Dwelling Place Read online

  Now, it is exceedingly difficult to use them as money; to treat them as property and at the same time render to them that which is just and equal as immortal and accountable beings, and as heirs of the grace of life, equally with ourselves. They are associated in our business and thoughts and feelings, with labour and interest and gain and wealth. Under the influence of the powerful principle of self-interest, there is a tendency to view and to treat them as instruments of labour, as a means of wealth, and to forget, or to pass over lightly the fact, that they are what they are, under the eye and government of God. There is a tendency to rest satisfied with very small and miserable efforts for their mortal improvement, and to give oneself but little trouble to correct immoralities and reform wicked practices and habits, should they do their work quietly and profitably and enjoy health and go on to multiply and increase upon the earth.

  If planters—and Charles clearly included himself among them—faced such dangers because “their people” were “their money,” a concomitant danger, Charles thought, also lurked for those who lived in the settlements:

  The difficulty presses in another direction. The Negroes themselves, seeing and more than seeing, feeling and knowing, that their owners regard and treat them as “their money”—as property only, are inclined to lose sight of their better character and higher interests, and in their ignorance and depravity, to estimate themselves and religion and virtue no higher than their owners do. The saying becomes true, like master, like servant.22

  Charles named in this way the big low-country gator that had always been thrashing around before his pulpit. He acknowledged what must have seemed so obvious to those who sat around the fires in the settlements—that the very character of slavery was deeply and fundamentally hostile to human dignity and welfare. Charles continued to hope, however, that good intentions and benevolent impulses and even the self-interest of planters would be powerful enough to overcome this fundamental hostility, to domesticate the gator and make room for good to be done for those who lived in the settlements. All his careful analysis, all his acknowledgment of the inseparable link between the physical and the spiritual life, and all his labors as a pastor in the settlements did not finally lead him to attack the system, to say with the abolitionists that slavery, with its degradations, must come to an immediate end. The most he was able to do was seek to be a reformer within the system, work to make the system somehow more humane and the life of the slave somehow more bearable. Others, however, as we shall see, would take his work, his reports, and his insights and use them as Charles could never bring himself to do—in a struggle for freedom for all the sons and daughters of Africa who lived in the settlements of Liberty County.23

  Following his trip to Charleston in 1845, Charles wrote three annual reports for the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes. And each year Charles attempted in the reports to evaluate his work and to see whether the time was right to bring this period of his life to a conclusion. The reports for 1845 and 1846 only gave hints of his movement toward a new calling. When he met with the association in January 1848 and gave his report for the preceding year, however, he announced that he had once again accepted a call to become a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary. In contrast to his decision in 1836 to go to Columbia, Charles now seemed ready and even eager to go. His health had suffered a setback after Joseph’s death, and his nighttime visits to the settlements had been curtailed. Moreover, the earlier, experimental character of his work in Liberty County had clearly come to an end. He was no longer swimming against the stream of southern white opinion but was sailing with an increasingly powerful current flowing in defense of human slavery. And there were more personal factors as well that influenced his decision—factors that were rooted once again in family, in his commitment to those whom he loved, and in his understanding of home.

