Whig reported “Mary Jones,
alias Mary Jane Henley a likely mulatto girl, about twenty years of age, arrested for being without free papers, was committed for nine days. She was sent to the North about nine years ago, by a highly respectable lady of this city, for the purpose of receiving a thorough education, after completing which she went to Liberia.” The article asserted, “The laws of Virginia positively prohibit the return to this State of any free negro who has lived in a free State,” yet Richards remained in Richmond. This may have been because her freedom was likely de facto, not de jure both Virginia law and stipulations in John Van Lew’s will made it difficult for the Van Lew family to free any of their slaves. If this was indeed the case, Richards likely experienced both the protection of and continued subjection to the Van Lew family. On August 30, at the end of her jail term, the
The Atlantic
The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class’
The business owners, real-estate brokers, and service members who rioted acted not out of economic desperation, but out of their belief in their inviolable right to rule.
January 12, 2021
Updated at 2:20 p.m. ET on March 25, 2021.
The mob that breached the Capitol last week at President Donald Trump’s exhortation, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, was full of what you might call “respectable people.” They left dozens of Capitol Police officers injured, screamed “Hang Mike Pence!,” threatened to murder House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and set up a gallows outside the building. Some were extremists using the crowd as cover, but as federal authorities issue indictments, a striking number of those they name appear to be regular Americans.