Julia Chinn, Enslaved Wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, 9th U.S. Vice President 1837

[appalachiablue]

'He became the nation’s 9th vice president. She was his enslaved wife. Her name was Julia Chinn.' Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2021. She was born enslaved and remained that way her entire life, even after she became Richard Mentor Johnson’s “bride.” - Excerpts, Ed. -

Johnson, a Kentucky congressman who eventually became the nation’s ninth vice president in 1837, couldn’t legally marry Julia Chinn. Instead the couple exchanged vows at a local church with a wedding celebration organized by the enslaved people at his family’s plantation in Great Crossing, according to Miriam Biskin, who wrote about Chinn decades ago. Chinn died nearly four years before Johnson took office. But because of controversy over her, Johnson is the only vice president in American history who failed to receive enough electoral votes to be elected. The Senate voted him into office.



- Richard Mentor Johnson, 1818.

The couple’s story is complicated and fraught, historians say. As an enslaved woman, Chinn could not consent to a relationship, and there’s no record of how she regarded him. Though she wrote to Johnson during his lengthy absences from Kentucky, the letters didn’t survive. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, who is working on a book about Chinn, wrote about the hurdles in a blog post for the Association of Black Women Historians. “While doing my research, I was struck by how Julia had been erased from the history books,” wrote Myers, a history professor at Indiana University. “Nobody knew who she was. The truth is that Julia (and Richard) are both victims of legacies of enslavement, interracial sex, and silence around black women’s histories.”

Johnson’s life is far better documented. He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 1802 and to Congress in 1806. The folksy, handsome Kentuckian gained a reputation as a champion of the common man. Back home in Great Crossing, he fathered a child with a local seamstress, but didn’t marry her when his parents objected, according to a 19th-century biography, “The Life and Times of Richard M. Johnson.” Then, in about 1811, Johnson, 31, turned to Chinn, 21, who had been enslaved at Blue Spring Plantation since childhood. Johnson called Chinn “my bride.” His “great pleasure was to sit by the fireplace and listen to Julia as she played on the pianoforte,” Biskin wrote in her account. The couple soon had two daughters, Imogene and Adaline. Johnson gave his daughters his last name and openly raised them as his children.

Johnson became a national hero during the War of 1812.. In 1819, “Colonel Dick” was elected to the U.S. Senate. When he was away in Washington for long periods, he left Chinn in charge of the 2,000-acre plantation and told his White employees that they should “act with the same propriety as if I were home.” While enslaved women wore simple cotton dresses, Chinn’s wardrobe “included fancy dresses that turned heads when Richard hosted parties,” Christina Snyder wrote in her book “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers & Slaves in the Age of Jackson.” In 1825, Chinn and Johnson hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during his return to America. In the mid-1820s, Johnson opened on his plantation the Choctaw Academy, a federally funded boarding school for Native Americans. He hired a local Baptist minister as director. Chinn ran the academy’s medical ward.

“Julia is as good as one half the physicians, where the complaint is not dangerous,” Johnson wrote in a letter. He paid the academy’s director extra to educate their daughters “for a future as free women.”

Johnson tried to advance his daughters in local society, and both would later marry White men...

More, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/07/julia-chinn-slave-wife-vice-president/
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- Richard Mentor Johnson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mentor_Johnson

[COL Mustard]

1. How Can A Human Own Another Human?

I have never understood the concept. I know it's been around for millennia, but I don't understand it. When I was a small child, I was told that certain people were bred for servitude and were just fulfilling their destiny. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now.

[appalachiablue]

2. Another egregious justification 'bred for servitude.'

The horrible institution is still around if less obvious in the ME, Asia esp. the bonded debtor form.

[gladium et scutum]

3. We find the concept so repugnant today

The practice still continues in some places on this planet and the practice of slavery goes back to the dawn of what we refer to a civilization. Unfortunately humans have lived with slavery longer than they have lived without it.