On this episode of Our American Stories, they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree— but Appleton Oaksmith landed on another planet. His mother was a feminist who knew top abolitionists; his father, a cartoonist admired across party lines. Appleton? He was hunted internationally for presumed slave trading and a failed kidnapping in Cuba that may have threatened Lincoln’s reelection. Yet he later fought for Black voting rights. Jonathan W. White, author of Shipwrecked, shares the story—courtesy of the U.S. National Archives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story about a man born into a life of privilege
in Maine who took to the sea and led the
US on a wild goose chase that became a political
crisis of sorts. In eighteen sixty four, you had to
tell the story of Appleton Oaksmith is Jonathan W. White.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Appleton Oaksmith's mother was a woman named Elizabeth Oaksmith, and
she was a very prominent first wave feminist. She was
a lecturer, an essayist, a poet, a playwright, a journalist.
She traveled in literary circle. She was friends with Edgar
Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth, longfellow, Horace Greeley. She would speak
(00:51):
on behalf of women's rights, but she was also in
favor of ending slavery. And to give you a sense
of how progressive she was in her time, she got
the state of New York to legally change her kid's
last names. She either thought the last name Smith was
too boring or she didn't want her kids to have
(01:11):
her husband's surname. She went by Elizabeth, and then her
middle name Oaks, and then her husband's last name Smith.
Her son's last name is Oaksmith. As one word without
it the ees, it's just kind of smushed together. I
am convinced that if the story hadn't happened, that we
would still know Elizabeth Oaksmith today in the same way
(01:33):
that we know Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Katie Stanton.
She was that prominent in early feminism. When she was
sixteen years old, she married an older man named Seba Smith.
Now Ceba Smith is famous because he created a fictional
character named Jack Downing, a fictional advisor to Andrew Jackson,
(01:54):
and it didn't matter if you were a Democrat or
a Wig. Everyone in the eighteen thirties and forties loved him.
So Lincoln loved him, and Lincoln's primary opponent, Stephen Douglas
loved him. Andrew Jackson loved him, and his primary political opponent,
Henry Clay loved him. Everybody loved Jack Downing. Now, even
though Appleton Oaksmith loved to write and loved to read,
(02:16):
and learned four languages and were raised by these very
educated people, his heart and his passion was with the ocean,
and so when he was sixteen years old, he traveled
to China. Then in the eighteen forties, he went around
the coast of South America to San Francisco during the
gold Rush. He thought that he would spend his time
in San Francisco. He was really captivated by the city,
(02:38):
but there was a tremendous amount of crime and arson.
The city was burned down several times, and there was
really no law and order. He was so put off
by the crime and the violence and the arson that
he decided to leave San Francisco. He acquired a ship
called the mary Adeline, and he took on passengers in
(02:59):
San Francisco, and he went back along the coast of
South America. And as he went, he took the passengers
and dropped them off in different places. And along the way,
he was looking for a cargo that he could take
back to New York, which is where his family was
living at this time. But he was never able to
find a cargo that would take him to New York,
and instead, when he got to Rio de Janeiro, he
(03:21):
got a cargo that was bound for the west coast
of Africa, and this is where he's going to begin
to make international headlines. He loaded the cargo and Rio
he went across the Atlantic Ocean. He made it to
the Congo River, and when he got there, a British
warship came up alongside of him. And under international law
(03:42):
in eighteen fifty two, an American sailor did not have
to let a British sailor onto his ship to search
for evidence of slave trading, but he let them on anyway,
they would have known what to look for, and they
likely did not see any evidence of slave trading. They
then depart and Appleton takes the Mariadeline onto the Congo River,
(04:04):
and the current of the Congo River is very powerful
and it forces things way out to see and he
winds up getting beached along the shoreline. And as he's
stuck there, three thousand African warriors assemble on the coast
and they begin to attack his ship. Ultimately, the only
thing that saves him are these British warships that had
(04:26):
already searched his vessel. They go on board, they unload
the cargo so that his ship becomes lighter, it becomes free,
and wind up saving his life. Now we don't know
whether Appleton was on a slaving voyage on this ship.
