Dwelling Place Page 14
Jones was all too aware that most southern whites were not enthusiastic about such questions, that they were in fact deeply hostile to any discussion that hinted at the abolition of slavery. Many ministers, he wrote Mary, “have ruined their influence and usefulness in the Southern states by injudicious speech and conduct in regard to the slaves and the general subject of slavery.” It was, he said, “highly important that those of us who are anticipating a Southern field of labour should become well acquainted with the subject of slavery, and understand in what way it may be approached, and by course of conduct the best interests of the coloured population and the approbation of the whites may be secured.”17
Charles struggled to find some reasonable, middle path that was in “the best interests of the coloured population” and that at the same time could receive the “approbation of the whites.” Without such a way he would be left with the freedom of a terrible choice—of deciding either for his Christian duty or for the home he loved. What was equally troubling for him was the possibility that his struggle was simply a “disinclination” of his own will to decide for his Christian duty—a disinclination rooted in sin, in his own self-love.
Charles turned his attention for a while to the American Colonization Society as a means of addressing slavery in the United States. It seemed such a glorious scheme, so full of reason and goodwill. The black population of the country would simply be sent back to West Africa, where a “civilized and Christianized republic” could be established in Liberia. There the former slaves could form a powerful republic to suppress the slave trade, open trade with the nations in the interior of Africa, and send from among their numbers missionaries and teachers to reclaim their African brothers and sisters from “their heathenish condition.” Charles thought it “a noble design!”18 And it was noble indeed—unless, of course, you were a slave who wanted freedom in the United States rather than a one-way trip to Liberia, or a white planter who had no desire to lose slave labor. And that was the rub—the scheme carried with it a deep racism that was beginning to be denounced, and it reflected a profound economic and political naïveté.
By the middle of May 1830, with graduation from Princeton looming, Charles felt the pressure building for some decision. He was, he wrote Mary, “uncertain that I should make Georgia my home.” He reminded her, “I have always been deeply interested for the Coloured population in slavery in the United States. How it has long been a doubt in my mind whether I ought to return to Georgia and endeavor to do what I can for them there, and also where as God shall give me opportunity, or devote myself at once to them, in some special efforts in connection with the Colonization Society, or in some other manner.” He did not know, he said, “which way the scale will turn,” and he prayed “for light from on high to shine and make the path of duty plain before my face.” One thing he was certain of—it was “high time that our country was taking some measures of some sort whose ultimate tendency shall be the emancipation of nearly three million of men, women, and children who are held in the grossest bondage, and with the highest injustice.”19 Perhaps he was thinking of those who worked the fields at the Retreat or ate by the evening fires of Carlawter.
Charles wondered in frustration why no one was devising and executing measures that would lead to emancipation. He felt that the whole country was dead on the subject, “while a vast amount of passion and prejudice and self-interest and difficulty is set in opposition to every attempt to bring it forward.” But he was certain that matters could not stay as they were and that some movement must take place. He asked Mary to pray for him that God would give him clarity about the direction he should go. And then he added:
I am, moreover, undecided whether I ought to continue to hold slaves. As to the principle of slavery, it is wrong! It is unjust, contrary to nature and religion to hold men enslaved. But the question is, in my present circumstances, with evil on my hands entailed from my father, would the general interests of the slaves and community at large, with reference to the slaves, be promoted best, by emancipation? Could I do more for the ultimate good of the slave population by holding or emancipating what I own? I know not very particularly how you feel on this point. But am inclined to believe that your feelings are not much different from mine.
Charles longed to see Mary and he urged her to come north for the summer so that they could discuss face-to-face these important questions. He was certain that in “regard to any measures which I may think best to adopt that are reasonable and calculated to benefit the slave population and push forward the Kingdom of Christ, I can be supported so far as money is concerned without difficulty.” What he wasn’t certain about was whether Mary could follow whatever path he chose. She had said she would, and she had filled his “heart with joy” when she told him she was willing for him go where the voice of God called him and that she would esteem it her highest happiness to go with him. But, he asked, “My beloved, my dear Mary, are you willing to give up all your relatives and friends for my sake?”20
For all of his struggles, Charles was clearly moving toward a decision that would lead him back to Liberty County as a missionary among slaves. Such a path seemed to lead to several deeply held hopes—the evangelization of the slaves to help prepare them for the virtues and responsibilities needed for freedom; the evangelization of slaves for their eternal salvation; and the building of a home, both an earthly and an eternal one, where blacks and whites could live together in harmony and mutual affection. Such a course seemed to be the way to resolve the deep conflicts of his heart and to ease the competing demands of duty and home. Before he made such a decision, however, he determined to discuss his plan with those most deeply identified with the antislavery movement.
