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Vol. 30:3 ISSN 0160-8460 September 2002
The Roorback Hoax: A Curious Incident in the Election of 1844
by James L. Rogers II
On August 21, 1844, the Ithaca Chronicle, a New York State Whig newspaper, published an account from an anonymous author, "An Abolitionist." The article contained a purported extract from Roorback's Tour through the Western and Southern States in 1836. The extract supposedly contained three paragraphs of Baron Roorback's description upon meeting a gang of slave traders and their victims upon the Duck River in Middle Tennessee. The extract contained the following critical passage:
Forty of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed, of the Hon. J. K. Polk, the present speaker of the house of representatives; the mark of the branding iron, with the initials of his name on their shoulders distinguishing them from the rest.
The publication of this account created a new term in the English language, embarrassed Whig partisans, and highlighted the desperation of Whigs late in the electoral campaign of 1844. A seemingly small incident of personal slander and political deceit, the Roorback Hoax illustrates some of the factors that lead to a Democratic electoral victory in 1844, and the consequent elevation of James K. Polk to the Presidency.
The author of the extract from Roorback's Tour had fabricated the assault on Polk. Roorback's Tour had never been printed, nor had Baron Roorback ever existed. Instead, George W. Featherstonhaugh's Excursion Through the Slave States, a recently published travel memoir, served as the source of much of the extract. "An Abolitionist" surreptitiously added the account of Polk's branded slaves and the location of Duck River, which runs near Polk's home in Columbia, Tennessee, to Featherstonhaugh's text.
Featherstonhaugh's description of the event, which took place in 1836 on the New River of southwestern Virginia, delivered a distasteful view of slave trading and slave traders, but no mention of branding or particular slaveowners. The London edition of the memoir featured an illustration of the event on its title page (see illustration). Polk's name is never mentioned in Featherstonhaugh's memoir, and Featherstonhaugh revealed the sugarcane plantations of Louisiana as the destination of the slaves.
"An Abolitionist" obviously did not know that Polk owned few slaves in 1836, and that his plantation in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, was quite small and devoted to self-sufficiency through the production of corn, hogs, and cotton. The Roorback Hoax was clearly intended to smear the moral character of the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and to emphasize the association of the Democracy with the worst aspects of slavery.
The circulation of the Roorback Hoax was greatly compounded when Thurlow Weed's Albany Evening Journal republished the account from the Chronicle. Weed's newspaper represented the upstate New York Whig Party, and was widely read and circulated in Whig circles throughout the North. The hoax wound up repeated in Whig newspapers in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, particularly critical battleground states in 1844.
The Whig press only discovered its error in publishing the Roorback Hoax when the Democratic press challenged the account and decisively refuted it. By early October, the Whig press finally announced its role in spreading the deception, blaming the hoax on an Ithaca Democrat, William Linn, who delivered the fraudulent passage to a gullible young Whig, Daniel McKinney, who then passed it on to the Chronicle's editor. Having publicly cleared themselves of the charge of fraud, the Whigs tried to bury the action with self-righteous proclamations of future caution and increased discretion. The Roorback Hoax disappeared from the Whig campaign newspapers, and apparently from the history of the Presidential election of 1844.
One might assume that Polk's "dark horse" status would lead to fewer personal attacks by the Whigs, but Democratic partisans rose to defend his character from a wide range of slanders. The widely circulated slogan "Who is James K. Polk?" represented the Whig charge of Polk's personal obscurity and insignificance, particularly compared to the national prominence of Clay. Whig partisans circulated an outrageous lie that Polk's father was a Tory during the American Revolution, when in fact Ezekiel Polk signed the Mecklenburg (NC) Declaration of Independence of 1775. Polk treated the charge against his father very seriously, and personally orchestrated a well-documented rebuttal.
The Roorback Hoax was therefore not an unusual example of political campaign excess, even given its blatant falsehood and the subsequent embarrassed retraction by the Whig press. But if the Roorback Hoax is fairly typical in the history of Presidential elections and personal assaults, why then would the Whig press so prominently retract its publication? Why widely publicize an unlikely scheme of deception and lack of discretion, when salutary neglect would serve the same purpose? What was so unique about this particular event that it caused the term "roorback" to enter the American lexicon as a synonym for personal slander during elections?
