The Clopton Chronicles

A Project of the Clopton Family Genealogical Society

 

 

 

A BEAST COMES CALLING

 

 

Regarding

 

William Henry Clopton, Sr. &

The Widow of President John Tyler, Julia Gardiner Tyler

 

By Suellen Clopton Blanton,[1] [email protected]

 

 

 

Reign of Terror

 

                Things look bright for our cause.  Our soldiers

                Here are perfectly confident of success and

                Gen. Lee is the same good Christian and great

                General_.

                                                Maria Tyler, 1864_[2]

 

 

While John Bacon Clopton’s widow and daughters[3] faced the war in Richmond, their kinsman, William Henry Clopton, Sr.,[4] stayed at his Charles City plantation, “Selwood[5],” just down the road from “Roslyn.”  President John Tyler’s widow, Julia Tyler, had fled to her family at Staten Island to wait out the war, leaving behind one of the President nieces, Maria Tyler, and a nephew, John C. Tyler, who continued to live at the Tyler home, “Sherwood Forest.[6]”

                With the exception of one brief brush with Federal occupation in 1862,[7] the little band of citizens did not learn the true horror and cruelty of war first hand until the last full year of the war.  Confidence was still high as 1864 began.  The crops were good.  The local Charles City Cavalry disbanded and many parties were held.

                But in May the gaiety would end and terror begin as General Benjamin Franklin “Beast” Butler, brought 36,000 men up the south side of the James River as he drove towards Richmond.  On May 7, 1864, Negro troops, the 1^st Brigade, Hinks Division, XVIII Corps,[8] commanded by Brigadier General Edward Augustus Wild, M.D., crossed the river at Kennon’s Landing and easily took possession of Charles City County.[9]

                Butler’s name was one of the most reviled in the South.  He declared escaping slaves of secessionist masters to be “contraband,” and thus subject to seizure and employment by the Military.[10]

The “African Brigade” began a reign of terror which was so brutal even General Butler was shocked.  A planter, Lamb Wilcox, unarmed and standing in his doorway, was shot dead when he refused to salute them.  Possibly the ultimate degradation befell our William Clopton.

General Wild, a Massachusetts abolitionist, had always supported equality of the races.  He cared deeply for his “Africans.”  He was seriously wounded during one battle, but refused to leave the field until his command was safe.  A well educated and skilled physician, he supervised the surgeons as they amputated his arm.[11]

Wild, whose hatred for slave owners knew no bounds, arrested Cousin Clopton, and described him sarcastically as a “high minded Virginia Gentleman.”  He continued:

 

 

He has acquired a notoriety as the most cruel Slave Master in this region, but in my presence he put on the character of a Sniveling Saint. I found half a dozen women among our [slave] refugees, whom he had often whipped unmercifully – I laid him bare and placed a whip into the hands of the Women, three of Whom took turns in settling some old scores on their master’s back.  A black man, whom he had abused, finished the administration of Poetical justice. . . .I wish that his back had been as deeply scarred as those of the women, but I abstained and left it to them.[12]

 

 

                We shall probably never know whether our cousin deserved the beating or not, however, it is curious his slaves, if they were truly abused, did not leave during the first Yankee occupation early in the war, or anytime thereafter.  Slaves began to “drift away,” one by one, as early as 1862, making their way to Hampton and the protection of the Union forces who had been firmly entrenched at Fortress Monroe[13] since April 1861.  Thanks to “Beast” Butler’s “contraband” ruling, escaped slaves always found a safe haven.[14]

                Arrested with our kinsman was the late President’s nephew, John C. Tyler, G. B. Major, A. H. Ferguson, R. J. Vaiden, J. C. Wilson, Thomas Douthat, of “Weyanoke,”, and others and taken to Fortress Monroe and imprisoned, leaving their wives and children defenseless.  Deeply distressed, Douthat said, “everything [is] lost on the farm and themselves surrounded by U.S. Colored troops.  God will protect them I feel assured, and in his hands I leave them.”  General Butler treated the planters with “marked respect,” but he did not let me go.  The General did lodge formal charges against the most vicious of the rampaging troops.[15]

                Wild himself was arrested a few weeks later by his division commander, General Hinks, for using excessive methods in dealing with rebel sympathizers.  He was convicted but freed on a technicality.[16]

 

 

In God’s Hands

 

                I think I am blessed so far above thousands languishing

                In prison, where I should have died.

