Interesting Notes on Williams Slave Pen
The United States Government recently installed signage at the site of the former slave pen once operated in Washington, D. C. by slave trader William H. Williams. See this Voice of America article for photos and more information:
http://www.voanews.com/a/us-government-recognizes-site-former-slave-prison/3673046.html
The slave pen is known for one of its famous and involuntary occupants, Solomon Northup. Northup, a free black man, was tricked into leaving his home in New York State, and was temporarily held at the slave pen prior to being transported to Louisiana, where he was a slave for about twelve years. Northup's experiences were related in his 1853 book Twelve Years a Slave, which was made into a film in 2013.
Washington historian W. C. Clephane described the pen as a "brick house covered with plaster and painted yellow," which was "set back some distance from the street amidst a grove of trees." There was an out-building at which "most of the slaves brought to this District for sale or shipment elsewhere were kept," though some slaves were kept in the house in a room next to the kitchen. From the outside the facility looked pleasant, but the interior revealed its seamy function; a later owner found "staples driven into the walls to which the slaves were shackled." [W. C. Clephane, in “Local Aspect of Slavery,” in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 3, (1900)]
Henry Wilson, speaking before the New York Anti-Slavery Society in May 1855 told how, in 1836, he had seen Williams Slave Pen, and that the sight of the men, women and children in chains--and the sound of their groans--disgusted him. Wilson at the time was a shoemaker from Massachusetts, but he became involved in politics and took up the anti-slavery cause. He was elected to the U. S. Senate, and worked steadily toward eradicating slavery. ["The Anniversaries: Senator Wilson's Anti-Slavery Lecture," New York Daily Tribune (May 9, 1855)]
Slave trading in the District of Columbia was banned in 1850 (as part of the Compromise of 1850, which also included the notorious Fugitive Slave Law). In January 1855, a northern newspaper was informed by a letter writer who described the slave pen where Northup had been imprisoned, saying: "...they shut it up." It was then dilapidated and deserted. [Syracuse Evening Chronicle (January 3, 1855)]
Wilson, in his speech five months later reported: "A short time ago I stood on the same spot, but the slave-pen was no longer there; in its place was a garden, and a sign hung there--'Flowers for sale and bouquets made to order.' I hope but a few years more shall pass until every spot wherever the groans of human bondage are heard shall be a garden in which the blossoms of freedom shall make glad the eye and the accents of hope delight the ear."
- David Fiske, author of Solomon Northup's Kindred: The Kidnapping of Free Citizens before the Civil War, and co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave.