  The death of Joseph Jones in October 1846 had not only been an emotional trauma for his family, it had also set in motion forces that significantly altered attachments to home for Charles and Mary. Joseph’s will, as one would expect, was carefully drawn, and its provision divided his accumulated wealth among his heirs. The 4,500 acres of the Retreat were divided between his sons James Newton and Edwin West, with the widow Elizabeth and the minor children having the right to live in the Retreat house and to a share of the plantation’s income as long as they remained single. Charles Berrien, who had already received land from his father, was given 300 acres adjoining his plantation near Walthourville. Henry Hart was given Lodebar, while Laurel View went to his younger brother Andrew Maybank. The Walthourville summerhouse and an adjoining plantation, Wild Woods, went to the widow Elizabeth. “To my beloved daughter Mary,” Joseph left the two lots in Sunbury where the old Jones place had been and where Mary and Charles’s grandmother, Mary Sharpe (Jones) Low lay buried. “I would leave my daughter more,” Joseph had written, but he had already given her Carlawter and a division of her mother’s slaves. The same was true for John—he received some land in a distant county, and Joseph said he would have given “my dear son more” except that he had already made a settlement of slaves with him (including Mom Sylvia, who had remained at the Retreat) and had helped him purchase Bonaventure. Furthermore, John had received a “liberal education together with a profession” and was well situated in life. Other relatives—including Charles, sisters Susan and Betsy, and aunt Eliza Robarts—received gifts of money. Joseph’s daughter Emma was allotted her $5 for “clandestinely at night running away with and marrying S. N. Harris.” As for the 208 slaves who were still owned by Joseph, they were to be evenly divided—along with railroad and bank stock, cash, and other possessions—among the primary heirs (Elizabeth and all her children except Emma). Charles was made attorney for Elizabeth, who was the executrix. This meant that he had responsibility for a division of all those who lived at the Retreat settlement, at Laurel View and Lodebar, and at some of the other plantations. The only exceptions were old Pulaski and his wife, Affy. “My faithful servant and old Driver Pulaski and his wife,” Joseph had written, were to remain at the Retreat, where Pulaski was to continue as “senior Driver.” In addition, the old man who had grown up with Joseph, who had been his “right-hand man” in the development of the Retreat, and who had wept beside his master as Joseph lay dying on the parlor floor—“faithful old Pulaski” was to receive every year “an extra suit of union clothing and six dollars” from the “joint planters of the Retreat.”24

  William Maxwell, with two other planters, carefully appraised the value of each of the slaves: James, a mason, was worth $1,000; Cato’s twenty-six-year-old wife Betsy was appraised at $450, his six-year-old daughter Rinah at $200, and his three-year-old son Ned at $150. Charles then divided all 208 of them into eleven lots of approximately equal worth, keeping parents and their non adult children together, and apportioned them to the heirs. So, ironically, Charles, after having emphasized the importance of stability, played a central role in destabilizing the old settlement at the Retreat—a settlement whose established ways, kinship ties, and sleeping ancestors reached back to Rice Hope plantation and to the days when slave ships were arriving regularly in Savannah and Charleston. Many of the people in the settlement were soon scattered: they loaded oxcarts with their possessions and traveled the sandy roads of the county to new plantations. Others would leave the settlement in the coming years as Joseph’s heirs grew up and married and left home with their inheritances following them. Before the terrors of war would break over the land, the settlement at the Retreat would be empty, all the people gone from its familiar surroundings and many of them gone from Liberty County.25

  Charles’s work as the attorney for the executrix had required that he go through Joseph’s papers. One day, shortly before the slaves were to be apportioned, he made a surprising discovery. He found that Joseph’s oldest son, Joseph Maybank Jones—who had died intestate in 1831 a few weeks after Charles and Mary had married—had received before his death twelve slaves f
rom his father. Joseph had simply kept his son’s slaves, and they and the children of the women were included in those appraised and divided into lots. The problem, Charles immediately realized and Savannah lawyers confirmed, was that Joseph was not his son’s only heir—all of Joseph Maybank Jones’s brothers and sisters alive at the time of his death, including Mary and John, were to be counted heirs. Charles concluded that Joseph Maybank Jones’s estate had to be removed from the estate of his father and settled separately. Elizabeth Jones originally agreed to such an arrangement, but with Charles Berrien’s encouragement she changed her mind and insisted that the division precede as if the Joseph Maybank Jones papers had not been found. This Charles refused to do. He immediately resigned as attorney for the executrix, and a few days later Mary and her brother John notified their stepmother that they were challenging that part of their father’s will that included the slaves of their brother Joseph. Both sides hired lawyers, and the case was headed to court.26

  This whole matter was deeply distressing for Charles and Mary, as it threatened to disrupt close and intimate family ties. In his will, Joseph had urged a continuation of that “brotherly and sisterly spirit” which had been exhibited among his children during his lifetime. “I doubt not it will be continued,” Joseph wrote, after I have been “consigned to that narrow house allotted to frail man.”27 With the exception of Charles Berrien, such was the case among the children of Joseph—Henry Hart, James Newton, Maybank, Evelyn, and the others were too close to Charles and Mary, they looked to them too often for guidance and counsel and for support when sick, to be alienated from them.

