The Deconstruction of Reconstruction

James Wormley

Businessman. Civic Leader.

In this episode we discussed the array of social, political, and legal forces that accelerated the abandonment of Reconstruction. One of the major political events mentioned was the 1876 Presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Governor of Ohio and his Democrat challenger, the New York Governor Samuel Tilden. After a hotly contested election produced no real clear winner, Congress appointed a special electoral commission to determine the outcome. While this commission was doing its work, national leaders from both parties began secret negotiations to broker a compromise. They conducted their negotiations at the Wormley Hotel, a prominent business in Washington, D.C. owned by an African-American man named James Wormley.

James Wormley was born in 1819, four years after his parents, Lynch and Mary Wormley moved to Washington. When they arrived in 1815, Lynch Wormley retained the services of well-known Washington lawyer, Frances Scott Key, to sue Smith Cocke for his own freedom, which he obtained by a deed of manumission. Key had obtained even more notoriety three years earlier when he wrote the words to what later became The Star Spangled Banner. The Wormley family earned a living by providing personal services to the growing white residents of Washington. Lynch and his sons became experienced horsemen, and developed a thriving business as drivers to high-profile businessmen, political figures, and D.C. socialites. This experience brought James Wormley into contact with the inner workings of Washington power.

In the early 1850’s, Wormley became the steward at the prestigious Washington Club. Nearly all of the members of the Club were leading figures in the military and politics. At the same time, Wormley opened his own restaurant and hotel not too far from the White House. When the Washington Club closed in 1869, the Washington elite held its meetings at Wormley’s new restaurant, making his establishment the go-to place for all of the city’s power brokers.

Wormley was a confidante and contemporary of national figures like Frederick Douglass and John Mercer Langston. During the Civil War, Wormley’s business continued to thrive. He hosted all the major military and political leaders, including General George McCellan and Senator Charles Sumner. In fact, Sumner gave Wormley his personal souvenir copy of the Thirteenth Amendment when in passed in 1865. As his business prospered, the Wormley family was active and influential in the cause of abolition.

The Wormley Hotel

circa 1884

In 1869, Wormley acquired the building next to his restaurant and made it the centerpiece of his enterprise, and the hotel emerged as the central establishment for politics, diplomacy, and social elegance in the District. In an historical twist of irony, the Wormley hotel - owned by a free-born man who dedicated much of his life to achieving the very goals Reconstruction was designed to produce - would be the setting for a political arrangement that not only brought about an end to Reconstruction, but one that also laid the foundation for the smothering of black equality in favor of disenfranchisement, subordination, and segregation.

The Wormley Hotel maintained its distinction through the final years of the nineteenth century. James Wormley died in 1884 after a surgical procedure in Boston. All of the major hotels in Washington lowered flags to half-staff to honor him.