Three days after writing Mary about his struggles, Charles left Princeton for Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. He had become a great walker during his time in the North, and he set out for Philadelphia on foot. He walked the twenty miles to Bristol and found the countryside dressed in green and cultivated like a garden. White farmhouses with red chimneys, lit by the clear shining of the sun, peered through the green foliage and stirred his admiration. In Bristol, after soaking his feet in cold water, he caught a steamboat on the Delaware River to take him the rest of the way to Philadelphia. Arriving in the city, he went to the meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly and heard Lyman Beecher preach “one of his reformation sermons. The great doctrine of his sermon was ‘that nothing could save our country from the various evils which threatened it, but an enlightened and moral people.’” Charles kept thinking about those who lived in the settlements in Liberty and how they fit into such a challenge. He talked with Absalom Peters, who four years earlier had led in the establishment of the American Home Missionary Society. They discussed the “condition and prospects of the coloured population of the U. States, and the best method of proceeding in giving them the Gospel, and waking up the public sympathy in their behalf.” Peters gave Charles advice about what was needed to start a new movement—that he must develop a careful plan and identify those who would help to carry the plan into effect. Charles took note of the advice, thought about what it might mean for Liberty County, and reported to Mary that Peters had promised that the mission society would support any good proposals for work among the slave population. After a brief discussion with Beecher, Charles left for Washington.21
He took a steamboat down the river to the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, where he boarded a canal barge drawn by horses hitched in a single file. It was a lovely day, and he sat beneath the barge’s awning and “enjoyed the cool breeze and the instructive conversation of a China merchant.” The canal connected the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay, saving a traveler hundreds of miles around the Delmarva Peninsula. Charles marveled at the technological developments of the nineteenth century and the promises they held for a bright future, and he knew that confidence in an expanding technology informed the assumptions of many in the growing antislavery movement. At the bay he boarded th
e steamer George Washington for the run to Baltimore. “Our boat,” he wrote, “made between 24 and 26 revolutions of her wheels per minute, and had on 15 or 16 inches of steam.”22
After a brief stay in Baltimore, Charles took the stage to Washington, where he made his way to the home of the U.S. attorney general, John M. Berrien. A Savannah politician and judge, Berrien was an old friend of Joseph Jones. He knew the influence of the Jones family and its connections in the low country, so when presented a letter of introduction from Joseph, the attorney general gave Charles a warm welcome. He made inquiries about the family in Liberty County and showed Charles every kindness, but when the subject of the Cherokees came up, Berrien’s tone changed. He expressed to Charles his satisfaction at the recent passage of the bill authorizing the president to negotiate with the Cherokees “for the sale or exchange of lands and removal West of the Mississippi, and appropriating $500,000 for these purposes.” Berrien evidently thought any white Georgian would agree with such sentiments, but Charles expressed his regrets about the bill, for he thought it unjust and an infringement on the rights of the Cherokees. Taken aback, Berrien “put himself to the trouble of entering into some remarks on the right of Georgia to the territory, the misapprehension of the true state of the question in the north, the unnecessary excitement that prevailed in the Religious community etc.” Charles found Berrien’s arguments specious, and he left without receiving an invitation to stay in the attorney general’s home. Charles was insulted, evidently considering this slight a serious violation of the code of hospitality inherent in his privileged background. The attorney general soon wrote a letter of apology to Joseph, saying that his busy schedule prevented his offering such an invitation, but Charles accepted the apology grudgingly.23
Charles quickly received an invitation, however, to stay in the home of Reuben Post, a New Englander who was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Washington and chaplain of the Senate. There he found a Mr. Evarts, another New Englander, who was the corresponding secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions. “It will not surprise you, I hope,” he wrote Mary, “when I tell you that it does me good to meet New England friends and acquaintances.”24 The episode at Berrien’s and the warm reception he received from the New Englanders apparently raised a question in his mind. Was there a way that the religious community he had cometo know in the North was more his home than the geographical community of Georgia? He certainly found in this religious community, in contrast to Berrien, a welcome and a deep sympathy with his way of seeing contemporary events. Could the religious community represent for him another kind of home—an alternative vision, a broader, less tribal way of understanding home in this world and the next? But of course there was also a religious community at Midway, where his parents and so many friends and relatives lay buried, and where his sisters and fiancée were members.
