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He was born into a wealthy slaveholding family. He was a na- tionally known politician. His face adorns the Capitol build- ing in Washington, D.C. And he fathered children with one of his slaves. She was a light-skinned, literate woman who lived with him as his common-law wife and died in slavery. Can you guess their names? The answer might seem obvious - Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. But this is not their story. The man in question is Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, Democratic U.S. Representative (1806- 19 and 1829-37), U.S. Senator (1819-29), and Vice President under President Martin Van Buren (1837-41). The woman is Julia Chinn, an enslaved African American woman who had once belonged to Johnson's father Robert (1). The two documents that this article examines - a political cartoon entitled "An Affecting Scene in Kentucky" and the election ticket entitled "Carrying the War into Africa" - both use images of Julia Chinn to make a political point during a heated election season. With historical background on the personalities portrayed, the nature of the relationship between Johnson and Chinn, the election of 1836, and the production of these documents, teachers and students can learn much about the world of antebellum America.
Richard Mentor Johnson
Johnson was born into a family of wealthy plantation owners in Beargrass, Kentucky, near what is now Louisville, on October 17, 1780. Taking advantage of family connections - his father was a prominent landholder and a former associate of Thomas Jefferson - Johnson read law with two noted Kentucky jurists and, by 1802, he was a practicing attorney who gained a reputation for defending poor clients against wealthy land speculators. First elected to the Kentucky state legislature in 1804, he won election the U.S. House of Representatives in 1806 and served six consecutive terms. Johnson fervently admired Thomas Jefferson, whom he described as the "patriarch of republicanism." With other young Democratic-Republican frontier politicians, most notably Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, Johnson viewed himself as a Jeffersonian, siding with "the people" against banks, land speculators, and "great monied monopolies" (2).
The War of 1812 made Johnson a national figure. Serving under General William Henry Harrison, whom he would later oppose in the election of 1840, Johnson led two mounted regiments...