  Matters were different, however, with Elizabeth. She had been so retiring, so much in the background during all the comings and goings at the Retreat and during all the decisions about family matters. Her self-confident stepdaughter Mary, only a few years younger than she, had always taken the lead and been outspoken. Even when Joseph lay dying on the parlor floor, it had been Mary and not Elizabeth who had taken over. Mary had been the one who had knelt for hours by her father’s head and who had at the end gently shaved his head for the doctor’s blister. Now as the widow and executrix, Elizabeth made her presence known, and the tension between her and Mary came into the open. Elizabeth dug in her heels and absolutely refused to acknowledge the estate of Joseph Maybank. And, to make matters worse, when she had a tall obelisk raised over Joseph’s grave, she had carved in its marble side the names of all of his children but Mary and John. Mary and her brother were obviously deeply hurt by this attempt to remove them from among the children of Joseph. The legal matters were eventually settled out of court—with Mary and John (and Emma too!) each receiving a part of their brother’s estate—but the rupture with Elizabeth never entirely healed. Mary never again referred to her as anything but Mrs. Jones, and Elizabeth on her part remained decidedly cool and distant toward Mary. John, with his affable spirit, soon made peace with Elizabeth, who had been a mother to him in ways she had never been to Mary.28

  After her brief efforts at self-assertion, Elizabeth once again receded into the background. Even Charles Berrien would turn to Mary and not his mother when there was sickness or trouble in the family.29 Charles and Mary soon assumed their roles as patriarch and matriarch in the extended Jones family. But first there had to be a clear break with Liberty County. Joseph’s death and the troubles associated with his will made it easier for Charles to accept the call to Columbia and for Mary to consent. Their attention and affections were now focused sharply on the younger generation—on Charlie, Joe, and Mary Sharpe—and Columbia offered the opportunity for the children to continue their educations without leaving home for college or a boarding school. Home would now be defined for Charles and Mary in ways that no longer included the Retreat except as a place of memories and occasional visits.

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  COLUMBIA II

  Once Charles and Mary had made the decision to go to Columbia, they had the daunting task of preparing for the move. They now owned three plantations that had to be managed, and with the death of Susan’s husband, Joseph Cumming, in 1846, Charles also had the responsibility for the management of White Oak, Social Bluff, and Lambert. So as they prepared to leave Liberty County in 1848, Charles had to think first about what he was going to do in regard to the management of these six plantations and the more than 160 slaves who lived upon them. And Mary had to see after all of the special responsibilities that were hers in regard to Montevideo, Maybank, and Arcadia.

  The most critical task was finding responsible managers who not only knew how to raise cotton, rice, and provisions but also knew how to direct and see after the needs of those who lived in the settlements. Charles wrote Susan in late spring of 1848 and told her he had secured for White Oak and Lambert the services of two neighboring planters—Thomas Winn Fleming and Peter Winn Fleming—and that William Maxwell had agreed to look after Social Bluff. Charles gave Susan detailed instructions about the management of the plantations and warned that she must be careful and frugal in order to keep from going deeply into debt. Charles Edward was now a student at Princeton, and Susan, who had little business sense and almost no idea about managing a plantation, had to assume responsibilities she had never had before. From now on—even with the managers—she would have to see about plantation ledgers, about selling cotton and rice, and about buying blankets, cloth, shoes, and bacon for the people of the settlements.1