Charles spent the next day with Ralph Gurley, the executive of the American Colonization Society. They talked about the society, about the young colony of African Americans in Liberia, and about the prospects of the society. Gurley was optimistic about the future and emphasized the moral obligation of every American to address the evils of slavery. The society, Charles concluded, “is gaining ground in the U. States, rapidly, and its colony is very flourishing.”25
During the next few days, Post showed Charles the sights of the city. They went to the Senate, where Charles saw John C. Calhoun, “not a handsome man, features small, rather slim in person, but an eye full of vivacity and fire, seated beneath rather a heavy brow;” and he saw Daniel Webster and a host of others as well. But he was most impressed with Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. “His countenance is all benevolence,” Charles wrote Mary, and, in contrast to Berrien, he treats “every body with great kindness, I mean Christian kindness, and is a most devoted, pious man.” Charles saw Frelinghuysen as a great friend of the Indian, for he had made an important speech opposing the removal of the Cherokees.26
On the following Sunday, Post asked Charles to preach the morning sermon at the First Presbyterian Church. Charles had with him the sermon he had preached as a part of his examination for ordination. Not surprisingly, the sermon was on Matthew 6:24, a text that addressed the preoccupation of Charles’s mind and heart: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Senator Frelinghuysen was there, and shortly after the service began Andrew Jackson came in and sat with his wife right under the pulpit. “He looked at me over his specktacles,” Charles reported, “with an eye of considerable fire and command, to know who was about to preach.” Charles recognized him immediately as the president and liked the old gentleman’s appearance very much, with his full head of gray hair. Charles assured Mary that he was not intimated by having the president in the congregation. “Standing up in the presence of God, to deliver the truths of his word to dying men, I found neither time nor inclination to gaze after the man who with his distinctions will be soon laid in the dust, and will appear with me before the King of Kings, the Lord of all; He to answer for the improvement of his opportunity of hearing the word of the Lord spoken; and I, for my faithfulness in delivering it.” In the congregation with the president hearing Charles preach on the impossibility of serving two masters was the Cherokee delegation in Washington.27
That evening the delegation came to Reuben Post’s home. Led by John Ross, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, they had come to Washington to fight the removal bill. “Our conversation,” Charles wrote Mary, “was chiefly on their controversy with Georgia, the passage of the bill, etc.” Charles found them all sensible, well-informed men. “They felt much,” said Charles, “and determined to bear with patience every evil that might come upon them, and hold fast their lands and not sell a foot, and if possible carry their cause before the Supreme Court of the U. States.” None of those sitting in the Post drawing room could know that in a few short years the friends and relatives of Charles would be leaders in making Cherokee lands the most vigorous and thriving part of Georgia for its white citizens.28
Meanwhile, in Liberty County, Mary and her family were back in Sunbury for the summer and fall, having left the Retreat house being painted and readied for the upcoming wedding. Susan and the children left Laurel View in July for an extended stay with the Roswell Kings on St. Simons, and Mary, at her father’s urging, was preparing for a visit to Sapelo Island. The Thomas Spaldings of Sapelo had visited at the Retreat, and social etiquette required a return visit.29
Mary was reluctant to go, saying that a quiet and retired life had more charms for her than any other. But when she went, she found that Sapelo and the Spalding plantation charmed her. The island, she wrote Charles, was the “most beautiful and romantic spot I ever saw. From the beach which is near a quarter of a mile in width you see the Atlantic rolling at your feet from three points—east, south, and west. We took a moonlight excursion upon it, which I shall never forget. The sublimity of the scene was indescribable.” As for the Spalding house, it looked “like the castle of some old feudal lord” and was “seated in the bosom of an extensive oak forest which from its moss clad and venerable appearance seems to have weathered the storms of a century.” Mary was also delighted with the beautiful Mrs. Spalding. She seemed to Mary “almost all that woman should be—possessing ardent, active piety, great intelligence and a most bewitching kindness and affection of manner.”30 In her description of Sapelo, Mary was apparently inviting Charles to feel as well the charm of the island and the bewitching pull of a low-country home.
Shortly after his evening with the Cherokee delegation, Charles left Washington for Baltimore. With him went Ross and a few members of the delegation. Charles stayed at the home of friends and took an excursion on the new railroad that already had thirteen miles of track laid. His car, pulled by what Charles called “one horse,” moved at the rate of ten or twelve miles per hour. It was to him “t
he most delightful ride I ever had. No motion but that of right on.”31 With no motion but “right on,” the train, like the steamboat, was a sign of progress, of advancement, of movement toward an expanding future. Charles was never enthralled by the promises of technology, but he was deeply aware that profound changes were going on around him—changes that would soon be pushing into the Georgia low country and into Cherokee lands—and he shared a widespread optimism about a future that appeared to be arriving on rails.
In the afternoon after his train excursion, he went to see Benjamin Lundy, the antislavery editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation. Lundy had recently met an impressive young abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, and had persuaded him to come to Baltimore and join him as the coeditor of the Genius. Charles evidently did not meet the fiery Garrison, who bitterly opposed the colonization movement, but he spent the afternoon and early evening discussing with Lundy the antislavery cause and the prospects of the Liberian colony. He left Lundy’s home and called on John Ross and another member of the Cherokee delegation. Ross decided to travel with him to Philadelphia.32