This story was written in 2011.
Black History: William Perkins
In Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland.
Oysters and ice cream might seem to be strange partners, but they were a big part of life here during much of the 1800s.
It was all due to one man, who built up a small empire around food and real estate. He was famous enough to have been mentioned, from time to time, in New York and Cleveland newspapers.
The man was William Perkins, an African American referred to in records of the time as a “colored freeman” who was among Maryland’s wealthiest black businessmen in the mid-1880s. In 1884, his holdings were estimated at $12,000, a big sum at the time.
His father was a waterman, Samuel Perkins. An 1828 newspaper ad touts Samuel’s “Masonic Hall Oyster Establishment – Best York River Oysters.”
William Perkins was born about 1820. By 1841, he ran his own ad for “OYSTERS!” served in a newly renovated “cellar under the Odd-Fellows’ Hall.”
Periodically in the 1840s and 50s, ads for “Oysters, Barbering, etc.” appeared under the name Samuel Perkins, where his son seems to have learned his trade. By 1856 father and son both had a reputation as restaurateurs.
Perkins was married, sometime after 1850, to Frances Ann “Fannie” Anderson. He was 49 in 1870’s census (her age varies from census to census, but she was a bit older). They had a 14-year-old son William.
By 1857, William Perkins opened an eatery under his own name and called it the Rising Sun, at Maple (then called Fish Street) and Cross streets. It was still open for business as late as 1891, but the ownership by then isn’t clear.
He clearly understood marketing. While the Kent News didn’t carry an ad of his in 1868, he got press anyway. On June 6, the paper reported “A SURPRISE – Printers, as well as preachers, are sometimes the subject of a surprise!
“This was the case a few days ago, when we received from the establishment of the well-known caterer, William Perkins, a basket well laden with ice-cream, strawberries and cake.
“On trial, we found the ice-cream to be the real article itself, the strawberries fresh and sweet, and the cake, of different varieties, most excellent.
“Our readers may imagine that we had a nice time of it; and of they should feel a revival of the latent appetite for these good things, just in season, it may be speedily gratified by walking around to ‘Bill’s’.”
Over the years, he got an unusual amount of press in the local papers, owned by white men who rarely said much about local African American affairs. Much of that was because he wasn’t afraid to step out, in the late 1860’s, as a political figure.
By 1884 the newspaper referred to him as “the great leader of the colored Republicans in Kent,” but noted “Bill has had a severe spell of sickness lately.” Editorial style in those days isn’t always direct. This could have meant he was ailing, or it could have meant that his businesses and investments weren’t doing well.
The national recession of 1882-85 caught him, and he had trouble repaying mortgages, loans and bills from his Baltimore ice supplier.
No wills were recorded in Kent records for Perkins and wife Frances. Apparently, after business reverses in the mid-1880s, he sank into poverty and left Chestertown for Baltimore. Frances can’t be traced.
On May 11, 1895, the Kent News copied a Baltimore Sun obituary:
“William Perkins, colored, aged seventy-five years, died Saturday at the Home for aged colored People, on Lee street, near Sharp.” (This is probably the Aged Men and Women’s Home for Colored People at 214-216 West Lee St, opened in 1870.)
“He was born in Kent co., where he resided the greater part of his life. He kept a restaurant in Chestertown many years and was well known to the people of the Eastern Shore. He served as delegate to State and county republican conventions, and during President [Benjamin] Harrison’s administration was appointed to a position in the custom-house [in Baltimore].”
Harrison was president from 1889-1893. The paper offered that Perkins favored James G. Blaine, a Republican U.S. senator and secretary of state, who was defeated for the nomination several times and lost the presidential race in 1884.
“For years he had a very wide reputation as an oyster cook. Indeed many people to-day declare that Bill Perkins could beat the world cooking oysters! He succeeded by industry and application to business in acquiring considerable property, but lost it all ‘in politics,’ and died very poor.”
And yet his final resting place remains unknown.
Between 1841 and 1895, Perkins worked hard for himself and for the local black community. It seems he touched every major African American social issue in his time.
As early as 1852, he was concerned with rights for African Americans. With his neighbor James A. Jones (a butcher, grocer, and tavern owner, called a “mulatto”) he went as a delegate to the 1852 Baltimore Convention. There they spoke in favor of an African homeland for freed slaves. They were appointed to its platform committee.
