The first Africans arrived in the colony of Virginia in 1619. Numbering about twenty, their legal status in the colony initially was ambiguous. However, by 1705, the colonial government created laws that established a race-based system of legal slavery which controlled the actions of enslaved people and passed enslavement onto the children of enslaved mothers. The population of enslaved Africans and African Americans grew rapidly; by 1790, they made up 39 percent of Virginia’s total population. Unfortunately, based on early scholarship of the Shenandoah Valley, there is a conception that enslaved African Americans did not make up any significant portion of the population of the Valley. Previous writers, such as Joseph Waddell and John Walter Wayland, incorrectly asserted that German and Scots-Irish people did not support enslavement, and since they had been the largest immigrant groups to settle in the Valley, there were limited numbers of enslaved people living in the Shenandoah Valley. This was categorically untrue; enslaved people made up approximately 25 percent of the Valley’s population by the start of the Civil War. Similarly, past scholarship also argued that enslaved people were well treated in the Valley and got along well with their slaveowners. [1]
More recent scholarship by authors such as Jonathan A. Noyalas and Edward Ayers has begun to delve into the complicated history of enslavement in the Shenandoah Valley and disprove these narratives. Because of biases in historic records, it can be hard to get a full picture of the experience of enslavement in the Valley. One of the only slave narratives from the Valley, The Narrative of Bethany Veney, A Slave Woman, is an invaluable source into what enslavement was like in Page County. Unfortunately, there are no written records from the enslaved people owned by the Lincoln family. However, stories of their lives can be pieced together using court records, letters, and economic records.
Henry
There are several appearances of a man named Henry in the Lincoln family records. Henry was one of Colonel Abraham Lincoln’s most valuable enslaved men. He appears on two undated lists of enslaved people; on one he is valued at $600 and the other at $625. There are no records which reveal when Abraham purchased Henry or his birthdate. However, it seems that Abraham allowed Henry some opportunities for self-sufficiency. In 1848, Abraham wrote a short note to an unidentified man asking that he send him a calfskin and leather for “black men’s shoes.” He also wrote that his “man Henry has some bark and sheep skins they belong to him and you will please pay him the money.” Furthermore, in a letter written by Abraham’s agent in Richmond, Jacob Shook in 1849, Jacob relays that the “wagons left, about 12’ oclock to day with the articles called for in [Abraham’s] letter. [He] sent the sales by Henry as well as the bills [he] purchased.” He goes on to mention that he “gave them no money, they having sold some flour on the road.” In addition to selling his own bark and sheepskins, it appears that Henry, and potentially other enslaved people, were producing and selling their own flour. Perhaps Jacob Shook assured Abraham that he had sent everything asked for and told him the time that the wagons left so that Abraham would know if anything went missing from the wagons. [2]
Henry was still enslaved by the Lincolns in 1851, when Abraham passed away. His will ordered that Henry and another enslaved man should be given to his wife Mary, with “their increase of the females, with permission.” Enslavement was a legal status in Virginia and after a law passed in 1662, any children born to an enslaved mother inherited her status as an enslaved person, a legal concept called partus sequitur ventrem. By giving Henry to Mary Lincoln, Abraham was giving her the wealth that would come from any children Henry would have. This demonstrates how the reproductive capabilities of enslaved people, particularly women, was used as a method to derive more wealth by slave owners. [3]
Squire
Squire was estimated to be around 50 years old in September 1841, which if accurate, would put his birthdate around the year 1791. Before coming to the Lincoln family, Squire was enslaved by Dorcas Robinson in Rockingham County. In her will dated 1811, Dorcas entrusted three enslaved people named Cate, James, and Squire to the children of her daughter Dorcas Lincoln, “in consideration of [the] natural love and affection” she had for her daughter. Squire remained enslaved by members of the Lincoln family from 1811-1841. In an undated list of the enslaved people owned by Col. Abraham Lincoln, Squire’s value is listed at $325.[4]