Clearly the Africans on the coastline believed he was. My
thought is that if Appleton was on a slave trading voyage,
(04:49):
he likely was not yet fully aware of what he
was embarking on. That the Portuguese who were aboard his
ship and that he would be meeting with to discharge
the cargo may have have had that in mind, and
they may not have let him know yet. He never
wrote about it at any rate. But this incident, which
becomes known as the Battle of the Congo, makes international headlines.
(05:12):
Newspapers throughout the Atlantic world are reporting on what Appleton
Oaksmith had been engaged in. Appleton eventually makes it back,
he moves in with his parents, and he loses a
bundle of money. Appleton Oaksmith is essentially flat broke, so
he winds up going into business with a fish oil
(05:33):
factory owner on Long Island. Now there's a couple of
really big moments that are taking place at this time
when he's getting into the fish oil business. One is
that secession has come. Oaksmith tries to work with the
Tammany Hall political machine in New York City to put
on pro union rallies in New York to rally the
(05:55):
nation not to divide. He reaches out to William Seward,
the Senator from New York, and calls on Seward to
come speak to Tammany Hall Democrats, but he asks Seward
to make statements that would be pro slavery, and Seward
just ignores him. The other big thing that takes place
is that in eighteen fifty nine, petroleum has been discovered,
(06:17):
the whaling industry completely bottoms out. Appleton is working with
this fish oil factory owner on Long Island, and he
and his co businessman decide we need whale oil for
the fish oil factory. Appleton purchases a whale oil boat,
but the people who sell it to him think that
it doesn't seem kosher, and so they sell him the boat.
(06:40):
And then they go immediately to Lincoln's US Marshall and
they say, this guy, Appleton Oaksmith, has bought a ship
and he says it's for whaling, but we don't believe him.
They seize the ship, they seize the cargo that's on it,
and decide that they are going to arrest Appleton Oaksmith.
Now they're not yet, sir, and that they can get
(07:00):
him for slave trading. But They have a loophole that
has come about because of the Civil War. In eighteen
sixty one, Abraham Lincoln suspended the privilege of the rid
of habeas corpus, and he did it initially along the
East Coast, and he expanded it to include the area
between Washington, d C. And New York City. And Appleton
Oaksmith is in New York City, and so they use
(07:23):
Lincoln's suspension of the rid of habeas corpus to arrest
Appleton Oaksmith and basically charge him with disloyalty. But they
worry that they might not be able to get a
conviction in New York, maybe there's too many people with
Southern sympathies in New York, and that he'll get either
a hung jury or an acquittal. But they've got another out,
(07:44):
and that is that Appleton is suspected of buying whaling
vessels in New Bedford, Massachusetts as well. They transfer him
up to Boston Harbor and they hold him in a
military prison there, and they hold him there until they
can prepare to transfer him over to civil authorities in Boston.
Appleton doesn't know what's coming, and one day in January
(08:05):
of eighteen sixty one, an order comes for his release,
and he's relieved. He thinks he's going to go free. Instead,
when he walks out, there is the US Marshal in
Boston waiting for him. They re arrest him, this time
under civil authority, and they charge him with outfitting ships
for the slave trade. They couldn't charge him with slave trading.
(08:27):
He wasn't caught red handed, but they did believe that
he was buying these vessels and setting them up to
go on a slaving voyage. And the trial is almost
a farce. It's one of the most ridiculous things you
could ever imagine. Appleton's defense, his lawyer's defense, was to
get about thirteen women and girls to look really pretty
(08:50):
and sweet and to sit them next to him in
the courtroom and hopefully that would win over the sympathies
of the jury. At one point Appleton, his sister in law,
was testifying from the stand, and I think they plan
this in advance, because she passes out and Appleton gets
up from the defense table and runs and catches her
before she hits the ground. And the jury apparently was
(09:12):
taken by this sort of Victorian sentimentalized scene, but not
taken enough to acquit him. He's ultimately filmed guilty and
he goes back to jail and while he's awaiting sentencing,
he somehow escapes and makes his way to Havana.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
When we come back, what happens next with Appleton Oaksmith?