After emancipation in Maryland in 1864, Perkins became especially active in Radical Reconstruction politics in the late 1860s, and remained a stalwart Republican.
The elections of 1870 and 1872 pitted Perkins against Plummer and Usilton of the Kent News. But 25 years later the local obituary called him “one of the noted colored men of the land.
“Perkins was probably the most popular leader of his race in Maryland – certainly on this shore. … He was not an educated man – not having the opportunities of his race in the present time to this end – but he had by self application and study gained a sufficient ‘book learning’ to enable him to conduct a successful business and take a leading part in all the church and charity organizations of his race in Chestertown.”
It said the Janes’ Church congregation is “indebted for the substantial and really handsome church property now owned by that organization.”
That may refer to a $1,500 loan he took out from the Preachers’ Aid Society in 1877, secured by several lots. It is likely the loan went to build Zion Church, which was near today’s Wilmer Park. Eventually, when Perkins went bankrupt, the Preachers’ Aid Society took possession of his “Perkins’ Hall.”
Perkins Hall was a meeting room built in 1862. It was located on the “Foot of Cross Street,” now Philosopher’s Terrace, near his house on the corner, near his 1858 ice house. The hall was used for entertainment and holiday gatherings. In the 1880s it was the starting point for the Decoration Day Parade, organized by Charles Sumner Post No. 25, G.A. R., for both white and African Americans.
In January 1895 the hall collapsed, and according to news accounts: “Historic Perkins’ Hall, which has been the scene of many political and other meetings, succumbed to the inroads of time and weather and fell with a crash, leaving only a pile of debris to mark the place.” Apparently it was still owned by Preacher’s Aid.
After the Civil War, African Americans began to organize benevolent and fraternal societies, new and larger churches, and schools for their children. They were putting the pieces together for the free black community and the recently freed.
Although after 1865 the state provided money for African American schools, local governments resisted spending it. As a result, Maryland blacks used donations to benevolent societies to begin setting up schools. “The Baltimore Association For The Moral And Educational Improvement Of The Colored People,” which lasted from 1864 to 1870, was one Perkins became involved in.
Baltimore Quakers wanted a state freedmen’s aid society, so white businessmen, philanthropists, and ministers set up the Baltimore Association.
The plan was to meet the African American need for schools, while pressing the state to take responsibility for black education. Its 100-some schools were transferred to the state in 1870. Baltimore Normal School, one of the first established, today is Bowie State University.
In 1865, there were about 150 students in five black schools in Kent County.
For decades education continued to be considered an essential ingredient within county’s black communities. In 1888, Perkins went to Annapolis and asked the General Assembly for $50,000 in school funding. The Kent News reported it was “presented in his usual practical and forcible style.”
As much as editors liked ice cream, the newspaper’s tune changed in 1870, when Perkins became a politically active “radical Republican.” He was a member of the Maryland delegation to the Republican national convention in 1872. The 1876 convention lists a William Perkins as a Maryland delegate from “Cambridge.”
The so-called Radical Republicans favored rapid social and political equality for former slaves – and he was delivering speeches during the Congressional elections that year.
The talk was hot, with “Democratic Conservatives” opposing Radical Republicans. The atmosphere was not all that different than the 2010 off-year election, although 140 years later the Democratic and Republican parties had swapped horses.
In Perkins’ day, the Democrats swore the radicals would destroy the nation by allowing African Americans to participate in politics; now, Republicans swore that a black president was going to destroy the nation with “socialist” health care.
The Kent News was firmly in the Democratic Conservative camp. Helmed by James Plummer and William B. Usilton, the paper took shot after shot at Perkins in the months before the Nov. 8, 1870 election.
What “Bill” thought wasn’t recorded, and what he said was not printed. What survives are swipes at his character, his business and his race. And following the local rout of Radical Republicans, a fair measure of gloating.
Plummer and Usilton laid out their thoughts clearly in their paper the week before the 1870 election: “The only mode of arresting this downward and certain road to infamy and ruin is to oppose the election of the Radical candidates. Let every white man – who has any respect for his race, his family, for society and himself – unite with the Democratic and Conservative element in the present political contest. Let no one absent himself from the polls – but be sure and cast his vote.”
Immediately below this, the paper claimed “PERJURY – We have been informed that in all the election districts of the county … a number of young negroes, some not over nineteen, swore that they were over twenty-one years of age.”