 

 

Maria Tyler fled to “Selwood” as soon as the fighting began.  She and William’s wife, Lucretia, must have witnessed his savage beating.  As soon as Julia Tyler learned of the precarious position of her niece and Mrs. Clopton, she began a letter campaign to President Abraham Lincoln, signed “Mrs. Ex-President Tyler,” pleading with him to release William and John.  Pulling out all stops, she referred to the 27 year old Maria as, “the delicate orphan girl . . . exposed to a fate I dread even to think of.”[17]

                Beast Butler responded immediately and saw that the women were made safe, but she did not gain the release of the men for some time.  Finally, after dispensing a tongue lashing to Colonel Joseph Holt, Judge Advocate General, in Washington, protesting the whipping of William Clopton and the “complete dismantlement of Sherwood Forest,”[18] and a continued barrage of letters, William Clopton was released in late June, John Tyler, in mid-July.

 

 

 

There was great surprise when recently widowed President Tyler chose the beautiful and vivacious Julia Gardiner as his second wife.  She brought glamour and fun back to the White House, banishing the gloom that had filled the White House following the death of  the President’s invalid first wife.  She became the first incumbent president’s wife to pose for daguerreotype and to hire a press agent.  She introduced public dancing to polite society.   Both she and her husband loved to dance, and their beautiful home, Sherwood Forest, boasts a marvelous long room designed specifically for dancing reels.  She gave birth to five sons and two daughters.

 

 

 

               

The men returned to find Sherwood Forest had been turned over to the local Negroes who sacked the contents, destroyed furniture and crushed mirrors.  “Old Fanny was the leader in tearing down the curtains and gathering things up generally,” wrote our kinsman.[19]  The house, barns and other outbuildings were occupied by the neighborhood Negroes who wandered aimlessly through the countryside

                In a letter[20] to Mrs. Tyler, William outlined the situation at Sherwood Forest.

 

 

                                                                July 1, 1864

 

I passed your place yesterday – it is occupied yet as a school house by negroes and whites[21] – the trees are nearly all destroyed and a good many houses erected around the lot.  The last was all ploughed up pretty close to the Dwelling – the house looked to be in very good repair outside as I could see from the road. . .

                I saw Mr. E. O. Waters yesterday, who said all his negroes had left.  Truly these are terrible times – the loss of my negroes gives me no concern up to the present.  My feelings have been so changed in regard to them I don’t feel that I ever care to see another.  I sent Tom to Richmond a day or so before I was taken[22], with Estelle and Lu[23] writes me he died just three weeks from the day he left home.  I feel very said about it, but my wish to be with my dear Wife overrides everything else.  Don’t think for a moment I am low spirited, for I am as far from it as I ever was and bear up under it all.  I think I am blessed so far above thousands languishing in prison, where I should have died. . .

                                                                                W. H. C.

 

 

Delicate Maidens

 

                Virginia ladies normally did not marry

                Common Yankee soldiers in the middle

                Of the Civil War.

 

 

While Lucretia Clopton was undoubtedly distressed by the turn of events, Maria Tyler was terrified.  She begged Mrs. Tyler to permit her to come to Staten Island.  She was sick and panicked when the men were arrested and put in prison.

 

 

“I do not know what is to become of me.  My health is feeble, very [and] . . .   I am surprised that you do not seem yet to understand the complete wreck at Sherwood. . . Wish I could have an interview if only of one hour’s duration with you, dearest of all friends – perhaps you could then form a more correct idea of my desolate condition. . . provisions are scare I assure you – almost to starvation.  The prospect is gloomy in the extreme.”

 

 

The delicate maiden Maria, had moved in with the Cloptons.  Mrs. Tyler had feared only The Fate Worse Than Death for the 27 year old; she had not even considered the fate that did await the young woman.

