Beschreibung:

Title: Letter to Virginia’s US Senator at lavish Washington, hotel with underground slave pens Author: F. & A.H.Dodge & Co. Place: Georgetown [Washington, D.C.] Publisher: Date: 1846 Description: Autograph Letter Signed. 2pp.+ stampless address leaf. To William S. Archer [U.S. Senator from Virginia], Saint Charles Hotel, Washington City, “with one Box Wine”: As promised, the Dodge firm was sending Archer 12 sample bottles of decanted vintage Sherry and Madeira wines, at a discounted cost of $9.54. They hoped he would be pleased with the wine, but, even if not, would appreciate his opinion on their quality. William Segar Archer was a bon vivant who knew good wine. He served 15 years in the US House of Representatives and six years in the Senate, chairing its Foreign Relations Committee and helping draft what would become the Missouri Compromise. At his Virginia plantation, he owned so many slaves that, after Emancipation, the Archer slaves and their descendants would form an entire Black community within the town of Amelia, Virginia. So it was not surprising that Archer should make the St. Charles Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks from Capitol Hill, his pied a terre while in Washington. Besides its impressive façade, designed by Latrobe, and “high-class” service, it was the hotel of choice for Southerners traveling with their slaves – as well as visiting slave traders – unique because it offered underground slave pens, complete with iron bars and chains, hidden from Dixie gentleman who were sipping vintage wines above ground. Archer’s wine was supplied by Dodge brothers firm of West Indies shipping merchants, prominent in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., slave owners despite being the sons of a Massachusetts Yankee. Their grandfather had been a Revolutionary War Colonel who served with General Washington, and the son of one of the partners would later become superintendent of Washington’s Mt. Vernon estate. Lot Amendments Condition: Very good. Item number: 288551