II. Businessman and Landowner
By 1861, African American entrepreneur William Perkins was well on the way to financial success.
Exactly 150 years ago, the Kent News said: “William Perkins will open to the public on Tuesday next his new and handsomely furnished saloon, where he will be always prepared to satisfy the appetites of the lovers of good things. Long experience and competency in his love of business guarantee to his customers continued satisfaction.” (March 16, 1861).
After the Civil War, part of the plan to assist previously enslaved people was the Freedmen’s Bureau, or the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. It was in charge of relief efforts and educational activities throughout the country.
Senator Charles Sumner was a vocal supporter of the “Bill to Establish a Bureau of Freedmen” and spoke for it on June 13 and 15, 1864. Set up in 1865 as part of the War Department, it was active through 1869.
Perkins was hired as an Eastern Shore field agent (another indication that he could read and write; land records show he signed his name while wife Frances made “her mark.”) Reports he made would be in the National Archives, and would be the only documents in his own words. By 1872 the Bureau had closed.
As a leading businessman, Perkins was active in local benevolent societies and Zion Church, later Janes United Methodist, where he served as an officer. In June 1868, according to The Chestertown Transcript, a “procession (of benevolent societies) moved from William Perkins Hall through the main street to the colored M.E. Church,” where they heard lectures and about $125 was pledged to good works. Perkins was one of the festival organizers.
As an African American entrepreneur, he took the same road as many of his fellows, but he was more successful than most. Loren Schweninger, in the 1989 essay “Black-owned businesses in the South, 1790-1880,” wrote:
“They did so by engaging in a broad range of economic activities as shopkeepers, storekeepers, skilled artisans, haulers and draymen, and restaurant owners. Delaware black-smith Prince Colwell, Maryland shoemaker George Adams, District of Columbia laundress Eliza Bean, Kentucky furniture dealer Moses Spencer, Tennessee hauler-coachman William Napier, and Missouri wagoner Adam Taylor were among a significant number of antebellum business people who sustained or slightly improved their economic position after the war. Among the most successful former free Negroes in this economic expansion were Chestertown (Md.) restaurateur William Perkins, who more than quadrupled his $2,300 antebellum estate by 1870; Baltimore barber Augustus Roberts, who owned no realty in 1860, but was listed as being worth $12,000 in 1870; Alexandria Va. butcher William Gray, who increased his realty from $1,700 to $5,000; Richmond boiler-maker James Woodson, whose wealth rose from $700 to $4,000; and Louisville barber Nathaniel Rogers, who increased his holdings from $1,800 to $8,000.”
Perkins, based on Schweninger’s sampling of African American businessmen, was in the top stratum. An unusual indication of his status is hidden in the 1877 Lake, Griffing and Stevenson Atlas of Kent & Queen Anne’s Counties.
On the large Chestertown map, which lists few property owners, “Wm. Perkins (Residence)” is marked at the corner of Cross and Bridge streets.
Along the side, where officials, attorneys, merchants, blacksmiths and undertakers paid to place what look like classified ads, there is “Wm. PERKINS, Proprietor of ‘Rising Sun’ Saloon. Oysters served in every style, Cake, Ice-Cream, Terrapins, Crabs, Beef-steaks, Fried Ham, and all the delicacies of the season. Families supplied with Oysters, Ice-Cream and Frozen Custards, and Water Ices by the gallon, and on reasonable terms.”
There’s nothing to indicate his race. But with the atlases published by subscription and support from prominent local individuals, it shows his community status was on par with white contemporaries among hotel-keepers and merchants.
An 1878 Kent County business directory lists William Perkins under “Grain, Coal and Fertilizer,” with “John Bell, T W Eliason, Jr, B F Fleming, Sam’l B Foard, Hines & Co., Hubbard Bros.”
This appears to refer to his ice business rather than grain or fertilizer, though perhaps his deliverymen handled coal too. Oysters and ice cream both require refrigeration, and that meant ice.
Perkins had an ice house roughly 20-by-20 feet in the late 1850s. He may have expanded or built a second one later.
In 1869, the newspaper reported he had 182 tons of ice shipped from Portland, Maine. It described him as “an enterprising colored man of this town.” Another shipment was noted in 1882, and Perkins stayed in the ice business for another ten years, until a mechanical ice plant was built in town.
