By ©2024 Sarah Becker

The Constitution of the United States was signed in 1787. The same year Marylander cum Alexandrian Benoni Wheat [1787-1852] was born. The Constitution’s staying power is to be respected. As is the Wheat families’ extraordinary legacy: especially as it relates to slavery and politics; manumission, emancipation and race relations; free enterprise and Jim Crow [1877-1950s]; black housing, employment and home ownership.

The Wheat families four generations of fair play are not only to be admired, but also remembered. The U.S. Constitution, 1787, Article 1, Section 2.3: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.

Inequality, as defined by the American Heritage dictionary: “the condition of being unequal; social or economic disparity.

Many Alexandria residents opposed slavery. Quaker Friends like apothecary Edward Stabler [1769-1831] and his son William [1795-1852]: also Benjamin Hallowell [1799-1877] and Samuel Mcpherson Janney [1801-1880]. In the 1790s Stabler, “admired for…the sterling integrity of his principles” championed the Society for the Relief of Persons illegally Held in Bondage.

“The Society, at its high-water mark, claimed more than 100 members, many of whom were Quakers and more than a few of whom were Methodists,” the Encyclopedia Virginia explained. The Society’s stated goal: gradual emancipation. The last Quaker community to reject slavery: the Virginia Meeting in 1774.

As of 1804 every Northern state had passed gradual emancipation laws. Vermont, for example, banned slavery in 1777; Pennsylvania mandated gradual emancipation in 1780, New Jersey in 1804.

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9.1: “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808….”

“The transatlantic slave trade entailed the kidnapping, purchase, and commercial export of Africans,” the Commission on the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Act concluded in 2008.

“On March 2, 1807, Congress—on President Thomas Jefferson’s say-so—passed ‘An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves…within the jurisdiction of the United States,’” the Commission continued. The Act, as then approved, became law in 1808.

As of January 1, 1808, it became illegal ‘‘to import or bring into the United States or territories thereof from any foreign kingdom, place or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such as a slave, or to be held to service or labour.’’ Ship seizures; the disposal of slave cargo were the states to process.

Congressional passage of the 1820 Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery’s Western expansion. Benoni Wheat, Steamship line owner; Trustee of the colored members of Trinity Church, and future member of the Alexandria Common Council [1836-1852] manumitted his 28 year-old-slave Letty the same year.

“NEGROES and SLAVES: As a religious Society, we have found it to be our indispensable duty to declare…our belief of the repugnancy of slavery,” the Quaker Friends wrote circa 1821. “The slow progress in the emancipation of this part of the human family, we lament, but…the longer the opposition remains, the greater is the necessity…in pleading their cause.”

“Like all other political contentions, the conflict has been degraded into a combat of persons, instead of a contest between the principles of right and wrong,” Stabler concluded.

A second Alexandria Society, “a benevolent society was formed about the year 1827,” Quaker Benjamin Hallowell noted. In October 1829, Society members—Hallowell and Benoni Wheat included—convened “to promote the Abolition of Slavery and improve the condition of the African race.”

“CHAMPION of those who groan beneath, Oppression’s iron hand,” Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote abolitionist newspaper Editor William Lloyd Garrison. “In view of penury, hate, and death, I see thee fearless stand…In the steadfast strength of truth.”

“I am ready…to plead the cause of my colored countrymen,” Garrison told Philadelphia’s free people of color in 1831. “For this purpose there is no day too holy…no body of men too inconsiderable to address. I ask no church to grant the authority to speak…it is a duty, which—as a lover of justice I am bound to execute.”

As it was a duty for the elder Benoni Wheat: Benoni’s son, Benoni [1823-1902] and his wife Matilda Taliaferro Fitzhugh [1831-1885]. Grandson Harrie Fitzhugh Wheat [1866-1912]: great-granddaughter Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat Thomas [VFWT, 1893-1987]. Realtor VFWT was the architect of Alexandria’s Colored Rosemont, the subject of four previous columns.

As of 1836, retiring slave-traders Franklin & Armfield were selling between 1,000 and 2,000 Negroes annually. Thousands were trafficked from their Alexandria, D.C., Duke Street office to the lower South.

“Every summer,” the National Park Service corroborated, “slave drivers marched chained groups of enslaved people from Virginia through Tennessee to Mississippi and Louisiana. In the fall and spring, the firm used its fleet of sailing ships to traffic people to New Orleans.”

“To the rice swamp dank and lone,” Whittier wrote. “There no mother’s eye is near them, There no mother’s ear can hear them; Never, when the torturing lash Seams their back….” The number of Virginia slaves in 1850: 472,529.

In 1852, the elder Benoni Wheat’s death year Charleston’s Walker, Richards & Co. published The Pro-Slavery Argument. Southern secession seemed likely and a selling argument was needed.

Alternatively—on March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. Her critical portrayal of slavery was widely praised. Also, anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner [MA-Free Soil] took to the Floor to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

America’s Civil War began on April 12, 1861, with the Confederate firing on Union occupied Fort Sumter. Virginia seceded from the Union on April 17; Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy, and Alexandria accepted Union control on May 24. Business owners were asked to sign a loyalty oath; most complied, and the War ended April 9, 1865.

U.S. Constitution, Amendment 13, as ratified December 6, 1865: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist with the United States….” Black, white: all were allegedly free.

Freedom, as defined by the American Heritage dictionary: “1. Political independence, possession of civil rights.”

Benoni Wheat’s son Benoni was, like his father, a Steamship line owner; Purveyor of New Agricultural Implements, Union sympathizer and Reconstruction member of Alexandria’s City Council. He was “loved by all classes, his unostentatious charity” well-known.

It was Benoni’s 1853 marriage to wife Matilda that gave life to the Fitzhugh-Wheat legacy. Matilda was an indirect descendant of Fredericksburg’s William Fitzhugh of Chatham. Fitzhugh’s son, W. H. Fitzhugh [1792-1830], of Ravensworth and Alexandria, was a role model for many. He “experimented in giving slave families small farms within Ravensworth to operate independently as tenants and buy their freedom.”

Benoni’s son Harrie Fitzhugh Wheat, Real estate entrepreneur, Member of Alexandria’s Citizens Progressive Association and the Old Dominion Boat Club, took his heritage to heart. His daughter, Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat Thomas not only took her heritage to heart, she planned a history-making housing project of her own. The last of Virginia’s middle-class black-owned Jim Crow-era replicated single-family homes still stands: 1312 Wythe Street. VFWT purchased Colored Rosemont’s Wythe Street land portion in 1939.

About the Author: Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007. Email: abitofhistory53@gmail.com