Wrap-Up
I have been thwarted in my efforts to learn more about Henry C. Crawford, but I am not surprised. He could not have been born in Hicksville, because to serve as a First Mate or Captain in 1860, he must have been born before people of European ancestry permanently lived there. As an adult, he likely was at sea most of the time, and thus missed being recorded in censuses and local directories. If he did live in Hicksville, he may have kept a room in the Grand Central Hotel, and used it only between voyages. I have not yet found any record of where he was incarcerated.
Albert Horn was pardoned a few years later by Abraham Lincoln, because he was dying from acute lung disease. Given the thousands of people whose lifetime slavery he arranged, I question Lincoln’s showing him mercy.
As a child, when I learned about the Civil War, I felt irrationally smug about being a Northerner. The North was “where the good guys came from.” I clung to that thought for a long time, but I eventually realized that life is more complicated than it seemed in my childhood. Having now looked into the grim world in which Henry Crawford and men like him lived, I am less sure about things, but I can say this: The North was not all good guys.