Over the years, he bought lots and buildings on the northeast side of town. There are at least 13 transactions in the land records from the 1850s to mid-1880s. Most were purchases, while some were mortgages.
By 1884, his holdings were reported at $12,000, but he hit hard times.
On Dec. 26, 1885, an auctioneer sold most of the “real and personal property of Wm. Perkins, the well known proprietor of the ‘Rising Sun’ oyster saloon. Most of the personal property was sold but only a portion of the real estate.”
That included a lot on Maple Avenue and a Cross Street “double dwelling.” He sold off horses and wagons too.
The “large saloon and dwelling and the other dwellings and large ice house” were held “for private sale.” The “ice-house and hall” sold the next month.
Later, the paper reported he sold the “Rising Sun Saloon and three-story dwelling house on Maple Avenue; Small frame dwelling on the corner of Maple Avenue and Cross Street; old 2-story brick house near Cross Street; lot of land on Cross Street … improved by a stable, carriage house and cow shed.”
Despite his reverses, he was still socially prominent in the late 1880s. Once in a while his name got into the news for something besides business.
In March 1888, the Kent News described a feud between Perkins and “Fred. Nichols Jr., Sunday school superintendent, steward, &c., … one of the most prominent colored individuals in the town” in church and politics.
Nichols charged Perkins with “having stolen church money and doing many other wicked things.” Perkins asked the church to investigate and leveled his own charges: lying, defamation and twelve counts of fraud for cooking church and lodge books.
And Nichols, “in the presence of the lodge” had been seen “shaking his fist in Perkins’ face and calling him ‘an infernal grand rascal’ and ‘an old big-headed infernal roguish rascal.’“
Perkins was exonerated.
A Nov. 8, 1889 report mentioned “A shooting affair which resulted in the death of two colored men occurred at Perkins Hall, in Chestertown, about eleven o’clock …” By then he no longer owned the building.
A week later, the Kent News reported that gunman Frank Harris said “I did not mean to kill them.” The two men, named Trusty and Brown, were buried in the old Janes’ Church cemetery.
As a responsible citizen, Perkins was executor of the William E. Anderson estate for a period in the 1870s (Anderson was active with Perkins in the 1870 electioneering). Settling it took almost ten years. During the 1880s George E. Anderson deeded 20 acres along today’s Old Morgnec Road to Frances A. Perkins, described as being part of the “William Anderson land.” The records are unclear, but William Anderson appears to have been her brother. Shortly after, she paid $450 for 50 acres there then sold 30 of it for the same amount.
Perkins ended his life in Baltimore, impoverished, dying in 1895. Fannie Perkins fades from the records. Neither seems to be buried in the county.
But there is a Perkins tombstone mystery. In Janes Cemetery on Quaker Neck Road, one stone bears the Perkins name: “Anna Maria daughter of Wm. & Frances Perkins d. July 5, 1866, aged 20.”
Yet “daughter” Ann M, age 41, is living with them in the 1880 census. Perhaps Frances has been married once before.
III. Elections of 1868 and 1870
“Bill Perkins could beat the world cooking oysters! He succeeded by industry and application to business in acquiring considerable property, but lost it all ‘in politics,’ and died very poor.”
So noted the Kent News in William Perkins’ May 1895 obituary.
It’s not clear how “politics” cost Perkins his property, but his role in building an African American community after 1865 is well-known by reports of his activities, and by bitter editorial opposition in the pages of the Kent News from the time.
After emancipation in Maryland in 1864, Perkins, a financially successful free black, became a figure in Eastern Shore Reconstruction politics.
The Radical Republicans were in favor of full political participation for African American men. Democratic Conservatives were far less sympathetic to the freedmen. Between 1864 and 1870, the conservatives grumbled about suffrage and equality for blacks, but assumed the states could control the situation.
James Plummer and William Usilton of the Kent News were firmly in the Democratic conservative camp, but the 1868 coverage was general. It was fairly subdued, and the paper spent its ink boosting state and national Democrats at the expense of Republican candidate General Ulysses S. Grant.
Its columns are fairly quiet about local politics, except consistently running an endorsement of Col. Samuel Hambleton for Congress.
Hambleton was a Talbot County Democrat, a Southern sympathizer whose son, James, fought in the Confederate army. Originally a Whig, after 1856 Hambleton supported James Buchanan for president and became a Democrat, which “led him into the camp of the extreme Southern party,” according to “History of Talbot County, Vol. 1” by Samuel A. Harrison (1895).