Here on our American story and we return to our
(10:10):
American stories and with the story of Appleton Oaksmith when
we last left off Oaksmith that escaped from prison after
getting sent there for buying whale ships during the Civil War.
This was well after oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, which
struck many people, and the Lincoln administration is a thinly
veiled attempt to illegally import slaves from Africa. Let's get
(10:35):
back into the story. Here again is Jonathan W. White.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
For the next two years, Appleton will work as a
Confederate blockade runner and he writes poetry that gets published
in Confederate newspapers that sings the praises of the Confederacy. Now,
the federal government still wants to get him back. They're
trying to come up with a way to do it.
(11:01):
The problem is there's no extradition treaty between the United
States and Spain. So they can't just go to the
Spanish government and say we want you to arrest Oaksmith
and send him back. But something fortuitous happens for the
federal government. A Cuban slave trader named Jose Augustin or
Gwellis escapes from Cuba and makes his way to Manhattan.
(11:21):
And so now in the summer of eighteen sixty four,
you have a situation where an American convicted slave trader
is hiding out in Cuba and a Cuban slave trader
is hiding out in Manhattan. And so the Spanish Minister
in Washington, d c. And Secretary of State William Seward
(11:42):
get together and they come up with a plan. You
kidnap our guy, will kidnap your guy, and will swap
We may not have an extradition treaty, but that's okay.
This is how we're going to get it done. And
so they agree to do that, and so Robert Murray,
the US Marshall in New York City, finds arc Wellis,
arrests him, sends him back to Cuba, and Arguellas gets
(12:04):
nineteen years at hard labor for his crime of slave trading.
The Cuban police are not quite as on the ball
as the US Marshall was. They go to the home
of Sydney Oaksmith, Appleton's brother, get there sometime between eleven
PM and midnight, and they surround the house. There's about
(12:26):
twelve or thirteen of them, and three of them go
into the house and they go through the house until
they get into a bedroom where they find a man
asleep and they wake him up and the man says,
who are you And they essentially say, we're not going
to tell you, but we're arresting you. You're coming with us,
And so they force this very sick man out of bed,
(12:46):
bring him to the front of the house, and then
they take him outside, and they then begin to wonder
if they've got the right man. They go in and
they ask a servant do you have a photograph of
Appleton oaks And the servant goes into another room and gets
a photograph of Appleton Oaksmith and brings it to the
Cuban police and they look at it and they realize
(13:08):
they've got the wrong guy. They had arrested Appleton's brother, Sidney,
who really was sick. This moment made international news. It's
getting reported throughout the United States and other places in
the newspapers that the federal government had tried to do
this sort of illegal kidnapping scheme with the Spanish government
(13:30):
in order to capture Appleton Oaksmith. This became a campaign
issue in eighteen sixty four that Democrats tried to hit
Lincoln for acting illegally. Here the radicals who broke away
from the Republican Party in eighteen sixty four, led by
John C. Fremont, they tried to hit Lincoln for this,
and it actually led to a great deal of consternation
(13:51):
on in Lincoln's cabinet. Lincoln's Attorney General was a man
named Edward Bates. He said that Seward was led to
this hazardous measure by Seward's belief that it would be
a capital hit to win the favor of the extreme
anti slavery men. In other words, Seward was just trying
to become popular with the abolitionists. Kiddeon Wells, lincoln Secretary
(14:12):
of the Navy, wrote in his diary he said, constitutional
limitations to Seward are unnecessary restraints. Could the abduction, by
any possibility be popular, mister Seward would do it. William
Seward saw what he was doing as perfectly justifiable. Slave
trading is one of the most heinous crimes that human
(14:33):
beings have ever been involved in and could ever be
involved in, and so from Seward's perspective, you needed to
do what you needed to do to stop slave trading.
