Dwelling Place Read online

  Shepard apparently believed that Mary had, of her own free will, a sexual encounter with a white man—perhaps he thought she had gone to Riceboro on a Saturday night and met there some sailor whose little ship sailed up and down the North Newport. Or perhaps he thought one of the merchants or one of the travelers who stopped in the boro had plied her with liquor and had his way with her. Or perhaps he knew something that he was concealing from Charles—that she had not been a willing participant in a sexual encounter but a victim in the common abuse of black women by white men. Whatever Shepard knew or thought, Zadock apparently knew enough about what had happened to take Mary as his wife and to give her a public admonition—one of the weapons of the weak—that may have acted as some protection for her in the future.12

  If there was some question or secrecy about the father of Mary’s child, there seemed to be no doubt about the father of Henry Hart Jones’s two slave children. They had been born at the Retreat when Henry and their mother were teenagers, but since the death of Joseph Jones, the children and their mother had been living at Lodebar, Henry’s plantation. Windsor, a house servant at the Mallard Place, had begun courting the mother (whose name remains hidden in the plantation records) and had received permission to marry her. Rebecca Mallard wrote her son Robert Quarterman Mallard of the approaching wedding: “Windsor is to be married to a woman of Henry Joneses almost white with two children that are almost white, also, for I am told, they can scarcely be distinguished from Mr. Jones.” Rebecca Mallard evidently had questions about the wisdom of the match—although she apparently had no questions about the father of the children. Some of Windsor’s brothers had married “light complicted wives,” and Rebecca thought “they very often do badly in so doing.”13

  The plans for a remarkable wedding, however, went ahead. Henry and his wife, Abby, agreed to give a big wedding for the slave couple. Invitations were sent out to whites and blacks, and arrangements were made with the black preacher Toney Stevens to conduct the wedding service at Lodebar. Among the whites who attended were Lou Mallard, the daughter of Rebecca and Thomas Mallard, and her cousin Ann Baker. They were escorted by John Ward, who would shortly be elected mayor of Savannah, serve as president of the Democratic National Convention in 1856, and eventually be the first United States minister to China. Ward did not stay for the wedding, but a number of the Mallard domestic servants came in their best attire, including Josiah and his wife, Henrietta. Rebecca Mallard wrote about some of the details of the wedding:

  Windsor was married on Saturday night at Mr. H. Joneses. Lue & Ann Baker were invited to attend. The invitation was accepted and away they went escorted by young Mr. Ward. He saw them there, but did not remain as he was not invited. They (the girls) enjoyed themselves so well that they did not get back until a little before twelve. Old Toney Stevens married them. Windsor seems to be in fine spirits and is quite a fine servant…. They had quite a nice wedding. James & Em & Margaret [went] together. Josiah & Henrietta. Lue laughed & said that Josiah had his horse sent up in order to ride to the wedding.14

  The wedding appeared a happy occasion for all, black and white alike. Perhaps among the whites no one was happier than Abby, for even though the relationship between her husband and his slave had been years earlier, its memory must have been painful for Abby, a constant reminder to a white mistress of nighttime visits by her husband to the settlement at the Retreat.

  And among the blacks, perhaps no one was happier than the slave woman herself, for the marriage provided—once again through the weapons of the weak—at least some protection from abuse. With a husband from the influential Mallard Place, reports of scandalous behavior on the part of her white master could be, if needed, circulated in the community in a way that would undermine Henry’s reputation as a pious and respectable citizen. Years earlier Charles had written Mary: “We must strive to have as few difficulties as possible with servants and dependents, for through their tale-bearing the influence of many a family is ruined, not to say their respectability. People are not generally aware how much their servants have them in their power.” Charles thought that however much “vanity or insolence may look down with contempt on the suffrage of men undignified by wealth and unenlightened by education,” slaves seldom “commend or blame without justice.” For the slave, the vice and virtue of owners are “easily distinguished.” The slave consequently knows the “secrets of a master,” for pride and folly generally make the master think he is secure when in fact he is being “inquisitively watched” by the slave, who has a “desire of reducing the inequalities of condition.” So for the slave mother, her marriage to Windsor provided some protection, even if that protection should not be exaggerated.15