“After the election of Mr. Lincoln Col. Hambleton used his utmost influence with the people of this county to draw them into the vortex of secession. … During the war (he) … did all that was possible … to promote the disruption of the Union,” Harrison noted.
After the 15th Amendment passed, early in 1870, the tone of the election writing changed and the Kent News became more personal. The paper took shots at Henry R. Torbert, the 1868 and 1870 Radical Republican 1st District congressional candidate, and at Perkins, often called “Bill,” or even “Billy,” in the months before the Nov. 8, 1870 election. (Torbert was typically referred to by last name, or not named at all. The paper merely referred to the candidate who was a “swindler” or “liar.”)
In 1870, Perkins traveled the Eastern Shore during election season, stumping for Torbert. The speeches “Bill” gave were not printed in the news journals of the day. Highly editorialized and opinionated accounts survive of local events, plus more Kent News commentary that stakes out their opposition to African Americans as voters and full citizens. By modern standards, what they wrote seems heavily prejudiced along racial lines, rather than outlining simple political differences. It’s fair to say that a large number of Kent County’s white residents simply weren’t ready for racial equality and were blunt about it.
Unfortunately, by 1870 it was clear Republican postwar politics was corrupt at all levels. It was easy for Plummer and Usilton to attack Perkins for supporting members of a “ring” said to be operating out of the Baltimore Custom House.
While his name is missing from newspaper accounts of the political season of 1868, Perkins may simply have decided two years later that moving forward meant working politically with the Radical Republicans.
After the November 1870 electoral rout of Radical Republicans throughout Maryland, Plummer and Usilton permitted themselves a fair measure of gloating. So their words all through the 1868-1870 tumult must be taken with skepticism. It’s hard to believe they were not going for effect over accuracy.
Election of 1868
In late October 1868, “A Radical meeting was held at the Court House … A band of music from Smyrna was in attendance. We were not present, but learn that the meeting was addressed by Messrs. Torbert (radical candidate for Congress) and Wilson, of Cecil; Bloxsom and Russum, of Caroline; and Askew, of Baltimore city – all of whom, except the last named, are said to be very poor speakers.
“We are informed that a large proportion of those in the Court House were negro men, while quite a crowd of negro women attended on the outside. A number of persons, including some conservative republicans, who purposed to attend, were kept away by the dark cloud which the gathering presented.”
Torbert, an Elkton lawyer, ran twice, in 1868 and 1870, for 1st District congressman.
An editorial on the same page left no doubt about how Plummer and Usilton felt about the “Radical meeting.” In urging a vote for the Horatio Seymour-Frank Blair Democratic presidential ticket they wrote, “Universal and impartial negro suffrage, and the elevation of the negro to a position of social and political equality with white men is the cardinal dogma of the Radical party … and in Maryland we shall behold the humiliating spectacle of negroes voting side by side with white men.”
Maryland went predictably Democratic when the votes were counted, and in Kent there were 1,332 votes for the Democrats. Republicans got 266. Despite the state results, Grant was elected. Torbert lost the 1st District by a wide margin and Hambleton went to Congress.
In 1869, Congress passed the 15th Amendment granting African American males voting rights. It was ratified by enough states to become law on March 30, 1870.
Ratification rated a tiny notice, barely two inches long, in the April 2 Kent News. Shortly afterward Democratic Conservatives churned their rhetoric to a fever pitch.
But there had been other quiet activity to keep black men from the polls. Chestertown and Elkton tried to amend their charters through General Assembly action in 1870. The paper noted April 9: “The bill which passed the legislature recently amending the charter of Chestertown, has been vetoed by the Governor because only ‘white male citizens’ were allowed under it to vote.”
Its 1868 charter limited voting to property owners, and “only those can vote who are holders of real estate – and these are not limited to the white citizens. So that we shall soon be called to witness some of the beauties of radical reconstruction exhibited in our town.” A week later it reported Elkton’s revised charter had been vetoed for similar reasons.
