The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

by Taylor, Alan

  The next big flare-up came a month later and involved Billy, who had been Cabell’s manservant. In February 1808, Cabell caught Billy pilfering, so Tucker advised, “Bring Billy down with you as I am determined to send him back with a memento against thieving.” The “memento” probably entailed whipping. Then Cabell and Tucker exiled Billy to Corotoman as a field hand: a harsh fall for a manservant. On March 12, 1808, however, Robertson reported that Billy refused to work. When Robertson prepared to “correct” him, Billy picked up a brick as a weapon and ran away, swearing that “he would di[e] before he would be corrected and gave me a great deal of impertinent language.” His defiance induced three other “very insolent” slaves to run away, and Robertson predicted that they would head to Williamsburg to complain to Tucker. “I never had so disorderly [a] set of people to manage in my life,” Robertson concluded.24

  Staying in Williamsburg, Tucker expected Cabell to fix the latest blowup at Corotoman. Meanwhile, more slaves fled into the forest. On June 20, Cabell reported, “I found no less than fourteen crop hands in the woods when I got to Corotoman. I got them all in, had some of them corrected, sent two to Lancaster Prison to be sold (one of whom is my man Billy) and I turned off the assistant overseer, whose cruelty I could no longer bear.” Playing both good and bad cop, Cabell sacked Robertson’s brutal young assistant but only after rounding up the runaways and flogging or jailing the ringleaders, pending their sale. In late August a woman and her child left the Lancaster jail by sale to a slave trader, who took them far away to Georgia or South Carolina to pick cotton. Apparently Billy played the penitent and got a reprieve, for he remained at Corotoman during the next decade.25

  Despite Cabell’s latest intervention, resistance persisted, and the restive slaves got support from the nearby common whites, who also hated the strict new regime at Corotoman. Former tenants resented losing their lands, and debtors disliked being pressed suddenly to pay their arrears. Both the slaves and the common whites pined for the good old days of Gresham’s laxer regime. To spite Robertson and Cabell, slaves and common whites colluded in stealing from the estate. Cabell suspected that the malcontents got encouragement from Gresham, who lived on a nearby farm. In November 1809, Cabell again had to return to Corotoman to restore order: “On my arrival, ten of the most able and likely young negros were in the woods. The banditti who live in the fork of Carter’s Creek, were plundering & insulting the estate in the most abominable manner. The people thereabouts [were] generally railing at & threatening Robertson, the manager. . . . The stocks of sheep & hogs [were] constantly thinned by the depredations of runaways and lawless white freebooters.” And one of Robertson’s assistants was “holding an illicit intercourse with the young women on the estate,” which may have sparked the latest flight to the woods.26

  Cabell recovered the latest runaways, and he claimed victory in 1810 by exulting in the labor that Robertson had goaded from the reduced workforce. Every winter, the men cleared more of the forest in the rear of the plantation: “The land is under a system of good tillage & the soil gradually improving & the estate assuming constantly a more agreeable & spacious aspect as the forest farms become more open.” In a good year, the estate produced 3,000 bushels of wheat for the market, and 2,500 barrels of corn, of which 1,000 had to be retained to feed the slaves, leaving a surplus of 1,500. Cabell had terminated the cultivation of tobacco, which he detested as a soil killer. Due to several good harvests, the new regime proved profitable during the five years of 1808–1812.27

  But the troubled plantation began to wear down Cabell, who lamented, “I never open a letter from that quarter, but with a sure conviction on my mind, that I am to hear something disagreeable—something to create inquietude & distress.” Rather than endure further “painful assaults upon my peace of mind,” Cabell longed to “retire to the hollow of a mountain to live on Indian bread.” He wished “extremely for Charles’s return that something may be done to put a stop to this never ceasing . . . vexatious correspondence with the managers.” But Cabell should have been more careful in his wishes, for Charles Carter was the wild card in the family deck.28