He said, a nation is never bound to furnish asylum
to dangerous criminals who are offenders against the human race.
In other words, slave traders, they don't get the sort
(14:54):
of protection that other accused criminals might get. And Seward
said this this was a mere act of comedy between nations.
These were two nations who had these offenders against human rights,
and as an act of comedy or working together, we
are going to trade them. This was perfectly justifiable. Lincoln
(15:15):
didn't say anything about this until after his re election.
He said, for myself, I have no doubt of the
power and duty of the executive under the law of
nations to exclude enemies of the human race from an
asylum in the United States. In other words, if you're
a slave trader, you are an enemy of the human race.
(15:35):
You don't get the same kind of protections that other
criminals might get. Appleton Oaksmith stayed on the LAMB until
eighteen seventy two. He made it up to Canada. And
one thing I didn't mention, I've got a lot on
in the book. I mentioned his wife. She tried to
help him get out of jail by writing to Lincoln
(15:57):
pleading on his behalf. Well. They had a very tallultuous
marriage and a very unhappy marriage. They'd known each other
for ten days before getting married, and Ableton decided he
wanted to divorce her, but he didn't tell her. Instead,
he used the state of Indiana. Indiana in the eighteen
fifties and sixties had very lax divorce laws and you
(16:19):
could essentially get a mail order divorce, and the newspapers
in New York City during the Civil War would advertise
lawyers saying, if you need a quick and easy divorce,
hire us. We'll get you a divorce from Indiana, and
says somehow Ableton hired a lawyer, got a divorce from
Indiana even though he'd never lived there, and he married
his cousin. He then took his new wife and kids
(16:42):
to London and summoned his ex wife, who doesn't yet
know she's his ex wife, to come to London. She
believes she's coming to London to be reunited with her husband,
and instead he confronts her with divorce papers and says,
I'm remarried signing these. If you don't, you'll never see
your kids again. She feels completely stuck and does this. Meanwhile,
(17:04):
Appleton's mother is still pleading with the federal government to
pardon her son, and Andrew Johnson is on the verge
of pardoning Oaksmith. When the ex wife finds out and
she rushes to the White House, meets with Andrew Johnson, says,
my ex husband's a scoundrel. Don't pardon him. And it's
an incredible irony that Andrew Johnson, the president who pardoned
(17:28):
every ex Confederate, refuses to pardon Appleton Oaksmith. Oaksmith remains
in exile until eighteen seventy two, when he finally gets
Ulysses S Grant to issue a pardon. In eighteen seventy two,
Appleton Oaksmith moves to North Carolina kind of on a whim,
and in one of these really interesting twists in history
(17:50):
that I don't fully know how to explain, he gets
elected in an ex Confederate state as a pro black
civil rights Tai clan candidate, and he actually advocates for
black civil and political rights in the state legislature. Not
full black equality, but for black political rights and for
(18:11):
civil rights. And it's a pretty remarkable transformation to see
him going from being pro slavery in the eighteen fifties
and eighteen sixties to being convicted of outfitting ships for
the slave trade, to becoming a pro Confederate blockade runner,
and then to becoming a pro black civil rights politician.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and his special thanks to
Jonathan W. White. He's the author of Shipwrecked, a true
Civil Wars story of mutinies, jail breaks, blockade running, and
the slave trade. And a special thanks to the US
National Archives for allowing us to use this audio originally
a part of a lecture given by White, and what
(18:52):
a story he told.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Forget the Cuban missile.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Crisis, long before that debacle, we had the crisis of
the exchange host is kidnapping plot. And this guy comes
out not only on scathed and pardon, but ends up
running for the state House on the platform of pro
civil rights for former slaves in the state of North Carolina,
(19:16):
the story of one of the Civil Wars great grifters,
and perhaps a redeemed one, or maybe not here on
our American stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story about a man born into a life of privilege
in Maine who took to the sea and led the
US on a wild goose chase that became a political
crisis of sorts. In eighteen sixty four, you had to
tell the story of Appleton Oaksmith is Jonathan W. White.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Appleton Oaksmith's mother was a woman named Elizabeth Oaksmith, and
she was a very prominent first wave feminist. She was
a lecturer, an essayist, a poet, a playwright, a journalist.
