The Story of Archer Alexander. From Slavery to Freedom. March 30, 1863.

Presentation copy to the author’s son and a culprit identified…

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Presentation copy for the author’s son, and the first edition of this biography of Archer Alexander—often described as the last individual captured under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Two items of marginalia appear on pages 92–93, likely in the author’s hand. Page 92 reveals the identity of Union General William S. Harney (1800–1889) as the man who whipped an enslaved girl at the Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis so badly that she died from her injuries. Harney was jailed, released, and never punished for this murder. He became known among the Lakota people as “Woman Killer.” Page 93 reveals the name of a man who attested to the crime, identified in the book as “N.J.E.”

Born into slavery, near Richmond, Virginia, Alexander was separated from his parents and brought to Missouri. There, he married Louisa, also enslaved, and the couple raised ten children. In 1863, Alexander was accused—correctly—of spying for the Union Army. As a result of his espionage, the sabotage of a Union-controlled railroad bridge by secessionists was successfully thwarted.

Alexander escaped to St. Louis and found employment with this book’s author, William Greenleaf Eliot. Alexander was subsequently imprisoned, under the Fugitive Slave Act, but Eliot intervened through his military connections, securing Alexander’s release. Eliot also helped Alexander’s wife and daughter escape enslavement.

Later in life, Archer Alexander (d. 1880) served as the model for Thomas Ball’s “Emancipation Memorial” in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., unveiled on the eleventh anniversary of President Lincoln’s assassination. The book’s frontispiece displays Ball’s monument, and the history of the monument’s construction is as follows:

After Lincoln’s death, Charlotte Scott, a freed woman, approached her former enslaver, William P. Rucker. She entrusted him with a $5 donation, and appealed for his help in constructing a monument. “Eventually more than $16,000 (about $260,000 today) was raised from free Blacks, largely from several regiments of the U.S. Colored troops [and] Rucker enlisted [St. Louis philanthropist] James Yeatman, one of the commissioners of the Western Sanitary Commission, a volunteer war-relief group that was assisting formerly enslaved people, to help bring Scott’s vision to fruition.” (Keeven-Franke)

Price: $9,500.00