Election of 1870
On May 21, the paper described a 15th Amendment celebration by African Americans, relying on secondhand information once the parade left the center of town:
“THE COLORED CELEBRATION. – … a vast multitude assembled at this town (in) the morning … It is estimated that about three thousand persons, including men, women and children, were in the procession. The line was thickly interspersed with flags and transparencies of various descriptions, together with a number of handsomely decorated wagons. Some of the music was very fine, but to our ear none was so entrancing as that of the veritable ‘Worton Band,’ which gave a second edition of the ‘old cow’ with variations. We learn that speeches were made in the woods by Gen. Crawford, H.R. Torbert, R.M. Smyth, Rev. H.H. Garnett and Prof. Day – the two last colored. Some bitter things are reported to have been said, but the main effort was to impress the colored people with the idea that it was their duty to vote the radical ticket, which of course was perfectly natural, as that was the only object … in making them voters. Good order prevailed … there being no disturbance of any kind.”
Undoubtedly Perkins was part of the parade.
The Kent News reported in a longer article the same day that Sen. George Vickers of Chestertown “made an able speech in opposition” to a bill for enforcing the 15th Amendment. He argued, among other things, that the states retained the right to control the “question of suffrage” and “he contended that the position taken by the Radical party was monstrous and destructive of all principles of a Republican Government.” It would create a “centralized despotism,” he said.
On Sept. 10, 1870, a “Radical Mass Meeting” attracted what Plummer and Usilton said was “between three and four hundred persons, mostly blacks.” They noted this wasn’t the turnout the radicals predicted.
The organizers were, with African Americans indicated by italic type [note, italics did not survive the transfer to a web page] : “R.M. Smyth (president); T. DeC. Ruth, Wm. H. Lambert, Wm. Perkins, Levi Rogers, Dr. Walter Melvin, Edw. T. Willis, John Comly, Wm. E. Anderson, T.E. Norris, Jas. S Leary, Jos. C. Rasin, Rev. John R. Beck, W.H. Hamilton, W. Bowman, Capt. A.L. Corey and Wm. B. Turbit (vice presidents); John H. Redue, Geo. C. Rogers, Jas. F. Sprigg (secretaries).”
The rally was to whip up support for Torbert’s rematch with Hambleton.
“Mr. Torbert, the congressional nominee … harangued the crowd for about an hour,” said the Kent News. Then the article went off onto a long diatribe on the 15th Amendment and landed on Torbert with a thump: “His speech throughout was a lame affair, without argument or point.”
Perkins did take the stage, and the paper observed, “The concluding and best speech was made by William Perkins, colored, of this town. With a good deal of policy, he combined some good advice to the blacks, besides making a number of fair political points. We may hereafter have more to say of this very politic speech.”
Torbert “started out boldly with the declaration that he was ‘the standard-bearer of the Union republican party of the first congressional district.’ This announcement, which was made for the purpose of being applauded, was received in deep silence … after finishing his ‘piece,’ he sat down in expectation of some word of ‘endorsement’ …. A suppliant look in the direction of the ‘colored orator’ showed that his hopes were now centered in him. But Bill showed a disposition to remain silent,” and it was only after “Torbert’s imploring glance – like the lingering gape of a dying chicken – caught the eye of the ‘colored orator’“ who proposed three cheers for Torbert.
Shortly after, the Kent News’ editorial page carried a weekly banner: “FOR CONGRESS: COL. SAMUEL HAMBLETON OF TALBOT COUNTY.”
IV. The Media Didn’t Like What It Was Seeing
Successful businessman William Perkins stepped into local politics in 1870, speaking for and supporting the slate of Radical Republican candidates.
The most hotly contested race was for Congress from the 1st District, lining up Democratic Conservative Samuel Hambleton against Cecil County challenger, Republican Henry Torbert.
The paper wrote on Sept. 24 of a speech Perkins gave two weeks earlier, at a “Radical Mass Meeting” which, the Kent News said, attracted a mere 300 people. Because the editors paraphrased what he said and added their own commentary, it’s very hard to tell what Perkins may actually have said. But the sense of it comes through, and James Plummer and William Usilton didn’t like it.
They began by calling him a “remarkable Republican personage – the associate of certain white Radicals who formerly would take very little notice of Bill, who had no very exalted opinion of him, and considered him no better than the other negroes of the town or county, as they used to call them! But since Billy has been put upon stilts, and can strut and talk about ‘former slaves’ and ‘Dimercrats’ and can vote, they are now ‘cheek-by-jowl’ with him – it is now Mr. Perkins, when it was once Bill.”