She traveled in literary circle. She was friends with Edgar
Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth, longfellow, Horace Greeley. She would speak
(00:51):
on behalf of women's rights, but she was also in
favor of ending slavery. And to give you a sense
of how progressive she was in her time, she got
the state of New York to legally change her kid's
last names. She either thought the last name Smith was
too boring or she didn't want her kids to have
(01:11):
her husband's surname. She went by Elizabeth, and then her
middle name Oaks, and then her husband's last name Smith.
Her son's last name is Oaksmith. As one word without
it the ees, it's just kind of smushed together. I
am convinced that if the story hadn't happened, that we
would still know Elizabeth Oaksmith today in the same way
(01:33):
that we know Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Katie Stanton.
She was that prominent in early feminism. When she was
sixteen years old, she married an older man named Seba Smith.
Now Ceba Smith is famous because he created a fictional
character named Jack Downing, a fictional advisor to Andrew Jackson,
(01:54):
and it didn't matter if you were a Democrat or
a Wig. Everyone in the eighteen thirties and forties loved him.
So Lincoln loved him, and Lincoln's primary opponent, Stephen Douglas
loved him. Andrew Jackson loved him, and his primary political opponent,
Henry Clay loved him. Everybody loved Jack Downing. Now, even
though Appleton Oaksmith loved to write and loved to read,
(02:16):
and learned four languages and were raised by these very
educated people, his heart and his passion was with the ocean,
and so when he was sixteen years old, he traveled
to China. Then in the eighteen forties, he went around
the coast of South America to San Francisco during the
gold Rush. He thought that he would spend his time
in San Francisco. He was really captivated by the city,
(02:38):
but there was a tremendous amount of crime and arson.
The city was burned down several times, and there was
really no law and order. He was so put off
by the crime and the violence and the arson that
he decided to leave San Francisco. He acquired a ship
called the mary Adeline, and he took on passengers in
(02:59):
San Francisco, and he went back along the coast of
South America. And as he went, he took the passengers
and dropped them off in different places. And along the way,
he was looking for a cargo that he could take
back to New York, which is where his family was
living at this time. But he was never able to
find a cargo that would take him to New York,
and instead, when he got to Rio de Janeiro, he
(03:21):
got a cargo that was bound for the west coast
of Africa, and this is where he's going to begin
to make international headlines. He loaded the cargo and Rio
he went across the Atlantic Ocean. He made it to
the Congo River, and when he got there, a British
warship came up alongside of him. And under international law
(03:42):
in eighteen fifty two, an American sailor did not have
to let a British sailor onto his ship to search
for evidence of slave trading, but he let them on anyway,
they would have known what to look for, and they
likely did not see any evidence of slave trading. They
then depart and Appleton takes the Mariadeline onto the Congo River,
(04:04):
and the current of the Congo River is very powerful
and it forces things way out to see and he
winds up getting beached along the shoreline. And as he's
stuck there, three thousand African warriors assemble on the coast
and they begin to attack his ship. Ultimately, the only
thing that saves him are these British warships that had
(04:26):
already searched his vessel. They go on board, they unload
the cargo so that his ship becomes lighter, it becomes free,
and wind up saving his life. Now we don't know
whether Appleton was on a slaving voyage on this ship.