  However happy the wedding of Windsor and his bride, tensions were building between blacks and whites in Liberty County. At the heart of black resistance to slavery in the low country had been the creation of a Gullah community and its efforts to ameliorate the harsh conditions of bondage. If there had never been in Liberty County an organized revolt against slavery, there had been over the generations of those who lived in the settlements a steady struggle to limit the power of whites and to create a community that remembered ancestors, affirmed the dignity of blacks, and told stories that taught strategies of resistance. The isolation of the settlements during much of the year and the relative stability of the slave population in the county had played important roles in the creation of the Gullah community and in its adoption of various strategies to resist the degradations of slavery. To be sure, the slave sales under the oaks in Riceboro and the movement of slaves from plantation to plantation within the county were constant reminders of the power of whites and of their ability to act in arbitrary and cruel ways. But African Americans had nevertheless been able to create, within the harsh confines of slavery, networks of families that reached from Colonel’s Island on the coast to the river plantations along the North Newport and to Walthourville on the sand hills. Saturday night visiting at “the wife house;” Sunday meetings at Midway, North Newport, and Sunbury; and the Saturday markets at Riceboro and Hinesville had all contributed to the creation and maintenance of a coherent Gullah community with its own worldview and ethos, its own reading of the landscape of the county, and its own ways of challenging the assumptions of white masters and mistresses.16

  In the 1850s, however, the Gullah community of Liberty County began to come under increasing pressure, as it had in the 1830s with the opening of Cherokee lands to white settlers. Now fertile lands in southwest Georgia were beginning to be opened for settlement.17 The new lands acted as a magnet—they drew whites toward the promised rewards of rich cotton crops, and they tore blacks away from their Gullah communities that had been built with courage and much sacrifice. By the middle of the decade this magnetic pull of virgin lands was radiating most forcefully into Liberty County along the tracks of an expanding railway system that could easily transport people and materials westward. When the rails of the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad were laid through the county in the 1850s, the settlements began to be linked more readily to a wider world, and slave families faced new, more radical, and frequent separations.18 For not only were family members carried away in increasing numbers to live on and work distant lands, but laborers were hired from the Retreat and other plantations to lay the rails, build the bridges, and maintain the tracks of the expanding railroads. Those who were hired out to work on the railroads would spend months away from their homes and would be subjected to harsh new work routines and to the management of those who had no self-interest in their welfare.19

  As this shaking of old foundations first began to be felt in the early 1850s, a religious revival broke out among both the whites and blacks of the county. And among the various settlements, none was struck more forcefully by religious fervor than the settlement at Arcadia. Toney Stevens had been visiting the plantation regularly, preaching in its little chapel, visiting in the settlement, and generally encouraging the people.20 Through his pastoral car
e, some began to feel religious stirrings along the sandy road of Arcadia’s settlement. Charles, on his visits home from Philadelphia in June 1851, wrote Mary of what was happening at Arcadia:

  You will be happy to know that a considerable change has passed over some of them of late for the better: Charles and Lucy, Pharaoh, Clarissa, Kate Jones and Agrippa, and Bella and some others. They are more sober, and regular at church and in the house of prayer; and it is hoped they may be under the influence of the Spirit of God.

