James Lee
(about 38 in 1855)
A Man Enslaved at Clermont, Whose Flight to Freedom was Successful
James Lee was not a docile slave and was considered by his owners to be a bad influence on other slaves. For this, he was sold in 1855 by his owner, Edward McCormick of Clermont, to Joseph Bruin, who, between 1844 and 1861, when Federal troops closed him up, was the most notorious slave trader in Alexandria, Va. About 38, James Lee may have had family also enslaved at Clermont.
“Slave traders like Bruin took advantage of the tradition among slave owners of selling slaves who made trouble to the Deep South as both a punishment and an instrument of control.” (Bedell, 2010, 49).
But James Lee didn’t stay sold or go South; he escaped from Bruin’s slave jail, and a $100 reward for his capture was published on September 15, 1855. Bruin, a man described in 1853 as “heartless beyond expression” and who liked to sell young female slaves into the specialty prostitution market in New Orleans, was unable to recapture him and on March 10, 1856, published another fugitive slave poster for James Lee at $300. Lee used the bold strategy of posing as a free man and was seen prior to the second reward notice in Clarke (Clermont), Jefferson, and Loudoun counties and Harpers Ferry, further suggesting the possibility of his having family in the area. There is no record that James Lee was ever recaptured; his flight to freedom was apparently successful.
A family letter (Nov. 15, 1855) to Edward McCormick at Clermont from his former mother-in-law, Mary Stribling, and sister-in-law, Kate Stribling, who owned the farm next door to Clermont, Glen Owen, suggests that James Lee may have previously been the property of Edward’s in-laws, and had been sold to him with their departure for Missouri. The letter alternates between talk of their slaves, including James Lee (“corrupt”) and selling them to teach a lesson, and talk of “the dear pets”, Edward’s children by his deceased first wife, Mary Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Mary and sister of Kate.