Clearly the Africans on the coastline believed he was. My
thought is that if Appleton was on a slave trading voyage,
(04:49):
he likely was not yet fully aware of what he
was embarking on. That the Portuguese who were aboard his
ship and that he would be meeting with to discharge
the cargo may have have had that in mind, and
they may not have let him know yet. He never
wrote about it at any rate. But this incident, which
becomes known as the Battle of the Congo, makes international headlines.
(05:12):
Newspapers throughout the Atlantic world are reporting on what Appleton
Oaksmith had been engaged in. Appleton eventually makes it back,
he moves in with his parents, and he loses a
bundle of money. Appleton Oaksmith is essentially flat broke, so
he winds up going into business with a fish oil
(05:33):
factory owner on Long Island. Now there's a couple of
really big moments that are taking place at this time
when he's getting into the fish oil business. One is
that secession has come. Oaksmith tries to work with the
Tammany Hall political machine in New York City to put
on pro union rallies in New York to rally the
(05:55):
nation not to divide. He reaches out to William Seward,
the Senator from New York, and calls on Seward to
come speak to Tammany Hall Democrats, but he asks Seward
to make statements that would be pro slavery, and Seward
just ignores him. The other big thing that takes place
is that in eighteen fifty nine, petroleum has been discovered,
(06:17):
the whaling industry completely bottoms out. Appleton is working with
this fish oil factory owner on Long Island, and he
and his co businessman decide we need whale oil for
the fish oil factory. Appleton purchases a whale oil boat,
but the people who sell it to him think that
it doesn't seem kosher, and so they sell him the boat.
(06:40):
And then they go immediately to Lincoln's US Marshall and
they say, this guy, Appleton Oaksmith, has bought a ship
and he says it's for whaling, but we don't believe him.
They seize the ship, they seize the cargo that's on it,
and decide that they are going to arrest Appleton Oaksmith.
Now they're not yet, sir, and that they can get
(07:00):
him for slave trading. But They have a loophole that
has come about because of the Civil War. In eighteen
sixty one, Abraham Lincoln suspended the privilege of the rid
of habeas corpus, and he did it initially along the
East Coast, and he expanded it to include the area
between Washington, d C. And New York City. And Appleton
Oaksmith is in New York City, and so they use
(07:23):
Lincoln's suspension of the rid of habeas corpus to arrest
Appleton Oaksmith and basically charge him with disloyalty. But they
worry that they might not be able to get a
conviction in New York, maybe there's too many people with
Southern sympathies in New York, and that he'll get either
a hung jury or an acquittal. But they've got another out,
(07:44):
and that is that Appleton is suspected of buying whaling
vessels in New Bedford, Massachusetts as well. They transfer him
up to Boston Harbor and they hold him in a
military prison there, and they hold him there until they
can prepare to transfer him over to civil authorities in Boston.
Appleton doesn't know what's coming, and one day in January
(08:05):
of eighteen sixty one, an order comes for his release,
and he's relieved. He thinks he's going to go free. Instead,
when he walks out, there is the US Marshal in
Boston waiting for him. They re arrest him, this time
under civil authority, and they charge him with outfitting ships
for the slave trade. They couldn't charge him with slave trading.
(08:27):
He wasn't caught red handed, but they did believe that
he was buying these vessels and setting them up to
go on a slaving voyage. And the trial is almost
a farce. It's one of the most ridiculous things you
could ever imagine. Appleton's defense, his lawyer's defense, was to
get about thirteen women and girls to look really pretty
(08:50):
and sweet and to sit them next to him in
the courtroom and hopefully that would win over the sympathies
of the jury. At one point Appleton, his sister in law,
was testifying from the stand, and I think they plan
this in advance, because she passes out and Appleton gets
up from the defense table and runs and catches her
before she hits the ground. And the jury apparently was
(09:12):
taken by this sort of Victorian sentimentalized scene, but not
taken enough to acquit him. He's ultimately filmed guilty and
he goes back to jail and while he's awaiting sentencing,
he somehow escapes and makes his way to Havana.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
When we come back, what happens next with Appleton Oaksmith?
