Archer Alexander

by Bob Brail

    It may come as a surprise to most readers to learn that Washington, D. C., was at one time the home to two statues depicting individuals who had resided in southern St. Charles County. The first, of course, was Daniel Boone. Horatio Greenough's marble monument The Rescue shows a frontiersman protecting his terrified family from the attack of an Indian warrior. Greenough, whose work was dedicated in 1853, never identified the frontiersman, but the American public quickly did. In fact, the statue became popularly known as “Daniel Boone Protects His Family.” It stood in front of the east facade of the Capitol Building until it was moved to storage in 1958.

    The other Washington, D. C., statue, dedicated in 1876, that depicts an individual from Boone-Duden country can be seen today in Lincoln Park. Thomas Ball's The Emancipation Memorial depicts President Abraham Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation as he frees a kneeling slave. The individual whose photograph served as a model for that slave's creation was Archer Alexander, a former fugitive slave from the Cottleville area.

    Alexander was born into slavery in Virginia around 1815. In 1829 his owner, James Alexander, brought Archer Alexander with him when he left Virginia and moved to Dardenne Prairie in St. Charles County. Shortly after this, Archer Alexander married Louisa, another of James Alexander's slaves. Only a few years after their move from Virginia, both James Alexander and his wife Nancy died of cholera. Their orphaned children were returned to Virginia, but the slaves were kept in St. Charles County to be rented out to help pay for the support of the orphaned children.

    By 1844, Archer Alexander had been purchased by David K. Pitman, who resided just west of Cottleville. Around the same time Louisa Alexander and their seven children were sold to James Naylor, who ran a general store on the Boone's Lick Road. In 1855 Archer Alexander's ownership had come to David K. Pitman's son, Richard Hickman Pitman, also farming near Cottleville. Richard Pitman at this time was a graduate of St. Charles College (1849), had studied medicine for two years, had run a general store in Cottleville for four years, and had farmed since then. After the war he would work in the field of education for the remainder of his life, building and leading two schools, Woodlawn Female Seminary and Fairview Seminary School. The 1860 slave census shows Pitman owning ten slaves, the oldest of whom was a forty-five year old male. This would have been Archer Alexander.

    Alexander's road to freedom began on a December evening in 1862. He was visiting his wife Louisa at Naylor's store and overheard a conversation in another room. There a group of Confederate sympathizers, including Richard Pitman and James Naylor, were deciding to impede the Union war effort by destroying the bridge over Peruque Creek. During their discussion, they spoke of the arms and ammunition they had hidden in the Campbell ice house on the Boone's Lick Road. (A later investigation by Union authorities would show that every Saturday “30 or 40 Seccessionist farmers” met at the store.) Alexander and another slave named Peter then walked five miles to report this information to Lt. John Bailey of the Home Guard. As a result, the plot to destroy the bridge was foiled and the arms confiscated. Since Confederate sympathizers threatened revenge on the informers, Alexander feared for his life and so fled in early 1863. “According to a report filed with the Union provost marshal, 'those on whom he had informed . . . openly threatened to shoot him.'”

    It is possible, though, that Alexander had been planning to flee slavery since before he overheard the conversation at Naylor's store. In December, 1862, General Samuel Curtis, who commanded the Department of the Missouri, issued an order that gave provost marshals the authority to free the slaves of any secessionist slaveholders who reached the Union lines. Alexander may have known of this new order, so he could have been making escape plans even before the night at Naylor's store.

    Some days after his arrival in St. Louis, Alexander received a thirty day Order of Protection from Union Provost Marshal Franklin Dick which allowed Alexander his freedom in St. Louis until the “legal right to his services” could be determined. During that time he was employed by Unitarian minister and abolitionist William Greenleaf Eliot, who would purchase and free several slaves during the war. Eliot was also one of the organizers of the Western Sanitary Commission relief agency. Richard Pitman, meanwhile, had no intention of allowing Alexander to remain free. Pitman hired three slave catchers, and on March 27, 1863, these men assaulted Alexande , beating him with clubs, and taking him to the Myrtle Street Prison. There Alexander showed his Order of Protection to the authorities and was released. The three slave catchers were then imprisoned in the same jail for violating the Order. As historian Miranda Rechtenwald writes: “We are left to wonder the look on the other men's faces as Alexander walked free and they were imprisoned in a building, which until the year previous, had been used as the city's largest slaveholding pen.”