Plummer and Usilton proceeded to rip the Republicans’ motives. Turning back to Perkins, he “spoke of his preference of being a citizen with twenty-five cents in his pocket than to be where he was ten years ago with fifty thousand dollars! … Perhaps he had consulted his friend Munchausen, with whom he so often confers and who, only a short time ago, contended that the negro race was but little superior to the Monkey or Orangoutang ….”
“Munchausen” appears to be a reference to “General” R. Clay Crawford, a prominent local Radical.
“Bill never was a slave; then years ago he owned property, kept an eating house and was patronized largely by the Democrats and Conservatives … Perkins is a lover of money and his present efforts are no doubt stimulated by it.”
The editors went on to say Perkins did not understand the 13th through 15th Amendments, and that the 13th, not Abraham Lincoln, freed the slaves.
“He said there were two parties – one the party of progress, of justice and right (the Republican.) The other (the Democratic) the party of proscription, of tyranny and ignorance !! – Could impudence and ignorance exceed this bold and false assertion of smooth-faced and smooth-tongued Billy Perkins?”
He knew that “the two thousand Democratic and Conservative voters and property holders, had been the true friends of the colored people – had employed and paid them, and had befriended them and their families in many ways and instances, ….”
They ended, “Perkins’ compliments, personally to the Democrats, was no doubt intended to conciliate them to some extent, that he might retain their custom, but he ought to remember that there is such a place as ‘Rockwell’s’ and that the persons he denounced as members of a party of ‘tyranny, proscription and ignorance,’ were not likely in the future to expend their money in his saloon!
“He might have told them that a banded opposition, such as he advised, against a great political party, would be likely to produce and effect not very beneficial to those he was haranguing.
“We intended to say more, but want of space admonishes us, and probably some will say we have already bestowed too much attention upon a windy and subsidized speaker, on the radical platform.”
But there was space enough for a weekly blast at Perkins. On Oct. 1, the topic was “Secret Societies.” According to the editors, Custom House officials in Baltimore – Radical Republicans – organized clubs for African American males, using dues to pay for political speakers. “We presume that the fund thus raised is one of the sources from which William Perkins derives his compensation for abusing and vilifying those who have heretofore nourished and sustained him, and made him all that he is, except radicalism and scallawagism … (and) making speeches at night in churches, which have been built and consecrated to a different purpose …. We would advise William, who has thus countenanced and otherwise aided the corrupt, to change his course before he finds that he cannot regain lost confidence and power.”
Later the paper reported “A COLORED MAN of this town, who ‘stands high in the church,’ remarked in our hearing the other day that he was getting tired of seeing his church used for political purposes … and if his friend Perkins did not leave off certain associates which would disgrace him and his church in the estimation of the community.”
In another issue, the editors wrote about “RADICAL CLUBS: The colored people’s churches and school houses in this county have nearly all been converted into political Club rooms [where they are] harangued alternately by native negroes and white carpet-baggers. The object is to bind the negroes with the most solemn obligations to the support of radicals for office …
“In Chestertown a ‘Central Club’ has been formed, and the following officers elected: President Thos DeC Ruth; Vice Presidents Wm. H Lambert and Isaac Anderson; Sec. John H Redue and Geo. F. Rogers. Treas R.S. Jones. The names in italic are negroes.” [note, italics did not survive the transfer to a web page]
The next week, Plummer and Usilton warned of “The Consequences” – losing customers.
“William Perkins, the restaurant keeper and ice preserver and distributer, having neglected his proper calling and business and turned radical politician, has doubtless experienced that his eating saloon is not patronized by the Democrats and Conservatives as formerly, and William may also expect that he will not hereafter monopolize the ice trade. Billy thinks himself a little smart, and although he may get paid at present for his political harangues, and nightly assemblages in hall of his sable brethren, intermixed with a sprinkling of white office-holding and office-hunting individuals … the time will come when the votes of the Ethiopeans [sic] will not be courted or needed; … that the Democrats and Conservatives are destined to become the majority, and then William will find his ‘occupation gone,’ … and lament it.”
They continued, “He will no doubt reflect somewhat as follows: Why did I ride about and desecrate churches and meeting-houses by making political speeches … assisted by unprincipled carpetbaggers and interlopers. Why did I listen to the bad and vicious advice given by a swarthy renegade to my colored brethren …?”
