How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [83]
While outlawing the slave trade would be an economic blow to Alexandria, if Congress returned Alexandria to Virginia and then outlawed the slave trade in the District, the prohibition would be a boon to Alexandria, since it would eliminate the competition. To achieve this boon required some delicacy. Hunter, with his calm, dispassionate manner, a Southerner who spoke glowingly of the future of the Union, was just the man for the job. The bill passed the House 96 to 65 (and the Senate 32 to 14).
The legislation stipulated that a referendum be held on the southern side of the Potomac to determine whether a majority of that area’s voters (white males) wished to become Virginians. One group of Alexandrians particularly concerned about the vote’s outcome were its African Americans, since Virginia law prohibited teaching African Americans to read and write and required African American religious activities to be monitored by whites. Describing the day of the referendum, one free African American businessman in Alexandria wrote, “Whilst the citizens of this city and county were voting … humble poor were standing in rows on either side of the court house and, as the votes were announced every quarter of an hour, the suppressed wailings and lamentations of the people of color were constantly ascending to God for help and succor.”9
Today ghosts of the original District of Columbia remain on the map in the borders of present-day Arlington County, Virginia, and along the post—Revolutionary War segment of King Street in Alexandria.
As for Hunter, he was elected to the Senate later that year. While there, the anticipated storm erupted over slavery in the region acquired in the Mexican War. It blew away the Missouri Compromise. In its place, Congress cobbled together the Compromise of 1850 and then, four years later, took cover under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which left the question of slavery to the states and territories (see “Stephen A. Douglas” in this book). Amid the bitter debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Hunter’s calm demeanor and practical arguments provided influential support for the bill—so much so that, the following year, the Cleveland Herald noted, “Clubs are forming in [New York] for the support of Robert M. T. Hunter, at present U.S. Senator from Virginia, for President of the U.S.”
Ghosts of old D.C. border
Though Hunter’s presidential bid failed even to get his name on the ballot at the 1856 Democratic National Convention, it succeeded in calling attention to him as a candidate for the future. Indeed, four years later, a correspondent for the Daily South Carolinian reported:
I would respectfully suggest that a union of the Southern delegates might be effected upon the Honorable Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia.… Mr. Hunter is peculiarly fitted for the Presidency.… He is a man of superior natural abilities and thorough cultivation … profoundly versed in the history of the rise and fall of empires.… However he is free from even the slightest tinge of pedantry and sentimentality. He is a plain, practical business man.
But the times no longer called for plain, practical men. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act had failed to mitigate the political storm over slavery. Inadvertently, they fed its escalation to hurricane force. In choosing a presidential candidate at the 1860 Democratic National Convention, the delegates were unable to coalesce after fifty-seven ballots. In each of those votes, Hunter placed a distant third among nine nominees. Ultimately the party shattered. Its splintered constituencies enabled the election of a visionary, Abraham Lincoln.
After Virginia’s secession, Robert M. T. Hunter was elected to the Confederate Congress—but not for long. In July 1861, three months into the Civil War, Hunter became the Confederacy’s secretary of state—also not for long. Individuals