Here on our American story and we return to our
(10:10):
American stories and with the story of Appleton Oaksmith when
we last left off Oaksmith that escaped from prison after
getting sent there for buying whale ships during the Civil War.
This was well after oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, which
struck many people, and the Lincoln administration is a thinly
veiled attempt to illegally import slaves from Africa. Let's get
(10:35):
back into the story. Here again is Jonathan W. White.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
For the next two years, Appleton will work as a
Confederate blockade runner and he writes poetry that gets published
in Confederate newspapers that sings the praises of the Confederacy. Now,
the federal government still wants to get him back. They're
trying to come up with a way to do it.
(11:01):
The problem is there's no extradition treaty between the United
States and Spain. So they can't just go to the
Spanish government and say we want you to arrest Oaksmith
and send him back. But something fortuitous happens for the
federal government. A Cuban slave trader named Jose Augustin or
Gwellis escapes from Cuba and makes his way to Manhattan.
(11:21):
And so now in the summer of eighteen sixty four,
you have a situation where an American convicted slave trader
is hiding out in Cuba and a Cuban slave trader
is hiding out in Manhattan. And so the Spanish Minister
in Washington, d c. And Secretary of State William Seward
(11:42):
get together and they come up with a plan. You
kidnap our guy, will kidnap your guy, and will swap
We may not have an extradition treaty, but that's okay.
This is how we're going to get it done. And
so they agree to do that, and so Robert Murray,
the US Marshall in New York City, finds arc Wellis,
arrests him, sends him back to Cuba, and Arguellas gets
(12:04):
nineteen years at hard labor for his crime of slave trading.
The Cuban police are not quite as on the ball
as the US Marshall was. They go to the home
of Sydney Oaksmith, Appleton's brother, get there sometime between eleven
PM and midnight, and they surround the house. There's about
(12:26):
twelve or thirteen of them, and three of them go
into the house and they go through the house until
they get into a bedroom where they find a man
asleep and they wake him up and the man says,
who are you And they essentially say, we're not going
to tell you, but we're arresting you. You're coming with us,
And so they force this very sick man out of bed,
(12:46):
bring him to the front of the house, and then
they take him outside, and they then begin to wonder
if they've got the right man. They go in and
they ask a servant do you have a photograph of
Appleton oaks And the servant goes into another room and gets
a photograph of Appleton Oaksmith and brings it to the
Cuban police and they look at it and they realize
(13:08):
they've got the wrong guy. They had arrested Appleton's brother, Sidney,
who really was sick. This moment made international news. It's
getting reported throughout the United States and other places in
the newspapers that the federal government had tried to do
this sort of illegal kidnapping scheme with the Spanish government
(13:30):
in order to capture Appleton Oaksmith. This became a campaign
issue in eighteen sixty four that Democrats tried to hit
Lincoln for acting illegally. Here the radicals who broke away
from the Republican Party in eighteen sixty four, led by
John C. Fremont, they tried to hit Lincoln for this,
and it actually led to a great deal of consternation
(13:51):
on in Lincoln's cabinet. Lincoln's Attorney General was a man
named Edward Bates. He said that Seward was led to
this hazardous measure by Seward's belief that it would be
a capital hit to win the favor of the extreme
anti slavery men. In other words, Seward was just trying
to become popular with the abolitionists. Kiddeon Wells, lincoln Secretary
(14:12):
of the Navy, wrote in his diary he said, constitutional
limitations to Seward are unnecessary restraints. Could the abduction, by
any possibility be popular, mister Seward would do it. William
Seward saw what he was doing as perfectly justifiable. Slave
trading is one of the most heinous crimes that human
(14:33):
beings have ever been involved in and could ever be
involved in, and so from Seward's perspective, you needed to
do what you needed to do to stop slave trading.
