Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm

When Mary Ann Harris and her new family left Washington City they moved to the more rural Washington County, which was much larger than Washington City and Georgetown combined. But the population was only just over 3,000 people of whom a quarter were enslaved; only 10 percent of the residents were free Black people.¹

The Harrises bought a small 2- acre farm across a dirt road from wealthy plantation owners named Belts. They called their farm Dry Meadows because their crops had to depend on rain rather than a natural body of water. But the Harrises thrived there, having 8 children before the Civil War. Because it was sparsely populated, it was healthier than the city where global pandemics regularly spread from the foreign ships in the port. Unfortunately, one of the Harris girls died in 1850 from an accidental fire. Their next daughter was born 8 years later and she would live well into the 20^th century.²

No matter how rural Dry Meadows was the family could still hear the gathering storm of war. Seventy-five enslaved Washington residents tried to escape by ship but their capture caused days of rioting. Some people suggested freeing the District’s enslaved residents and a new Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, proposed compensating the owners. His proposal went nowhere, however, until years later when he became president.³

In 1860 the Harris’s oldest son, John, wanted to find a job that presumably would pay more than helping his parents on the small family farm. But as a Black man he needed proof of his freedom before he left the safety of his neighborhood. His white neighbor, Martha Parker, said that she would be a witness for his certificate. She had lived on the banks of the Potomac near the Pointers’ cottage when they were raising John’s mother. She was, therefore a credible witness that John had been born to a free Black woman. With his certificate in hand, he moved to Georgetown and became a house servant. He was there when Lincoln was elected president followed within months by the beginning of the Civil War. ⁴  

Washington, DC was a southern city surrounded by two southern slave-owning states. When Virginia seceded and joined the Confederacy it became essential that Maryland not follow.  Lincoln sent 700 Union troops to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, to occupy first the Naval Academy and then the town. The Maryland General Assembly fled to Frederick, Maryland, where they eventually decided that they didn’t have the authority to secede.⁵ 

With Washington’s northern and eastern boundaries safe for the moment, the Union Army engineers began building a ring of 68 forts that would encircle the city and provide its front line of defense. To create sight lines between the forts the Union soldiers cut all of the trees in a mile wide swath. Since four of the forts were within three miles of the Harris farm they were able to see clearly the activity around these forts. ⁶

The forts immediately created new markets for the food of the small farmers in Washington County. The former enslaved gathered around the forts for both work and protection; they also swelled the population of Washington. Eventually President Lincoln proposed compensation emancipation in DC and in 1862 the Congress passed it. The value of the compensation was determined by a well-known slave trader..⁷

Although Black people were finally emancipated in Washington, DC they could not join the Union army to fight against the Confederacy. People doubted that they would be good soldiers, but when the army lost many thousands of soldiers in major  battles they began to rethink their assumptions. And in July of 1863 the two oldest Harris brothers made the biggest decisions in their lives and enlisted in Washington’s 1^st Regiment of U. S. Colored Troops.⁸

Questions for Students

• Why would the Harris family want to move to a very rural part of the District called Washington County?
• Why was the government of the District divided into Washington City, Georgetown and Washington County?
• Why would the Harrises call their farm Dry Meadows?
• Would a two-acre farm be big enough for a family of eight children in the 19^th century?
• Were many Black families in the District land owners?
• How might a 10-year-old girl living on a farm die in a fire?.
• Why did Maryland, which was a slave-owning state stay in the Union?
• Why did the Union Army build a ring of forts around Washington, especially in the northern border?
• Why couldn’t Black men join the Union Army for the first two years of the war?
• Why did the Union Army finally start recruiting them?

See All the Images

Click on the images below to see them in a larger format.

Endnotes

1. Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, 8-10.
2. Torrey and Green, 57
3. Torrey and Green, 59
4. Torrey and Green, 61
5. Torrey and Green, 62
6. Torrey and Green, 63
7. Torrey and Green, 63
8. Torrey and Green, 69