  Divisions

  More idealistic than the rest of the family, Charles became known as “Phylosopher Carter” to their friends. Mercurial and sentimental, Charles struggled as a student at the College of William and Mary, so St. George Tucker sent the boy away to Winchester to study with his older stepbrother, Henry St. George Tucker, who soon complained, “He is so fanciful that it is difficult to meet his wishes; & so irritable that he regards every failure in the attempt to please him as clearly demonstrative of a desire to vex him.” In 1806 St. George Tucker gave up on training Charles for the law and instead sent him away first to Paris and later to Edinburgh to study medicine.29

  From Europe, Charles wrote dutiful and affectionate letters to his parents, but his idealism unnerved them. In December 1806 he reminded Tucker, “I informed you some time since that it was my intention to emancipate all the Slaves which fell to my share. Be assured that I am still resolved on doing so. I am sure that you will aid me in my endeavours to carry into effect this first wish of my Heart.” In November 1807, Charles explained, “Many reasons, my dear Father Tucker, incline me to make this determination, the principal one of which is that I don’t feel myself authorized to deprive another of his Liberty. What man is there who can justify the making another labour for his support or who should be willing to trust to the humanity of his Temper in the exercise of that right which a Master possesses over his Slave?” Unlike his peers back in Virginia, Charles could imagine blacks as his equal in rights.30

  Tucker, however, had made his peace with slavery and wanted to preserve his annual income from Corotoman. He tried to discourage Charles by citing the financial inconvenience to the family of losing their slave labor. Yet, Charles remained resolute: “Unfortunate as it is, that in relinquishing this property, I must injure those I would least wish to injure, but I know them too well not to feel assured that they will pardon me for doing so.” This only proved how little he really knew of the Tuckers, who did not share his abolitionist dream.31

  During the spring of 1812, Carter returned from Europe with, in Cabell’s words, “some opinions very adverse to the interests of Virginia estates.” He proposed to free his share of the slaves, provided that his mother, sister, Tucker, and Cabell would consent. But they balked, lest their own slaves become restive. In May, family friend Dr. Philip Barraud (who was John Hartwell Cocke’s father-in-law) advised Tucker on how to dissuade Charles. “I think it may be proved to him that he can do much more for those people than they can do for themselves. John Cocke . . . talked romantically after marriage on this very topic. His best Judgment is now against the Doctrine from sound Experience.” Charles backed away from freeing the Corotoman field hands, but he pressed his mother to commit to manumit, after her death and Tucker’s, the Williamsburg household slaves, whom Charles stood to inherit.32

  Tucker abruptly rejected even that limited and delayed proposal, for he expected complete control over his household. Fearing that the house slaves might hasten his death with poison, Tucker instructed Lelia to inform Charles that any prospective emancipation

  would probably, if known to them, be the source of misconduct on their parts and possibly of consequences as fatal as have in more than one Instance flowed from Servants knowing that the period of their Emancipation depended upon the Death of a person whom they might possess the means of secretly destroying. Such a Temptation ought in no case to be held out to poor ignorant Creatures who might be misled by the Councils of others.

  Tucker also reminded Charles that under Virginia’s revised manumission law of 1806, any emancipated slaves had to leave the state within a year, which would

  send them into perpetual Banishment from their friends & Connexions, poor, ignorant, and friendless. Those in the decline of Life would perish miserably, & those who were not would be obliged to encounter every hardship that poverty, ignorance, want
of friends, and a complexion indicative of a State of Slavery would expose them to—perhaps to be taken up & sold as runaway Slaves, &c. In the latter case . . . they might be sold to cruel masters and experience a Lot an hundred times harder than that to which them have been for more than twenty years accustomed & in which they probably are, and will continue as happy, as they are capable of being.