  Lucy, Pharaoh, Adeline, and Bella all applied for membership at Midway and were admitted on communion Sunday, August 1851. Clarissa, Kate, and Charles applied but were not admitted until the next year. Mary Jones was home from Philadelphia on the communion Sunday, May 1852, when Charles—who had grown up in the settlement at Maybank—was baptized and received with eight other slaves into the Midway congregation. (Clarissa and Kate had been admitted the previous January.) Mary wrote Charlie and Joe at Princeton:

  It has been a great source of gratitude to our Heavenly Father that so many from Arcadia have within eighteen months professed religion and seem to be walking worthy of the Christian name—all connected with Midway Church. Charles joined the last Communion. My heart felt bursting with love and thankfulness as I saw the great man kneel as humbly as a child for baptism; a true change seems to have passed over him.21

  Charles—the son of Andrew and Mary Ann—was to become an increasingly important figure in the settlements. As a cart driver and a skilled handler of oxen, he was in demand on all three of the Joneses’ plantations during certain seasons of the year. He and his wife, Lucy—the daughter of Rosetta and Sam—came to be regarded by their owners as among the most responsible people in the settlements as tensions between whites and blacks began to come more in to the open. During the coming years, Charles and Lucy moved toward the inner circle of elite slaves that included Cato, Porter, Patience, and Phoebe, as well as Andrew and Rosetta. On the Sunday when Charles was baptized and became a member of Midway, four young white men—all cousins—were also admitted into membership of the church. One of them was Robert Quarterman Mallard. The youngest son of Thomas and Rebecca Mallard, Robert had grown up at the old Mallard Place and later was to write about Plantation Life Before Emancipation.22 What neither he nor Charles knew as they went forward in May 1852 to take their vows before the Midway congregation, was that Charles and Lucy’s only daughter, Tenah, was to become in a few short years the slave of Robert Mallard and would eventually be carried with her husband, young Niger the fisherman, far from her low-country home.

  If some in the settlements began turning with a new fervor to the consolations of religion, others in the settlements began to turn toward more open resistance as the relative stability of the Gullah community began to be undermined in the 1850s. The long-used tactic of running away was an option chosen by some as the disruptions of the period began to loosen, for increasing numbers, the ties they had to the settlements. Sam Mallard, Robert’s older brother, was one prosperous planter who had to face the challenges of runaways during these years. A number of his slaves made a break for freedom during the hardest part of the harvest season in 1852. Led by the slave Barak and his wife, Lucy, they hid in the river swamps for weeks, although apparently they kept in touch with some who lived in the settlements, perhaps getting some supplies and most likely taking some livestock from surrounding plantations. Sam Mallard sent word throughout the settlements that “if they had to be taken, he would give them one hundred lashes apiece.” So they began to “come in” and give themselves up. Barak and Lucy were taken to the little jail in Riceboro, where they were held for several weeks as the ringleaders before being sent off to Savannah to be sold. The others, no doubt, were severely punished—most likely with the whip, even if not with a crippling hundred lashes. As for Sam Mallard, he had been greatly troubled by the whole incident. His father, Thomas, thought he had had enough trouble “to make him poor,” but his mother, Rebecca, thought “he bore it very well indeed.”23

  Other planters, however, did not fare as well as Mallard. His brother-in-law, Leander Varnedoe, who had grown up at old Liberty Hall plantation, had his plantation home burned in 1852, his family barely escaping with their lives. Mary Jones reported that the fire was “thought to be the work of an incendiary—a runaway servant belonging to Dr. Way.” And there were other suspicious fires around the county during these early years of the decade: a cotton house and sixty bales of cotton, another plantation home, and one of the LeConte’s gin houses.24