    In the following weeks, William G. Eliot, wrote to Richard Pitman and offered to purchase Alexander “for a small price.” Eliot's intent was clear: “I shall emancipate him and hire him as a free man.” Eliot was willing to have a third party determine a fair price, suggesting Governor Hamilton Gamble or Missouri Supreme Court Judge Barton Bates. Pitman refused Eliot's offer. On April 15, Alexander testified before the Provost Marshal concerning Richard Pitman's Confederate symapthies. Alexander stated that Richard Pitman “has been a disloyal man, a secessionist, and has so expressed himself very freely.” He then stated, in essence, “Just ask any of his Union neighbors” before detailing a few examples, including the violation of the Order of Protection by Pitman's slave catchers. Alexander “requested that he be emancipated 'in consideration of the known & active disloyalty of his master, [and] of the service which he has himself rendered to the Union cause.'” Alexander was then given his freedom under the Confiscation Act of 1862 which allowed the property of disloyal citizens to be seized by Union authorities.

    Alexander then turned his attention to gaining the freedom of his wife and children. Louisa, when notified by Alexander of his freedom, asked James Naylor to name a price for her freedom. On November 16, 1863, Louisa wrote Archer Alexander a letter in which she recounted Naylor's response to her request. “I am heartbroken,” she wrote. Naylor said that “only at the point of the bayonet” would he free her. Naylor “is always abusing Lincoln and calls him an old Rascoll he is the greatest rebel under heaven it is a sin to have him loose he says if he had hold of Lincoln he would chop him up into Mincemeat.” Since the avenue of purchase was blocked, Alexander paid twenty dollars to a farmer to steal Louisa and their two youngest children and bring them to St. Louis. By early December, 1863, Louisa, ten year old Ellen, and four year old James were in St. Louis requesting protection from the Provost Marshal, which was granted. There the family lived until slavery was abolished in Missouri on January 11, 1865, resulting in Louisa's and the children's freedom.

    According to the National Park Service, on the day after President Lincoln's assassination, former slave Charlotte Scott gave five dollars to her employer to start a fund to create a memorial to Lincoln.  Soon this effort was taken up by the Western Sanitary Commission, of which William G. Eliot was a leader.  The memorial was paid for solely by former slaves, and primarily by black Union veterans.  Thomas Ball was is creator, and he sculpted the memorial in Italy.

     During these first years after the war, Alexander was farming with his second wife Julia near Hillsboro, Illinois; Louisa had died by then of unknown causes. Willliam G. Eliot, as a member of the Western Sanitary Commission, wanted to suggest to Thomas Ball that he use Archer Alexander as his model for the freed slave who kneels before Lincoln in the memorial. To that end, around 1870 Eliot had Alexander's photograph taken in a St. Louis studio. Several images were sent to Ball in Italy. There “Ball formed a kneeling slave in Archer Alexander's likeness.” The Emancipation Memorial was cast in Munich in 1875 and shipped to the United States. Congress accepted the sculpture as a “gift from the colored people of the United States” and paid for its pedestal. Frederick Douglass spoke at its dedication in Lincoln Park on April 14, 1876. Archer Alexander would never visit the memorial, seeing it only in a photograph.

    Alexander would outlive his second wife, but not by long. He was back in St. Louis, residing near Willliam G. Eliot, when he died on December 8, 1880. According to Eliot, Alexander died thanking God he would die in freedom. He is buried in St. Peter's Cemetery in Normandy, St. Louis County.

    For the past few years, the Emancipation Memorial has been the subject of controversy and protest because of what some perceive as the sculpture's demeaning view of blacks. Even Frederick Douglass, only days after the monument's dedication in 1876, wrote that he wanted to see a second statue placed in Lincoln Park, showing a black “erect on his feet like a man.” How ever this controversy turns out, it must be acknowledged that Archer Alexander, although crouching in the memorial, was indeed a man who lived erect on his feet, risking his life for his country, courageously escaping slavery, and then doing whatever was necessary to free his family.

Sources: “Archer Alexander” (encyclopediavirginia.org); “Archer Alexander, American Hero” by Doris Keeven-Franke (mohistory.org); Emancipation Memorial (nps.gov); The Emancipation Memorial (en.wikipedia.org); Federal Slave and Population Censuses; History of St. Charles, Montgomery, and Warren Counties, Missouri (mdh.deepwebaccess.com); Letter from Barton Bates to William Eliot, March 28 1863 (mdh.deepwebaccess.com); Letter from Louisa Alexander to her husband Archer, November 16 1863 (mdh.deepwebaccess.com); Letter from William Eliot to Richard Pitman, March 30 1863 (mdh.deepwebaccess.com); “The Life of Archer Alexander: A Story of Freedom” by Miranda Rechtenwald (digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu); The Rescue (en.wikipedia.org).