  During the sixteen years after his failed emancipation plan, Tucker had learned all of the lines of a pro-slavery paternalist, persuaded that slavery protected “poor, ignorant Creatures” who had to be kept so forever.33

  In early 1812, Charles Carter settled at Corotoman, where he tried to introduce a milder management that undermined and irritated Robertson. Supporting their manager, Tucker and Cabell regretted Carter’s meddling as naive and dangerous. The tensions came to a head in August 1812, when two young enslaved men ran away from Corotoman to Williamsburg. Appealing to Tucker’s paternalism, they sought protection against Robertson’s abuse. One had been severely whipped, and the other was about to be flogged, when both broke free of their ropes and escaped. One had offended by leaving the plantation overnight to visit his wife, and the other had been caught “resting a few minutes in the heat of the day.” They reported that five other slaves had fled into the nearby woods. Lelia added that Robertson had pursued and caught one of the other runaways, John Chub: “In the contest he received a blow—came home that night & died the next morning.”34

  The abrupt appearance of runaways with fresh scars and grim stories troubled Tucker, who preferred to keep a denying distance from his plantation and its field hands. After putting them to work on a nearby farm, Tucker unburdened himself in a letter to Cabell: “This is an abominable state of things & I almost wish I was dead that I might neither hear nor see any more such [runaways].” Eloquent in his self-pity, Tucker felt victimized by the turmoil that he expected Robertson to keep confined to Corotoman.35

  The Tuckers and Cabells blamed Carter for sympathizing with, and perhaps even encouraging, the slave protest against Robertson. In a pained letter to Polly, Lelia disavowed her son.

  Could a Mother inspire a Child with her own opinions & feelings, how different would the conduct of mine be—but alas! We have only the power of wishing . . . but in Charles’s case I indulge the hope that a personal experience of difficulties will make a change. . . . He promised me, & he tells me that he has fulfilled his promise, to say to the Negroes that he would not give countenance to their running away, or to their disobedience—that his right after a division would extend but to a third of them & in the mean time that he enjoined them all to pay the fullest attention to Mr. Robertson’s orders.

  But Robertson’s power was already too compromised. In September, Cabell sought a new estate manager because, he explained, “Robertson’s authority over the negroes seems to be entirely destroyed and a great clamor has been raised about his cruelty.”36

  On behalf of their community, the runaways had won an important concession by compelling Tucker and Cabell to sack Robertson. Slaves, however, could achieve only a partial and temporary victory given the superior power of the masters. Indeed, the new manager, John Richeson, was another improver recommended by Colonel Taylor, and Robertson lingered until the end of the year to help Richeson restore order. In December, Cabell reported renewed “uncertainty and difficulties & embarrassments” at Corotoman. Ten slaves had fled in the night “under the pretext . . . that Mr. Robertson would beat them.” Cabell added, “Richeson was very uneasy least Charles’s indulgence to his people might interfere seriously with his authority on the adjacent plantation.” Cabell ordered five of the recently retrieved runaways sold “for incorrigible ill conduct.”37

  Meanwhile, Cabell and Carter struggled over how to divide the land and slaves of Corotoman. It was no easy matter to split up a large and complex estate that included 200 human beings with the differential values dictated by age, gender, health, and skill. Cabell and Carter relied on three distinguished arbiters experienced at managing Virginia estates: John Hartwell Cocke, Richard Corbin, and Colonel Henry Skipwith. In December 1812 they met at Corotoman to divide the land and sort the diverse slaves into two lots of equal value. Carter received 3,250 acres of fertile lowlands along Taylor’s Creek and another 1,200 acres of forested hinterland. Cabell and Tucker retained the western lowlands: 3,195 acres along Carter’s Creek. Carter probably got the extra forest land to settle charges owed by Cabell and Tucker for the period during Carter’s absence in Europe.38

  After dividing the slaves by lot, Cabell complained bitterly that Carter had obtained the best carpenters, but Cabell’s friend Cocke defended the award and revealed the complexity of valuing and dividing human beings: “The other carpenter of equal value to Joe Brown was put into one lot & the [black]smith into the other lot and Charles drew that which had the Carpenter in it. The other rough carpenters of inferior value, we equally divided between the two lots—with the exception of one, which Charles selected call’d Sam.” There was the further complication that Cabell had unilaterally sold five recovered runaways without Carter’s permission. Rather than a cash settlement, he wanted three more slaves as his share from the estate.39