At some point after this list was written, Squire became the property of Abraham’s brother, Jacob Lincoln Jr. On August 19th, 1841, Squire was the subject of a court of oyer and terminer case involving arson. Oyer and terminer courts were a type of criminal court formed specifically to try slaves accused of capital crimes until 1785, when they began trying enslaved people for all felonies. Capital crimes were any crimes committed which could result in the death penalty; this included crimes such as murder, attempted murder, rape or attempted rape, arson, poisoning, conspiracy or insurrection, and theft. These trials took place at county courthouses and were presided over by five justices of the peace with no jury. If given a guilty verdict, there was no legal opportunity for an enslaved person to appeal the court’s decision themselves. Because Virginia law required an enslaved person convicted of a capital crime to receive the death penalty, judges and justices of the peace were required to impose that sentence. In some instances, however, enslaved people had their sentences commuted. [5]
The case of each enslaved person sentenced to death by a court in Virginia was sent to the governor for review. Virginia law allowed the governor to use the power of executive clemency to “sell and transport condemned bondsmen,” rather than hang them, if they felt the case warranted it. Notes from the justices of the peace, defense counsel, or petitions from local community members in favor of commuting the sentence could be included in the trial record for the governor to consider. Factors such as an enslaved person’s youth, personality, whether they had or had not committed crimes before, and the harshness of the death sentence in contrast to the crime committed – particularly if the crime involved property – were just a few of the reasons that justices cited when asking governors for clemency. [6]
Squire was accused of “feloniously burning a barn” owned by Abraham Lincoln that was valued at $1000. He was found guilty by the court of oyer and terminer in Rockingham County and sentenced to hang for his crime on October 29, 1841. Prosecutions for arson rose sharply in Virginia in the antebellum period, particularly after 1831 when charges of murder or conspiracy and insurrection began to decline. Arson was one of the “most feared” crimes by white slave owners. While the court records do not reveal a motive behind Squire’s actions, burning property was one of the most overt ways that enslaved people could rebel against their enslavement. When Squire’s case was sent to the governor’s office, the justices of the peace “recommended [Squire]….to the clemency of the executive,” though their reasons for doing so were not recorded. The lieutenant governor granted clemency to Squire and “ordered that he be brought to the penitentiary for transportation.” Instead of being hanged, Squire was sent to the Penitentiary of Virginia, located in Richmond, on September 10, 1841. Unfortunately, there are no further records of what happened to Squire. Since he was recommended for transportation, it is most likely that he was sold somewhere outside of Virginia. [7]
[1] Cynthia A. Kierner, “‘Skillfull in Anie Country Worke’: Red, White, and Black in Colonial Virginia,” in Changing History: Virginia Women Through Four Centuries (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2013); Kelley Fanto Deetz, Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017); Jonathan A. Noyalas, Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2021).
[2] Undated list of enslaved people, Lincoln Society of Virginia; “Abram Lincoln Negroes,” Lincoln Society of Virginia, undated; Colonel Abraham Lincoln to Unknown, July 22, 1848, Lincoln Society of Virginia; Jacob Shook to Col. Abraham Lincoln, May 17, 1849, Lincoln Family Papers 1746 – 1939, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MMC-0975, Accession no. 6065A.
[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Last Will of Abraham Lincoln,” May 14, 1851, Records of Rockingham County, Virginia, Circuit Court, Will Book A, 197; Brent Tarter, “Elizabeth Key (fl. 165-1660),” Encyclopedia Virginia, last updated November 8, 2022, Elizabeth Key (fl. 1655–1660) – Encyclopedia Virginia.
[4] Dorcas Robinson, “Dorcas Robinson Will,” April 7, 1811, In Waldo Lincoln’s History of the Lincoln Family, 205-206, https://archive.org/details/historyoflincoln00illinc/page/205/ mode/1up; “Abram Lincoln Negroes,” Lincoln Society of Virginia, undated.
[5] Philip J. Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996) 72 and 68; Daniel J. Flanigan, “Criminal Procedure in Slave Trials in the Antebellum South,” The Journal of Southern History 40, no. 4 (Nov 1974): 544, https://doi.org/10.2307/2206354.
[6] Flanigan, “Criminal Procedure in Slave Trials,” 544; Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia, 75-76.
[7] Jacob Lincoln, “Public Claim October 10, 1841,” Condemned slaves and free blacks executed or transported records, 1781-1865, Accession APA 756, Box 7, Folder 16 Library of Virginia, 2, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1181034; Schwarz, Slave Laws in Virginia, 7 and 88; Noyalas, Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley, 21; A List of Slaves and Free Persons of Color Received in the Penitentiary of Virginia for Sale and Transportation from the 25th June 1816 to the 4th February 1842, 10, https://lva.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01LVA_INST/br4o1h/alma9917846592105756.