They concluded, “Alas, my folly! I wish I had continued in my proper calling, and let politics and office-holders and scallawags alone, and had adopted and practised upon the advice which my best friends had given me. The fact that my friends told me that I made the best speech at the Torbert mass meeting on the court house green is no consolation to me now in my gloom and calamity.”
“Bad Company,” warned the editors on Oct. 15.
They wrote, “We have from time to time offered a word of admonition and advice to Billy Perkins, in reference to his abandonment of his proper calling – his turning politician – and of the low company he keeps in his travels and nightly meetings.
“If he chooses to … take to his embrace the slanderer, the libeller, the falsifier, the infamous … Billy must bear the consequences.” Perkins, they wrote, “chooses to meet in nightly conclave with spies and informers ….”
On Oct. 22, the paper was concerned with tooting its horn about the Conservatives’ own courthouse meeting. It “drew together a large audience … the court room was densely packed, and many were unable to gain admission.”
Senator George Vickers spoke briefly against “the fraudulent and illegal means by which the fifteenth amendment was forced upon the States.”
Incumbent Hambleton took aim at corruption in the Grant administration and “radical misrule.”
On the same page, the editors quoted at length from the 15th Amendment, using its text to argue against a Torbert vote. It was “an illegal act of Congress to usurp the control of the public schools of the states” forcing white and black children to attend together.
On Oct. 29, the paper reported on “Bill Perkins in Worcester.” The Snow Hill Messenger called it “Incendiary Speech of a Negro.”
The Messenger wrote, “The Radicals, under command of Torbert, Lovejoy, Major White and a negro named Perkins, held a meeting in this place on Monday. … The usual befouling of their own race by the white men and laudation of the negro, was the gist of their orations.
“The negro … deprecated the idea of equality in the races – was very humble – didn’t think the negro ought to aspire to the white man’s level, &c., &c.”
But in a church meeting that evening, “Perkins commenced by saying that they had probably heard his speech … but he had come to talk to them then and there not as inferiors , but as equals to the white man – as free citizens of the United States. That they were equal to the whites in every respect save, perhaps intellect. That they were now sustaining the Radical whites with a view to part of the spoils – but that they were 6,000,0000 strong … soon they would have the whites at their mercy, and would not only crush them to the earth, but keep them there. That the way to accomplish this was to vote the Radical ticket.”
Like the Kent News, the Messenger apparently felt secondhand reports were good enough: “This is about the substance of what we have had reported to us …. Can you hear such utterances as these falling from this hypocritical negro’s lips and not swear to defeat the fell designs of the Radical conspirators, black and white? This negro is carried about for the purpose of making these double-faced speeches. It is but another evidence that the Radical party is based on fraud and festering with corruption.”
Another piece on the meeting from the Snow Hill Shield was in the same issue. It didn’t mention Perkins. It had no kind words about candidate Torbert.
Just a week before the election, the Kent News called Torbert a “swindler,” and wrote; “White Men! Remember (the election) decides whether Kent Count shall be ruled in the future by White Men or Negroes!”
In the end, Hambleton polled 17,301 to Torbert’s 13,328 across the 1st District and went back to Congress. It seems Torbert abandoned politics then, eventually turning to newspapering. Cecil Whig owner Edwin E. Ewing sold it in 1876 to “Henry R. Torbert, Esq.” and the 1897 “American Newspaper Directory” lists Henry R. Torbert as editor of the Republican-affiliated Cecil Whig. Torbert died in 1911.
Hambleton’s political career was uneventful. “His Congressional career was not marked by anything that distinguished him from that large body of respectable and useful, though little conspicuous members of the national legislature, who occupy their seats regularly and constantly; who listen to the debates attentively and intelligently; who follow the proceedings closely and vigilantly, and who vote at last mechanically and obediently,” wrote historian Samuel Harrison.
His house is still standing in Easton at 28 South Harrison St. He died there in 1886.
Plummer and Usilton declared on Nov. 12, 1870, “Old Kent All Right.” The election “resulted in a glorious triumph for the White Man’s Ticket.”
It would be fascinating to read what William Perkins himself thought of all this.
Even with the noise and smoke surrounding the election, Perkins continued as a prominent and successful local businessman for another 15 years, one who watched out for his community’s interests in difficult times.
Postscript: Maryland State Archives link to bio: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/051500/051553/html/51553bio.html