  As for Montevideo, Charles had been able to secure the services of Thomas Shepard, a friend who owned a small plantation, Grassy Glade, in nearby McIntosh County. Shepard was a member of Midway and had been a supporter of Charles’s work for the religious instruction of the slaves. His piety—as well as his ability to raise cotton and rice and to keep all hands fully occupied—made him, Charles thought, a good manager for Montevideo. Shepard would later manage White Oak as well.2

  For the management of Arcadia, Charles hired Irwin Rahn, a Jack of all trades. He could raise cotton, rice, and corn, and he could also make bricks and work as a skilled carpenter. He was a member of Midway, and he and his wife had named one of their sons Charles Jones. The child, who had worms, died of congestion shortly after his father took over the management of Arcadia. While pious and skilled in many trades, Rahn lacked the formal education and sensibilities of the Jones family. Neatness, order, cleanliness, and a good diet were not among his most cherished values. He consequently did better at raising cotton and rice at Arcadia than at supplying pork for Daddy Robin and the others who lived in its settlement. And in spite of having the eye of a carpenter, when he looked at the cabins in the settlement, he failed to notice—as Mary later found to her dismay—that some of them had begun to lean and that the floors in some of them were beginning to give way.3

  Charles felt most confident about the arrangements he made for Maybank. Andrew was a skilled driver, “an intelligent man—and one of principle,” and clearly the leader of all those who lived in the settlement by the marsh. Furthermore, William Maxwell had agreed to see after the place, to confer with Andrew, to handle the marketing of the cotton, and to purchase the necessary supplies for the people. He and Betsy were now living in Sunbury, and they would be going to the island on a regular basis to visit and stay at Social Bluff.4

  While Charles was making these arrangements for the management of the plantations, he continued his weekly preaching and teaching at the stations. He had been forced the year before to give up the part of his work that he most cherished—the weeknight visits to the settlements of the county. The old childhood wound to his lungs that he had received when he was staying with his Aunt Eliza in Greensboro had evidently started to give him trouble. “I laboured under an irritated and inflamed state of the lungs,” he had told his neighbors, “which forbid exposure to the night air.”5

  As for the future of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes in Liberty County, Charles told its members that the work of the association was now up to them. The work, he said, must “be left to your
own consciences and to God, and my prayer is that you may not be found wanting.” From its inception, the association had involved the efforts of many people—officers had been elected annually, and many men and women had been involved over the years in teaching Sunday schools around the county. But the association itself was, in the words of Rebecca Mallard, “Mr. Jones’ association.” Charles was the one who gathered the materials and wrote the reports, and he had been the one who had seen that the meetings were held each year and that the invitations had been sent throughout the community. So when he left, the association itself came to an end. No more reports were issued, and no more appeals to the South for the religious instruction of the slaves flowed from Liberty County. The local efforts that the association had sponsored continued, however, now largely under the auspices of the Lambert Estate and under the direction of the Lambert trustees. During the coming years they hired missionaries who would visit in the settlements and preach in the stations, and they began to pay Toney Stevens’s owner $30 a year for his labors as the “coloured preacher” for the Midway congregation.6

  While these various transitions were unfolding, Mary was busy preparing to move her family to Columbia. Clothes had to be selected and packed in trunks; books had to be boxed; decisions had to be made about what household items would make the trip to Columbia with the family; and the plantation houses at Montevideo, Maybank, and Arcadia had to be prepared for the family’s long absence. At the same time that Mary was busy with these preparations, she was also busy with her usual routines. Phoebe and Patience were both pregnant and unable to be as helpful as usual. Moreover, Phoebe’s youngest child, Richard Baxter, was sickly and demanding much of his mother’s attention. His twin brother had died the year before, shortly after his birth, and Richard had struggled to gain weight and strength. In late summer 1848 Mary wrote Laura that the “protracted illness of Phoebe’s poor little Richard” occupied much of his mother’s time. Patience’s “indisposition,” on the other hand, had “through a kind Providence” terminated happily, “as she has added a young Patience to her household gifts.”7