789, Harris pp. 103-4.
24 Robinson, p. 18
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)
26 Annals of African Church, pp. 28ff
27Minutes of American Philosophical Society, p. 266 https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/american-philosophical-society-minutes-1774-1787#page/266/mode/1up
29 He had freed his slaves conditionally in 1777 but retained them to work his farms; "John Dickinson: A Great Worthy of the Revolution."
30 WT to parents, 14 April 1788, Papers of William Thornton pp. 64ff.
31WT
to Lettsom, 26 July 1788, Pettigrew 2 pp. 520-30; on his steam-cannon see Harris, p. 54.
33 Westcott, John Fitch Inventor of the Steamboat, p. 194
34 Westcott, pp. 270, 278
36 Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. Thornton" p. 184
37 Westcott, p. 283
38 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.
39 Harris, pp. 105-7
40 Fairfax, Ferdinando, "Plan for liberating the negroes within in the united states." Encyclopedia of Virginia History has the article from American Museum December 1790
41Jenkins fn. p. 60 quoting letter in LOC of 25 June 1802.
42 Peterson, Charles E., “Library Hall...” Trans. Am. Phil. Soc,, vol. 43, pt 1
43Pettigrew 2, pp. 536-40; WT to Lettsom 3 February, 1789, Harris, Papers of William Thornton
44. WT to Vining, 16 June 1790, Harris, p. 116
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