The content of the Roorback Hoax appears to provide little insight into its significance. The Whig press surely realized the party had little to gain by making Polk's connection to slavery obvious. Clay had very substantial slave-worked hemp enterprises in Kentucky, and owned significant numbers of slaves. Intimating that Polk would treat his slaves as cattle, rather than chattel, appears to be a blatant attack on Polk's moral character.
While the branding aspect of the hoax seems morally outrageous, most contemporary observers would have realized the unlikelihood that any slaveowner, particularly a prominent national politician, would mistreat valuable property in such a way. At the very least, branding would have made the transfer of slaves to other owners very difficult.
Moreover, the publicity surrounding the revelation of the hoax would destroy the moral focus of the character assault, and possibly redound upon the character of those who promulgated and promoted the slander. Whig newspapermen decided, rather than lose the moral battle, to try to deflect the moral outrage onto a Democrat officeholder.
Perhaps the Roorback Hoax served as an attempt to induce abolitionists to support the Whig Party? As many historians have noted, abolitionists opposed slaveholding on philosophical or religious grounds, and could not have been so easily convinced to support Clay over Polk. The Liberty Party existed solely as an expression of abolitionist political views, and its partisans certainly looked with disfavor upon both Whigs and Democrats in 1844. Abolitionists figured prominently in electoral politics in the critical states of 1844 – New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The winning candidate in 1844 had to carry at least two of those states. Nevertheless, both Democrats and Whigs realized that, if they could draw large numbers of abolitionist votes, their chances of victory would increase significantly. Both parties tried various schemes to lure abolitionist voters, but evidence from 1844 indicates that neither had much success.
The significance of the Roorback Hoax more likely lies in another context of the 1844 campaign. By August, expansionism had clearly become the dominant campaign issue of 1844. The Democratic Convention and its candidates issued clear and unambiguous campaign stands in favor of the immediate annexation of Texas and Oregon into the United States. Martin Van Buren's attempt to repeat as Democratic standard-bearer in 1844 had unexpectedly foundered upon this very issue, and Polk's nomination clearly tied his candidacy and the national party to expansionism.
Clay, and the Whig Party generally, repudiated any near-term action on the Texas or Oregon questions, favoring a "masterful inactivity" (borrowing a term from John C. Calhoun). The Democratic position on Texas and Oregon annexation captured the imagination of the American public, and every other issue quickly faded into the background of the campaign. Whigs felt that they had a stronger argument in domestic economic issues, and would have preferred to run on the prosperity and protection platforms of their convention. Victory in the key states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio depended upon a focus on Whig economic issues.
A number of events conspired to derail the Whig attempt to focus the campaign on the domestic economy. Polk's letter to John K. Kane of June 19, 1844, explained the Democratic position on a revenue tariff with incidental protection, and effectively nullified the Whig advantage on the tariff issue in Pennsylvania and New York. President John Tyler had openly embraced Texas annexation, which gave the issue both prominence and popularity among his partisans. Tyler's withdrawal from the 1844 contest left his officeholders and their powerful patronage posts, especially in New York City and Philadelphia, free to support the Democratic expansionist ticket.
While Texas annexation clearly meant the expansion of slavery into that territory, the annexation of Oregon would provide a complementary non-slave geographic balance to expansionism. It is no small irony that Clay, a prominent author of geographic compromise on slavery in 1820, found his Presidential aspirations threatened by an obvious, but not explicit, appeal to geographical balance in expansionism between new slave and non-slave territories. Such reasoning would not sway abolitionists, but, as already mentioned, they would likely support neither Clay nor Polk in 1844.
In light of the dominance of expansionism in 1844, and the political events surrounding it, Clay and the Whigs found themselves entirely on the defensive by August on this critical issue. The Roorback Hoax appears to be a desperate Whig attempt to move the electoral debate to some other issue, especially in key states like New York. If they could insert a change in subject to one that focused on character and morality, maybe the Whigs could regain the campaign initiative and emphasize economic policy. Despite Whig attempts to promulgate a roorback on the Democratic candidate in 1844, Polk carried New York and Pennsylvania and the electoral victory. And the term "roorback" thereby entered the nation's peculiar electoral vocabulary.
James L. Rogers II, former associate editor of The Correspondence of James K. Polk, is assistant professor of history at Middle Georgia College. Much of the information in this article is derived from the files of the Polk Correspondence project, a long-term recipient of NHPRC support.