He said, a nation is never bound to furnish asylum
to dangerous criminals who are offenders against the human race.
In other words, slave traders, they don't get the sort
(14:54):
of protection that other accused criminals might get. And Seward
said this this was a mere act of comedy between nations.
These were two nations who had these offenders against human rights,
and as an act of comedy or working together, we
are going to trade them. This was perfectly justifiable. Lincoln
(15:15):
didn't say anything about this until after his re election.
He said, for myself, I have no doubt of the
power and duty of the executive under the law of
nations to exclude enemies of the human race from an
asylum in the United States. In other words, if you're
a slave trader, you are an enemy of the human race.
(15:35):
You don't get the same kind of protections that other
criminals might get. Appleton Oaksmith stayed on the LAMB until
eighteen seventy two. He made it up to Canada. And
one thing I didn't mention, I've got a lot on
in the book. I mentioned his wife. She tried to
help him get out of jail by writing to Lincoln
(15:57):
pleading on his behalf. Well. They had a very tallultuous
marriage and a very unhappy marriage. They'd known each other
for ten days before getting married, and Ableton decided he
wanted to divorce her, but he didn't tell her. Instead,
he used the state of Indiana. Indiana in the eighteen
fifties and sixties had very lax divorce laws and you
(16:19):
could essentially get a mail order divorce, and the newspapers
in New York City during the Civil War would advertise
lawyers saying, if you need a quick and easy divorce,
hire us. We'll get you a divorce from Indiana, and
says somehow Ableton hired a lawyer, got a divorce from
Indiana even though he'd never lived there, and he married
his cousin. He then took his new wife and kids
(16:42):
to London and summoned his ex wife, who doesn't yet
know she's his ex wife, to come to London. She
believes she's coming to London to be reunited with her husband,
and instead he confronts her with divorce papers and says,
I'm remarried signing these. If you don't, you'll never see
your kids again. She feels completely stuck and does this. Meanwhile,
(17:04):
Appleton's mother is still pleading with the federal government to
pardon her son, and Andrew Johnson is on the verge
of pardoning Oaksmith. When the ex wife finds out and
she rushes to the White House, meets with Andrew Johnson, says,
my ex husband's a scoundrel. Don't pardon him. And it's
an incredible irony that Andrew Johnson, the president who pardoned
(17:28):
every ex Confederate, refuses to pardon Appleton Oaksmith. Oaksmith remains
in exile until eighteen seventy two, when he finally gets
Ulysses S Grant to issue a pardon. In eighteen seventy two,
Appleton Oaksmith moves to North Carolina kind of on a whim,
and in one of these really interesting twists in history
(17:50):
that I don't fully know how to explain, he gets
elected in an ex Confederate state as a pro black
civil rights Tai clan candidate, and he actually advocates for
black civil and political rights in the state legislature. Not
full black equality, but for black political rights and for
(18:11):
civil rights. And it's a pretty remarkable transformation to see
him going from being pro slavery in the eighteen fifties
and eighteen sixties to being convicted of outfitting ships for
the slave trade, to becoming a pro Confederate blockade runner,
and then to becoming a pro black civil rights politician.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and his special thanks to
Jonathan W. White. He's the author of Shipwrecked, a true
Civil Wars story of mutinies, jail breaks, blockade running, and
the slave trade. And a special thanks to the US
National Archives for allowing us to use this audio originally
a part of a lecture given by White, and what
(18:52):
a story he told.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Forget the Cuban missile.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Crisis, long before that debacle, we had the crisis of
the exchange host is kidnapping plot. And this guy comes
out not only on scathed and pardon, but ends up
running for the state House on the platform of pro
civil rights for former slaves in the state of North Carolina,
(19:16):
the story of one of the Civil Wars great grifters,
and perhaps a redeemed one, or maybe not here on
our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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