  More startling for whites even than these fires was the murder of a planter in the adjoining county of McIntosh. James Houston, whose Peru plantation was on the South Newport River, also planted on Wahoo, a small island near Harris Neck. Miles of marsh surrounded the island and helped to make it one of the most isolated places on the Georgia coast. In June 1852 Houston floated down the South Newport in a small boat and made his way through a winding creek to the little landing near the island settlement. He was carrying provisions for the coming weeks when the work of those who lived in the settlement would be hard and the sun hot. A tall, good-looking man, Houston was a member of a distinguished family, but he was also a drunkard who could fly into a rage and bitterly abuse his slaves. On this early June day, he apparently arrived on the island drunk and began to abuse his slaves with a whip. They watched him and waited. At some point in the early evening he made his way to a little shack, where he collapsed in a drunken stupor. Someone, most likely the driver, came into the shack and, with a blow that would not kill him, hit him in the head with an axe. Others came in and carried him outside to a tree, where his arms where tied up. Then in an act of revenge and of resistance to further abuse, they whipped him to death. They burned his clothes and bedding in order to conceal what had happened and buried him in the thick marsh mud near a creek where “the water ebbed and flowed over the grave.” When he did not return to his plantation, suspicious whites went looking for him. They found his battered and decaying body uncovered by the work of the tide and exposed to the hungry elements of the marsh. Thomas Shepard wrote on 28 June to Charles in Philadelphia that three of Houston’s men “are now in the Darien gaol awaiting their trial. One of whom is his Driver, acknowledges their crime. Says they had calmly determined to run the risk of the gallows than to be treated as they had been.” Irwin Rahn reported in early July that “what gave rise to the nefarious act was making his people work on the Sabbath days.” By the middle of July, John Stevens was writing from Palmyra plantation that five of Houston’s slaves were “imprisoned (among them a woman), and many others implicated.” On 10 August, Rahn wrote again that “those Negroes of Mr. Houston” were “ten in no. in committing the murderous act. The people in the county assembled, holding a court executed five without a legal process of law and it is supposed they execute the balance.” An orderly lynching was apparently thought the best way to deal with such an insurrection. Thomas Shepard thought that the whole affair showed how Satan—“old Sambo,” he called him—“will (as often as he can) make sin in one work the destruction of others.”25

  Black rage, however, did not always turn against whites or rise in resistance to slavery—often it was directed against other blacks, especially as the settlements were increasingly disrupted. At Arcadia one of the men—Allen—got in a fight with a man named Robert from a neighboring plantation. Plymouth, the driver for John B. Mallard, was able to stop the fight, but not before Allen butted heads with Robert. The blow to Allen’s head evidently caused a concussion, and Allen died a few days later. At North Hampton plantation, near Montevideo, a young carpenter was at first thought to have drowned in the dark waters of the North Newport but was later believed murdered by someone in the settlement.26 And a group of slaves that were associated with the old Mallard Place were involved in a fight that led to death. Charles wrote in his journal some of the details:

  Mr. B. A. Busby’s man Anthony was killed Saturday night by a blow on the head with a rake in the han
ds of Mr. J. L. Mallard’s boy Adam, 13 or 15 years old. Woman Betty—W. S. Baker’s—implicated—discharged. Boy committed for trial. Done in Dorchester in the night. Anthony died Sunday afternoon. Not a good Negro.

  Occasionally someone in the settlements would turn, out of some despair or desperation, not to resistance but to self-destruction. Jim, the driver at Charles Berrien Jones’s plantation, had grown up at the Retreat and had been widely respected. When Charles learned of Jim’s death, he wrote Charlie:

  Your uncle Berrien has been much afflicted in the loss of his driver, Jim. Little Jim as he used to be familiarly called. Poor fellow—something went wrong on the plantation, his character was implicated, and he seems not to have been able to bear the loss of character and he deliberately loaded the gun, went into a room, lay down, fixed his head on some cotton, cocked the piece, drove the ram rod, put the gun between his feet, kept the muzzle with his left hand in its place under his throat, and then with the ram-rod in his right hand touched the trigger! The load passed through the crown of the head! In this position—unmoved, he was almost immediately found. How sad! He was waiting in the house before we were married, and was very handy in getting my letters to your mother out of the office on mail days and hastening home with them. Thus is the journey of life strewed with light and shade and the shade is often very dark and distressing.27

  Of course, there was nothing new about any of this. Running away, burning barns, fighting among blacks, and even occasionally the murder of a white and the suicide of a black had a history in Liberty County. But the decade of the 1850s apparently encouraged such behavior as the increasing disruptions of the settlements unleashed long-suppressed rage and new anxieties. In such a context old tensions between blacks and whites took on a growing intensity, and that intensity intruded into the settlement at Carlawter.