  Dissatisfied with Cocke’s explanation, Cabell threw a dramatic fit: “I am lost in astonishment & my soul already torn by affliction is almost crushed by this new catalogue of unprovoked injuries. . . . Sometimes I feel as if I should become deranged.” Used to dominating others, slaveholders rarely took disappointment well. Once again, Tucker took Cabell’s side, advising him, in regard to Carter, “that you should never see each other again—nor even write. . . . My wife is wretched; & I am not far from it, from this Cause.” Lelia agreed, denouncing her son for manifesting “unbridled passion, prejudice, pride, & obstinacy,” although that description better fits Cabell’s conduct given Cocke’s explanation of the dispute. But Carter had become the black sheep of his family for advocating better treatment of their slaves.40

  Cabell’s petulance over the carpenters would cost him dearly, for he could not sell his share of the slaves and the lands until he had completed the legal division by entering into formal deeds of partition and mutual release with Carter. Nothing could be done so long as Cabell refused to write or speak to him. That delay bought time for the slaves to make other plans.

  During February 1813, the same month that Cabell fell out with Carter, British warships appeared in Chesapeake Bay. Because Corotoman lay along a navigable river near the bay, Cabell worried, “Our situation in that quarter is truly distressing. I expect every day to hear that the British Tenders will take that course, as all our force is gone to Norfolk & Hampton.” Given the recent unrest at Corotoman, Cabell expected the slaves to seek out the British as liberators: “The negroes will probably not wait for them to come in pursuit of them.”41

  In November, Cabell returned to Corotoman to find the enemy pressing their raids along the nearby Potomac: “burning vessels, plundering along the Maryland shore & receiving refugee slaves from both shores in great numbers.” In one week, the enemy liberated 200 slaves, and Cabell despaired of repelling any British raid on Corotoman: “Great Passiveness appeared . . . among the militia. No signals had been agreed on—no plan for rendezvousing with quickness & vigor. In short the feeble & scattered militia in Lancaster [County] act as if they had no other reliance but on the mercy of the enemy, or on providence, or on the wilderness around their farms.”42

  To reduce the danger from a raid, Cabell had Richeson relocate most of the Tucker-Cabell slaves away from their riverside community to a new quarter in the woods at the head of Carter’s Creek, placing them beyond sight of any British vessels. “The settlement at the sloop landing is to be entirely broken up,” Cabell explained, save for “some few old ones . . . & one family to watch the granary.” The elderly seemed the least likely to escape. Ominously named “Deadman’s Bones,” the new quarter was an unhealthy location. Rather than risk losing many slaves to the British, Cabell preferred to risk a
few more deaths by malaria.43

  The move apparently backfired, disgusting many slaves and preparing them to try their luck with the British. If so, they were not about to share this decision with Cabell, who returned from visiting Corotoman to gush, “I found Richeson managing the property & particularly the negroes remarkably well. All were satisfied & not a murmur to be heard. . . . I talked freely with some of the negros relative to the British & from all I could discover they seemed to have no intention of going away.” Given what would happen five months later, Cabell was played by his canny slaves in November 1813.44

  Families

  The liberation of the Corotoman slaves followed a classic pattern: three young men initially fled and then led the British back in force to liberate their brothers, sisters, children, parents, cousins, uncles, and aunts. On April 18, 1814, four British barges entered Carter’s Creek in pursuit of two merchant sloops. The raiders faced no resistance from the militia because, a local man reported, “it being not only court, but election day for Lancaster County, of which the enemy, by some means not yet discovered, must have been apprized.” The militiamen had gone to the courthouse to drink and vote, leaving the rest of the county undefended. When British barges probed into the creek, Richeson drove “all the stock of every kind” into the forest “and directed all the Negroes to get up to the new settlement, and from thence into the woods.” But three defiant young men—Canada Baton, Tom Saunders, and Ezekiel Loney—bolted to join the raiders. An agitated Richeson reported, “I have been more distress[ed] this time than all the rest together. If these times should last, I mean to go home next year.” He predicted that more slaves would flee if the British returned, which they soon did.45