 

 

Maria is married to a little Dutchman who will be twenty one in August from Buffalo, N.Y., entirely without any of the civilities of life about him.  He sits in the parlor or dining room [of Selwood] and spits on the floor as though he was outdoors.  When I got home she had made it all up to suit herself.  He was left at Mr. Major’s in hire for a guard. . . Lu thinks it awful she did not consult anyone about it, John[24] nor me. . . She passed herself off for 23. . . Mr. James Christian[25] came and married them. . . He spits on the floor and piles fish bones on the table around his plate – but enough!  I feel that I am lowered in the world by being compelled to admit such a thing to take place in my house.  But the force of circumstance could not be overcome.”

                                                                                W. H. C.[26]

 

 

 

William threw Maria and her Yankee husband, Private John Kick[27] out!  Mrs. Henry Holt of Charles City finally took Maria in but refused to accept her bridegroom.

                Mrs. Tyler explained the shocking marriage was no doubt due to the fact that Maria was, well, crazy.

 

 

[Poor Maria had for some weeks been] bordering on insanity.  The terrible scenes she depicted [in her last letter] have evidently banished reason from its throne.  Otherwise I think she would have braved the starvation which by her account stared her in the face, or met death in any form rather than have taken the step of which you inform me.  It is to be hoped, however, that the loyalty of her husband[28] to which you particularly allude will soon promote him to high military rank. . .[29]

 

 

Alas, no further documents have surfaced to tell us how William and Lucretia lived out their remaining days.  Mrs. Tyler spent her last years living in a house on the corner of Grace and Eight Streets in Richmond, opposite St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Cathedral,[30] but often returned to visit her family and friends at Charles City.[31]  She lived to see Sherwood Forest gradually returned to its antebellum beauty and often visited the plantation.  She died July 10, 1889 at Richmond’s Exchange Hotel, at the age of sixty-nine, in room 27, only a few doors down the hall from where her husband had died in 1862.  She was buried beside her husband at Hollywood Cemetery.[32]

 

                1.  William Henry²² Clopton, Sr. of "Selwood"  (James²¹, William²⁰, Walter¹⁹, William¹⁸, Walter¹⁷, William¹⁶, William¹⁵, Walter¹⁴, William¹³, Richard¹², William¹¹, John¹⁰, William⁹, Thomas⁸, Walter⁷, William⁶, Walter⁵, William⁴, Walter³, William², Guillaume¹ Peche, Lord Of Cloptunna and Dalham) was born November 28, 1810 at New Kent County, Virginia, and died March 14, 1876 at "Selwood," Charles City County, Virginia. He was a member of Emmaus Baptist Church, New Kent County, Virginia¹.  He married (1) Elizabeth Brumley November 28, 1833, daughter of William Brumley.  He married (2) Lucretia Roberts, of Hampton 1849, daughter of Zerubabel Roberts and Margaret Trower.

       

Children of William Clopton and Elizabeth Brumley are:

        2                 i.    Mary Foote²³ Clopton, of "Selwood".  She married Edward Wilcox.

        3                ii.    William Henry Clopton, Jr., of Selwood".

        4               iii.    Ann Brumley Clopton, of "Selwood", born Abt. 1835; died October 9, 1844 at her parent's home, New Kent County, Virginia of a diseased brain².

 

 

Endnotes

 

1.        Religious Herald (Richmond, Virginia) Marriage Notices,  (Copy located Clopton Family Archives, courtesy of Darlene Slater, Research Assistant Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia), April 13, 1876 Issue, "Died on Tuesday, 14th of march, at his residence in Charles City county, William H. Clopton, formerly of New Kent county, Va., in the sixty-sixth year of his age."

2.        Religious Herald (Richmond, Virginia) Obituary Notices,  (Copy located Clopton Family Archives courtesy of Darlene Slater, Research Assistant, Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia), December 26, 1844 Issue, "Died, at her father's in New Kent, on the 9th of October, after sixteen days painful illness of diseased brain,  Ann Brumley, second daughter of Wm. H. Clopton, aged eight years and eight months.  The Saviour said, suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

 

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